20 Ways the World Got Better in 2019, in Charts

The last 12 months have felt chaotic, destabilizing, and on occasion apocalyptic. Toxic nationalist movements have risen across the globe; politics in democratic nations have increasingly polarized; wealth gaps continue to expand; and the specter of climate change lurking at a remove has become an actual monster inside the house. It’s difficult, in the context of the daily onslaught of bad news and its demands on our attention, to remember that when you look at the long arc of human civilization, there are many, many things that continue to get better. As a sort of balm for the pains of a traumatic year, here are 20 concrete examples showing how, in many ways, the best time to be a human living on Earth was 2019. Editor’s note: It often takes a year or two (or more) to collect global data, so some of the figures shown in this article are from 2017 or 2018. All, however, were newly published in 2019. Environment/Climate/Energy Right now, it’s hard to find reasons to be optimistic about human civilization’s relationship with nature. The best thinkers on the planet have been releasing report after report telling us that, without world-upending alterations to our lifestyles and institutions, humankind is doomed to face catastrophic climate change within the next generation or two. Nevertheless, there have been some positive advances in the worlds of environment, climate, and energy in the past year. For example, the latest figures show that the global com...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change data visualization health Source Type: news