Stuck for something to write about this weekend, I thought back to the topics I’d covered in recent weeks: the BBC under threat; big tech Big Brother surveillance activities; a world gripped by fear of coronavirus; and another deadly winter in the Scottish mountains.
Just the kind of light-hearted fare I imagine you want to consume as the weekend gets underway.
So, I thought a touch of optimism was in order today. Perhaps not the all-out ebullience displayed by Paul Whitehouse’s “brilliant” Mancunian on The Fast Show, but definitely nearer to him in outlook than Charlie Higson’s Johnny Nice Painter, the artist for whom every landscape he surveyed eventually became “black, black, black.”
These mid-1990s cultural reference points will be lost on the majority of my younger colleagues. And if they don’t remember them, they probably won’t remember another popular topic of conversation in the 1980s and 1990s – the ever-widening hole in the ozone layer.
The damage done by humans to the shield of gas that protects us from most of the sun’s high-frequency ultraviolet rays was one of the big worries of that era. Happily, the UN’s environmental scientists now predict it will be completely healed by the 2030s, if current momentum is maintained.
So effective was the coordinated global effort to phase-out ozone-depleting chemicals in refrigerators, hairspray (another retro reference (for you at least Gaffers! -Ed)) and other consumer goods that, since the year 2000, parts of the ozone layer have recovered at a rate of one to three per cent every 10 years.
Hope springs eternal and not only from the ozone hole. Our “negativity instinct”, as Hans Rosling described it in his bestselling book Factfulness, often leads us to believe the world is going to the dogs. However, Rosling reminded us that the opposite is actually true and the general rule of thumb in life is that most things are, in fact, improving.
In the last 20 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost halved. Life expectancy has more than doubled over the past 200 years. Nearly 90% of one-year-olds now receive vaccinations against disease, compared with just 22% in 1980. More girls are going to school and staying in education than ever before. Last year, for the first time, the UK produced more electricity from low-carbon renewables and nuclear than from fossil fuels.
Reasons to be cheerful abound. Rosling summarised these improvements beautifully as “the secret silent miracle of human progress”.
Enjoy your weekend.