2017 - Its Getting Better! (...So Get Over It )

By just about any metric you want to measure it by, the prospects for humanity both now and in the future are improving and at an increasing rate.

But what about the population bomb? Global warming? ISIL? Pollution and all the other terrors and demons waiting for us all?

Well here's some facts rather than the self serving doom-laden propaganda that gets disseminated by the likes of Greenpeace, FOE and WWF.

Global life expectancy is now....70. Whereas most people think it is stuck at about 40.

How many kids do families typically have in (say) Bangladesh? 4? 6? 8?

No. It's now actually 2.5.

In fact the world went through "peak child" around 2000. Peak child means that the population of 16-24 year old is now stationary at about 2 Billion.

The world population is though still going up. That is because due to better health care, plentiful energy and a better diet people are living longer. But because the 18 - 24 year old are stationary at 2 Billion it means that the peak of the world population is in sight.

The world population will stabilize at about 11 billion within the next 70 years.

What about disasters? Remember the hysteria over Fukushima? Remember the smirking doomsters predicting death tolls of  hundreds of thousands? Possibly millions?

Yet in fact, NOBODY died from the Fukushima melt-downs - except for those poor souls were scared half to death by scientifically illiterate fear-mongers who had them forcibly evacuated.

Global Warming? True - we should not be complacent but even hurricanes are now at an all time low. The North Pole ice cap is still there, no doubt much to the chagrin of Al Gore. Sea levels are yet to show an increase.

Pollution? We are getting a grip. The incredible stupidity of promoting diesel cars has hit the buffers and just about everybody realizes how polluting coal is. Though bizarrely the grip is loosening in those countries piously parading their "Greenery". Germany continues to build new coal plant
while closing nuclear. But even then, nuclear is taking off in style all around the world. The West are the laggards, which is dissapointing.(A bit like having your football team in the relegation zone).

On the down side we continue to squander resources on junk energy like wind and solar. They have their niches but that's all. But people are getting wise to the snake oil salesmen who promise the world and provide little. Lets hope a few more of them get a good financial kicking in 2017.

Bigotry and pedantic religious dogma have also taken a beating. Mainly because world literacy now stands at well over 80%.

Education and better health care now mean that women are steadily overcoming the dogma and prejudices that have shackled them in the past. The education genie is out of the bottle. Much as the likes of ISIL and their ilk would want to put it back in - it ain't going to fit. Women are taking their rightful place at the centre of human progress.

Even Donald Trump and Brexit show how advanced nations are throwing off self serving elitist cliques. Now we just need to ensure we don't build new ones!

No doubt this is all disappointing stuff for the doom mongers - those who love to see the glass half empty - and full of poison. For them realism is now the enemy,

Today realism shows us things really are getting better.

True there are lots of things that still need fixing. Lots of wrongs that need righting.

But hey its the new year - let's be optimistic and crack on. Let the doom mongers stew.

Happy New Year!

Why the Young Don't Vote

Ever since I wrote about the poor turn out of 18-25 year old voters in the Eu Referendum (See THIS POST Here) and showed that 64% of the 18-24 age group failed to vote I've been thinking about why the young are so unlikely to vote. I started following the usual mantra that this non-voting was simply a form of laziness or a symptom of societal dislocation of some sort.

But maybe it is simpler than that, and more honourable too.

What if the young, recognising their lack of life experience, are simply abstaining and letting the older and (maybe) wiser councils of their elders make the decision?

Maybe we should even encourage people to abstain. Or more properly, we should encourage people to give proper consideration of the presented arguments before voting. If that consideration results in the voter coming to the conclusion that they really do not know which way to vote then abstention is a proper and considered response.

Vilifying the young for not voting is no answer. Instead of raging about their lack of respect for democracy we should be encouraging the young (and non-voters in general) to become better informed.

Forcing young people to dive headlong into electoral decision making to which they are ill-equipped is a bad idea. Why not wait for them to get a little more life experience first? Then they may be more capable of registering a meaningful vote.

So be nice to that young and spotty non-voter. Their abstention may not be not due to a lack of interest but due to a lack of experience.