The Improving State of the World

In a blog last week titled Perspective, this writer cited Indur Goklany's book, The Improving State of the World, particularly its focus on the change in life expectancy as a broad indicator of improving human welfare (and its sudden spike beginning in the mid-18th century). We've come a very long way from all those those centuries when humans were lucky to reach age 30; today's babies can expect much more:

The chart below shows another, albeit much narrower, indicator of improvement:  despite a rapid rise in the number of disasters reported, and despite there being many more people in recent decades living in areas where they occur, the number of people killed in such disasters has dropped dramatically over the past century. The explanation seems to be technology, which is clearly better at predicting, and systems (medical and otherwise), which are clearly better at responding:

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