Curb your Awfulising

During our recent trip to Dorset, we drove around Portland – that odd spur of land that dangles from the eastern end of Chesil Beach. It is the source of the famous building material, Portland stone, but we did not see any evidence of present day quarrying, just the remains of industry past. “They must have used it all up,” I said. However, I learned later – from a TV documentary – that the stone is being extracted still, and in vast quantities, from a network of underground mines. As I watched, I hoped that the presenter would raise the question of the eventual fate of Portland – would it soon be consumed completely? – but he seemed to have reached a tacit agreement with the mine manager to portray the stone as an unlimited resource.

Perhaps I worry unnecessarily about the fate of the rocky outcrop due to the historical novel I am currently reading: Barkskins describes the ravaging of North America by the early European colonists who, having stripped the Old World of its forests, proceeded to do the same to the New World. Awed by the size and fecundity of the woodlands there, they believed the resource was limitless: in any case, they were too busy reaping profits to consider the replenishment of nature’s bounty. Eventually, the notion of sustainability did take hold, with trees being planted for future harvesting, which is a comfort of sorts, but the fact that President Trump has appointed a climate change sceptic to head the Environment Protection Agency leads me back to a pessimistic prognosis. What can be done to limit the damage we are doing to nature? It is not my destiny to be a Greenpeace activist, risking life or limb out in the field of conflict – I do my bit at the recycling bins while cheering on the front-line soldiers. I may not have been able to come up with a clever idea like the people in Wyoming, who are buying up as many as they can of the limited-issue bear-hunting licences so that they can burn them, but at least I read that while drinking my takeaway coffee in a non-disposable cup.

Of course, it isn’t just the environment that concerns me: what about the general wellbeing of humanity? The abundance – or otherwise – of natural resources is just a part of the equation. Poverty, repression, ignorance, war and disease are all the enemies of humanity and they all seem to be getting worse: but are they? Statistics, surprisingly, demonstrate that they are, in fact, (literally) getting better which, to those of us who are inclined to ‘awfulise’ the situation, should be something of a revelation and a comfort. Consider the following quote: “In 1976, Mao single-handedly and dramatically changed the direction of global poverty with one simple act: he died.”  Though the statement gives no comfort to those who suffered under Mao’s tyranny, it makes the point that a proper consideration of factual data can dispel popular misconceptions about the state of the world. This proposition is the basis of Factfulness, Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World and Why Things are Better Than You Think, a book that is on top of my pile of intended reading, not least because it promises to “manage your tendency to misery”. The authors deploy data convincingly to demonstrate that even educated people can be “not only devastatingly wrong but systematically wrong” about global trends. If it lives up to its reputation for credibility, it will sit nicely with the next on the pile, Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, an argument for the case that humans have a much better life than they used to.

Therefore, I end on an optimistic note, albeit with a slight caution, as expressed so succinctly by the writer E.B. White (d.1985): “I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.”