Best Decade Yet: Humanity Grew Richer and More Sustainable in the 2010s

Over the last ten years, energy production has become cheaper and more efficient, Americans and Britons have started to consume fewer resources even as their standards of living increased, and greenhouse gas emissions have decreased. Contrary to the fearmongering of radicals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Grow Yucca in NYC), life has gotten better for humans and the environment in the past decade.

Writing for Britain's Spectator magazine, Matt Ridley explained that the 2010s have seen "the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline."

News often focuses on the tragedies — horrific mass shootings, poverty in Venezuela, war and civil strife in the Middle East — while ignoring the broad positive trends in living standards. Tragedies have been a fact of life for as long as humans walked the earth, but the increasing living standards are new and less shocking.

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