Sweet Science

Matt "Genome" Ridley delivers a paean to science–a bitch slap to European pessimists–in The Guardian (courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily):

For the past century the world has got steadily better for most people. You do not believe that? I am not surprised. You are fed such a strong diet of news about how bad things are that it must be hard to believe they were once worse. But choose any statistic you like and it will show that the lot of even the poorest is better today than it was in 1903. Longevity is increasing faster in the poor south than in the rich north. Infant mortality is lower in Asia than ever before. Decade by decade per-capita food production is rising.

Here at home, we are healthier, wealthier and wiser than ever before. Pollution has declined; prosperity increased; options opened.

All this has been achieved primarily by that most hated of tricks, the technical fix. By invention, not legislation.

My point? Simply this: if you asked intellectuals at almost any time since Malthus to talk about the future, they would have been pessimistic and they would have been wrong. The future (actual) has consistently proved better than the future (forecast).

Want more reasons to be cheerful? Check out Reason's own Ron Bailey on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day.