Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: Jed, such opinions depend on the time scale you wish to use. If you are > concerned about what will happen to your children, your optimism should be > low. >
Look at the video. Most of the Third World has *now* -- already -- achieved the low levels of infant mortality and family size that were the standard in the First World in 1960. These problems are essentially solved, except in a few countries that are politically unstable or at war. We can be optimistic now, becauses these two critical problems have been largely solved. Once you stop the population explosion and ensure that most children will survive to adulthood, that frees up resources to make progress in many other areas, such as education, economic growth and reducing pollution. The Internet, on-line instruction and on-line libraries are beginning to have an impact on education. This video was made by the Gates Foundation. A large share of the credit for recent progress goes to them. > if you are talking about your great-grand children, you should be a bit > more optimistic. > We are not talking about our great-grandchildren. This is happening now. If anyone in 1960 has said that Africa would achieve U.S. levels of infant mortality and family size by 2005, people would have accused them of being panglossian fools. People were predicting continent-wide mass starvation back then. Of course far more needs to be done. But this progress proves that we can achieve far more. With programs like a guaranteed minimum income and technology such as cold fusion, we can eliminate dire poverty everywhere, and we can have universal literacy within a generation. These goals are within sight. We can also eliminate things like the terrible air pollution in China. We had that kind of pollution in some cities the U.S. and the U.K. until the early 1950s, and in Japan until mid-1960s. The problem was solved when the voters demanded it be solved. The technology to fix it was available from the 1930s on. - Jed
