An open letter, published in various newspapers in 2019 and authored by Boris Palmer, contains a list of such reasons. Palmer is a leader in Germany’s Green Party and published his list as an antidote to extreme environmentalists in his own movement who’d claimed that civilization had “ruined” their lives. Palmer offers his list as evidence to the contrary: their lives have not been ruined, but to the contrary, made much better.
Palmer notes that young people have better life opportunities than at any previous time in recorded human history. The percentage of undernourished people in the world has sunk from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2019. Various contagious diseases have been significantly reduced or even eliminated.
While 100,000,000 people died in wars in the twentieth century, Palmer reports that fewer than 2,000,000 have died in wars in the last twenty years. The life expectancy of a newborn baby in the year 1800 was approximately 30 years. In 2019, that number was 72 years.
During those same two centuries, child mortality worldwide has sunk from 44% to 4%.
These advances, according to Palmer, are the results of deliberate actions and networked systems of governments, institutions, and businesses. All of this works together for better living conditions for human beings.
