Things We are Celebrating

*Technology  really does make our lives better,  and longer. 2011 was the year that research  suggested we may be closing in on a powerful AIDS vaccine, that we came even closer  to the global annihilation of polio, and that we learned renewable energy investment  in  the  developing  world  had  outstripped   such investments in rich countries. Alongside strong economic growth in developing countries and the spread of peace, democracy, and learning, continued technological advances will underpin a healthier, wealthier, more stable, and more sustainable world in the years ahead.

*Vegetarianism in the United States may have expanded by as much

as two-thirds  since 2009. As many as 5 percent of Americans now claim they don' t eat meat.

*People are healthier  than ever. According to World Bank data, roughly two million children born this year worldwide will live to their fifth birthday who would have died were mortality rates what they were 10 years ago.

*The world is richer than it has ever been. Even as stagnation and  popular  angst  gripped  the  U.S.  economy  this  year,  a historically unprecedented decline in levels of absolute poverty continued worldwide.

*We're getting  smarter. Technological and scientific advance in

the United States and other developed countries continues at a remarkable pace     this was the year, after all, that Google premiered  a robot  that could attend boring meetings  in your place, and we discovered 21 more planets orbiting distant stars.

*We're more peaceful  than we used to be. The last decade has

seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past century. On the domestic front, violent crime continued  its downward  trend through the start of the recession -- from more than 1.8 million reported violent crimes in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2010.

*Freedom  and democracy  are  spreading.  That'  really  good news because democracies really do fight less often.

*Social  networking  is bringing  us all closer  together.  Closer

communications leads to more trade and investment, making people better off both here and abroad.

*Money is not just stuck in big banks.  On the strength of the

same technologies, global remittances have climbed from $132 to

$440 billion over the course of the past decade.

*There are more families and more people to be friends with than ever before.   To be sure, we face the challenge of moving the world onto a more sustainable path of consumption But combined with the global spread of education, a larger population means there are far, far more potential geniuses to help figure it out. So celebrate that there are more people who are leading a higher quality of life than ever before in recorded history.

Mark and I celebrate what we know YOU can do to make the world

an even better place next year.