*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.
