Hans Rosling asks: Has the UN gone mad?
The United Nations just announced their boldest goal ever: To eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, already by 2030.
Looking at the realities of extremely poor people the goal seems impossible. The rains didn’t fall in Malawi this year. The poor farmers Dunstar & Jenet, gather a tiny maize harvest in a small pile on the ground outside their mud hut. But Dunstar & Jenet know exactly what they need to break the vicious circle of poverty. And Hans Rosling shows how billions of people have already managed. This year’s “hunger season” may very well be Dunster’s & Jenet’s last.
Up-to-date statistics show that recent global progress is ‘the greatest story of our time – possibly the greatest story in all of human history. The goal seems unrealistic to many highly educated people because their worldview is lagging 60 years behind reality…
Watch the one hour video from 2015 and read the rest of the article in Gapminder.
Watch the 3 year old video DON’T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population here:
Watch a 4 minutes video from 2010 (The Joy of Stats 200 countries 200 Years 4 minutes) showing the population development in the World over the last 200 years. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
On September 25th 2015, 193 world leaders commit to 17 Global Goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things between now and the year 2030. End extreme poverty. Fight inequality & injustice. Fix climate change. The Global Goals for sustainable development could get these things done. In all countries. For all people.
On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN Summit — officially came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.
The SDGs build on the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and aim to go further to end all forms of poverty. The new Goals are unique in that they call for action by all countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and addresses a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection…
A world greatly concerned about how the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president could stall global climate policy received a major dose of welcome news Sunday, when scientists published a projection suggesting that for the third straight year, global carbon dioxide emissions did not increase much in 2016.
The news comes from the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who measure how much carbon dioxide humans emit each year, as well as how much is subsequently absorbed by plants, land surfaces and oceans. The difference between the two determines the amount of carbon dioxide that remains in the atmosphere and drives global warming…
26 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better.
The press — and humans in general — have a strong negativity bias. Bad economic news gets more coverage than good news. Negative experiences affect people more, and for longer, than positive ones. So it’s natural for things like Russia’s incursion into Ukraine or the rise of ISIS or the Ebola outbreak to weigh on us more than, say, the fact that extreme poverty has fallen by half since 1990, or that life expectancy is increasing, especially in poor countries. But it’s worth paying some attention to the latter factors. The world is getting much, much better on a whole variety of dimensions. Here are just a few:
– Extreme poverty has fallen
– Hunger is falling
– Child labor is on the decline
– People in developed countries have more leisure time
– The share of income spent on food has plummeted in the US
– Life expectancy is rising
– Child mortality is down
– Death in childbirth is rarer
– People are getting taller
– More people have access to malaria bednets
– Guinea worm is almost eradicated
– Teen births in the US are down
– As is smoking
– War is on the decline
– Homicide rates are falling in Europe …
– … and the US too
– Violent crime in the US is going down
– We’ve rapidly reduced the supply of nuclear weapons
– More and more countries are democracies
– More people are going to school for longer
– And literacy is, predictably, up as well.
– The US unsheltered homeless population has fallen by nearly 32 percent since 2007.
– Moore’s law is still going
– Access to the internet is increasing
– Solar power is getting cheaper
Read the whole article with charts and maps by Dylan Matthews in Vox.
Some companies in Sweden are moving to a six-hour working day in a bid to increase productivity and make people happier.
Employers across the country have already made the change, according to the Science Alert website, which said the aim was to get more done in a shorter amount of time and ensure people had the energy to enjoy their private lives.
Toyota centres in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, made the switch 13 years ago, with the company reporting happier staff, a lower turnover rate, and an increase in profits in that time.
Filimundus, an app developer based in the capital Stockholm, introduced the six-hour day last year.
“The eight-hour work day is not as effective as one would think,” Linus Feldt, the company’s CEO told Fast Company.
Read the whole article by Hardeep Matharu in Independent.
Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in TED Talks 2016 where I discussed many of the challenges presented by the climate crisis. But a powerful shift has been taking place, and it is clear that we will ultimately prevail. Here’s why:
There are now only three questions we have to answer about climate change and our future.
1. MUST we change?
Each day we spew 110 million tons of heat-trapping global warming pollution into the very thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet, using it as an open sewer for the gaseous waste of our industrial civilization as it is presently organized…
Read the whole article by Al Gore in www.algore.com or at Medium where it was published originally.
Germany’s Federal Council (Bundesrat) voted to approve a ban on new combustion engine vehicles beginning in 2030. This move solidifies the opinion outlined earlier this summer to slash emissions in privately owned passenger cars. The Federal Council, which represents the nation’s federal states, approved the measure in order to cut emissions in accordance with the goals set forth in the Paris climate agreement, which Germany ratified just weeks ago. The Council has also asked the European Commission to consider implementing a ban like this across the European Union; given the long history of German policy influence, it could happen.
Read the whole article by Cat DiStasio in Inhabitat.
More than 150 countries have reached a deal described as “monumental” to phase out gases that are making global warming worse.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are widely used in fridges, air conditioning and aerosol sprays.
Delegates meeting in Rwanda accepted a complex amendment to the Montreal Protocol that will see richer countries cut back their HFC use from 2019.
But some critics say the compromise may have less impact than expected.
Three-way deal
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped forge the deal in a series of meetings in the Rwandan capital, said it was a major victory for the Earth.
“It’s a monumental step forward, that addresses the needs of individual nations but it will give us the opportunity to reduce the warming of the planet by an entire half a degree centigrade,” he told BBC News…
Read the whole article by Matt McGrath in BBC News.
