Uncategorized

Despite high-profile violence underway in the world, daily experience tells a different story. A global Gallup survey late last year found that more people around the globe felt safe walking alone at night in their city or neighborhood than at any time since Gallup began tracking this in 2006. At 73 percent, this share was…

The air we breathe is becoming significantly less deadly. Globally, the rate of deaths caused by air pollution fell by 21 percent in one decade, from 2013 to 2023. That death rate is age-adjusted because the young and the old are far more severely affected by dirty air. Much of the progress has come from…

Life expectancy in the US has never been as robust as among other advanced countries. Then it seemed to top out in 2014 while it continued to rise elsewhere. Longevity dropped everywhere during the pandemic – but most dramatically in the US. The good news is that US life expectancy at birth is rising again.…

Over the past 40 years, the US has become a much more water efficient. Since water use peaked in the 1980s, the population has grown more than 45 percent. Yet the total water use has dropped by 20 percent. On a per person basis, water use is down about 40 percent. This progress has less…

Canada’s agricultural breadbasket has been racked by drought since 2020 – punctuated by floods. This, many scientists have predicted, is the troubling future of Canadian farming in a changing climate. But there’s a surprise. It’s not that the weather isn’t hotter and drier and more extreme. It is all that. It’s that crop yields are…

For the first time in its history, Mexico has more people in its middle class than those living in poverty. These are World Bank categories measuring multidimensional poverty for an upper middle income country. More important than the categories is the trend. World Bank data show the Mexican middle class grew by more than 12 percentage…

For the first time in a generation, no drought conditions or even unusual dryness are seen anywhere in California. Of the state’s 17 major reservoirs, 14 are over 70 percent of maximum capacity. Boat docks have refloated out of the mud. Towns and cities are getting bigger, cheaper water deliveries. Chinook salmon are getting higher…

Pessimism is not quite as pervasive as it can seem, according to surveys conducted over the past year by the Archbridge Institute, a think tank focused on human flourishing. Positive attitudes remain remarkably widespread across different aspects of American life. Approximately 70% of Americans report they have achieved, or are making progress toward achieving, the American Dream.…

The year saw fires in Los Angeles that flattened communities, a tragic flood in Texas, and cyclone-driven floods in southern Asia that were far more devastating. We had our share of extreme weather. But the record 2025 set is the lowest death rate from extreme weather events since records began. Commentator Roger Pielke Jr. notes…

After rising for most of two decades, the overall suicide rate in the US dropped a bit in 2024, the latest year for data. More encouragingly, suicide attempts among teens has dropped much more decidedly. Young people between ages 12 and 17 attempted suicide 25 percent fewer times in 2024 than in 2021. We don’t…