Mike Moore: Despite all the loud warnings, the sky hasn't fallen

Mike Moore

In the year 250 St Cyprian of Carthage proclaimed: The world has grown old. The rainfall and sun's warmth are both diminishing, the metals are nearly exhausted.

In 1014, Archbishop Wulfstan declared: The world is in a rush and getting to its end.

Bad news is good news for newspapers, talkback hosts and some politicians. It sells newspapers, inflates ratings, buys votes and makes for stimulating dinner party conversation.

This alarmist world view is pervasive and taken as gospel by many who believe the world is in steady and inevitable decline.

The only problem with the alarmist world view is that it is wrong on nearly every count.

In the 1800s, economist Stanley Jevons predicted Britain would be destroyed as a superpower because it would run out of coal. Thomas Malthus thought rising populations would lead to mass famines, while Rachel Carson's Silent Spring predicted back in 1962 that man-made chemicals would wipe us out within 20 years. Science Digest predicted a new Ice Age in the 1970s.

Yet, within a few years, equally reputable scientists were suggesting we were more likely to end up in a global sauna. In 1980, acid rain was going to kill all the forests in North America and Europe. It didn't happen.

Remember the Club of Rome predicting, in The Limits of Growth, that gold would be exhausted by 1981, tin by 1987, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and natural gas by 1993?

In 1900, male life expectancy in the United States was 49 years. In the 1920s, most US farms didn't have electricity. The pollution level of the River Thames contributed to the cholera epidemics between 1831 and 1866 that killed more than 35,000 people. In 1861, it carried the typhoid disease that killed Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert. In 1950, large stretches of the river were devoid of oxygen because of pollution, rendering it almost dead.

Now people fish and swim in the river, and pollution counts are hugely down in developed economies.

It may not be fashionable to say this, but life is getting better and it's partly because of the alarmists. Free societies respond to crisis - public opinion shifts politicians, answers are found.

It is not a historic anomaly that the worst environmental and social outcomes come from closed economies of the far left and the far right.

Without an active civil society pushing for better outcomes and creating public opinion that politicians and bureaucrats must respond to, the worst happens. Thus, democracy is a necessity for development, as well as a principle and a human right.

Let's look at some key indicators. In 50 years, life expectancy has gone up by 20 years; infant mortality has halved. This is portrayed as a pension and healthcare crisis. It's good news.

In the 10 years from 1980, the percentage of people with access to good sanitation rose from 78 per cent to 84 per cent in urban areas, and from 29 per cent to 36 per cent in rural communities. This is real progress.

The world's population has doubled since 1961, but we now produce more food per capita. Food production in the developing world has tripled in that time.

Super wheat and super rice have saved millions of lives. The man who invented the crops received the Nobel Prize for peace. Nowadays, some people would want to destroy his laboratory.

The percentage of people suffering from starvation in the developing world has fallen from 45 per cent in 1949, to 35 per cent in 1970, to 18 per cent in 1997 - and the United Nations expects that to have fallen to 12 per cent by 2010.

Living standards are also improving worldwide. The UN reports more progress in alleviating poverty in the developing world in the past 50 years than in the previous 500.

A child dies of poor sanitation every second, and more than two billion people don't have access to a private toilet. But - again - the magnitude of the problem is less than it was, and the situation is undeniably better and can improve, given sane economic and political conditions.

* Former Prime Minister Mike Moore was also head of the World Trade Organisation.