Optimism

Lots of gloom and doom out there, but it depends where you look. A new book has come out bucking that trend. It is called "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves," by Matt Ridley. Mr. Ridley is a science writer. His foundation for optimism is: innovation. The long term trend of human history has been upward, he says, because humans are continually innovating. Innovations have led to vast improvements in the human condition, and it is likely that trend will continue. The problem of feeding a couple of billion more people by the year 2110 can easily be solved by the advances in agriculture and biology that are occurring as we speak. In fact, we could have more than enough food, using even less land than we do now. The book is full of statistical evidence that things have been getting better all the time, not worse.