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> The world is awful. The world is much better. A better way to look at this is that we've made significant progress when it comes to solving some of the probl

> The world is awful. The world is much better. A better way to look at this is that we've made significant progress when it comes to solving some of the problems, but we've also created new ones that make it much worse than before. We can now grow enough food to feed the world (although we're doing a terrible job of distributing it to the world). However the food is much less nutritional and much more toxic than before. We can now travel distances in a time that was unimaginable before, but we breathe the poison as a direct result of it.

nostromo 4y ago
> although we're doing a terrible job of distributing it to the world Are we? Starvation and malnutrition used to be common and is now rare. https://ourworldindata.org/famines https://ourworldindata.org/famines
- tomnipotent 4y ago
  This is true, but it's also true that the world produces enough food such that no ones needs to starve, and yet people still starve. A quarter of food produced ends up in landfills (Europe estimates 20% food waste, as high as 30-40% in US).
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Some food should be wasted. If 100% of food were consumed, that would mean that any slight disruption would result in not enough food, or that we were already in a state where there is not enough food. Wasting some food is better than having food shortages. Much better.
    - tomnipotent 4y ago
      We've built a society that's so litigious that companies are incentivized to recommend throwing away food even if there's less than a 0.01% chance of food-borne illness. Our waste is in part out of fear of getting sued or sick, but I'm not convinced the waste is the lesser of two evils. Food poisoning sucks, but it's survivable. Unlike starvation. A good example of this caution is eggs and refrigeration, for which American's and European's have opposite ways of handling things.
      - pracer 4y ago
        I think the point missing is that food that get wasted could not arrive where it is needed before getting rot. Letting aside the expenses to do that. The problem is not that we waste food, as it would not solve starvation, the problem is that in those places where people has no food, there is no production.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    I love how this comment thread perfectly echoes what the article is talking about. From a sibling comment by imtrigued: > Almost a billion are still going hungry. "The world is awful" And then from your parent comment: > Are we? Starvation and malnutrition used to be common and is now rare "The world is better" And finally your comment: > it's also true that the world produces enough food such that no ones needs to starve "The world can be much better" These three are all true, and I suspect each person already knew all three. It's just that each person chose to focus on a separate aspect.
    - gitrog 4y ago
      It seems to me that the first two are statements, and the final one is a conclusion, which is the only one that's productive to focus on.
      - woojoo666 4y ago
        I think they all achieve different purposes. "The world is awful" highlights a problem that needs solving, a concrete goal "The world is better" tells you that something is working, which you can build on top of or improve "The world can be better" gives a proposal for a course of action While the 3rd might seem like the most useful, the 1st is extremely important too, because if the proposal fails then you need to fall back to thinking about the problem. The 2nd is important for both motivation, and also for promoting incremental progress
        safety1st 4y ago
        It's a nice narrative but the accuracy of it is questionable, there isn't really some grand historical march away from famine. We've just had a great run from 1980-2020. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-si... The situation in 2022 is not good, it will take time to see exactly how bad. Famine correlates very closely with war -- if our recent period of relative global peace comes to an end it will probably return with a vengeance.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Almost a billion are still going hungry.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Slowly but surely, the main problem with food is changing from "starvation" to "obesity". Which is arguably just a different form of malnutrition, somewhat less deadly, but more of a chronic burden on the patient and the society.
- safety1st 4y ago
  In 2017 when that article was last updated, yeah sure. Not sure you can make that declaration in 2022. The combination of record poverty caused by Covid lockdowns and food supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine has put millions of people worldwide in famine conditions: https://www.reuters.com/world/world-faces-unprecedented-global-hunger-crisis-un-chief-says-2022-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/world-faces-unprecedented-glob... Exactly how bad it will get remains to be seen. But the causes of famine are generally political and in terms of total body counts the worst ones are basically "big country X really screws up" (e.g. China and the Soviet Union in the 20th century) and/or wars and I don't think we have any guarantee that those things won't happen again.
  - trasz 4y ago
    FWIW, China has a very long history of famines. Twentieth century wasn't an outlier - although in the West it's been heavily publicised for propaganda reasons.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      It was the worst famine - and, arguably, period - in the history of the world: - tens of millions died due to starvation from central planning issues (variously causing: a plague of locusts; Mao wanting to save face so refused foreign aid and maintained being a net exporter of food while people were starving; diverting people away from agriculture to metal production to meet the five year plan) - millions died from government beatings/torturings to death, and suicide due to hopelessness and government destruction of cultural traditions in the name of centrally planned progress Now one might say that there may have been even more harmful centrally planned economies, i.e. the USSR and Nazi Germany, but at best any of the candidates is competing to be only the third worst disaster in the history of the world.
      - trasz 4y ago
        It was the worst, but some of the ones before it weren't far behind - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China. Also I find it curious that among the possible causes you forgot to mention World War 2. What would you say if someone omitted that when explaining fifties in Europe?
29athrowaway 4y ago
> We can now grow enough food to feed the world We grow food on topsoil. Topsoil is soil with microorganisms, worms and insects in it. You cannot grow food on sterile soil. Topsoil takes a long time to form, and very short time to be consumed. We are using topsoil at a higher rate than it is replenished. The rate at which we use topsoil increases over time. We are very wasteful with our use of topsoil. We discard ugly vegetables, or vegetables outside certain arbitrary parameters despite them being perfectly edible, or simply to keep prices down. The reality is: over time, that statement is false. Topsoil is dying, and so are we.
- carapace 4y ago
  We're learning to grow food in ways that increases the amount and fertility of topsoil, so it's not a foregone conclusion. E.g. Permaculture, Syntropic and Regenerative agriculture, etc. Check out the transformation of the Loess Plateau in China. It was rendered into a wasteland by bad farming practices and then re-vegetated and revitalized: http://eempc.org/lessons-of-the-loess-plateau/ http://eempc.org/lessons-of-the-loess-plateau/
  - trasz 4y ago
    Not to mention things like the seawater rice: https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/chinese-scientists-discover-how-to-grow-seawater-rice https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/chinese-scientists-disc...
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    At scale? Can this be implemented globally in a few decades? What about making it work in places going dry? Desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants have existed for decades, but are expensive. Today, many people don't have access to clean water because of this. Rifles and ammunition are cheaper than new water infrastructure so war over water will take place everywhere before water conservation technology is deployed.
    - carapace 4y ago
      > At scale? Yes, of course, all lifeforms reproduce exponentially. Literally the biosphere would (re-)vivify the Earth automatically if we just stop destroying it. It's been doing it for four billion years. > Can this be implemented globally in a few decades? That I cannot say, but I believe the limiting factors are social/political rather than biological or physical. In other words, yes, if we have the will we could probably turn things around, go from destruction to regeneration, within three decades. It would be unprecedented but I don't see any intrinsic physical reasons that we couldn't do it. The revitalization of the Loess Plateau took less than three decades, and as a side-effect it now produces all the material needed to repeat the process in a new place. > What about making it work in places going dry? Yes. Not only can we do this in places going dry, we can convert desert to (productive food) forest where ever we need it. E.g. "Greening the Desert" https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/ https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/ project in Jordan. People are using ecological principles all over the world to regenerate large areas. > Desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants have existed for decades, but are expensive. Today, many people don't have access to clean water because of this. It's a huge problem, it's true. But progress is being made. E.g. check out the projects described in "India's Water Revolution" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nqnOcoLqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nqnOcoLqE We can transform the deserts into paradise. The rains will fall. (I'm going to stop now before I start quoting passages from "Dune") ;) > Rifles and ammunition are cheaper than new water infrastructure so war over water will take place everywhere before water conservation technology is deployed. Water projects are far cheaper and easier than making bullets. Check out the video I linked above.
hackerlight 4y ago
There is more nutritious food than before, and there is more toxic/unhealthy/processed food than before. What's changed is the ratio between the two, but the absolute level per capita of both is higher, which is great for anyone who is discerning and self-controlled enough to avoid the toxic stuff.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> We can now travel distances in a time that was unimaginable before, but we breathe the poison as a direct result of it. A city full of horse manure wasn't all that healthy, either.

nostromo 4y ago

> although we're doing a terrible job of distributing it to the world Are we? Starvation and malnutrition used to be common and is now rare. https://ourworldindata.org/famines https://ourworldindata.org/famines

tomnipotent 4y ago
This is true, but it's also true that the world produces enough food such that no ones needs to starve, and yet people still starve. A quarter of food produced ends up in landfills (Europe estimates 20% food waste, as high as 30-40% in US).
- imgabe 4y ago
  Some food should be wasted. If 100% of food were consumed, that would mean that any slight disruption would result in not enough food, or that we were already in a state where there is not enough food. Wasting some food is better than having food shortages. Much better.
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    We've built a society that's so litigious that companies are incentivized to recommend throwing away food even if there's less than a 0.01% chance of food-borne illness. Our waste is in part out of fear of getting sued or sick, but I'm not convinced the waste is the lesser of two evils. Food poisoning sucks, but it's survivable. Unlike starvation. A good example of this caution is eggs and refrigeration, for which American's and European's have opposite ways of handling things.
    - pracer 4y ago
      I think the point missing is that food that get wasted could not arrive where it is needed before getting rot. Letting aside the expenses to do that. The problem is not that we waste food, as it would not solve starvation, the problem is that in those places where people has no food, there is no production.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  I love how this comment thread perfectly echoes what the article is talking about. From a sibling comment by imtrigued: > Almost a billion are still going hungry. "The world is awful" And then from your parent comment: > Are we? Starvation and malnutrition used to be common and is now rare "The world is better" And finally your comment: > it's also true that the world produces enough food such that no ones needs to starve "The world can be much better" These three are all true, and I suspect each person already knew all three. It's just that each person chose to focus on a separate aspect.
  - gitrog 4y ago
    It seems to me that the first two are statements, and the final one is a conclusion, which is the only one that's productive to focus on.
    - woojoo666 4y ago
      I think they all achieve different purposes. "The world is awful" highlights a problem that needs solving, a concrete goal "The world is better" tells you that something is working, which you can build on top of or improve "The world can be better" gives a proposal for a course of action While the 3rd might seem like the most useful, the 1st is extremely important too, because if the proposal fails then you need to fall back to thinking about the problem. The 2nd is important for both motivation, and also for promoting incremental progress
      - safety1st 4y ago
        It's a nice narrative but the accuracy of it is questionable, there isn't really some grand historical march away from famine. We've just had a great run from 1980-2020. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-si... The situation in 2022 is not good, it will take time to see exactly how bad. Famine correlates very closely with war -- if our recent period of relative global peace comes to an end it will probably return with a vengeance.
imtringued 4y ago
Almost a billion are still going hungry.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Slowly but surely, the main problem with food is changing from "starvation" to "obesity". Which is arguably just a different form of malnutrition, somewhat less deadly, but more of a chronic burden on the patient and the society.
safety1st 4y ago
In 2017 when that article was last updated, yeah sure. Not sure you can make that declaration in 2022. The combination of record poverty caused by Covid lockdowns and food supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine has put millions of people worldwide in famine conditions: https://www.reuters.com/world/world-faces-unprecedented-global-hunger-crisis-un-chief-says-2022-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/world-faces-unprecedented-glob... Exactly how bad it will get remains to be seen. But the causes of famine are generally political and in terms of total body counts the worst ones are basically "big country X really screws up" (e.g. China and the Soviet Union in the 20th century) and/or wars and I don't think we have any guarantee that those things won't happen again.
- trasz 4y ago
  FWIW, China has a very long history of famines. Twentieth century wasn't an outlier - although in the West it's been heavily publicised for propaganda reasons.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    It was the worst famine - and, arguably, period - in the history of the world: - tens of millions died due to starvation from central planning issues (variously causing: a plague of locusts; Mao wanting to save face so refused foreign aid and maintained being a net exporter of food while people were starving; diverting people away from agriculture to metal production to meet the five year plan) - millions died from government beatings/torturings to death, and suicide due to hopelessness and government destruction of cultural traditions in the name of centrally planned progress Now one might say that there may have been even more harmful centrally planned economies, i.e. the USSR and Nazi Germany, but at best any of the candidates is competing to be only the third worst disaster in the history of the world.
    - trasz 4y ago
      It was the worst, but some of the ones before it weren't far behind - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China. Also I find it curious that among the possible causes you forgot to mention World War 2. What would you say if someone omitted that when explaining fifties in Europe?

29athrowaway 4y ago

> We can now grow enough food to feed the world We grow food on topsoil. Topsoil is soil with microorganisms, worms and insects in it. You cannot grow food on sterile soil. Topsoil takes a long time to form, and very short time to be consumed. We are using topsoil at a higher rate than it is replenished. The rate at which we use topsoil increases over time. We are very wasteful with our use of topsoil. We discard ugly vegetables, or vegetables outside certain arbitrary parameters despite them being perfectly edible, or simply to keep prices down. The reality is: over time, that statement is false. Topsoil is dying, and so are we.

carapace 4y ago
We're learning to grow food in ways that increases the amount and fertility of topsoil, so it's not a foregone conclusion. E.g. Permaculture, Syntropic and Regenerative agriculture, etc. Check out the transformation of the Loess Plateau in China. It was rendered into a wasteland by bad farming practices and then re-vegetated and revitalized: http://eempc.org/lessons-of-the-loess-plateau/ http://eempc.org/lessons-of-the-loess-plateau/
- trasz 4y ago
  Not to mention things like the seawater rice: https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/chinese-scientists-discover-how-to-grow-seawater-rice https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/chinese-scientists-disc...
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  At scale? Can this be implemented globally in a few decades? What about making it work in places going dry? Desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants have existed for decades, but are expensive. Today, many people don't have access to clean water because of this. Rifles and ammunition are cheaper than new water infrastructure so war over water will take place everywhere before water conservation technology is deployed.
  - carapace 4y ago
    > At scale? Yes, of course, all lifeforms reproduce exponentially. Literally the biosphere would (re-)vivify the Earth automatically if we just stop destroying it. It's been doing it for four billion years. > Can this be implemented globally in a few decades? That I cannot say, but I believe the limiting factors are social/political rather than biological or physical. In other words, yes, if we have the will we could probably turn things around, go from destruction to regeneration, within three decades. It would be unprecedented but I don't see any intrinsic physical reasons that we couldn't do it. The revitalization of the Loess Plateau took less than three decades, and as a side-effect it now produces all the material needed to repeat the process in a new place. > What about making it work in places going dry? Yes. Not only can we do this in places going dry, we can convert desert to (productive food) forest where ever we need it. E.g. "Greening the Desert" https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/ https://www.greeningthedesertproject.org/ project in Jordan. People are using ecological principles all over the world to regenerate large areas. > Desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants have existed for decades, but are expensive. Today, many people don't have access to clean water because of this. It's a huge problem, it's true. But progress is being made. E.g. check out the projects described in "India's Water Revolution" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nqnOcoLqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nqnOcoLqE We can transform the deserts into paradise. The rains will fall. (I'm going to stop now before I start quoting passages from "Dune") ;) > Rifles and ammunition are cheaper than new water infrastructure so war over water will take place everywhere before water conservation technology is deployed. Water projects are far cheaper and easier than making bullets. Check out the video I linked above.

hackerlight 4y ago

There is more nutritious food than before, and there is more toxic/unhealthy/processed food than before. What's changed is the ratio between the two, but the absolute level per capita of both is higher, which is great for anyone who is discerning and self-controlled enough to avoid the toxic stuff.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

> We can now travel distances in a time that was unimaginable before, but we breathe the poison as a direct result of it. A city full of horse manure wasn't all that healthy, either.