To Bring Good News

We didn’t know if he was going to do it. We waited with anticipation, hoping he would. And we were happy, when over this past weekend, we were rewarded when he came through. 

As each new year begins, for many years now, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has written a  column basically entitled: “Even This Year Is the Best Time Ever to Be Alive”. Every year, these columns are a ray of light, a reminder to put things in perspective, and a source of tangible hope in a troubled and anxious world.

It's been a tough year, seemingly especially so, in the minds of many. Even Kristof himself admitted that he “didn’t have the heart to write it” as 2024 was ending and 2025 was beginning. Too many atrocities, too much destruction, too many deaths clouded his positivity. The horrors in Gaza and the profound animosity between Israel and Hamas, genocide and famine in Sudan, ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria, the devastating wildfires in Los Angelas, and him witnessing toddlers starving in Madagascar, because of a drought probably exacerbated by climate change, a virulent political atmosphere around the globe - and you can add your own thoughts to the list of what is going wrong around us and for you in your own life - all contributed to his darkened view of the year. 

But he heard from many of his readers, asking, “Where’s your ‘best year ever’ column?” He realized that they needed hope. He needed it too.

So Nicholas Kristof stepped up again to deliver some better news.

He doesn’t ever ignore or sugarcoat or deny the multitudes of problems and horrors of this world. He writes about them regularly and is quick to point them out. His eyes are quite wide open when it comes to what his values tell him is wrong among us. 

But he’s also just as clear about what he believes is right about this world.

And that is what this annual column is all about. 

It is a reminder that “even in our messed-up world, many trends are still going right”, he writes. He needed reassurance, too - precisely, he indicates, “ … because I felt blue, I wanted to read a column putting grim news in perspective.” 

So, here are some of the facts in seven critical areas he proceeded to share for perspective:

• Child Mortality - 2024 appears to have been the year in which the smallest percentage of children died since the dawn of humanity. Since 2000, more than 80 million children’s lives have been saved.         
• Extreme Poverty - Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty worldwide.                                                                                                                                                        
• Literacy and Education - We’re approaching 90 percent literacy worldwide. The number of literate people is rising by more than 12 million each year. Every three seconds, another person becomes literate.
• War and Brutality - The ceasefire in Gaza, the toppling of the brutal Assad regime in Syria, and three of the world’s worst humanitarian crises of the last decade - in Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria — are now in better shape because wars have subsided.
• Diplomacy - tensions between the superpowers United States and China have diminished somewhat, increasing deterrence and reduced the risk of war.
• Energy and the Environment - Improvements in solar, wind, nuclear and other technologies, including in batteries, offer a credible path toward decarbonizing the world economy — and in energy becoming cheaper than ever before.
• Medicine and Healthcare - Scientists have developed the first medication for schizophrenia in decades, a vaccine in a trial against a form of breast cancer, and Americans are now becoming thinner each year rather than fatter.

Nicholas Kristof still believes that the world is “a mess”. But he also writes that it’s valuable to put it in perspective:

“Look at the data, and it’s difficult to deny a larger truth: For all the challenges we face, there has been no better time to be alive.”

Photo by Good Good Good on Unsplash