1. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty; today it’s around 800 million. That’s still too many, yes, but it’s nonetheless a reduction from over 40% to under 10% of the world’s population in a little over a generation. It means that an average of 115,000 people – roughly the population of Lincoln – escaped extreme poverty each and every day.
2. Human beings just went further from the Earth than anyone has ever been and came back with incredible new pictures of the Earth setting behind the moon. And thanks to the wonders of technology, we all got to watch it all live.
3. We can now travel distances, in a time and at a cost, that would have been unimaginable to our great grandparents. Even with the whole “Strait of Hormuz” thing.
4. We can also speak to friends and loved ones on the other side of the planet essentially whenever we want. When we worry about the role social media has played in our problems, we should try to hang on to that bit, too.
5. There will come a day on which the news headlines – economic meltdown, stand-off in Iran, debate over what to do with people who’ve been exposed to a mysterious new virus but definitely don’t have symptoms, phew – don’t feel like the opening act of a movie about the apocalypse. I mean, just logically, we must be due, right?
6. Matt Goodwin lost an election we were all terrified he’d win. Then he got mocked by his own colleagues at GB News – who, it seems, hate him as much as everyone else does.
7. It is vanishingly unlikely that Boris Johnson will ever be prime minister again.
8. Renewable energy capacity has been repeatedly outstripping expert predictions for years now: last year, it grew by nearly 15%. Also last year, for the first time, the International Energy Agency predicted that global fossil fuel demand would peak before 2030.
9. Experts are also saying that fusion power, with its promise of clean, safe and unlimited energy, is just 30 years away! Sure they’ve been saying that for decades – in the 1980s it was just 20 years – but think positive. In the early 2000s, some people were saying it was 50.
10. James Acaster and Ross Kemp are both on Celebrity Traitors this year, and tell me you don’t want to see how that goes.
11. Average US life expectancy is currently 79 years. Donald Trump, by a stunning coincidence, is 79 years old. OK, that’s misleading because that’s life expectancy at birth, and despite sharing certain attributes with one, Donald Trump isn’t actually a baby. But still, a 79-year-old American man likely has roughly nine years left. Food for thought.
12. David Attenborough turned 100 last week. You are blessed to live at a time at which he’s not only been making documentaries for over 70 years, but when many of them are available to watch whenever we want.
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13. Hey, how much time have you spent contemplating the implications of the 2019 European election results recently? Or, going back a bit, the foot and mouth outbreak, cash for questions, or the Westland Affair? All of these things were massive stories that rocked British politics, with huge implications for national life – yet a few years on you’d struggle to recall why they mattered, and a few decades on you’d struggle to remember they happened at all. That’s true of almost everything. There is a chance, however it may feel right now, it will be true of this week’s news cycle, too.
14. OK, let’s imagine the worst happens and Farage becomes prime minister. Well: something that recent history suggests is almost certain to follow is that the British public swiftly notices that nothing’s actually getting better, and immediately starts hating his guts. Finally, the curse would be broken!
I give it five weeks.
15. And whatever damage he manages to do in office, this too shall pass. How far back can you confidently name all the prime ministers? Do you know who the first of the 20th century* was? Even if Farage does make it to Downing Street, he will still one day be forgotten – and sooner than he thinks.
16. To be fair, on a long enough timeline, the United Kingdom will cease to exist as a meaningful political identity anyway.
17. At some point, the human race will die out, the sun will expand, and the Earth will die in a ball of flame. Time is a great leveller, it really is.
18. One day, statistically speaking, it has to stop getting any worse.
*Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, better known as Lord Salisbury.
