< Chapter 7: Taming Panglossians
One by one they were covered over: Dangerfield, A. (2015, October 4). The lost rivers that lie beneath London. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-29551351
‘Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river,’ Charles Dickens wrote in Little Dorrit: Dickens, C. (1857). Little Dorrit. In Project Gutenberg. Bradbury & Evans. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/963/pg963-images.html (Chapter 3)
The scientist Michael Faraday campaigned for action to be taken: Faraday, M. (1855, July 7). Letter to the editor of The Times. The Times, 8. https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday3003
one Tory continued to argue that the government ‘had nothing whatever to do with the state of the Thames’: Manners, J. (1858, June 15). In Hansard [Speech]. State Of The Thames – Question. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1858-06-15/debates/5dc16df6-9793-4aee-8829-21f58090e6cf/StateOfTheThames%E2%80%94Question#contribution-4e9799e9-bd04-4946-b7e5-a4868b6e5845
‘I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naive,’ [Rosling] wrote in Factfulness: Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rosling Rönnlund, A. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. Flatiron Books. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26457627M/Factfulness
he closed the second of his many TED Talks by swallowing a sword: TED. (2007). New insights on poverty [Video]. In TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_new_insights_on_poverty
To make his case he drew extensively on data presenting positive trends in everything from birth rates to bear attacks: Zetter, K. (2009, February 3). Best of TED: Hans Rosling. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2009/02/best-of-ted-han/
As one critic put it, his presentations covered ‘bad things in decline’ and ‘good things on the rise’, but never ‘bad things on the rise’: Berggren, C. (2018, November 16). The one-sided worldview of Hans Rosling. Quillette. https://quillette.com/2018/11/16/the-one-sided-worldview-of-hans-rosling/
Steven Pinker suggested in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Viking. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16239379W/The_better_angels_of_our_nature
He doubled down in 2018’s Enlightenment Now: Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Viking. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26434298M/Enlightenment_Now
[Pinker] subsequently realised that there had also been dramatic improvements ‘in prosperity, in education, in health, in longevity, in child mortality, in attitudes towards women, ethnic minorities and gay people, even time spent on housework’: Eaton, G. (2018, March 1). Is the world really better than ever? Steven Pinker on the case for optimism. New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2018/03/world-really-better-ever-steven-pinker-case-optimism
they were collectively dubbed ‘the New Optimists’ by the writer Oliver Burkeman: Burkeman, O. (2017, July 28). Is the world really better than ever? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/28/is-the-world-really-better-than-ever-the-new-optimists
The New Optimists was also the title of a 2010 collection of essays by scientists, describing the potential for progress in their specific fields. It has something of the same onwards-and-upwards vibe about it, but less social and political baggage: Richards, K. (Ed.). (2010). The new optimists: Scientists view tomorrow’s world & what it means to us. Linus. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24705499W/The_new_optimists
Critiques were made of his choice of data and methodologies, his account of the Enlightenment and its thinkers was pooh-poohed and Nicholas Taleb squabbled with him over the proper use of statistics; and others suggested that the analysis simply wasn’t meaningful:
Data and methodologies: Goldin, I. (2018). The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism [Review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by S. Pinker]. Nature, 554(7693), 420–422. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-02148-1 [Full PDF available here: https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-018-02148-1/d41586-018-02148-1.pdf].
The Enlightenment: Riskin, J. (2019). Pinker’s Pollyannish philosophy and its perfidious politics [Review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by S. Pinker]. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pinkers-pollyannish-philosophy-and-its-perfidious-politics/
Taleb’s statistical critique: Beauchamp, Z. (2015, May 21). This fascinating academic debate has huge implications for the future of world peace. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/21/8635369/pinker-taleb
Not meaningful: Gray, J. (2015, March 13). John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining
December round-ups of all the wonderful, untrumpeted advances and breakthroughs that took place over the course of the year have become something of a tradition: You can find plenty of these online. Here, by contrast, is a New Year’s Eve jeremiad from Peter Hitchens, in which his usual cantankerous moaning is justified, remarkably, by a bit of counterfactualism: Hitchens, P. (2019, December 31). The turn of the year is no cause for optimism. UnHerd. https://unherd.com/2019/12/the-world-we-lost-will-never-return/
interpreting them is not straightforward, as noisy rows over issues like the meaningful definition of poverty demonstrate: Hickel, J. (2019, February 4). A letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates, for that matter) about global poverty. Jason Hickel. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
Now a similar discrepancy is starting to show up in economics: people feel much worse off than the data say they are: Burn-Murdoch, J. (2024, May 10). How our sense of economic reality is being distorted. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/8cd76cde-7694-4674-99a7-188c18257530
crime tends to hit the headlines and therefore stands out in our minds [footnote]: I believe I introduced Pinker to the newsroom maxim ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ back in 2011. Call it my contribution to the New Optimist manifesto. [My apologies to my then-colleague Ferris Jabr, whose interview with Pinker I had gatecrashed. You can read that interview here: Pinker, S. (2011, October 12). Steven Pinker: Humans are less violent than ever (F. Jabr, Interviewer) [Interview]. In New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228340-100-steven-pinker-humans-are-less-violent-than-ever/
‘In March 1968, Robert Kennedy, launching his campaign to become the Democratic presidential candidate, told 20,000 students at the University of Kansas that ‘Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising…’: Kennedy, R. F. (1968, March 18). Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968. In John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum [Speech]. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968
a question for counterfactual history [footnote]: Several have been written, including one by RFK’s former speechwriter Jeff Greenfield, in which President Robert F. Kennedy […] ‘presides over a country in which war and partisanship have wrought growing disaffection’, according to Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. Kakutani, M. (2011). With a few tweaks, shaking up history [Review of Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan, by J. Greenfield]. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/books/01book.html
You may be poor, but it says here you’re happy: Bhutan evaluates its success in achieving gross national happiness by sending officials to ask its populace 148 questions about their lives: Lambert, J. (2024, February 4). Are you happy? New film follows a Bhutan bureaucrat who asks 148 questions to find out. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/02/04/1228505757/agent-of-happiness-bhutan-documentary-film-gross-national-happiness
Richard Easterlin looked at the relationship between happiness and income (per capita GDP) in the US between 1946 and 1970: Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. Nations and Households in Economic Growth, 89–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-205050-3.50008-7
David Cameron… announced that it was ‘high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress’: Plan to measure happiness ‘not woolly’ – Cameron. (2010, November 25). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11833241
New Zealand, which in 2019 issued a ‘well-being budget’: Charlton, E. (2019, May 30). New Zealand has unveiled its first ‘well-being’ budget. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/05/new-zealand-is-publishing-its-first-well-being-budget/
[Bhutan] remains both poor and not obviously happy, with many of its young people emigrating in search of a prosperous future elsewhere: Journalists report that Bhutan suffers from many of the ills common to poor countries: Marcus, L. (2024, July 4). This country has a national happiness index. But what is it really like to live there? CNN. (https://edition.cnn.com/travel/life-in-bhutan-intl-hnk/index.html).
International happiness surveys, meanwhile, place Bhutan somewhere around the middle of the rankings by country: Bhutan. (n.d.). In World Happiness Report. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from http://data.worldhappiness.report/country/BTN
the OECD duly published as an 11-indicator ‘Better Life Index’. In the 2020 edition, covering 41 countries, Norway came out on top; South Africa at the bottom: OECD Better Life Index. (n.d.). In OECD Better Life Index. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/
Stiglitz and his colleagues suggested [that] each country [needed] to engage in ‘robust democratic dialogue to discover what issues its citizens most care about’: Stiglitz, J. E. (2020, August 1). GDP is the wrong tool for measuring what matters. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gdp-is-the-wrong-tool-for-measuring-what-matters/
‘Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons […]’ the anthropologist Jason Hickel wrote in 2019: Hickel, J. (2019, January 29). Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal
There’s plenty of reason to doubt Hickel’s account of idyllic precolonial existence: Tupy, M. L. (2019, February 13). The romantic idea of a plentiful past is pure fantasy. CapX. https://capx.co/the-romantic-idea-of-a-plentiful-past-is-pure-fantasy
many Inuit are sceptical that the consequent boost to GDP will improve their lives or make up for their solastalgia: For a discussion of this issue, listen to ‘Who Defines “Progress”?’, episode 6 of the Testing Grounds podcast. The podcast is produced by the Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action (co-founded by Cove Park, the residency described back in Chapter 2): Narsaq International Research Station – Who defines “progress”?. (n.d.). [Podcast]. In Testing Grounds. Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from https://naarca.art/testing-grounds-podcast/
Modern monetary theory (MMT), for example, suggests that governments today shouldn’t worry about borrowing as much as they need: D’Souza, D. (2022). What is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)? In Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-4588060
it was how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed to pay for a Green New Deal: Horsley, S. (2019, July 17). This economic theory could be used to pay for the Green New Deal. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/742255158/this-economic-theory-could-be-used-to-pay-for-the-green-new-deal
‘Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, not the GDP of Nations,’ says the distinguished environmental economist Partha Dasgupta: RSA. (2025). Nature stewardship: 2024 RSA President’s Lecture [Video]. In RSA. https://www.thersa.org/videos/nature-stewardship-2024-rsa-presidents-lecture/
But attitudes are changing: there are indications that Europeans, at least, are now willing to prioritise the environment over growth: Arato, J., White, M. P., Davison, S. M. C., Pahl, S., Taylor, T., Krainz, M., Geiger, S. J., Kellett, P., McMeel, O., & Fleming, L. E. (2024). Environmental protection is more important to European citizens of all political persuasions than economic growth: A 14-country study in the marine context. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 207, 116845. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116845
Roser and Hickel are adversarial to the point of animosity: Roser, M. (2021, April 4). @MaxCRoser. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1378730932308471809.html. First hosted on Twitter.
As a 2022 Nature editorial marking the fiftieth anniversary of The Limits to Growthput it: Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50-year argument. (2022). Nature, 603(7901), 361. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00723-1
In 1999, the inventor Ray Kurzweil published The Age of Spiritual Machines: Kurzweil, R. (1999). The age of spiritual machines: When computers exceed human intelligence. Viking Penguin. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/941QAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM3LablemNAxVY97sIHX2HJDcQ7_IDegQIBBAn
People think [Moore’s Law] is true, so they find ways to make it true; the underlying technology has changed several times since Moore coined it: Danton, T. (2025, May 16). What is Moore’s Law and does this decades-old computing prophecy still hold true? Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/technology/electronics/what-is-moores-law-and-does-this-decades-old-computing-prophecy-still-hold-true
former Wired editor Kevin Kelly – a self-declared optimist – wrote What Technology Wants, a description of the ‘technium’, the all-encompassing system of technology that surrounds us: Kelly, K. (2010). What technology wants. Viking. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16327712W/What_technology_wants
‘just, I suppose, as biological evolution helped the dinosaurs deal with that meteorite,’ wrote the biologist Jerry Coyne: Coyne, J. A. (2010). Better All the Time [Review of What Technology Wants, by K. Kelly]. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/books/review/Coyne-t.html
in 2023, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’: Andreessen, M. (2023, October 16). The techno-optimist manifesto. Andreessen Horowitz. https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
Andreessen’s manifesto was a nakedly self-serving document, calling for freedom from regulation – and any other constraint on, say, a venture capitalist’s ability to make money: Kelly, J. (2023, October 22). I read Andreessen’s “techno-optimist manifesto” so you don’t have to. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/7eeb105d-7d79-4a59-89be-e18cd47be68f
As the economist Marianna Mazzucato has convincingly demonstrated, the seeds of Silicon Valley’s success were planted and cultivated decades earlier – in government-funded labs: Mazzucato, M. (2013, September 20). ‘The entrepreneurial state’: Apple didn’t build your iPhone; your taxes did. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-state-appl
The problem is that there seems to be less of that breakthrough innovation coming through the pipeline: Park, M., Leahey, E., & Funk, R. J. (2023). Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Nature, 613(7942), 138–144. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x
[…] a team of researchers from Stanford and MIT concluded in 2020 that ideas, and the exponential growth they imply, are getting harder to find: to pick one headline statistic, it takes eighteen times as many researchers to keep Moore’s Law ticking over today: Bloom, N., Jones, C. I., Van Reenen, J., & Webb, M. (2017). Are ideas getting harder to find? CEPR Discussion Papers. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039019
it might be that all the good ideas have been taken, or it might be that scientific research has got too cumbersome and expensive: Hanlon, M. (2014, December 3). The golden quarter. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt
Collison, P., & Nielsen, M. (2018, November 16). Science is getting less bang for its buck. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/
‘[Progress studies] is closer to medicine than biology: the goal is to treat, not merely to understand,’ they wrote in their initial call to arms: Collison, P., & Cowen, T. (2019, July 30). We need a new science of progress. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/
‘We live in a world where deliberately dimming the fucking sun might be less risky than not doing it,’ [said] Andy Parker, the project director for the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative: Kolbert, E. (2021). Under a white sky: The nature of the future. Crown. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL22857877W/Under_a_White_Sky
many climate specialists view [geoengineering] as not just unrealistic but unthinkable: Harvey, F. (2023, September 14). Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/14/experts-call-for-global-moratorium-on-efforts-to-geoengineer-climate
an increasing number of scientists, if still a minority, disagree; and some wealthy activists are ready to back them: Gelles, D. (2024, September 25). Silicon Valley renegades pollute the sky to save the planet. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/climate/rogue-solar-geoengineering.html
These two protocols remain the only UN treaties ever to have been ratified by every country on Earth [footnote]: They are still being revised and implemented to this day – and still paying off in unexpected ways. CFCs are also powerful greenhouse gases: outlawing them is estimated to have delayed the transition to an ice-free Arctic by around fifteen years. England, M. R., & Polvani, L. M. (2023). The Montreal Protocol is delaying the occurrence of the first ice-free Arctic summer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(22), e2211432120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211432120
Susan Solomon, the scientist whose work galvanised the UN ozone treaties, thinks the lessons are transferable: Solomon, S. (2024, June 5). Susan Solomon: ‘Healing the earth is possible’ (M. Reisz, Interviewer) [Interview]. In Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/susan-solomon-healing-earth-possible
her third book is called Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again: Solomon, S. (2024). Solvable: How we healed the Earth, and how we can do it again. University of Chicago Press. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL50631711M/Solvable
A study by researchers at the University of Oxford in 2021 looked at more than 2,900 estimates of the cost of solar power: Decarbonising the energy system by 2050 could save trillions – new Oxford study. (2022, September 14). University of Oxford News & Events. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-09-14-decarbonising-energy-system-2050-could-save-trillions-new-oxford-study
Way, R., Ives, M. C., Mealy, P., & Farmer, J. D. (2022). Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition. Joule, 6(9), 2057–2082. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2022.08.009
… once the vaccine existed, governments and philanthropists bought hundreds of millions of doses. It’s claimed to have sped up rollout by half a decade and saved around 700,000 lives:
About the pneumococcal AMC. (n.d.). GAVI: the vaccine alliance. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from https://www.gavi.org/investing-gavi/innovative-financing/pneumococcal-amc/about-pneumococcal-amc
In 1955, the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann wrote in Fortune: von Neumann, J. (1963). Can we survive technology? In A. H. Taub (Ed.), Collected Works Volume VI: Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology (pp. 504–519). Pergamon Press. https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf
In effect, they had taken control of them for perpetuity [footnote]: Of course, human activity always changes nature, and has done so on larger scales and for longer times than we may appreciate. The medieval London Bridge, for example, dramatically changed the flow of the Thames, making it dangerous for boats to navigate and ultimately reshaping the river basin itself. Catling, C. (2022, September 1). Life across the water: Exploring London Bridge and its houses. The Past. https://the-past.com/feature/life-across-the-water-exploring-london-bridge-and-its-houses/
to deal with the flash floods triggered by climate change, it will have to garden too: to become a ‘sponge city’: Perry, F. (2024, September 20). Sponge cities: the flood-proof architecture of the future? Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/1848fdf8-d9b0-4c32-82ee-fc6401b2c8ef
Part of that might well involve ‘daylighting’ the lost rivers of London: McKenna, J. (2017, September 6). “Daylighting” – the new trend that’s transforming cities. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/09/daylighting-is-a-new-trend-that-s-transforming-cities/