I posed this question the other day at dinner to a group of friends. (I think it was brought to mind by the anniversary of WWII's commencement). "Is the world better off today or in say, 1939?"
This occasioned some argument. Some thought that the levels of pollution in major cities were far less today than then and that this was a good thing. I argued that that might be true of the visible pollution (notably coal) but we had lots of invisible pollution (PCBs) that scared me far worse today.
Plus we only had that level of pollution in the major industrialized cities of the West, not in every city on earth. Then there is the matter of the population doubling since then (3 billion to 6 billion) plus the number of people at starvation level.
Posted by artandscience at January 23, 2005 09:03 PM