Perhaps because so many people share the grim opinion of eccentric Canadian Green MP Elizabeth May that “baby boomers have [coarse banal expletive deleted] this planet” we today begin a new series called “Cheerful Charts”, in which we broaden out from the dreary tunnel vision driving climate doomsters to drink and look at what real world data tell us about the state of our world today. The occasion for the Hon. Ms. May’s channeling Barnacle Bill was learning that she has another grandchild due this fall, which in reality is delightful and happy news but which sent May into a tirade of anger and despair because… climate change. But while we can’t remedy every disordered step in her thinking, we can at least point out that due to the accomplishments of many people over the years including her fellow baby boomers, that grandchild faces a very low risk of childhood mortality. Behold Cheerful Chart #1: declining child mortality worldwide:
Based on archeological examinations of ancient burial sites, scientists estimate that about half of children historically didn’t survive past puberty. And by “historically” they mean as far back as we can look and as far forward… up to the point in that graph where the line falls off a cliff, which is around 1820, as the dreaded carbon-spewing Industrial Revolution gathers momentum. The death rate is then cut in half in just over a century, reaching 27% by 1950, at which point the baby boomers got to work and, hmmm, brought it down to 4.3% globally as of 2020. The current rate isn’t the same everywhere, however. Instead as you might expect unless you are among those people thinking prosperity is the worst thing ever to hit the human race, it is lower in countries with higher income:
The declining mortality rate over time and around the world is due to rising income levels, or rather to the growing availability of goods and services conducive to human well-being from better food to safer homes to medical services, all of which in turn depend on access to effective, inexpensive energy.
The climate doomsters famously want to take us back to preindustrial temperatures and CO2 levels. But doing so would also take us back to preindustrial child mortality levels, which would really give the Elizabeth May’s of the world something to get upset about.
The British Empire was, in part, an unintended by-product of decreasing child mortality. Britain was one of the first European nation to take public health seriously in the latter half of the 18th century by building sewers and protecting water supplies. This significantly reduced the child mortality rate, resulting in Britain's population expanding rapidly in this period. This caused problems which the governments of the day solved by exporting the surplus numbers. Of course this required places to send them, giving an incentive to build an empire in places such as North America and Australasia.
Much of the early Australian settlers started out as convicts who were forcibly removed from Britain. Becoming a convict in the first place was deliberatly made very easy for this purpose - stealing a loaf of bread could result in so-called transportation.
I hear that modern Britain has a population problem caused by excessive immigration. Got any more room, Australia?
Taking us back to pre-industrial levels of CO2 and temps would result in much more than pre-industrial infant mortality rates.The mortality rates for the elderly,the sick,the lower incomes would also rise dramatically.Because the so-called Green Transition would cause more sickness and poverty.Much of our medicine and medical devices are thanks to fossil fuels,and millions of good paying jobs would be lost.It would be a nightmare dystopian world.Which is what the Left and the alarmists seem to want.