Image by Planet Volumes.

Let’s review.

2024 was an especially violent year. It was also the hottest on record. While most countries exist in high states of peace, we live in times of rising conflict and a climate crisis. We also live in times of optimism and hope. Let’s explore recent trends and apparent contradictions in the complex world that we all share.

“Is it getting better? Or do you feel the same?” Bono asks in the U2 song One. It can be difficult to make sense of the world. Professor Max Roser, who runs the website Our World In Data and said “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better…It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other.”

2024 was the hottest year on record and was the first year to average more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial average. The last 10 years have been the hottest 10 on record. Fires in Los Angeles have displaced 180,000 people and destroyed or damaged some 12,000 structures. News makes it easier to understand the impact on humans than the wider ecology and annoyingly centers the stories of impact on celebrities more than regular people.

In some ways the world is getting safer. The Institute for Economics and Peace note that........

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