A living atlas, revised in the open.
The world is getting better. The world is getting worse. Both are true.
One question at a time, answered only with open data. We read each at two distances: the long arc of the centuries, and the world as it feels this year. The answer usually changes between them, and the change is the point.
Every line is one question’s signature measure, drawn from its own evidence. The colour is where the honest answer leans: toward hope, toward despair, or genuinely both. The mix is the finding.
- 00The Whole Questionin progress
Is the world getting better or worse?
Child mortality, under age five Winning the old fights, losing the new ones.
- 01War & Peace
Is humanity becoming less violent?
Violent deaths Long-run collapse, short-run reversal.
- 02Health
Are we beating disease and death?
Life expectancy at birth Better than it feels.
- 03Climate
Is the climate stabilizing or breaking?
Global temperature anomaly Long-run despair, a hopeful recent turn.
- 04Poverty
Is the world winning against poverty?
Living under $3 a day The great escape, half-finished and slowing.
- 06Energy
Is the green transition actually happening?
Share of electricity from wind and solar Happening fast, arriving slow.
- 07Energy
Is the electric-car revolution real?
Share of new cars sold that are electric The sales flipped; the fleet hasn’t.
- 05Wealth & Growth
Are poor countries catching up?
GDP per capita, PPP Converging for people, not for places.
- 08Population
Is the world running out of children?
Children per woman, worldwide A liberation and a reckoning at once.
- 09Knowledge
Who shapes science now?
Scholarly works published per year Open, global, unequal.
Be joyfulWendell Berry Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, 1973
though you have considered
all the facts.
One question at a time
Each article asks a single honest question and answers it only with open, cited data. Every number traces to its source.
Read at every distance
The same measure, seen from the ten-thousand-year arc and from a single year. The verdict often reverses between the two, and that reversal is the thing worth seeing.
Three temperatures
Every chart is read three ways: hope, despair, and confusion, which gets equal billing here, never a footnote.
- Violence & Peace War, homicide, and terror, against the long arc of human cruelty bending down, then back up. 1 question
- Health & Life How long we live, what we die of, and how many of us there will be. 2 questions
- Wealth & Poverty Growth, income, and whether the poorest are finally catching up. 2 questions
- Climate & Energy The carbon we burn, the heat it traps, and how fast the transition out is moving. 3 questions
- Knowledge & Power Who makes the world’s knowledge, and whom it ends up serving. 1 question
Both are always true. The work is deciding which one you are looking at, and being honest about the lens.
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Things can be bad, and getting better.
Hans RoslingFactfulness -
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
Antonio GramsciPrison Notebooks -
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James BaldwinAs Much Truth As One Can Bear -
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Václav HavelDisturbing the Peace -
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert CamusReturn to Tipasa -
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.
Raymond WilliamsResources of Hope -
We must cultivate our garden.
VoltaireCandide -
Hope is the necessary, but insufficient, precondition for survival.
Cory Doctorowon hope vs. optimism