Reasons for hope in the new year

Here is an interesting bit from a website that seems to dedicate itself to reporting positive developments in world issues like climate, environment, health, and economic development.  In many raw indicators, the world got better in 2017 than it had been before.  I still worry about two juggernauts that don't necessarily manifest themselves in a one-year snapshot, but that could bring us all down in the years to come.  One is the rising tide of ethnic and other resentment, and the anti-democratic shifts in much of the world.  The second, and larger still, is the seemingly inevitable march of climate change, which despite the good news reported in the above article, has probably already reached a tipping point at which no improvements we make in CO2 emissions can reverse the phenomena of massive methane release from the Arctic that is already underway.

Stay tuned.