The world can be a tough place and sometimes the future looks bleak. Negative news headlines can start to make it seem like life is going downhill fast. Fortunately, there is actually a ton of really good news under the surface and positive trends happening in the world that you can look forward to. Here are the top five reasons to be optimistic about the future.
Poverty Is Decreasing Worldwide
Despite the tough slog of the day to day and worries about the future of the economy, poverty is actually going down worldwide. There is increased development and access to vital services around the world even in formerly completely poor countries, including education, healthcare, water and food. Even though modern life can get very stressful, overall things are actually getting better. Innovative technology and dedicated individuals are working around the clock to improve life for everyone and make sure people can survive and thrive.¹
Renewable Energy Has Enormous Potential
Even though non-renewable energy is still used by many nations and individuals, renewable energy is on the rise in a big way, especially with wind power and solar power. The expansion of renewable energy in the future is going to decrease the cost of energy and take away harmful contributions to climate change which is a big win-win. The spread of renewable energy in the developing world instead of fossil fuels will also be a big boost to climbing out of poverty and taking it easy on the environment. There is reason for hope!²
Clean Drinking Water
An astounding 90% of the world now has access to clean water, which is a huge upgrade from last century when large areas of the developing world didn’t have access to healthy clean water. After all, water is the elementary ingredient of life and humans can only go a few days without it. In fact, in the past three decades almost 3 billion people who didn’t have access to drinkable water have gotten access to it and in just the past decades the amount of kids around the world who die from dirty and contaminated water has been reduced by 50%. That is huge progress and it’s a good reason to be optimistic that in the future we can make even more headway.³
Recycling Revolution
Recycling is on the rise worldwide, and the practice of reusing and recycling what we’re done using is finally catching on in a big way. It isn’t only that people are getting more used to doing this, it’s that recycling technology is advancing majorly in many ways, especially when it comes to recycling down plastic products and using them for fuel and other useful industrial byproducts in conversion processes that don’t hurt the environment. Winning!¹
Millions of Lives Saved From Car Accidents
An estimated 38,800 individuals lost their lives in car accidents in 2019 just in the United States.⁴ Every life is precious and that number is far too high, even though it was two percent less than in 2018. The technology of the future is improving rapidly, however, and autonomous or self-driving cars of the future as well as vehicles with inbuilt safety features, crash avoidance technology and blind spot monitoring will help push this number even lower. Even though autonomous driving technology is still being perfected and tested, it has already been put in place in limited areas and countries such as China and had successful results. In addition, the vehicles of the future will be mainly electric and massively reduce carbon emissions.²
[1] https://www.jackcanfield.com/blog/how-to-be-optimistic/
[2] https://interestingengineering.com/7-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-the-future
[3] https://relevantmagazine.com/current16/why-you-should-be-optimistic-about-future/
[4] https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates