Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

NOTES

PREFACE

1. “Mothers and children” from Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, Jan. 20, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address. “Outright war” and “spiritual and moral foundations” from Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s remarks to a Vatican conference in the summer of 2014, transcribed in J. L. Feder, “This Is How Steve Bannon Sees the Entire World,” BuzzFeed, Nov. 16, 2016, https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world. “Global power structure” from “Donald Trump’s Argument for America,” final television campaign ad, Nov. 2016, http://blog.4president.org/2016/2016-tv-ad/. Bannon is commonly credited with authoring or coauthoring all three.

2. CUDOS: Merton 1942/1973 called his first virtue “communism,” though it is often quoted as “communalism” to distinguish it from Marxism.

PART I: ENLIGHTENMENT

1. S. Maher, “Inside the Mind of an Extremist,” presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum, May 26, 2015, https://oslofreedomforum.com/talks/inside-the-mind-of-an-extremist.

2. From Hayek 1960/2011, p. 47; see also Wilkinson 2016a.

CHAPTER 1: DARE TO UNDERSTAND!

1. What Is Enlightenment? Kant 1784/1991.

2. The quotations are blended and condensed from translations by H. B. Nisbet, Kant 1784/1991, and by Mary C. Smith, http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html.

3. The Beginning of Infinity: Deutsch 2011, pp. 221–22.

4. The Enlightenment: Goldstein 2006; Gottlieb 2016; Grayling 2007; Hunt 2007; Israel 2001; Makari 2015; Montgomery & Chirot 2015; Pagden 2013; Porter 2000.

5. The nonnegotiability of reason: Nagel 1997; see also chapter 21.

6. Most Enlightenment thinkers were non-theists: Pagden 2013, p. 98.

7. Wootton 2015, pp. 6–7.

8. Scott 2010, pp. 20–21.

9. Enlightenment thinkers as scientists of human nature: Kitcher 1990; Macnamara 1999; Makari 2015; Montgomery & Chirot 2015; Pagden 2013; Stevenson & Haberman 1998.

10. Expanding circle of sympathy: Nagel 1970; Pinker 2011; Shermer 2015; Singer 1981/2010.

11. Cosmopolitanism: Appiah 2006; Pagden 2013; Pinker 2011.

12. Humanitarian Revolution: Hunt 2007; Pinker 2011.

13. Progress as a mystical force: Berlin 1979; Nisbet 1980/2009.

14. Authoritarian High Modernism: Scott 1998.

15. Authoritarian High Modernism and blank-slate psychology: Pinker 2002/2016, pp. 170–71, 409–11.

16. Quotes from Le Corbusier, from Scott 1998, pp. 114–15.

17. Rethinking punishment: Hunt 2007.

18. Wealth creation: Montgomery & Chirot 2015; Ridley 2010; Smith 1776/2009.

19. Gentle commerce: Mueller 1999, 2010b; Pagden 2013; Pinker 2011; Schneider & Gleditsch 2010.

20. Perpetual Peace: Kant 1795/1983. Modern interpretation: Russett & Oneal 2001.

CHAPTER 2: ENTRO, EVO, INFO

1. Second Law of Thermodynamics: Atkins 2007; Carroll 2016; Hidalgo 2015; Lane 2015.

2. Eddington 1928/2015.

3. The two cultures and the Second Law: Snow 1959/1998, pp. 14–15.

4. Second Law of Thermo = First law of psycho: Tooby, Cosmides, & Barrett 2003.

5. Self-organization: England 2015; Gell-Mann 1994; Hidalgo 2015; Lane 2015.

6. Evolution versus entropy: Dawkins 1983, 1986; Lane 2015; Tooby, Cosmides, & Barrett 2003.

7. Spinoza: Goldstein 2006.

8. Information: Adriaans 2013; Dretske 1981; Gleick 2011; Hidalgo 2015.

9. Information is a decrease in entropy, not entropy itself: https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/information.is.not.uncertainty.html.

10. Transmitted information as knowledge: Adriaans 2013; Dretske 1981; Fodor 1987, 1994.

11. “The universe is made of matter, energy, and information”: Hidalgo 2015, p. ix; see also Lloyd 2006.

12. Neural computation: Anderson 2007; Pinker 1997/2009, chap. 2.

13. Knowledge, information, and inferential roles: Block 1986; Fodor 1987, 1994.

14. The cognitive niche: Marlowe 2010; Pinker 1997/2009; Tooby & DeVore 1987; Wrangham 2009.

15. Language: Pinker 1994/2007.

16. Hadza menu: Marlowe 2010.

17. Axial Age: Goldstein 2013.

18. Explaining the Axial Age: Baumard et al. 2015.

19. From The Threepenny Opera, act II, scene 1.

20. Clockwork universe: Carroll 2016; Wootton 2015.

21. Innate illiteracy and innumeracy: Carey 2009; Wolf 2007.

22. Magical thinking, essences, word magic: Oesterdiekhoff 2015; Pinker 1997/2009, chaps. 5 and 6; Pinker 2007a, chap. 7.

23. Bugs in statistical reasoning: Ariely 2010; Gigerenzer 2015; Kahneman 2011; Pinker 1997/2009, chap. 5; Sutherland 1992.

24. Intuitive lawyers and politicians: Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman 2011; Kahan, Peters, et al. 2013; Kahan, Wittlin, et al. 2011; Mercier & Sperber 2011; Tetlock 2002.

25. Overconfidence: Johnson 2004. Overconfidence in understanding: Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

26. Bugs in the moral sense: Greene 2013; Haidt 2012; Pinker 2008a.

27. Morality as a condemnation device: DeScioli & Kurzban 2009; DeScioli 2016.

28. Virtuous violence: Fiske & Rai 2015; Pinker 2011, chaps. 8 and 9.

29. Transcending cognitive limitations through abstraction and combination: Pinker 2007a, 2010.

30. Letter to Isaac McPherson, Writings 13:333–35, quoted in Ridley 2010, p. 247.

31. Collective rationality: Haidt 2012; Mercier & Sperber 2011.

32. Cooperation and the interchangeability of perspectives: Nagel 1970; Pinker 2011; Singer 1981/2010.

CHAPTER 3: COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENTS

1. Declining trust in institutions: Twenge, Campbell, & Carter 2014. Mueller 1999, pp. 167–68, points out that the 1960s were a high-water mark for trust in institutions, unsurpassed before or after. Declining trust in science among conservatives: Gauchat 2012. Populism: Inglehart & Norris 2016; J. Müller 2016; Norris & Inglehart 2016; see also chapters 20 and 23.

2. Non-Western enlightenments: Conrad 2012; Kurlansky 2006; Pelham 2016; Sen 2005; Sikkink 2017.

3. Counter-Enlightenments: Berlin 1979; Garrard 2006; Herman 1997; Howard 2001; McMahon 2001; Sternhell 2010; Wolin 2004; see also chapter 23.

4. Inscription in John Singer Sargent’s 1922 painting Death and Victory, Widener Library, Harvard University.

5. Irreligious defenders of religion: Coyne 2015; see also chapter 23.

6. Ecomodernism: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Ausubel 1996, 2015; Brand 2009; DeFries 2014; Nordhaus & Shellenberger 2007; see also chapter 10.

7. Problems with ideology: Duarte et al. 2015; Haidt 2012; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman 2011; Mercier & Sperber 2011; Tetlock & Gardner 2015; and see much more in chapter 21.

8. An adaptation of a quotation by Michael Lind on the back cover of Herman 1997. See also Nisbet 1980/2009.

9. Eco-pessimism: Bailey 2015; Brand 2009; Herman 1997; Ridley 2010; see also chapter 10.

10. A pastiche by the literary historian Hoxie Neale Fairchild of phrases from T. S. Eliot, William Burroughs, and Samuel Beckett, from Religious Trends in English Poetry, quoted in Nisbet 1980/2009, p. 328.

11. Heroic blood-bespatterers: Nietzsche 1887/2014.

12. Snow never assigned an order to his Two Cultures, but subsequent usage has numbered them in that way; see, for example, Brockman 2003.

13. Snow 1959/1998, p. 14.

14. Leavis flame: Leavis 1962/2013; see Collini 1998, 2013.

15. Leavis 1962/2013, p. 71.

CHAPTER 4: PROGRESSOPHOBIA

1. Herman 1997, p. 7, also cites Joseph Campbell, Noam Chomsky, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Paul Goodman, Michael Harrington, Robert Heilbroner, Jonathan Kozol, Christopher Lasch, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Kirkpatrick Sale, Jonathan Schell, Richard Sennett, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, and Garry Wills.

2. Nisbet 1980/2009, p. 317.

3. The Optimism Gap: McNaughton-Cassill & Smith 2002; Nagdy & Roser 2016b; Veenhoven 2010; Whitman 1998.

4. EU Eurobarometer survey results, reproduced in Nagdy & Roser 2016b.

5. Survey results from Ipsos 2016, “Perils of Perception (Topline Results),” 2013, https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/migrations/en-uk/files/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-mori-rss-kings-perils-of-perception-topline.pdf, graphed in Nagdy & Roser 2016b.

6. Dunlap, Gallup, & Gallup 1993, graphed in Nagdy & Roser 2016b.

7. J. McCarthy, “More Americans Say Crime Is Rising in U.S.,” Gallup.com, Oct. 22, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/186308/americans-say-crime-rising.aspx.

8. World is getting worse: Majorities in Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and the United States; also Malaysia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. China was the only country in which more respondents said the world was getting better than said it was getting worse. YouGov poll, Jan. 5, 2016, https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/05/chinese-people-are-most-optimistic-world/. The United States on the wrong track: Dean Obeidallah, “We’ve Been on the Wrong Track Since 1972,” Daily Beast, Nov. 7, 2014, http://www.pollingreport.com/right.htm.

9. Source of the expression: B. Popik, “First Draft of History (Journalism),” BarryPopik.com, http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/first_draft_of_history_journalism/.

10. Frequency and nature of news: Galtung & Ruge 1965.

11. Availability heuristic: Kahneman 2011; Slovic 1987; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein 1982; Tversky & Kahneman 1973.

12. Misperceptions of risk: Ropeik & Gray 2002; Slovic 1987. Post-Jaws avoidance of swimming: Sutherland 1992, p. 11.

13. If it bleeds, it leads (and vice versa): Bohle 1986; Combs & Slovic 1979; Galtung & Ruge 1965; Miller & Albert 2015.

14. ISIS as “existential threat”: Poll conducted for Investor’s Business Daily by TIPP, March 28–April 2, 2016, http://www.investors.com/politics/ibdtipp-poll-distrust-on-what-obama-does-and-says-on-isis-terror/.

15. Effects of newsreading: Jackson 2016. See also Johnston & Davey 1997; McNaughton-Cassill 2001; Otieno, Spada, & Renkl 2013; Ridout, Grosse, & Appleton 2008; Unz, Schwab, & Winterhoff-Spurk 2008.

16. Quoted in J. Singal, “What All This Bad News Is Doing to Us,” New York, Aug. 8, 2014.

17. Decline of violence: Eisner 2003; Goldstein 2011; Gurr 1981; Human Security Centre 2005; Human Security Report Project 2009; Mueller 1989, 2004a; Payne 2004.

18. Solutions create new problems: Deutsch 2011, pp. 64, 76, 350; Berlin 1988/2013, p. 15.

19. Deutsch 2011, p. 193.

20. Thick-tailed distributions: See chapter 19, and, for more detail, Pinker 2011, pp. 210–22.

21. Negativity bias: Baumeister, Bratslavsky, et al. 2001; Rozin & Royzman 2001.

22. Personal communication, 1982.

23. More negative words: Baumeister, Bratslavsky, et al. 2001; Schrauf & Sanchez 2004.

24. Rose-tinting of memory: Baumeister, Bratslavsky, et al. 2001.

25. Illusion of the good old days: Eibach & Libby 2009.

26. Connor 2014; see also Connor 2016.

27. Snarky book reviewers sound smarter: Amabile 1983.

28. M. Housel, “Why Does Pessimism Sound So Smart?” Motley Fool, Jan. 21, 2016.

29. Similar points have been made by the economist Albert Hirschman (1991) and the journalist Gregg Easterbrook (2003).

30. D. Bornstein & T. Rosenberg, “When Reportage Turns to Cynicism,” New York Times, Nov. 14, 2016. For more on the “constructive journalism” movement, see Gyldensted 2015, Jackson 2016, and the magazine Positive News (www.positive.news).

31. The UN Millennium Development Goals are: 1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 2. To achieve universal primary education. 3. To promote gender equality and empower women. 4. To reduce child mortality. 5. To improve maternal health. 6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. 7. To ensure environmental sustainability. 8. To develop a global partnership for [economic] development.

32. Books on progress (in order of mention): Norberg 2016, Easterbrook 2003, Reese 2013, Naam 2013, Ridley 2010, Robinson 2009, Bregman 2017, Phelps 2013, Diamandis & Kotler 2012, Goklany 2007, Kenny 2011, Bailey 2015, Shermer 2015, DeFries 2014, Deaton 2013, Radelet 2015, Mahbubani 2013.

CHAPTER 5: LIFE

1. World Health Organization 2016a.

2. Hans and Ola Rosling, “The Ignorance Project,” https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/.

3. Roser 2016n; estimate for England in 1543 from R. Zijdeman, OECD Clio Infra.

4. Hunter-gatherers: Marlowe 2010, p. 160. The estimate is for the Hadza, whose rates of infant and juvenile mortality (which account for most of the variance among populations) are identical to the medians in Marlowe’s sample of 478 foraging peoples (p. 261). First farmers to Iron Age: Galor & Moav 2007. No increase for millennia: Deaton 2013, p. 80.

5. Norberg 2016, pp. 46 and 40.

6. Influenza pandemic: Roser 2016n. American white mortality: Case & Deaton 2015.

7. Marlowe 2010, p. 261.

8. Deaton 2013, p. 56.

9. Reducing health care: N. Kristof, “Birth Control for Others,” New York Times, March 23, 2008.

10. M. Housel, “50 Reasons We’re Living Through the Greatest Period in World History,” Motley Fool, Jan. 29, 2014.

11. World Health Organization 2015c.

12. Marlowe 2010, p. 160.

13. Radelet 2015, p. 75.

14. Global healthy life expectancy in 1990: Mathers et al. 2001. Healthy life expectancy in developed countries in 2010: Murray et al. 2012; see also Chernew et al. 2016, for data showing that healthy life expectancy, not just life expectancy, has recently increased in the United States.

15. G. Kolata, “U.S. Dementia Rates Are Dropping Even as Population Ages,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 2016.

16. Bush’s Council on Bioethics: Pinker 2008b.

17. L. R. Kass, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things, May 2001.

18. Longevity estimates regularly superseded: Oeppen & Vaupel 2002.

19. Reverse-engineering mortality: M. Shermer, “Radical Life-Extension Is Not Around the Corner,” Scientific American, Oct. 1, 2016; Shermer 2018.

20. Siegel, Naishadham, & Jemal 2012.

21. Skepticism about immortality: Hayflick 2000; Shermer 2018.

22. Entropy will kill us: P. Hoffmann, “Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology,” Nautilus, May 12, 2016.

CHAPTER 6: HEALTH

1. Deaton 2013, p. 149.

2. Bettmann 1974, p. 136; internal quotation marks omitted.

3. Bettmann 1974; Norberg 2016.

4. Carter 1966, p. 3.

5. Woodward, Shurkin, & Gordon 2009; see also the Web site ScienceHeroes (www.scienceheroes.com). The team’s statisticians are April Ingram and Amy R. Pearce.

6. Book on the past tense: Pinker 1999/2011.

7. Kenny 2011, pp. 124–25.

8. D. G. McNeil Jr., “A Milestone in Africa: No Polio Cases in a Year,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 2015; “Polio This Week,” Global Polio Eradication Initiative, http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/, May 17, 2017.

9. “Guinea Worm Case Totals,” The Carter Center, April 18, 2017, https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html.

10. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Our Big Bet for the Future: 2015 Gates Annual Letter, p. 7, https://www.gatesnotes.com/2015-Annual-Letter.

11. World Health Organization 2015b.

12. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “Malaria: Strategy Overview,” http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Malaria.

13. Data from the World Health Organization and the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group, cited in Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Our Big Bet for the Future: 2015 Gates Annual Letter, p. 7, https://www.gatesnotes.com/2015-Annual-Letter; UNAIDS 2016.

14. N. Kristof, “Why 2017 May Be the Best Year Ever,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 2017.

15. Jamison et al. 2015.

16. Deaton 2013, p. 41.

17. Deaton 2013, pp. 122–23.

CHAPTER 7: SUSTENANCE

1. Norberg 2016, pp. 7–8.

2. Braudel 2002.

3. Fogel 2004, quoted in Roser 2016d.

4. Braudel 2002, pp. 76–77, quoted in Norberg 2016.

5. “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015–2020, Estimated Calorie Needs per Day, by Age, Sex, and Physical Activity Level,” http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/appendix-2/.

6. Calorie figures from Roser 2016d; see also figure 7-1.

7. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of Food and Agriculture 1947, cited in Norberg 2016.

8. A definition by the economist Cormac Ó Gráda, cited in Hasell & Roser 2017.

9. Devereux 2000, p. 3.

10. W. Greene, “Triage: Who Shall Be Fed? Who Shall Starve?” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 5, 1975. The term lifeboat ethics had been introduced a year earlier by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in an article in Psychology Today (Sept. 1974) called “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor.”

11. “Service Groups in Dispute on World Food Problems,” New York Times, July 15, 1976; G. Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics,” Psychology Today, Sept. 1974.

12. McNamara, health care, contraception: N. Kristof, “Birth Control for Others,” New York Times, March 23, 2008.

13. Famines don’t reduce population growth: Devereux 2000.

14. Quoted in “Making Data Dance,” The Economist, Dec. 9, 2010.

15. The Industrial Revolution and the escape from hunger: Deaton 2013; Norberg 2016; Ridley 2010.

16. Agricultural revolutions: DeFries 2014.

17. Norberg 2016.

18. Woodward, Shurkin, & Gordon 2009; http://www.scienceheroes.com/. Haber retains this distinction even if we subtract the 90,000 deaths in World War I from chemical weapons, which he was instrumental in developing.

19. Morton 2015, p. 204.

20. Roser 2016e, 2016u.

21. Borlaug: Brand 2009; Norberg 2016; Ridley 2010; Woodward, Shurkin, & Gordon 2009; DeFries 2014.

22. The Green Revolution continues: Radelet 2015.

23. Roser 2016m.

24. Norberg 2016.

25. Norberg 2016. According to the UN FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015, “Net forest area has increased in over 60 countries and territories, most of which are in the temperate and boreal zones.” http://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infographics-details/en/c/325836/.

26. Norberg 2016.

27. Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012.

28. Alferov, Altman, & 108 other Nobel Laureates 2016; Brand 2009; Radelet 2015; Ridley 2010, pp. 170–73; J. Achenbach, “107 Nobel Laureates Sign Letter Blasting Greenpeace over GMOs,” Washington Post, June 30, 2016; W. Saletan, “Unhealthy Fixation,” Slate, July 15, 2015.

29. W. Saletan, “Unhealthy Fixation,” Slate, July 15, 2015.

30. Scientifically illiterate opinions on genetically modified foods: Sloman & Fernbach 2017.

31. Brand 2009, p. 117.

32. Sowell 2015.

33. Famines not just caused by food shortages: Devereux 2000; Sen 1984, 1999.

34. Devereux 2000. See also White 2011.

35. Devereux 2000 writes that during the colonial period, “macroeconomic and political vulnerability to famine gradually diminished” due to infrastructure improvements and “the initiation of early warning systems and relief intervention mechanisms by colonial administrations which recognized the need to ameliorate food crises to achieve political legitimacy” (p. 13).

36. Based on Devereux’s estimate of seventy million deaths in major 20th-century famines (p. 29) and the estimates of particular famines in his table 1. See also Rummel 1994; White 2011.

37. Deaton 2013; Radelet 2015.

CHAPTER 8: WEALTH

1. Rosenberg & Birdzell 1986, p. 3.

2. Norberg 2016, summarizing Braudel 2002, pp. 75, 285, and elsewhere.

3. Cipolla 1994. Internal quotation marks have been omitted.

4. The physical fallacy: Sowell 1980.

5. The discovery of wealth creation: Montgomery & Chirot 2015; Ridley 2010.

6. Underestimating growth: Feldstein 2017.

7. Consumer surplus and Oscar Wilde: T. Kane, “Piketty’s Crumbs,” Commentary, April 14, 2016.

8. The term Great Escape is from Deaton 2013. Enlightened economy: Mokyr 2012.

9. Backyard tinkerers: Ridley 2010.

10. Science and technology as causes of the Great Escape: Mokyr 2012, 2014.

11. Natural states versus open economies: North, Wallis, & Weingast 2009. Related argument: Acemoglu & Robinson 2012.

12. Bourgeois virtue: McCloskey 1994, 1998.

13. From Letters Concerning the English Nation, cited in Porter 2000, p. 21.

14. Porter 2000, pp. 21–22.

15. Data on GDP per capita from Maddison Project 2014, displayed in Marian Tupy’s HumanProgress, http://www.humanprogress.org/f1/2785/1/2010/France/United%20Kingdom.

16. The Great Convergence: Mahbubani 2013. Mahbubani credits the term to the columnist Martin Wolf. Radelet (2015) calls it the Great Surge; Deaton (2013) includes it in what he calls the Great Escape.

17. Countries with rapidly growing economies: Radelet 2015, pp. 47–51.

18. According to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, “The number of people in the working middle class—living on more than $4 a day—has almost tripled between 1991 and 2015. This group now makes up half the workforce in the developing regions, up from just 18 per cent in 1991” (United Nations 2015a, p. 4). Of course most of the “working middle class” as defined by the UN would count as poor in developed countries, but even with a more generous definition the world has become more middle class than one might expect. The Brookings Institution estimated in 2013 that it comprised 1.8 billion and would grow to 3.2 billion by 2020 (L. Yueh, “The Rise of the Global Middle Class,” BBC News online, June 19, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-22956470).

19. Camel and dromedary curves: Roser 2016g.

20. More accurately, a Bactrian camel; one-humped dromedaries are technically “camels,” too.

21. Camel to dromedary: For another way of showing the same historical development, see figures 9-1 and 9-2, based on data from Milanović 2016.

22. This is also equivalent to the frequently cited $1.25 cutoff, stated in 2005 international dollars: Ferreira, Jolliffe, & Prydz 2015.

23. M. Roser, “No Matter What Extreme Poverty Line You Choose, the Share of People Below That Poverty Line Has Declined Globally,” Our World in Data blog, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/no-matter-what-global-poverty-line.

24. Veil of ignorance: Rawls 1976.

25. Millennium Development Goals: United Nations 2015a.

26. Deaton 2013, p. 37.

27. Lucas 1988, p. 5.

28. The goal is defined as $1.25 a day, which is the World Bank international poverty line in 2005 international dollars; see Ferreira, Jolliffe, & Prydz 2015.

29. The problem in getting to zero: Radelet 2015, p. 243; Roser & Ortiz-Ospina 2017, section IV.2.

30. The danger in crying “crisis”: Kenny 2011, p. 203.

31. Causes of development: Collier & Rohner 2008; Deaton 2013; Kenny 2011; Mahbubani 2013; Milanović 2016; Radelet 2015. See also M. Roser, “The Global Decline of Extreme Poverty—Was It Only China?” Our World in Data blog, March 7, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/the-global-decline-of-extreme-poverty-was-it-only-china/.

32. Radelet 2015, p. 35.

33. Prices as information: Hayek 1945; Hidalgo 2015; Sowell 1980.

34. Chile vs. Venezuela, Botswana vs. Zimbabwe: M. L. Tupy, “The Power of Bad Ideas: Why Voters Keep Choosing Failed Statism,” CapX, Jan. 7, 2016.

35. Kenny 2011, p. 203; Radelet 2015, p. 38.

36. Mao’s genocides: Rummel 1994; White 2011.

37. According to legend, said by Franklin Roosevelt about Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, but probably not: http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=8204/.

38. Local leaders: Radelet 2015, p. 184.

39. War as development in reverse: Collier 2007.

40. Deaton 2017.

41. Hostility to the Industrial Revolution among Romantics and literary intellectuals: Collini 1998, 2013.

42. Snow 1959/1998, pp. 25–26. Enraged response: Leavis 1962/2013, pp. 69–72.

43. Radelet 2015, pp. 58–59.

44. “Factory Girls,” by A Factory Girl, The Lowell Offering, no. 2, Dec. 1840, https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/lo_40_12.pdf. Cited in C. Follett, “The Feminist Side of Sweatshops,” The Hill, April 18, 2017, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/329332-the-feminist-side-of-sweatshops.

45. Quoted in Brand 2009, p. 26; chaps. 2 and 3 of his book expand on the liberating powers of urbanization.

46. Reviewed in Brand 2009, chaps. 2 and 3, and Radelet 2015, p. 59. For a similar account from today’s China, see Chang 2009.

47. Slums to suburbs: Brand 2009; Perlman 1976.

48. Improvement in working conditions: Radelet 2015.

49. Benefits of science and technology: Brand 2009; Deaton 2013; Kenny 2011; Radelet 2015; Ridley 2010.

50. Mobile phones and commerce: Radelet 2015.

51. Jensen 2007.

52. Estimate from the International Telecommunications Union, cited in Pentland 2007.

53. Against foreign aid: Deaton 2013; Easterly 2006.

54. In favor of (some kinds of) foreign aid: Collier 2007; Kenny 2011; Radelet 2015; Singer 2010; S. Radelet, “Angus Deaton, His Nobel Prize, and Foreign Aid,” Future Development blog, Brookings Institution, Oct. 20, 2015, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/future-development/posts/2015/10/20-angus-deaton-nobel-prize-foreign-aid-radelet.

55. Rising Preston Curve: Roser 2016n.

56. Life expectancy figures are from www.gapminder.org.

57. Correlation between GDP and measures of well-being: van Zanden et al. 2014, p. 252; Kenny 2011, pp. 96–97; Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012; Prados de la Escosura 2015; see also chapters 11, 12, and 14–18.

58. Correlations between GDP and peace, stability, and liberal values: Brunnschweiler & Lujala 2015; Hegre et al. 2011; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Welzel 2013; see also chapters 12 and 14–18.

59. Correlations between GDP and happiness: Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs 2016; Stevenson & Wolfers 2008a; Veenhoven 2010; see also chapter 18. Correlation with IQ gains: Pietschnig & Voracek 2015; see also chapter 16.

60. Composite measures of national well-being: Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Veenhoven 2010; Porter, Stern, & Green 2016; see also chapter 16.

61. GDP as cause of peace, stability, and liberal values: Brunnschweiler & Lujala 2015; Hegre et al. 2011; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Welzel 2013; see also chapters 11, 14, and 15.

CHAPTER 9: INEQUALITY

1. Plotted by the now-defunct New York Times Chronicle tool, http://nytlabs.com/projects/chronicle.html, retrieved Sept. 19, 2016.

2. “Bernie Quotes for a Better World,” http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/bernie8.htm.

3. Inequality in the Anglosphere vs. the rest of the developed world: Roser 2016k.

4. Gini data taken from Roser 2016k, originally from OECD 2016; note that exact values vary depending on the source. The World Bank’s Povcal, for example, estimates a less extreme change, from .38 in 1986 to .41 in 2013 (World Bank 2016d). Income share data from the World Wealth and Income Database, http://www.wid.world/. For a comprehensive dataset, see The Chartbook of Economic Inequality, Atkinson et al. 2017.

5. The trouble with inequality: Frankfurt 2015. Other inequality skeptics: Mankiw 2013; McCloskey 2014; Parfit 1997; Sowell 2015; Starmans, Sheskin, & Bloom 2017; Watson 2015; Winship 2013; S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

6. Frankfurt 2015, p. 7.

7. According to the World Bank 2016c, global GDP per capita grew in every year from 1961 to 2015 except 2009.

8. Piketty 2013, p. 261. Problems with Piketty: Kane 2016; McCloskey 2014; Summers 2014a.

9. Nozick on income distributions: Nozick 1974. His example was the basketball great Wilt Chamberlain.

10. J. B. Stewart, “In the Chamber of Secrets: J. K. Rowling’s Net Worth,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 2017.

11. Social comparison theory comes from Leon Festinger; the theory of reference groups comes from Robert Merton and from Samuel Stouffer. See Kelley & Evans 2016 for a review and citations.

12. Amartya Sen (1987) makes a similar argument.

13. Wealth and happiness: Stevenson & Wolfers 2008a; Veenhoven 2010; see also chapter 18.

14. Wilkinson & Pickett 2009.

15. Problems with The Spirit Level: Saunders 2010; Snowdon 2010, 2016; Winship 2013.

16. Inequality and subjective well-being: Kelley & Evans 2016. See chapter 18 for an explanation of how happiness is measured.

17. Starmans, Sheskin, & Bloom 2017.

18. Ethnic minorities perceived as cheaters: Sowell 1980, 1994, 1996, 2015.

19. Skepticism on inequality causing economic and political dysfunction: Mankiw 2013; McCloskey 2014; Winship 2013; S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

20. Influence-peddling versus inequality: Watson 2015.

21. Sharing meat, keeping plant foods: Cosmides & Tooby 1992.

22. Inequality and awareness of inequality are universal: Brown 1991.

23. Hunter-gatherer inequality: Smith et al. 2010. The average excludes questionable forms of “wealth” such as reproductive success, grip strength, weight, and sharing partners.

24. Kuznets 1955.

25. Deaton 2013, p. 89.

26. Some, but not all, of the increase in between-country inequality from 1820 to 1970 can be attributed to the larger number of countries in the world; Branko Milanović, personal communication, April 16, 2017.

27. War as leveler: Graham 2016; Piketty 2013; Scheidel 2017.

28. Scheidel 2017, p. 444.

29. History of social spending: Lindert 2004; van Bavel & Rijpma 2016.

30. Egalitarian Revolution: Moatsos et al. 2014, p. 207.

31. Social spending as a proportion of GDP: OECD 2014.

32. Change in mission of government (particularly in Europe): Sheehan 2008.

33. In particular, in environmental protection (chapter 10), gains in safety (chapter 12), the abolition of capital punishment (chapter 14), the rise of emancipative values (chapter 15), and overall human development (chapter 16).

34. Social spending by employers: OECD 2014.

35. Reported by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.), P. Rucker, “Sen. DeMint of S.C. Is Voice of Opposition to Health-Care Reform,” Washington Post, July 28, 2009.

36. Wagner’s Law: Wilkinson 2016b.

37. Social spending in developing countries: OECD 2014.

38. Prados de la Escosura 2015.

39. No libertarian paradises: M. Lind, “The Question Libertarians Just Can’t Answer,” Salon, June 4, 2013; Friedman 1997. See also chapter 21, note 40.

40. Willingness to have a welfare state: Alesina, Glaeser, & Sacerdote 2001; Peterson 2015.

41. Explanations for the post-1980s inequality rise: Autor 2014; Deaton 2013; Goldin & Katz 2010; Graham 2016; Milanović 2016; Moatsos et al. 2014; Piketty 2013; Scheidel 2017.

42. Taller elephant with lower trunk tip: Milanović 2016, fig. 1.3. More analysis of the elephant: Corlett 2016.

43. Anonymous versus nonanonymous data: Corlett 2016; Lakner & Milanović 2015.

44. Quasi-nonanonymous elephant curve: Lakner & Milanović 2015.

45. Coontz 1992/2016, pp. 30–31.

46. Rose 2016; Horwitz 2015 made a similar discovery.

47. Individuals moving into the top 1 or 10 percent: Hirschl & Rank 2015. Horwitz 2015 obtained similar results. See also Sowell 2015; Watson 2015.

48. Optimism Gap: Whitman 1998. Economic Optimism Gap: Bernanke 2016; Meyer & Sullivan 2011.

49. Roser 2016k.

50. Why the United States doesn’t have a European welfare state: Alesina, Glaeser, & Sacerdote 2001; Peterson 2015.

51. Rise in disposable income in lower quintiles: Burtless 2014.

52. Income rise from 2014 to 2015: Proctor, Semega, & Kollar 2016. Continuation in 2016: E. Levitz, “The Working Poor Got Richer in 2016,” New York, March 9, 2017.

53. C. Jencks, “The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?” New York Review of Books, April 2, 2015. Similar analyses: Furman 2014; Meyer & Sullivan 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017; Sacerdote 2017.

54. 2015 and 2016 drops in the poverty rate: Proctor, Semega, & Kollar 2016; Semega, Fontenot, & Kollar 2017.

55. Henry et al. 2015.

56. Underestimating economic progress: Feldstein 2017.

57. Furman 2005.

58. Access to utilities among the poor: Greenwood, Seshadri, & Yorukoglu 2005. Ownership of appliances among the poor: US Census Bureau, “Extended Measures of Well-Being: Living Conditions in the United States, 2011,” table 1, http://www.census.gov/hhes/well-being/publications/extended-11.html. See also figure 17-3.

59. Consumption inequality: Hassett & Mathur 2012; Horwitz 2015; Meyer & Sullivan 2012.

60. Decline in happiness inequality: Stevenson & Wolfers 2008b.

61. Declining Ginis for quality of life: Deaton 2013; Rijpma 2014, p. 264; Roser 2016a, 2016n; Roser & Ortiz-Ospina 2016a; Veenhoven 2010.

62. Inequality and secular stagnation: Summers 2016.

63. The economist Douglas Irwin (2016) notes that 45 million Americans live below the poverty line, 135,000 Americans are employed by the apparel industry, and the normal turnover of jobs results in about 1.7 million layoffs a month.

64. Automation, jobs, and inequality: Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2016.

65. Economic challenges and solutions: Dobbs et al. 2016; Summers & Balls 2015.

66. S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

67. Governments vs. employers as social service providers: M. Lind, “Can You Have a Good Life If You Don’t Have a Good Job?” New York Times, Sept. 16, 2016.

68. Universal basic income: Bregman 2017; S. Hammond, “When the Welfare State Met the Flat Tax,” Foreign Policy, June 16, 2016; R. Skidelsky, “Basic Income Revisited,” Project Syndicate, June 23, 2016; C. Murray, “A Guaranteed Income for Every American,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2016.

69. Studies of the effects of basic income: Bregman 2017. High-tech volunteering: Diamandis & Kotler 2012. Effective altruism: MacAskill 2015.

CHAPTER 10: THE ENVIRONMENT

1. See Gore’s 1992 Earth in the Balance; Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), “Industrial Society and Its Future,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm; Francis 2015. Kaczynski read Gore’s book, and the similarities between it and his manifesto were pointed out in an undated Internet quiz by Ken Crossman: http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html.

2. Quoted in M. Ridley, “Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times,” Wired, Aug. 17, 2012. In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich also compared humanity to cancer; see Bailey 2015, p. 5. For fantasies of a depopulated planet, see Alan Weisman’s 2007 bestseller The World Without Us.

3. Ecomodernism: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Ausubel 1996, 2007, 2015; Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012; Brand 2009; DeFries 2014; Nordhaus & Shellenberger 2007. Earth Optimism: Balmford & Knowlton 2017; https://earthoptimism.si.edu/; http://www.oceanoptimism.org/about/.

4. Extinctions and forest clearing by indigenous peoples: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Brand 2009; Burney & Flannery 2005; White 2011.

5. Wilderness preserves and decimation of indigenous peoples: Cronon 1995.

6. From Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum (2005), quoted in Brand 2009, p. 19; see also Ruddiman et al. 2016.

7. Brand 2009, p. 133.

8. Gifts of industrialization: chapters 5–8; A. Epstein 2014; Norberg 2016; Radelet 2015; Ridley 2010.

9. Environmental Kuznets curve: Ausubel 2015; Dinda 2004; Levinson 2008; Stern 2014. Note that the curve does not apply to all pollutants or all countries, and when it occurs it may be driven by policy rather than happening automatically.

10. Inglehart & Welzel 2005; Welzel 2013, chap. 12.

11. Demographic transitions: Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016d.

12. Muslim population bust: Eberstadt & Shah 2011.

13. M. Tupy, “Humans Innovate Their Way Out of Scarcity,” Reason, Jan. 12, 2016; see also Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

14. Europium Crisis: Deutsch 2011.

15. “China’s Rare-Earths Bust,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2016.

16. Why we don’t run out of resources: Nordhaus 1974; Romer & Nelson 1996; Simon 1981; Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

17. People don’t need resources: Deutsch 2011; Pinker 2002/2016, pp. 236–39; Ridley 2010; Romer & Nelson 1996.

18. Probability and solutions to human problems: Deutsch 2011.

19. The Stone Age quip is commonly attributed to Saudi oil minister Zaki Yamani in 1973; see “The End of the Oil Age,” The Economist, Oct. 23, 2003. Energy transitions: Ausubel 2007, p. 235.

20. Farming pivots: DeFries 2014.

21. Farming in the future: Brand 2009; Bryce 2014; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

22. Future water: Brand 2009; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

23. Environment is rebounding: Ausubel 1996, 2015; Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012; Bailey 2015; Balmford 2012; Balmford & Knowlton 2017; Brand 2009; Ridley 2010.

24. Roser 2016f, based on data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

25. Roser 2016f, based on data from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

26. Environmental Performance Index, http://epi.yale.edu/country-rankings.

27. Contaminated water and cooking smoke: United Nations Development Programme 2011.

28. According to the UN Millennium Development Goals report, the percentage of people exposed to contaminated water fell from 24 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2015 (United Nations 2015a, p. 52). According to data cited in Roser 2016l, in 1980, 62 percent of the world’s population cooked with solid fuels; in 2010, just 41 percent did.

29. Quoted in Norberg 2016.

30. Third-worst stationary oil spill in history: Roser 2016r; US Department of the Interior, “Interior Department Releases Final Well Control Regulations to Ensure Safe and Responsible Offshore Oil and Gas Development,” April 14, 2016, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-releases-final-well-control-regulations-ensure-safe-and.

31. Increased tiger, condor, rhino, panda numbers: World Wildlife Foundation and Global Tiger Forum, cited in “Nature’s Comebacks,” Time, April 17, 2016. Conservation successes: Balmford 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2010; Suckling et al. 2016; United Nations 2015a, p. 57; R. McKie, “Saved: The Endangered Species Back from the Brink of Extinction,” The Guardian, April 8, 2017. Pimm on declining extinction rate: quoted in D. T. Max, “Green Is Good,” New Yorker, May 12, 2014.

32. The paleontologist Douglas Erwin (2015) points out that mass extinctions wipe out inconspicuous but widespread mollusks, arthropods, and other invertebrates, not the charismatic birds and mammals that attract the attention of journalists. The biogeographer John Briggs (2015, 2016) notes that “most extinctions have occurred on oceanic islands or in restricted freshwater locations” after humans have introduced invasive species, because the native animals have nowhere to run; few have taken place on continents or in the oceans, and no ocean species has gone extinct in the past fifty years. Brand points out that the catastrophic predictions assume that all threatened species will go extinct and that this rate will continue for centuries or millennia; S. Brand, “Rethinking Extinction,” Aeon, April 21, 2015. See also Bailey 2015; Costello, May, & Stork 2013; Stork 2010; Thomas 2017; M. Ridley, “A History of Failed Predictions of Doom,” http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not/.

33. International agreements on the environment: http://www.enviropedia.org.uk/Acid_Rain/International_Agreements.php.

34. Healing ozone hole: United Nations 2015a, p. 7.

35. Note that the environmental Kuznets curve may be driven by such activism and legislation; see notes 9 and 40 in this chapter.

36. Density is good: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Brand 2009; Bryce 2013.

37. Dematerialization of consumption: Sutherland 2016.

38. Dying car culture: M. Fisher, “Cruising Toward Oblivion,” Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2015.

39. Peak Stuff: Ausubel 2015; Office for National Statistics 2016. The equivalents in American units are 16.6 and 11.4 tons.

40. See, for example, J. Salzman, “Why Rivers No Longer Burn,” Slate, Dec. 10, 2012; S. Cardoni, “Top 5 Pieces of Environmental Legislation,” ABC News, July 2, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/top-pieces-environmental-legislation/story?id=11067662; Young 2011. See also note 35 above.

41. Recent reviews of climate change: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; King et al. 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; Plumer 2015; World Bank 2012a. See also J. Gillis, “Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2015; “The State of the Climate in 2016,” The Economist, Nov. 17, 2016.

42. 4°C warming must not occur: World Bank 2012a.

43. Effects of different emission scenarios: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; King et al. 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; Plumer 2015; World Bank 2012a. The projection for a 2°C rise is the RCP2.6 scenario shown in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014, fig. 6.7.

44. Energy from fossil fuels: My calculation for 2015, from British Petroleum 2016, “Primary Energy: Consumption by Fuel,” p. 41, “Total World.”

45. Scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change: NASA, “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate Is Warming,” http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/; Skeptical Science, http://www.skepticalscience.com/; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; Plumer 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; W. Nordhaus, “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong,” New York Review of Books, March 22, 2012. Among the skeptics who have been convinced are the libertarian science writers Michael Shermer, Matt Ridley, and Ronald Bailey.

46. Consensus among climate scientists: Powell 2015; G. Stern, “Fifty Years After U.S. Climate Warning, Scientists Confront Communication Barriers,” Science, Nov. 27, 2015; see also the preceding note.

47. Climate change denialism: Morton 2015; Oreskes & Conway 2010; Powell 2015.

48. Bona fides on political correctness: I am on the advisory boards of the Foundation for Individual Rights on Education (https://www.thefire.org/about-us/board-of-directors-page/), the Heterodox Academy (http://heterodoxacademy.org/about-us/advisory-board/), and the Academic Engagement Network (http://www.academicengagement.org/en/about-us/leadership); see also Pinker 2002/2016, 2006. Evidence on climate change: See citations in notes 41, 45, and 46 above.

49. Lukewarming: M. Ridley, “A History of Failed Predictions of Doom,” http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not/; J. Curry, “Lukewarming,” Climate Etc., Nov. 5, 2015, https://judithcurry.com/2015/11/05/lukewarming/.

50. Climate Casino: W. Nordhaus 2013; W. Nordhaus, “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong,” New York Review of Books, March 22, 2012; R. W. Cohen et al., “In the Climate Casino: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, April 26, 2012.

51. Climate justice: Foreman 2013.

52. Klein vs. carbon tax: C. Komanoff, “Naomi Klein Is Wrong on the Policy That Could Change Everything,” Carbon Tax Center blog, https://www.carbontax.org/blog/2016/11/07/naomi-klein-is-wrong-on-the-policy-that-could-change-everything/; Koch brothers vs. carbon tax: C. Komanoff, “To the Left-Green Opponents of I-732: How Does It Feel?” Carbon Tax Center blog, https://www.carbontax.org/blog/2016/11/04/to-the-left-green-opponents-of-i-732-how-does-it-feel/. Economists’ statement on climate change: Arrow et al. 1997. Recent arguments for the carbon tax: “FAQs,” Carbon Tax Center blog, https://www.carbontax.org/faqs/.

53. “Naomi Klein on Why Low Oil Prices Could Be a Great Thing,” Grist, Feb. 9, 2015.

54. The problem with “climate justice” and “changing everything”: Foreman 2013; Shellenberger & Nordhaus 2013.

55. Scare tactics less effective than practical solutions: Braman et al. 2007; Feinberg & Willer 2011; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, et al. 2012; O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole 2009; L. Sorantino, “Annenberg Study: Pope Francis’ Climate Change Encyclical Backfired Among Conservative Catholics,” Daily Pennsylvanian, Nov. 1, 2016, https://goo.gl/zUWXyk; T. Nordhaus & M. Shellenberger, “Global Warming Scare Tactics,” New York Times, April 8, 2014. See Boyer 1986 and Sandman & Valenti 1986 for a similar point about nuclear weapons.

56. “World Greenhouse Gas Emissions Flow Chart 2010,” Ecofys, http://www.ecofys.com/files/files/asn-ecofys-2013-world-ghg-emissions-flow-chart-2010.pdf.

57. Scale insensitivity: Desvousges et al. 1992.

58. Moralization of profligacy and asceticism: Haidt 2012; Pinker 2008.

59. Sacrifice vs. benefit as a source of moral approbation: Nemirow 2016.

60. See http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pinker/files/ten_ways_to_green_your_scence_2.jpg and http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pinker/files/ten_ways_to_green_your_scence_1.jpg.

61. Shellenberger & Nordhaus 2013.

62. M. Tupy, “Earth Day’s Anti-Humanism in One Graph and Two Tables,” Cato at Liberty, April 22, 2015, https://www.cato.org/blog/earth-days-anti-humanism-one-graph-two-tables.

63. Shellenberger & Nordhaus 2013.

64. Trading economic development against climate change: W. Nordhaus 2013.

65. L. Sorantino, “Annenberg Study: Pope Francis’ Climate Change Encyclical Backfired Among Conservative Catholics,” Daily Pennsylvanian, Nov. 1, 2016, https://goo.gl/zUWXyk.

66. The actual carbon-to-hydrogen ratio in the cellulose and lignin making up wood is lower, but most of the hydrogen is already bound to oxygen, so it does not oxidize and release heat during combustion; see Ausubel & Marchetti 1998.

67. Bituminous coal is mainly C137H97O9NS, with a ratio of 1.4 to 1; anthracite is mainly C240H90O4NS, with a ratio of 2.67 to 1.

68. Carbon-to-hydrogen ratios: Ausubel 2007.

69. Decarbonization: Ausubel 2007.

70. “Global Carbon Budget,” Global Carbon Project, Nov. 14, 2016, http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/.

71. Ausubel 2007, p. 230.

72. Carbon plateau, GDP rise: Le Quéré et al. 2016.

73. Deep decarbonization: Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project 2015; Pacala & Socolow 2004; Williams et al. 2014; http://deepdecarbonization.org/.

74. Carbon tax consensus: Arrow et al. 1997; see also “FAQs,” Carbon Tax Center blog, https://www.carbontax.org/faqs/.

75. How to implement a carbon tax: “FAQs,” Carbon Tax Center blog, https://www.carbontax.org/faqs/; Romer 2016.

76. Nuclear power as the new green: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Ausubel 2007; Brand 2009; Bryce 2014; Cravens 2007; Freed 2014; K. Caldeira et al., “Top Climate Change Scientists’ Letter to Policy Influencers,” CNN, Nov. 3, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-letter/index.html; M. Shellenberger, “How the Environmental Movement Changed Its Mind on Nuclear Power,” Public Utilities Fortnightly, May 2016; Nordhaus & Shellenberger 2011; Breakthrough Institute, “Energy and Climate FAQs,” http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/nuclear-faqs. Though many environmental climate activists now support an expansion of nuclear power (including Stewart Brand, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Tim Flannery, John Holdren, James Kunstler, James Lovelock, Bill McKibben, Hugh Montefiore, and Patrick Moore), remaining opponents include Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and (with some equivocation) Al Gore. See Brand 2009, pp. 86–89.

77. Solar and wind provide 1.5 percent of the world’s energy: British Petroleum 2016, graphed in https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-much-energy-does-the-world-get-from-renewables.

78. Land required by wind farms: Bryce 2014.

79. Land required by wind and solar: Swain et al. 2015, based on data from Jacobson & Delucchi 2011.

80. M. Shellenberger, “How the Environmental Movement Changed Its Mind on Nuclear Power,” Public Utilities Fortnightly, March 2016; R. Bryce, “Solar’s Great and So Is Wind, but We Still Need Nuclear Power,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2016.

81. Chernobyl cancer deaths: Ridley 2010, pp. 308, 416.

82. Relative death rate from nuclear vs. fossil fuels: Kharecha & Hansen 2013; Swain et al. 2015. A million deaths a year from coal: Morton 2015, p. 16.

83. Nordhaus & Shellenberger 2011. See also note 76 above.

84. Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project 2015. Deep decarbonization of the United States: Williams et al. 2014. See also B. Plumer, “Here’s What It Would Really Take to Avoid 2°C of Global Warming,” Vox, July 9, 2014.

85. Deep decarbonization of the world: Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project 2015; see also the preceding note.

86. Nuclear power and the psychology of fear and dread: Gardner 2008; Gigerenzer 2016; Ropeik & Gray 2002; Slovic 1987; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein 1982.

87. From “Power,” by John Hall and Johanna Hall.

88. Variously attributed; quoted in Brand 2009, p. 75.

89. Necessity for standardization: Shellenberger 2017. Selin quote: Washington Post, May 29, 1995.

90. Fourth-generation nuclear power: Bailey 2015; Blees 2008; Freed 2014; Hargraves 2012; Naam 2013.

91. Fusion power: E. Roston, “Peter Thiel’s Other Hobby Is Nuclear Fusion,” Bloomberg News, Nov. 22, 2016; L. Grossman, “Inside the Quest for Fusion, Clean Energy’s Holy Grail,” Time, Oct. 22, 2015.

92. Advantages of technological solutions to climate change: Bailey 2015; Koningstein & Fork 2014; Nordhaus 2016; see also note 103 below.

93. Need for risky research: Koningstein & Fork 2014.

94. Brand 2009, p. 84.

95. American gridlock and technophobia: Freed 2014.

96. Carbon capture: Brand 2009; B. Plumer, “Can We Build Power Plants That Actually Take Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air?” Vox, March 11, 2015; B. Plumer, “It’s Time to Look Seriously at Sucking CO2 Out of the Atmosphere,” Vox, July 13, 2015. See also CarbonBrief 2016, and the Web site for the Center for Carbon Removal, http://www.centerforcarbonremoval.org/.

97. Geoengineering: Keith 2013, 2015; Morton 2015. Artificial carbon capture: See the preceding note.

98. Low-carbon liquid fuels: Schrag 2009.

99. BECCS: King et al. 2015; Sanchez et al. 2015; Schrag 2009; see also note 96 above.

100. Time headlines: Sept. 25, Oct. 19, and Oct. 14, respectively. New York Times headline: Nov. 5, 2015, based on a poll from the Pew Research Center. For other polls showing American support of climate mitigation measures, see https://www.carbontax.org/polls/.

101. Paris agreement: http://unfccc.int/paris agreement/items/9485.php.

102. Likelihood of temperature rises under the Paris agreement: Fawcett et al. 2015.

103. Decarbonization driven by technology and economics: Nordhaus & Lovering 2016. States, cities, and world vs. Trump on climate change: Bloomberg & Pope 2017; “States and Cities Compensate for Mr. Trump’s Climate Stupidity,” New York Times, June 7, 2017; “Trump Is Dropping Out of the Paris Agreement, but the Rest of Us Don’t Have To,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2017; W. Hamaidan, “How Should World Leaders Punish Trump for Pulling Out of Paris Accord?” The Guardian, June 15, 2017; “Apple Issues $1 Billion Green Bond After Trump’s Paris Climate Exit,” Reuters, June 13, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-climate-greenbond-idUSKBN1941ZE; H. Tabuchi & H. Fountain, “Bill Gates Leads New Fund as Fears of U.S. Retreat on Climate Grow,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 2016.

104. Cooling the atmosphere by reducing solar radiation: Brand 2009; Keith 2013, 2015; Morton 2015.

105. Calcite (limestone) as a stratospheric sunscreen and antacid: Keith et al. 2016.

106. “Moderate, responsive, temporary”: Keith 2015. Removing 5 gigatons of CO2 by 2075: Q&A from Keith 2015.

107. Climate engineering increases concern about climate change: Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, et al. 2012.

108. Complacent vs. conditional optimism: Romer 2016.

CHAPTER 11: PEACE

1. The graphs in Better Angels and in this book include the most recent year available. However, most datasets are not updated in real time but are double-checked for accuracy and completeness and thus released well after the most recent year they include (at least a year, though the gap has been shrinking). Some datasets are not updated at all, or change their criteria, making different years incommensurable. For these reasons, together with the publication lag, the latest years plotted in the Better Angels graphs were before 2011, and those plotted in this book extend no later than 2016.

2. War as the default state of affairs: See the discussion in Pinker 2011, pp. 228–49.

3. In this discussion, I use Levy’s classification of great powers and great power war; see also Goldstein 2011; Pinker 2011, pp. 222–28.

4. Crisscrossing trends in great power war: Pinker 2011, pp. 225–28, based on data from Levy 1983.

5. Obsolescence of war between states: Goertz, Diehl, & Balas 2016; Goldstein 2011; Hathaway & Shapiro 2017; Mueller 1989, 2009; and see Pinker 2011, chap. 5.

6. The standard definition of “war” among political scientists is a state-based armed conflict which causes at least 1,000 battle deaths in a given year. The figures are drawn from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset: Gleditsch et al. 2002; Human Security Report Project 2011; Pettersson & Wallensteen 2015; http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/.

7. S. Pinker & J. M. Santos, “Colombia’s Milestone in World Peace,” New York Times, Aug. 26, 2016. I thank Joshua Goldstein for calling my attention to many of the facts in that article, repeated in this paragraph.

8. Center for Systemic Peace, Marshall 2016, http://www.systemicpeace.org/warlist/warlist.htm, total for 32 episodes of political violence in the Americas since 1945, excluding 9/11 and the Mexican drug war.

9. Counts from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset: Pettersson & Wallensteen 2015, with updates from Therese Pettersson and Sam Taub (personal communication). The wars in 2016 were: Afghanistan vs. Taliban, and vs. ISIS; Iraq vs. ISIS; Libya versus ISIS; Nigeria vs. ISIS; Somalia vs. Al-Shabab; Sudan vs. SRF; Syria vs. ISIS, and vs. Insurgents; Turkey vs. ISIS, and vs. PKK; Yemen vs. Forces of Hadi.

10. Syrian civil war battle death estimates: 256,624 (through 2016) from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (http://ucdp.uu.se/#country/652, accessed June 2017); 250,000 (through 2015) from the Center for Systemic Peace, http://www.systemicpeace.org/warlist/warlist.htm, last updated May 25, 2016.

11. Civil wars that ended since 2009 (technically, “state-based armed conflicts,” with more than 25 battle deaths per year but not necessarily more than 1,000): personal communication from Therese Pettersson, March 17, 2016, based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Armed Conflict dataset, Pettersson & Wallensteen 2015, http://ucdp.uu.se/. Earlier wars with large death tolls: Center for Systemic Peace, Marshall 2016.

12. Goldstein 2015. The numbers are for “refugees,” who cross international borders; the number of “internally displaced persons” has been tracked only since 1989, so a comparison of those displaced by the Syrian war and by earlier wars is impossible.

13. Genocides as old as history: Chalk & Jonassohn 1990, p. xvii.

14. Peak death rate in genocides: From Rummel 1997, using his definition of “democide,” which includes the UCDP’s “one-sided violence” together with deliberate famines, deaths in internment camps, and the targeted bombing of civilians. Stricter definitions of “genocide” also result in counts during the 1940s in the tens of millions. See White 2011; Pinker 2011, pp. 336–42.

15. The calculations are explained in Pinker 2011, p. 716, note 65.

16. Numbers are for 2014 and 2015, the most recent years for which a breakdown is available. Though these are the “high” estimates in the UCDP One-Sided Violence Dataset version 1.4–2015 (http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_one-sided_violence_dataset/), the numbers tally only the verified deaths and should be considered conservative lower bounds.

17. Problems in estimating risks: Pinker 2011, pp. 210–22; Spagat 2015, 2017; M. Spagat, “World War III—What Are the Chances,” Significance, Dec. 2015; M. Spagat & S. Pinker, “Warfare” (letter), Significance, June 2016, and “World War III: The Final Exchange,” Significance, Dec. 2016.

18. Nagdy & Roser 2016a. Military spending in all countries but the United States has decreased in inflation-adjusted dollars from their Cold War peaks, and in the United States it is lower than the Cold War peak as a proportion of GDP. Conscription: Pinker 2011, pp. 255–57; M. Tupy, “Fewer People Exposed to Horrors of War,” HumanProgress, May 30, 2017, http://humanprogress.org/blog/fewer-people-exposed-to-horrors-of-war.

19. Enlightenment-era denunciations of war: Pinker 2011, pp. 164–68.

20. Declines and hiatuses in war: Pinker 2011, pp. 237–38.

21. Gentle commerce vindicated: Pinker 2011, pp. 284–88; Russett & Oneal 2001.

22. Democracy and peace: Pinker 2011, pp. 278–94; Russett & Oneal 2001.

23. Possible irrelevance of nuclear weapons: Mueller 1989, 2004; Pinker 2011, pp. 268–78. For new data see Sechser & Fuhrmann 2017.

24. Norms and taboos as a cause of the Long Peace: Goertz, Diehl, & Balas 2016; Goldstein 2011; Hathaway & Shapiro 2017; Mueller 1989; Nadelmann 1990.

25. Civil wars less deadly than interstate wars: Pinker 2011, pp. 303–5.

26. Peacekeepers keep peace: Fortna 2008; Goldstein 2011; Hultman, Kathman, & Shannong 2013.

27. Richer countries have fewer civil wars: Fearon & Laitin 2003; Hegre et al. 2011; Human Security Centre 2005; Human Security Report Project 2011. Warlords, guerrillas, and mafias: Mueller 2004.

28. Contagion of war: Human Security Report Project 2011.

29. Romantic militarism: Howard 2001; Mueller 1989, 2004; Pinker 2011, pp. 242–44; Sheehan 2008.

30. Quotes are from Mueller 1989, pp. 38–51.

31. Romantic nationalism: Howard 2001; Luard 1986; Mueller 1989; Pinker 2011, pp. 238–42.

32. Hegelian dialectical struggle: Luard 1986, p. 355; Nisbet 1980/2009. Quote from Mueller 1989.

33. Marxist dialectical struggle: Montgomery & Chirot 2015.

34. Declinism and cultural pessimism: Herman 1997; Wolin 2004.

35. Herman 1997, p. 231.

CHAPTER 12: SAFETY

1. In 2005, between 421,000 and 1.8 million people were bitten by poisonous snakes, and between 20,000 and 94,000 of them died (Kasturiratne et al. 2008).

2. Relative toll of injuries: World Health Organization 2014.

3. Accidents and causes of death: Kochanek et al. 2016. Accidents and the global burden of disease and disability: Murray et al. 2012.

4. Homicides more lethal than war: Pinker 2011, p. 221; see also p. 177, table 13–1. For updated data and visualizations on homicide rates, see the Igarapé Institute’s Homicide Monitor, https://homicide.igarape.org.br/.

5. Medieval violence: Pinker 2011, pp. 17–18, 60–75; Eisner 2001, 2003.

6. The Civilizing Process: Eisner 2001, 2003; Elias 1939/2000; Fletcher 1997.

7. Eisner and Elias: Eisner 2001, 2014a.

8. 1960s crime boom: Latzer 2016; Pinker 2011, pp. 106–16.

9. Root-causism: Sowell 1995.

10. Racism in decline in the 1960s: Pinker 2011, pp. 382–94.

11. Great American Crime Decline: Latzer 2016; Pinker 2011, pp. 116–27; Zimring 2007. The 2015 uptick was likely caused in part by a retreat in policing following nationally publicized protests against police shootings in 2014; see L. Beckett, “Is the ‘Ferguson Effect’ Real? Researcher Has Second Thoughts,” The Guardian, May 13, 2016; H. Macdonald, “Police Shootings and Race,” Washington Post, July 18, 2016. For reasons why the 2015 uptick is unlikely to reverse the progress of the years before, see B. Latzer, “Will the Crime Spike Become a Crime Boom?” City Journal, Aug. 31, 2016, https://www.city-journal.org/html/will-crime-spike-become-crime-boom-14710.html.

12. Between 2000 and 2013, the Gini index in Venezuela fell from .47 to .41 (UN’s World Income Inequality Database, https://www.wider.unu.edu/), while the homicide rate rose from 32.9 to 53.0 per 100,000 (Igarapé Institute’s Homicide Monitor, https://homicide.igarape.org.br).

13. Sources of UN estimates are listed in the caption to figure 12-2. Using very different methods, the Global Burden of Disease project (Murray et al. 2012) has estimated that the global homicide rate fell from 7.4 per 100,000 people in 1995 to 6.1 in 2015.

14. International homicide rates: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2014; https://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html.

15. Reducing global homicide by 50 percent in thirty years: Eisner 2014b, 2015; Krisch et al. 2015. The 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals include the vaguer aspiration “Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere” (Target 16.1.1, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg16).

16. International homicide rates: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2014, https://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html; see also Homicide Monitor, https://homicide.igarape.org.br/.

17. Lopsided distribution of homicides at every scale: Eisner 2015; Muggah & Szabo de Carvalho 2016.

18. Homicide in Boston: Abt & Winship 2016.

19. New York crime decline: Zimring 2007.

20. Homicide declines in Colombia, South Africa, and other countries: Eisner 2014b, p. 23. Russia: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2014, p. 28.

21. Homicide declined in most nations: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013, 2014, https://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html.

22. Successful crime-fighting in Latin America: Guerrero Velasco 2015; Muggah & Szabo de Carvalho 2016.

23. Rise in Mexican homicide 2007–11 due to organized crime: Botello 2016. Drop in Juárez: P. Corcoran, “Declining Violence in Juárez a Major Win for Calderon: Report,” Insight Crime, March 26, 2013, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/declining-violence-in-juarez-a-major-win-for-calderon-report.

24. Homicide declines: Bogotá and Medellín: T. Rosenberg, “Colombia’s Data-Driven Fight Against Crime,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2014. São Paulo: Risso 2014. Rio: R. Muggah & I. Szabó de Carvalho, “Fear and Backsliding in Rio,” New York Times, April 15, 2014.

25. San Pedro Sula homicide decline: S. Nazario, “How the Most Dangerous Place on Earth Got a Little Bit Safer,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 2016.

26. For an effort to halve homicide in Latin America within a decade, see Muggah & Szabo de Carvalho 2016, and https://www.instintodevida.org/.

27. How to bring homicide rates down quickly: Eisner 2014b, 2015; Krisch et al. 2015; Muggah & Szabo de Carvalho 2016. See also Abt & Winship 2016; Gash 2016; Kennedy 2011; Latzer 2016.

28. Hobbes, violence, and anarchy: Pinker 2011, pp. 31–36, 680–82.

29. Police strikes: Gash 2016, pp. 184–86.

30. Impunity from justice increases crime: Latzer 2016; Eisner 2015, p. 14.

31. Causes of the Great American Crime Decline: Kennedy 2011; Latzer 2016; Levitt 2004; Pinker 2011, pp. 116–27; Zimring 2007.

32. One-sentence summary: Eisner 2015.

33. State legitimacy and crime: Eisner 2003, 2015; Roth 2009.

34. What works in crime prevention: Abt & Winship 2016. See also Eisner 2014b, 2015; Gash 2016; Kennedy 2011; Krisch et al. 2015; Latzer 2016; Muggah 2015, 2016.

35. Crime and self-control: Pinker 2011, pp. 72–73, 105, 110–11, 126–27, 501–6, 592–611.

36. Crime, narcissism, and sociopathy (or psychopathy): Pinker 2011, pp. 510–11, 519–21.

37. Target hardening and crime reduction: Gash 2016.

38. Effectiveness of drug courts and treatment: Abt & Winship 2016, p. 26.

39. Equivocal effects of firearm legislation: Abt & Winship 2016, p. 26; Hahn et al. 2005; N. Kristof, “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals,” New York Times, Jan. 16, 2016.

40. Traffic death graph: K. Barry, “Safety in Numbers,” Car and Driver, May 2011, p. 17.

41. Based on deaths per capita, not per vehicle mile traveled.

42. Bruce Springsteen, “Pink Cadillac.”

43. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 2016. The rate rose slightly, to 10.9, in 2015.

44. The annual rate of death in car crashes per 100,000 people is 57 in rich countries, 88 in poor countries (World Health Organization 2014, p. 10).

45. Bettmann 1974, pp. 22–23.

46. Scott 2010, pp. 18–19.

47. Rawcliffe 1998, p. 4, quoted in Scott 2010, pp. 18–19.

48. Tebeau 2016.

49. Tudor Darwin Awards: http://tudoraccidents.history.ox.ac.uk/.

50. The complete dataset for figure 12-6 shows a puzzling rise in deaths from falls starting in 1992, which is inconsistent with the fact that emergency treatments and hospital admissions for falls during this period showed no such rise (Hu & Baker 2012). Though falls tend to kill older people, the rise cannot be explained by the aging of the American population, because it persists in age-adjusted data (Sehu, Chen, & Hedegaard 2015). The rise turns out to be an artifact of changes in reporting practices (Hu & Mamady 2014; Kharrazi, Nash, & Mielenz 2015; Stevens & Rudd 2014). Many elderly people fall down, fracture their hip, ribs, or skull, and die several weeks or months later from pneumonia or other complications. Coroners and medical examiners in the past tended to list the cause of death in these cases as the immediate terminal illness. More recently, they have listed it as the precipitating accident. The same number of people fell and died, but increasingly the death was attributed to the fall.

51. Presidential reports: “National Conference on Fire Prevention” (press release), Jan. 3, 1947, http://foundation.sfpe.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/presidentsconference1947.pdf; America Burning (report of the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control), 1973; American Burning Revisited, U.S. Fire Administration/FEMA, 1987.

52. Firefighters as EMTs: P. Keisling, “Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ out of ‘Fire Department,’” Governing, July 1, 2015.

53. Most poisonings are from drugs or alcohol: National Safety Council 2016, pp. 160–61.

54. Opioid epidemic: National Safety Council, “Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic; Painkillers Driving Addiction,” 2016, http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/prescription-painkiller-epidemic.aspx.

55. Opioid epidemic and its treatment: Satel 2017.

56. Opioid overdoses perhaps peaking: Hedegaard, Chen, & Warner 2015.

57. Age and cohort effects in drug overdoses: National Safety Council 2016; see Kolosh 2014 for graphs.

58. Drug use down in teenagers: National Institute on Drug Abuse 2016. The declines continued through the second half of 2016: National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Teen Substance Use Shows Promising Decline,” Dec. 13, 2016, https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/news-releases/2016/12/teen-substance-use-shows-promising-decline.

59. Bettmann 1974, pp. 69–71.

60. Quoted in Bettmann 1974, p. 71.

61. History of workplace safety: Alrich 2001.

62. Progressive movement and worker safety: Alrich 2001.

63. The steepening of the drop from 1970 to 1980 in figure 12-7 is probably an artifact from aggregating different sources; it is not visible in the continuous data series from National Safety Council 2016, pp. 46–47. The overall trend in the NSC dataset is similar to that in the figure; I chose not to show it because the rates are calculated as a proportion of the population rather than the number of workers, and because they contain an artifactual drop in 1992, when the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries was introduced.

64. United Nations Development Programme 2011, table 2.3, p. 37.

65. The example is from “War, Death, and the Automobile,” an appendix to Mueller 1989, originally published in the Wall Street Journal in 1984.

CHAPTER 13: TERRORISM

1. Fear of terrorism: Jones et al. 2016a; see also chapter 4, note 14.

2. Western Europe as war zone: J. Gray, “Steven Pinker Is Wrong About Violence and War,” The Guardian, March 13, 2015; see also S. Pinker, “Guess What? More People Are Living in Peace Now. Just Look at the Numbers,” The Guardian, March 20, 2015.

3. More dangerous than terrorism: National Safety Council 2011.

4. Homicide in Western Europe versus the United States: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013. The average homicide rate of the 24 countries classified as Western Europe in the Global Terrorism Database was 1.1 per 100,000 people per year; the figure for the United States in 2014 was 4.5. Road traffic deaths: The average of the Western European countries’ road traffic death rates for 2013 was 4.8 fatalities per 100,000 people per year; the US rate was 10.7.

5. Deaths in insurgencies and guerrilla warfare now counted as “terrorism”: Human Security Report Project 2007; Mueller & Stewart 2016b; Muggah 2016.

6. John Mueller, personal communication, 2016.

7. Contagion of mass killings: B. Cary, “Mass Killings May Have Created Contagion, Feeding on Itself,” New York Times, July 27, 2016; Lankford & Madfis 2018.

8. Active shooter incidents: Blair & Schweit 2014; Combs 1979. Mass murders: Analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report Data (http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/) from 1976 to 2011 by James Alan Fox, graphed in Latzer 2016, p. 263.

9. For a graph that expands the trends using a logarithmic scale, see Pinker 2011, fig. 6-9, p. 350.

10. K. Eichenwald, “Right-Wing Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS,” Newsweek, Feb. 4, 2016. Using the United States Extremis Crime Database (Freilich et al. 2014), which tracks right-wing extremist violence, the security analyst Robert Muggah (personal communication) estimates that from 1990 through May 2017, and excluding 9/11 and Oklahoma, there have been 272 deaths from right-wing extremism and 136 from Islamist terrorist attacks.

11. Terrorism as a by-product of global media: Payne 2004.

12. Greater impact of homicide: Slovic 1987; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein 1982.

13. Rational fear of murderers: Duntley & Buss 2011.

14. Motives of suicide terrorists and rampage killers: Lankford 2013.

15. Delusion that ISIS is an “existential threat” to America: See chapter 4, note 14; also J. Mueller & M. Stewart, “ISIS Isn’t an Existential Threat to America,” Reason, May 27, 2016.

16. Y. N. Harari, “The Theatre of Terror,” The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2015.

17. Terrorism doesn’t work: Abrahms 2006; Brandwen 2016; Cronin 2009; Fortna 2015.

18. Jervis 2011.

19. Y. N. Harari, “The Theatre of Terror,” The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2015.

20. Don’t Name Them, Don’t Show Them: Lankford & Madfis 2018; see also the projects called No Notoriety (https://nonotoriety.com/) and Don’t Name Them (http://www.dontnamethem.org/).

21. How terrorism ends: Abrahms 2006; Cronin 2009; Fortna 2015.

CHAPTER 14: DEMOCRACY

1. High rates of violence in nonstate societies: Pinker 2011, chap. 2. For more recent estimates confirming this difference, see Gat 2015; Gómez et al. 2016; Wrangham & Glowacki 2012.

2. Despotic early governments: Betzig 1986; Otterbein 2004. Biblical tyranny: Pinker 2011, chap. 1.

3. White 2011, p. xvii.

4. Democracies have faster-growing economies: Radelet 2015, pp. 125–29. Note that this can be obscured by the fact that poor countries can grow at faster rates than rich countries, and poor countries tend to be less democratic. Democracies are less likely to go to war: Hegre 2014; Russett 2010; Russett & Oneal 2001. Democracies have less severe (though not necessarily fewer) civil wars: Gleditsch 2008; Lacina 2006. Democracies have fewer genocides: Rummel 1994, pp. 2, 15; Rummel 1997, pp. 6–10, 367; Harff 2003, 2005. Democracies never have famines: Sen 1984; see also Devereux 2000, for a slight qualification. Citizens in democracies are healthier: Besley 2006. Citizens in democracies are better educated: Roser 2016b.

5. Three waves of democratization: Huntington 1991.

6. Democracy in retreat: Mueller 1999, p. 214.

7. Democracy is obsolete: quotes from Mueller 1999, p. 214.

8. “The end of history”: Fukuyama 1989.

9. For quotations, see Levitsky & Way 2015.

10. Not getting the concept of democracy: Welzel 2013, p. 66, n. 11.

11. This is a problem for the annual counts by the democracy-tracking organization Freedom House; see Levitsky & Way 2015; Munck & Verkuilen 2002; Roser 2016b.

12. This is another problem with the Freedom House data.

13. Polity IV Project: Center for Systemic Peace 2015; Marshall & Gurr 2014; Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016.

14. Color revolutions: Bunce 2017.

15. Democracies: Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016; Roser 2016b. “Democracies” are countries rated by the Polity IV Project as having a democracy score of 6 or greater, “Autocracies” as those having an autocracy score of 6 or greater. Countries that are neither democratic nor autocratic are called anocracies, defined as an “incoherent mix of democratic and autocratic traits and practices.” In an “open anocracy,” leaders are not restricted to an elite. For 2015, Roser divides the world’s population up as follows: 55.8 percent in democracies, 10.8 percent in open anocracies, 6.0 percent in closed anocracies, 23.2 percent in autocracies, and 4 percent in transition or with no data.

16. For a recent defense of the Fukuyama thesis, see Mueller 2014. Refuting the “democratic recession”: Levitsky & Way 2015.

17. Prosperity and democracy: Norberg 2016; Roser 2016b; Porter, Stern, & Green 2016, p. 19. Prosperity and human rights: Fariss 2014; Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012. Education and democracy: Rindermann 2008; see also Roser 2016i.

18. Diversity of democracy: Mueller 1999; Norberg 2016; Radelet 2015; for data, see the Polity IV Annual Time-Series, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html; Center for Systemic Peace 2015; Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016.

19. Prospects for democracy in Russia: Bunce 2017.

20. Norberg 2016, p. 158.

21. Democratic dimwits: Achens & Bartels 2016; Caplan 2007; Somin 2016.

22. Latest fashion in dictatorship: Bunce 2017.

23. Popper 1945/2013.

24. Democracy = the right to complain: Mueller 1999, 2014. Quotation from Mueller 1999, p. 247.

25. Mueller 1999, p. 140.

26. Mueller 1999, p. 171.

27. Levitsky & Way 2015, p. 50.

28. Democracy and education: Rindermann 2008; Roser 2016b; Thyne 2006. Democracy, Western influence, and violent revolution: Levitsky & Way 2015, p. 54.

29. Democracy and human rights: Mulligan, Gil, & Sala-i-Martin 2004; Roser 2016b, section II.3.

30. Quotes from Sikkink 2017.

31. Human rights information paradox: Clark & Sikkink 2013; Sikkink 2017.

32. History of capital punishment: Hunt 2007; Payne 2004; Pinker 2011, pp. 149–53.

33. Death penalty on death row: C. Ireland, “Death Penalty in Decline,” Harvard Gazette, June 28, 2012; C. Walsh, “Death Penalty, in Retreat,” Harvard Gazette, Feb. 3, 2015. For current updates, see “International Death Penalty,” Amnesty International, http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/international-death-penalty, and “Capital Punishment by Country,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country.

34. C. Ireland, “Death Penalty in Decline,” Harvard Gazette, June 28, 2012.

35. History of the abolition of capital punishment: Hammel 2010.

36. Enlightenment arguments against the death penalty: Hammel 2010; Hunt 2007; Pinker 2011, pp. 146–53.

37. Southern culture of honor: Pinker 2011, pp. 99–102. Executions concentrated in a few Southern counties: Interview with the legal scholar Carol Steiker, C. Walsh, “Death Penalty, in Retreat,” Harvard Gazette, Feb. 3, 2015.

38. Gallup poll on the death penalty: Gallup 2016. For current data, see the Death Penalty Information Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/.

39. Pew Research poll reported in M. Berman, “For the First Time in Almost 50 Years, Less Than Half of Americans Support the Death Penalty,” Washington Post, Sept. 30, 2016.

40. Death of the death penalty in the United States: D. von Drehle, “The Death of the Death Penalty,” Time, June 8, 2015; Death Penalty Information Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/.

CHAPTER 15: EQUAL RIGHTS

1. Evolutionary basis of racism and sexism: Pinker 2011; Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin 2006; Wilson & Daly 1992.

2. Evolutionary basis of homophobia: Pinker 2011, chap. 7, pp. 448–49.

3. History of equal rights: Pinker 2011, chap. 7; Shermer 2015. Seneca Falls and the history of women’s rights: Stansell 2010. Selma and the history of African American rights: Branch 1988. Stonewall and the history of gay rights: Faderman 2015.

4. Ranking for 2016 by US News and World Report, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-10-most-influential-countries-in-the-world-have-been-revealed-a6834956.html. These three nations are also the most affluent.

5. Amos 5:24.

6. No increase in police shootings: Though direct data are scarce, the number of police shootings tracks the rate of violent crime (Fyfe 1988), which, as we saw in chapter 12, has plummeted. No racial disparity: Fryer 2016; Miller et al. 2016; S. Mullainathan, “Police Killings of Blacks: Here Is What the Data Say,” New York Times, Oct. 16, 2015.

7. Pew Research Center 2012b, p. 17.

8. Other surveys of American values: Pew Research Center 2010; Teixeira et al. 2013; see reviews in Pinker 2011, chap. 7, and Roser 2016s. Another example: The General Social Survey (http://gss.norc.org/) annually asks white Americans about their feelings toward black Americans. Between 1996 and 2016 the proportion feeling “close” rose from 35 to 51 percent; the proportion feeling “not close” fell from 18 to 12 percent.

9. Successive cohorts more tolerant: Gallup 2002, 2010; Pew Research Center 2012b; Teixeira et al. 2013. Globally: Welzel 2013.

10. Generations carry values with them: Teixeira et al. 2013; Welzel 2013.

11. Google searches and other digital truth serums: Stephens-Davidowitz 2017.

12. Searches for nigger as an index of racism: Stephens-Davidowitz 2014.

13. There seems to be no systematic decline in searches for jokes in general, such as in the search string “funny jokes.” Stephens-Davidowitz points out that searches for hip-hop lyrics and other appropriations of the word nigger almost entirely use the spelling nigga.

14. African American poverty: Deaton 2013, p. 180.

15. African American life expectancy: Cunningham et al. 2017; Deaton 2013, p. 61.

16. The last year for which the US Census reports illiteracy rates is 1979, when the rate for blacks was 1.6 percent; Snyder 1993, chap. 1, reproduced in National Assessment of Adult Literacy (undated).

17. See chapter 16, note 24, and chapter 18, note 35.

18. Disappearance of lynching: Pinker 2011, chap. 7, based on US Census data presented in Payne 2004, plotted in figure 7-2, p. 384. Hate crime homicides of African Americans, plotted in figure 7-3, fell from five in 1996 to one per year in 2006–8. Since then the number of victims stayed at an average of one per year through 2014, then spiked to ten in 2015, nine of them killed in a single incident, a mass shooting in a church in Charleston, South Carolina (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2016b).

19. For the years between 1996 and 2015 inclusive, the number of hate crime incidents recorded by the FBI correlated with the US homicide rate with a coefficient of .90 (on a scale from –1 to 1).

20. Anti-Islamic hate crimes follow incidents of Islamist terrorist attacks: Stephens-Davidowitz 2017.

21. Hate crime hyperbole: E. N. Brown, “Hate Crimes, Hoaxes, and Hyperbole,” Reason, Nov. 18, 2016; Alexander 2016.

22. How it used to be: S. Coontz, “The Not-So-Good Old Days,” New York Times, June 15, 2013.

23. Women in the labor force: United States Department of Labor 2016.

24. For evidence that the decline began even earlier, in 1979, see Pinker 2011, fig. 7-10, p. 402, also based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Because of changes in definitions and coding criteria, those data are not commensurable with the series plotted here in figure 15-4.

25. Cooperation breeds sympathy: Pinker 2011, chaps. 4, 7, 9, 10.

26. Justification as a force for moral progress: Pinker 2011, chap. 4; Appiah 2010; Hunt 2007; Mueller 2010b; Nadelmann 1990; Payne 2004; Shermer 2015.

27. Decline of discrimination, rise of affirmative action: Asal & Pate 2005.

28. World Public Opinion Poll: Presented in Council on Foreign Relations 2011.

29. Council on Foreign Relations 2011.

30. Council on Foreign Relations 2011.

31. Effectiveness of global shaming campaigns: Pinker 2011, pp. 272–76, 414; Appiah 2010; Mueller 1989, 2004, 2010b; Nadelmann 1990; Payne 2004; Ray 1989.

32. United Nations Children’s Fund 2014; see also M. Tupy, “Attitudes on FGM Are Shifting,” HumanProgress, http://humanprogress.org/blog/attitudes-on-fgm-are-shifting.

33. D. Latham, “Pan African Parliament Endorses Ban on FGM,” Inter Press Service, Aug. 6, 2016, http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/08/pan-african-parliament-endorses-ban-on-fgm/.

34. Criminalization of homosexuality and the gay rights revolution: Pinker 2011, pp. 447–54; Faderman 2015.

35. For current data on gay rights worldwide, see Equaldex, www.equaldex.com, and “LGBT Rights by Country or Territory,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory.

36. World Values Survey: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp. Emancipative values: Welzel 2013.

37. Distinguishing age, period, and cohort: Costa & McCrae 1982; Smith 2008.

38. See also F. Newport, “Americans Continue to Shift Left on Key Moral Issues,” Gallup, May 26, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/183413/americans-continue-shift-left-key-moral-issues.aspx.

39. Ipsos 2016.

40. Values go with the cohort, not the life cycle: Ghitza & Gelman 2014; Inglehart 1997; Welzel 2013.

41. Emancipative values and the Arab Spring (a complicated relationship): Inglehart 2017.

42. Correlates of emancipative values: Welzel 2013, especially table 2.7, p. 83, and table 3.2, p. 122.

43. Cousin marriage and tribalism: S. Pinker, “Strangled by Roots,” New Republic, Aug. 6, 2007.

44. Knowledge Index: Chen & Dahlman 2006, table 2.

45. Knowledge Index as a predictor of emancipative values: Welzel 2013, p. 122, where the index is called “Technological Advancement.” Welzel (personal communication) confirms that the Knowledge Index has a highly significant partial correlation with emancipative values (.62) holding constant GDP per capita (or its log), whereas the reverse is not true (.20).

46. Finkelhor et al. 2014.

47. Decline of corporal punishment: Pinker 2011, pp. 428–39.

48. History of child labor: Cunningham 1996; Norberg 2016; Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016a.

49. M. Wirth, “When Dogs Were Used as Kitchen Gadgets,” HumanProgress, Jan. 25, 2017, http://humanprogress.org/blog/when-dogs-were-used-as-kitchen-gadgets.

50. History of the treatment of children: Pinker 2011, chap. 7.

51. Economically worthless, emotionally priceless: Zelizer 1985.

52. Tractor ad: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/tractor.gif.

53. Correlation between poverty and child labor: Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016a.

54. Desperation, not greed: Norberg 2016; Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016a.

CHAPTER 16: KNOWLEDGE

1. Homo sapiens: Pinker 1997/2009, 2010; Tooby & DeVore 1987.

2. Concrete orientation of uneducated peoples: Everett 2008; Flynn 2007; Luria 1976; Oesterdiekhoff 2015; see also my commentary on Everett in https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion-and-human-thought#22005.

3. Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1931, vol. 5, p. 410, quoted in Easterlin 1981.

4. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 1966.

5. Education causes economic growth: Easterlin 1981; Glaeser et al. 2004; Hafer 2017; Rindermann 2012; Roser & Ortiz-Ospina 2016a; van Leeuwen & van Leewen-Li 2014; van Zanden et al. 2014.

6. I. N. Thut and D. Adams, Educational Patterns in Contemporary Societies (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 62, quoted in Easterlin 1981, p. 10.