Victoria Jelinek

Statistician Hans, Ola, and Anna Rosling’s book Factfulness is about the progress that mankind has made over the last century and continues to make. The book proves that the world is not as bad as we sometimes think because we are bombarded with negative news about the state of current affairs. It’s accessible, interesting, and inspiring — filled with anecdotes and stories that support the facts and contribute to the book’s relevance.

I understand why it’s a bestseller. People are hungry for positive, factual information and this book provides it. I appreciate its efforts and the facts it conveys. I frequently consider the short test at the beginning of the book, when I discovered that my construct of world affairs is negatively biased. And, it’s interesting to contemplate why this is — we humans are compelled by dramatic events, and the media capitalizes on this historic compulsion in order to attract and sustain our interest. It’s a relief to discover that globally more people are literate than ever before, and more children are immunized than ever before. It’s interesting to discover that infant mortality is exponentially decreased across the world, and, in general, life spans are longer.

However, I’m not convinced that more humans being born, and more people living longer are “good” things. The Rosling’s focus for the book is human “progress.” The notion of a second and third world, a “them” and “us” perspective of the western world and the developing world that is out-dated. Populations across the globe are increasingly armed with clean drinking water, motorbikes, cars, appliances, mobile phones, televisions, and the ability to take holidays with their families. This book heralds these developments as achievements, and I understand that, indeed, they are in the sense that it’s more just that most people now have the opportunity for a higher standard of living. But, I believe this abides by the capitalistic notion of what “success” is, which is the ever-increasing accumulation of material wealth at the detriment to the natural world. More consuming by the ever-growing human population means there is more destruction of forests, rivers, agricultural lands, land historically needed by animals to live in, and, overall, contributes to increasing pollution in our oceans and in our atmosphere, as well as to the destruction of ecosystems. Little is said over the course of the book about the effect that this human “progress” has on the environment, which I argue is of more pressing importance.