War. Pandemic. Mass slaughter. A climate undergoing catastrophic transformation. A world that seems to be hurtling towards its end.

Our own world? No. This is the world of the 14th Century. Conflict raged for decades between England and France. The Black DeathA bacterial infection that killed as much as 60% of the population of Europe and 33% of the Middle Eastern population. killed half of all people in Europe.¹ In central Asia the ruthless warlord TimurMongolian ruler of Samarkand who led his nomadic hordes to conquer an area from Turkey to Mongolia (1336-1405). massacred 17 million people, around 5% of the global population.² The onset of the Little Ice AgeA climate interval of much cooler weather that occurred in Britain in the 17th century and lead to several big freezes. in Europe ruined crops and caused widespread famine.

The truth is, for most of our ancestors, the 21st Century - largely stable, peaceful, and prosperous --would seem like an impossible dream.

That is the argument of economist Sergei Guriev, who thinks we should all be more optimistic about our own times. So in spite of everything, here are five reasons to be cheerful today: 

Far-right rejections. Faced with the prospect of a far-right government, the French people rallied around the left and centre. Polls show Americans are beginning to turn against Donald Trump.

Climate solutions. Although the climate crisis is still ravaging the natural world, we are quietly beginning to address this. Last year global renewable energy capacity grew by a massive 50%, and it is on course to more than double again by the end of the decade.³ 

Getting richer. Just 8% of people live in extreme poverty, down from 40% just 50 years ago.⁴

Equality rising. In most of the rich world, the Gini coefficient, a measures of income inequality, is continuing to drop.⁵

Child mortality. For most of our history, around half of all children would never make it to adulthood. Since 1990, however, the number of deaths of children under five has dropped by 59%.⁶

Just a few reasons why some think that the news is too much doom and gloom, and that it fills people with fatalism and makes them lose any will to make things better.

Alternatively, it might make them support unnecessarily drastic solutions for problems that are already being solved, emboldening political extremes.

Others say that bad news can be a good thing, and that most people think the world is in a better state than it really is. So it is important, they argue, to punch through the complacency and make people realise what really is wrong.

Otherwise, they say, when bad things happen, they will come as a surprise. People then lose faith in journalists and political leaders, who they think did not warn them of what was coming.

But some say the important thing is not good or bad news, but nuanced news. Under the surface of many of the feel-good stories lies an uncomfortable truth: the world's revolution in renewable energy and that in poverty-reduction are both being led by China.

In 2022, China installed around as many solar panels as the rest of the world combined.⁷ In the past 40 years it has lifted almost 800 million people out of poverty.⁸ Since 2011, it has led around 40% of all investment in African infrastructure, bringing wealth to the world's poorest continent.⁹

This may be good news for the world at large, but it is bad news for the West, which is concerned about China's growing influence in the Global SouthA term increasingly used to describe less-developed countries, most of which are south of a line that separates, on different continents, the USA from Mexico, Europe from Africa, and Russia from central Asia and China..

So rather than "good" or "bad" news, they say, we should focus on who benefits from the way the world is, and who does not.

Is the news too negative?

Yes: A constant diet of bad news makes people either depressed or angry. Either way, it makes the task of mobilising them behind solutions to our real problems much harder.

No: Most of us live in soft little cocoons of safety. We know nothing about how hard life is for others. On those rare occasions our bubble is breached, it comes as a huge shock. Bad news primes us for disaster.

Or... Most news is not intrinsically "good" or "bad": it is good or bad, or both, for different people. We need a more nuanced understanding of the world and the way it benefits some and harms others.