Amid the disasters, let’s not forget the tidings of comfort and joy | thearticle

Our television screens are often filled with images of natural disasters, most of them due to bad weather. On Christmas Day parts of the central Philippines were hit by Typhoon Phanfone,

killing at least ten people in an area where some 6,000 were killed by another typhoon, Haiyan, just six years ago. Climate change may be making these extreme weather events more frequent,

although the evidence is still unclear on this. What is clear, however, is that the human cost of such catastrophes has been steadily falling. According to figures compiled by Our World in

Data, weather-related deaths have declined by 95 per cent since the 1960s. What makes this fact even more remarkable is that the world’s population has more than doubled during those six

decades, which means that many millions more people now live in coastal and other regions vulnerable to natural disasters. The media also reports these events much faster and highlights

casualties and damage caused with dramatic images. But the public is seldom reminded that global GDP is growing so much faster than population that even most poorer countries can deal with

emergencies better and their economies will recover far more speedily than in the comparatively recent past. The exceptions are nearly always due to human failures. Indeed, over the past

century most of the worst human catastrophes have been man-made. The worst famine in history was not caused by bad weather, let alone climate change, but by Mao Zedong’s disastrous policy

known as the Great Leap Forward. In three years, 1959-61, some 45 million Chinese died, according to the leading authority Frank Dikötter. This famine was entirely avoidable, like those that

took place under many other Communist regimes, from the Soviet Union under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Ethiopia under Mengistu and North Korea under the Kims. The problem, then, is not

acts of God but those of devils in human form. In his Christmas Day sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury drew attention to the “darkness” that led an Islamist terrorist to murder two

innocent people and injure several more on London Bridge earlier this month. Justin Welby spoke eloquently about the “monster” lurking in the “shadows” that leads to violence. The “lies” of

darkness, he warned, sometimes “call out with a louder volume than the love-filled whispers of the light”. He is right, of course: the world would seem far less dark a place if we were

reminded of all those whose lives have improved as often as those who are victims. But there is little appetite for good news. Having recently visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),

Dr Welby reminded us of the recent outbreak of Ebola there, which killed about 3,000 people. That is tragic for those involved. But we should recall that Congo has been one of the

worst-governed countries in the world, both under Belgian colonial rule (Joseph Conrad described the “horror” there in _Heart of Darkness_) and after independence in 1960, since when the DRC

has been devastated by war and genocide: some 5.4 million people died in the Second Congo War alone between 1998 and 2003. The eminent writer on Africa, Richard Dowden, has written about

that conflict for TheArticle here . The legacy of dictators lives on long after their crimes, not only in Africa but here in Europe too. Yet the fact that the Ebola outbreak was contained in

the DRC shows how much better the world has become at dealing with natural disasters. By way of comparison, the influenza pandemic known as “Spanish Flu” that struck the world a century

ago, between 1918 and 1920, is now thought to have killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide, including 20 million in Europe — more than died in the First World War. What has made

the difference is human ingenuity: scientific, technological and economic advances unimaginable in previous eras. According to the World Bank, during the last decade alone humanity has

halved extreme poverty and created 28 per cent of all the wealth in history. And what makes such progress possible is what the American statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “benign

neglect”. When people are left in peace to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they generally prosper.