D.his piece is not a plea for naive optimism, but rather for viewing huge challenges as tasks that need to be solved – and not as an apocalypse waiting. Sometimes those who always paint the worst horror of all possible scenarios on the wall have the best of intentions. They want to scare the population so that they become more active and act against grievances such as global warming or hunger in the world. Not infrequently, however, they want to generate attention that can be converted into money. News of real progress, on the other hand, is more difficult to circulate.
When hurricanes in the run-up to Christmas destroy a candle factory in Kentucky and kill forty workers, reporters show up to cover it. That is correct and understandable. The live report, on the other hand, which begins with the note: Everything is calm and completely uneventful here, has no chance. No event is also a data point in a man-made trend: A hundred years ago, around 300 people per million people died of natural disasters every year. There are currently around ten per million, according to data from the International Disaster Database. The trend is man-made, because dams, levees, early warning systems and more robust houses are the result of planned actions with the aim of minimizing the number of victims.