[Tepix]

805 million means the number is down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries.

Source: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

[viewer5]

That's insane, I had no idea there was any improvement, let alone that much! I just casually assumed the number would be growing along with our total global population, but to know it's actually decreasing as population increases? Wow.

[netcan]

If you're in the mood for good news, 2012 was estimated to be the most peaceful year (percentage of humans to dies by violence) in human (and hominid) history. Slight regression in 2013 & 2014, but still.

The world is big and there are lots of problems, especially when you think of suffering on the scale of millions, but a lot of things are getting better. If you visit some places that are behind on care for orphans, you'll be struck by how foreign it is to see small children begging, stealing and fending for themselves. It doesn't exist in many many places, but you don't have to look more than 2-3 generations before you'll find widows and orphans being a big, huge societal problem. Supporting widows and orphans was often synonymous with charity, "righteousness," and similar. That holds true from the early 20th century back to the beginning of written records.

China is a big part of the high speed exodus from absolute poverty, for all that is wrong with it politically.

The instinct to reject the notion that we are improving on the grounds that there is a lot left to do doesn't come from a bad place. Each life is an entire world of potential, suffering, happiness and love. That makes it hard to quantify. A million people hungry is an unfathomable amount of suffering. Empathy and solidarity are some of our most redeeming qualities. In my opinion, so is exploration. All that said, it's important to know the achievements that have been achieved. There's a bad way of knowing them, self congratulatory nationalism is a terrible one. There are also a good ways. If nothing else, we need to know if we should keep going.

[lentil_soup]

For these things the videos by Hans Rosling are a classic, all of them are great and shine a completely different and positive light on where we stand:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_and_ola_rosling_how_not_to_be_...

Look for the other videos as well, he has a few.

[kaybe]

Most of this has been accomplished by economic growth in the most populated areas, mainly China. The situation elsewhere didn't change that much.

[knowaveragejoe]

Additionally, the UN millenium development goal of halving world poverty by 2010 was met ~2005.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escap...

[badname]

Even if it is so (and we can talk for hours on the validity of this or that data) how do you find the fact that there are enough damned means of production to feed everyone and it's been so for decades now? Also how do you like the fact that there are now about 50-60 MILLION people in US that get food stamps. Or the fact that the wages for most of the western world are falling for 30 years now? ... Whatever.

[evincarofautumn]

Unfortunately, it is a basic ecological principle that an increase in food results in an increase in population, and humans are not exempt from that. Yes, we have enough food to feed everybody. We have (usually) had enough, not just for decades, but for ten thousand years—ever since agriculture took off, and even more so since the industrial revolution and the Haber process.

However, food production is not enough to eliminate starvation. If you simply transport food to people in an area that can’t support a population increase, all you’re doing is ensuring that there will be more people there to starve in the next generation, and continually increasing costs of transporting food there.

You need to establish local economy and agriculture, or it’s not sustainable. And if such infrastructure can’t be put in place, you need to get people out of there.

Of course, I don’t know how to do that, nor do I know how to solve the economic problems you mention, but that is what needs to be done.

[ajuc]

1. Food production IS more than enough. Logistics and storage is not there.

2. Growth of population declines as countries get more developed, while the food availibility increases. That was true in Europe, USA, Japan, China.

I don't see a reason why this shouldn't work the same for remaining undeveloped countries.

So I don't think your ecological principle works on human.

[evincarofautumn]

When I said “food production is not enough to eliminate starvation” I did not mean “we don’t produce enough food to eliminate starvation”, I meant “producing more food is not enough to eliminate starvation”. So yes, I agree and already stated that the problems are economic.

Suppose this principle did not hold. Then how would the human population of Earth continue to grow? In other words, what would all the new people be made of?

[ajuc]

Population won't grow forever, not because of lack of food, but because (most) people would have better things to do than care for 6 kids, and 6 kids won't have positive effect on their wealth (it's already the case in the developed world - check out natural growth in Europe or Japan).

So more food = more people is not true.

[userulluipeste]

People may indeed limit themselves to having only two, one, or even no children at all, but that will only lead to extinction of such self-limiting groups. Besides these, there also are people that see nothing more important (but not necessarily better) than leaving behind their own kind as offspring. Unless some effect kicks in, like a social drive that instill in the masses the idea of breeding less as it's in western culture, or a government-enforced program to artificially control the demographic dynamic as in China, these kind of people will prevail in the long run. And that's a good thing, I think.

[kaybe]

Before we cut space missions, can we please stop paying so much for warfare and spam first?

[maccard]

> can we please stop paying so much for warfare

an awful lot of research for space has been done with defense budgets