http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/Editorials/201307120075

Life is better: Dramatic changes - Editorial : The Charleston Gazette, Jim Haught, Executive Editor, July 12, 2013

World War II killed at least 40 million people, only a generation after World War I killed 15 million. Yet today, full-scale warfare between nations has disappeared.

When the 1900s began, average human life expectancy was only about 48 years. Now it's nearing 80.

Murder in Europe was about 100 per 100,000 population during medieval times -- but it has fallen 99 percent, to just one per 100,000 today. Lynching of blacks in the U.S. south ended.

Right after World War II, the world had only 20 democracies, but now the total is near 100.

Surprisingly, life has improved to a stunning degree. Several recent books declare that civilization has entered a new phase -- a time of humane values, orderly society and widespread public safety -- despite random terrorist attacks, gun massacres and other horrors that make headlines.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker -- author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined -- calls the transformation "maybe the most important thing that has ever happened in human history."

Interviewed in the July-August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Dr. Pinker said some scholars once assumed that humans have built-in "urges like revenge and dominance" making them "killer apes" with "homicidal DNA." But now it has become clear that intelligent, reasonable people can suppress lethal instincts and create law-abiding cultures in which families live peacefully. The psychologist said:

"It used to be that countries in Europe would start two new wars a year for 500 years. As of 1945, that went to zero. Military historians have just been astonished at the fact that war between developed countries has pretty much ceased to exist .... If you look at statistics on war worldwide, since 1990, they have been going down, down, down. Fewer people are killed in war than ever before."

Question: If warfare is vanishing, why does America bankrupt itself by spending $1 trillion per year for the world's largest war-making machine -- more taxpayer cost than virtually all other nations on Earth combined? What's the point of this gigantic spending? Other Western nations don't squander their assets in this manner. Today, threats arise chiefly from hidden terror fanatics and Third World civil conflicts -- small menaces against which giant armies, navies and air forces are ineffective.

Dr. Pinker attributes the general retreat of violence to democratic civilization fostered through efforts like the United Nations.

"If you live in a society where there is a rule of law for long enough, it changes your emotions," he said. " You become less likely to react with rage if someone gives you the finger or calls you a nasty name. You don't challenge them to knife fight; you walk away."

The Harvard scholar added that gun-saturated America is bloodier than other advanced nations:

"By a number of criteria, the United States is more violent than other Western democracies. Our rate of homicide is two to five times higher .... We start more wars, and 33 of the 50 states have capital punishment, which has been abolished everywhere else."

Let's all hope that America gradually joins the rest of modern cultures in the historic shift away from killing.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jim Haught

Kudos for your editorial "Life is better". But if I may, I'd like to expand that to illustrate how government intervention through regulation has also improved our lives.

First I should disclose that as a Canadian I was until my company transferred me to California, a member of the Progressive Conservative party there. While that party name may seem to be an oxymoron, the truth is it was a party dedicated to careful thoughtful progress while taking into consideration the lessons of the past, so “...we would not be doomed to repeat the mistakes!”

That's a concept that the right wing in this country has abandoned...and sadly in Canada too. Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and even Ronald Ragan are undoubtedly spinning in their graves at the obstructionist no progress attitude of the GOP today. But I digress.

As an engineer who has been challenged by air quality issues and opportunities for the last 50 years, I have seen time and time again how regulatory agencies pushed the technology envelopes and demanded cleaner air even when B.A.C.T* was not good enough or the technology beyond it was seemingly possible. Let me give you some examples. (*Best Available Control Technology)

My father when I was a teenager, had a Cadillac. That car when new had a 90 day 4000 mile warranty and was lucky to get a 11 or 12 miles to the gallon.

The California Air Resources Board, (CARB is the State’s primary air regulatory agency for mobile sources), recognizing scientifically the serious smog conditions in Southern California in particular were caused primarily by automobile emissions, began in the late 50’s, early 60’s, a process of demanding through regulations an improved control of emissions in vehicles. That process for the last 45 years has brought us today to automobiles that are 98% cleaner than they were when they started in 1968.

During those efforts, CARB realized that requiring clean emissions in new vehicles was not enough. They then demanded that the automobile companies design and build vehicles so that the emission performance would exist for the first hundred thousand miles of the vehicle's life...assuming proper maintenance.

The automobile industry fought them every step of the way. What’s the result? today’s vehicles are cleaner, far more efficient, and much better made. My wife’s 2009 Cadillac today has a six-year 100,000 mile warranty and we regularly achieve an average of 26.4 miles to the gallon. That's progress!

Let me give you another example. As an engineer I was retained by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) in Los Angeles to examine the economic impact of a more Stringent rule that they were proposing to eliminate, not reduce, but eliminate all volatile organic compounds from coatings on furniture. That meant eliminating what for many years ago we all remember was the smell of drying paint. It was the evaporation of the volatile organic compounds on the manufacture of new furniture and painting of architectural elements, that was clearly in the science based opinion of SCAQMD, contributing to the smog of Southern California.

The furniture industry in Southern California, which at the time was the second-largest concentration of furniture manufacturers in United States, screamed bloody murder. Jobs! Economic chaos! You've all heard the mantra.

They argued that not only were no such coatings available at the time, (and they weren't), but that if the rule was implemented the entire industry would either die or leave Southern California and go to Mexico where no such rules existed.

SCAQMD set a goal of implementing the rule five years hence from its announcement. So it was the regulators who press the technology which, within four years, was successful. Through innovation, pressured by regulatory demands for cleaner air, VOC free coatings were made available before the fifth year arrived and are now the standard for those coatings today.

These are just two examples I offer to show how we have made major progress in cleaning up the air we breathe by regulatory agencies, in other words the government, pressing for "dramatic change" by pushing the technological envelopes.

These were not market forces that brought these changes about, but Government regulators acting with scientific evidence and thoughtful legislative support from both progressive and conservative legislators who demanded that "Life should be better" in California.

Today Obama's Pressure for "dramatic changes" in coal fired power plants is certainly and scientifically justified. As we see all around us in West Virginia the serious health damages that are caused to citizens everywhere, we must ask, no demand, that nothing less than zero emissions be tolerated. Alternative energy sources are dramatically lower in emissions. Why should we tolerate anything less... except to protect coal company profits.

And in spite of the deniers, it is now quite clear, we are by our in action and a century of the escalating emission of greenhouse gases causing serious damage to our planet. Why should we tolerate anything less than clean air and a safe planet for our grandchildren. While there may be an ER for citizens whose health is compromised by air and water pollution, there is no ER for the planet!

Yes, "Life will be better" when we stop killing each other and our planet. And the irony, which has been shown so many times before, and as I pointed out in the examples above, the economic opportunities and advantages of cleaning up our act are clearly available once we reintroduce and embrace the concept of being Progressive Conservatives.

Allan Tweddle, Charleston, WV, July 15, 2013