Senior fellow Charles Kenny's weekly column in Foreign Policy on Thanksgiving.
From the Article
It's been a tough year, and one in which a lot of people around the world might be struggling to find things to be thankful for. In the United States, unemployment remains stubbornly high, growth stubbornly low, and good sense on Capitol Hill stubbornly absent. European debt, meanwhile, looks about as secure as a Las Vegas mortgage. But look more broadly at the state of the world and there's a lot going right -- so give that thanks and pass the gravy.
1. Let's start with the good news … for turkeys: Vegetarianism in the United States may have expanded by as much as two-thirds since 2009. As many as 5 percent of Americans now claim they don't eat meat. From a fowl's perspective, the cloud to that silver lining is that Americans areeating less red meat and more poultry. But the last 20 years have seen meat consumption per capita plateau in developed countries around the world, according to research from the National Institutes of Health. And some of the biggest and fastest-growing developing countries remain comparatively safe places for a gobbler: Forty percent of Indians, for instance, don't eat meat. That's good for the rest of us as well, of course -- in an age where we are trying to use the same land and fewer resources to feed a larger and more affluent global population, a diet that switches out meat for the stuff meat eats is one of the most effective tools we have.
2. People are healthier than ever. According to World Bank data, roughly two million children born this year worldwide will live to their fifth birthday who would have died were mortality rates what they were 10 years ago. And this year has seen further progress in the fight against child mortality -- not least in the effort to vaccinate children everywhere against a growing range of illnesses. A particularly exciting advance was the rollout of a new vaccine for pneumococcal diseases like pneumonia and sepsis, which kill 1.6 million people a year. One selfish reason to cheer this progress in the United States: If we contain a disease worldwide, the misguided evil of parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids against it here at home won't matter as much.