Let's look back with an eye toward how we move forward
The turn of the decade is a good time to take stock of how we've improved the world for our children and how we can keep making it better, for the health of humans, society, and democracy.
January is named for Janus, Roman god of thresholds, who looks both forward and backward. This particular January marks the beginning of not just a new year but a new decade. So, like Janus, we take this January to look back with an eye toward how we move forward.
We look first to whether we have made — and will continue to make — the world a better place for humanity. That is, what will happen with life expectancy, with global disease, with humanity’s ability to feed itself?
The last decade has given us considerable good news here. Extreme global poverty fell from 21% in 2010 to 8.6% in 2018. Africa rose on the global stage, boasting some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. We saw the eradication of rinderpest and the near-eradication of polio and guinea worm. Millions of Americans gained health insurance. Cancer survival rates are markedly better.
On the other hand, climate change stopped being abstract. We see it in the news every week, from historic flooding in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota, to apocalyptic fires in Australia, to unprecedented and unexpected melting of the ice sheets. Our efforts to date have fallen far short of even our inadequate goals. With 2030 — at latest — being a critical tipping point, the coming decade is our “do or die” time and will define whether coming generations curse us or thank us. Whether we move forward with a government-based Green New Deal or a market-based Green Real Deal, we must end our inaction and stop allowing politicians to move us backwards.
In other bad news, while overall crime has fallen dramatically in recent decades, gun deaths in children between the ages of 5 and 18 have increased to epidemic levels over the past 20 years. Every day, 78 children, teens and young adults are injured or killed by guns. These children won’t see the world we hand to their generation at all. We must take action on gun violence.
Our second focus area for the 2020s is how to ensure that America will continue to be a land of democracy and opportunity. We have little good news to share looking back in these areas.
Over the past decade, America has become increasingly defined by its wealth gap. Wealth inequality was last so extreme during the Roaring ‘20s, which ended in the global economic collapse known as the Great Depression. We’ve observed a marked increase in jokes about guillotines lately, but we prefer policy solutions: antitrust enforcement, increased minimum wage, improved social programs, financial transaction taxes, wealth taxes, equal access to education.
Our democratic system has also been degrading and may reach a critical juncture. Both parties have for years been moving toward a strong executive model of government. Today, despite the obvious checks-and-balances structure of the Constitution, some in our current administration believe in a “unitary executive” — that is, a president with nearly unlimited power — while the Republican party has been exhibiting worrying authoritarian tendencies for years. At the same time, our population has changed and will continue to change to make both the Senate and the Electoral College even more grossly misrepresent the will of the majority of Americans. By 2040, 70% of the U.S. population is likely to live in just 16 states. Finally, the trampling of longtime norms and rules has given lifetime appointments to numerous judges whom the American Bar Association believes lack basic qualifications to serve. It is time to revisit all of these matters by enshrining better governance in the law, as recommended by the bipartisan National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy.
The last decades have been a mix of incremental progress and increasing strains on our political, economic, and ecological systems. America has always been a country that strives to improve itself. The 2020s must be the decade where we address these critical issues and ensure that our children and their children receive a worthy heritage.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City. And biannual time changes must be abolished.
Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on January 10, 2020.