Cheer up. That is the message this week in case you feel pessimistic.

People and the media fling gloomy news at us. The market is tanking. The economy is fated for disaster. Pollution will engulf us. We are running out of _________ (Fill in the blank.).

Today, a few reminders of reality.

We have always been swamped by lousy news of one sort or another. Always. However, we have not always been blessed with the heartening news of the sort we have today.

For instance, never have the earth’s 6 billion residents “lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more prosperous lives.”  So writes Charles Kinny in the magazine Foreign Policy. Despite the global financial mess, humans today earn more than ever. You may feel this is not the case. If you lived in India or China, billions who have escaped the poverty and starvation their parents knew might argue the point with you.

Media spotlight disease, poverty and war. But the cold facts are that we have less of them than ever. And across the globe, levels of education and literacy keep rising. Higher percentages of babies and children survive. People live longer. And birth rates keep falling. (So stop fretting that the world will be burdened by too many people.)

As for the environment, we keep learning how to improve it. We keep developing technology to mend the harm we inflict.