Remember the "Bee Apocalypse"? Some in the U.S. panicked because honey bees began to die in huge numbers for no reason. Was it climate change? Maybe it was some kind of disease.
Today, that trend is different. The latest Department of Agriculture survey of domestic and farm animals found an increase of 31% since 2007. Some private estimates show a more gradual recovery.
But the point is that the numbers of bees are trending up when our media was full of doom-and-gloom stories about what we would do without honey bees to pollinate our flowers and crops. The answer is simple: let nature take its course. It might help if we didn't panic at every single negative trend that comes our way.
Another important trend that has turned around is U.S. life expectancy. "The average American now lives to be 77.5, up from 76.4 last year (though still a bit short of the all-time high of 78.8, set in 2019)." reports Reason.
The end of the pandemic, thanks to Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" that developed vaccines in record time and, despite a higher than normal rate of side effects, still saved three million lives and contributed to the turnaround in life expectancy.
Another factor in longer life spans for U.S. citizens was the dramatic drop in opioid deaths, which declined by 14% between June 2023 and June 2024 relative to the previous 12 months. No one can quite figure out why the decline is happening. It's certainly not anti-drug campaigns by the government. My own theory is that the number of those addicted reached a critical mass where the number of new addicts is fewer than the growing number of drug overdoses. There are just fewer people using, so fewer people are overdosing.
Our political and media culture often seems to thrive on negative trends. But one measure of the strength of any society is what happens when things are going in the wrong direction. It requires clear ideas, people unwilling to accept decline with a shrug, and leaders who seek change rather than scoring populist points by blaming others for problems.
Wealth helps a lot too. The fact that so few Americans—about 11 percent, according to the Census Bureau—live in poverty means more resources are available for solving other problems, and more people have more time to spend thinking up solutions.
Simply reversing a bad trend is not cause for declaring "mission accomplished." Much more could be done to alleviate, for example, the opioid crisis—including the legalization of alternative ways to get high. The same is true for violent crime, which is once again falling in most American urban centers but could always be lower.
Americans have always — always — been problem solvers. Whether it's finding ways to make a better mousetrap or improving the electric motor, Americans were born to tinker, to improve, to create. Negative trends disappear because Americans see answers where most people see problems.
It's what any exceptional nation would do.
What's next? Perhaps we'll tackle the worrying increase in automobile fatalities. The answer appears to be self-driving vehicles, which automated vehicle developer Waymo claims can avoid accidents 3.5 times better than human drivers.
Eric Boehm of Reason writes, "As America enters the second quarter of the 21st century, it is a resilient place where people—and bees—are living better lives."
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