Here, for instance, is a city called Shenzhen in China. Twenty years ago Shenzhen was a fishing village of a few thousand people living in poverty with low life expectancies, high infant mortality, few resources and few choices. Today it has over two million people housed in comfortable high rise apartments, working in gleaming new skyscrapers and high technology factories, playing in attractive city parks, serviced by modern clinics and hospitals and educated in well equipped schools. Not as rich yet as London or New York or nearby Hong Kong but on the way. And all over the world the story is pretty much the same.
Some societies are more advanced, and more successful than others.
But in China, in India, in Russia, in Africa, Europe, North and South America the rich are indeed getting richer and though the gap between rich and poor may be increasing, contrary to what many humans seem to hear and believe, the poor are also getting richer. To do so all human societies today are burning more fossil fuels. To do so they are using more copper and steel and bricks and glass and fertilizers and plastics and the thousand and one materials that go into a modern civilization. How else can they build the houses, the factories, the hotels, the hospitals, the automobiles, the trains and airports and communication systems that provide for a longer, healthier and more fulfilling human life. Now come the disputes of experts on earth as the 3rd millenium begins.