前言：人类需要反思，但人类也需要自豪，因为我们不懈的努力，世界抵抗风险的能力越来越强，而当我们修正了不足，继续奋斗，未来将会更加光明
钟南山院士
If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.
如果您对世界现状感到沮丧，请让我分享一个观点：在人类悠久的历史中，2019年是有史以来最好的一年。
The bad things that you fret about are true. But it's also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
你担心的坏事是真的。但同样真实的是从人类20万年前出现至今，2019年是儿童死亡率最低的一年，也是成年人患上重疾可能性最小的一年。
Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.
近年来，每天有325,000人首次获得电力, 每天有200,000人首次喝到自来水， 每天有650,000人首次上网。
Perhaps the greatest calamity for anyone is to lose a child. That used to be common: Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27 percent of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4 percent.
也许对任何人来说，最大的灾难就是失去一个孩子。 过去很常见：从历史上看，几乎一半的人类都死于童年。 直到1950年，所有儿童中仍有27％的人在15岁之前死亡。现在，这一数字已下降到约4％。
"If you were given the opportunity to choose the time you were born in, it'd be pretty risky to choose a time in any of the thousands of generations in the past," noted Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data Website. "Almost everyone lived in poverty, hunger was widespread and famines common."
运营世界数据网站的牛津大学经济学家马克斯·罗瑟（Max Roser）指出：“如果你有机会选择自己的出生时间，那么选择过去几千代人中的任何时间都将面临很大的风险。几乎每个人都生活在贫穷中，饥饿普遍存在，饥荒普遍存在。”
Yet I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Americans say in polls that the share of the world population living in poverty is increasing-yet one of the trends of the last 50 years has been a huge reduction in global poverty.
但是，我担心新闻媒体和人道主义世界会如此无情地关注坏消息，以至于我们让公众相信每种趋势都朝着错误的方向发展。 多数美国人在民意测验中表示，生活在贫困中的世界人口比例正在增加，但过去50年的真实趋势之一是全球贫困已大大减少。
As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet's population endured "extreme poverty", defined by the United Nations as living on less than about US$2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world's population now.
直到1981年，地球上42％的人口都遭受了“极端贫困”，这被联合国定义为每天生活费不足2美元。 现在，这一比例已下降到不到世界人口的10％。
Disease like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on Aids. Half a century ago, a majority of the world's people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90 percent adult literacy. There have been particularly large gains in girls' education - and few forces change the world so much as education and the empowerment of women.
诸如小儿麻痹症，麻风病，河盲症和象皮病之类的疾病正在减少，全球的努力已将艾滋病的潮流转向。 半个世纪以前，世界上大多数人是文盲。 现在，我们的成人识字率已接近90％， 尤其在女孩的教育方面取得了特别大的成就，几乎没有什么力量能像教育和增强妇女权能那样改变世界。
You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate, and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralysing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but helpless.
阅读这些可能会让你感到不舒服，我理解。 当人类仍然有太多需要反思之处时，整体历史进程的变迁似乎是无味的，误导的或适得其反的。 同时，这些数字尚有待商, 2019年的数字是根据推断得出的。 但是我担心，对世界状况的深深悲观正在瘫痪而不是赋予权力，过度悲观会使人们不仅感到绝望，而且感到无助。
Readers constantly tell me, for example, that if we save children's lives, the result will be a population crisis that will cause new famines. They don't realize that when parents are confident that their children will survive, and have access to birth control, they have fewer children.
例如，读者经常告诉我，如果我们拯救儿童的生命，结果将是人口危机，这将导致新的饥荒。 他们没有意识到，当父母对自己的孩子能够生存并对节育措施充满信心时，他们的孩子就会减少。
Yes, it's still appaling that a child dies somewhere in the world's every six seconds - but consider that just a couple of decades ago, a child died every three seconds. Recognizing that progress is possible can be a spur to do more.
是的，虽然现在世界上每六秒钟就有一个孩子死亡-但几十年前，每三秒钟就有一个孩子死亡。 认识到进步是存在的，这会激励人们做更多的事情。
Climate change remains a huge threat to out globe, as does compassion fatigue in the rich world, and it's likely that we will miss a UN target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. We should keep pressing on all these fronts, but we'll get a morale boost if we acknowledge the backdrop of hard-won improvement.
气候变化仍然是全球的巨大威胁，富裕国家的同情疲劳也是如此，我们很可能无法实现联合国到2030年消除极端贫困的目标。我们应该继续在所有这些方面努力，我们会取得进展，如果我们承认来之不易的改善，就会鼓舞士气。
“We are some of the first people in history who have found ways to make progress against these problems," said Mr Roser, the economist. "We have changed the world. How awesome is it to be alive at a time like this?" "Three things are true at the same time," he added. "The world is much better, the world is awful, the world can be much better."
经济学家罗瑟说：“我们是历史上最早找到解决这些问题的方法的一些人。我们改变了世界。活在这样的时代是何其的美好，三件事同时成真。世界变得更好，世界也变得更糟，但终究世界会变得更好。”
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