Bloomberg Businessweek (January 2025)

Год выпуска: January, 2025

Автор: Bloomberg Businessweek

Жанр: Бизнес

Издательство: «Bloomberg Businessweek»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 120

AN OPTIMIST’S GUIDE TO A CHAOTIC WORLD

Proponents of scientific expertise, international cooperation, free trade— as well as anyone hoping for a calm, measured competence emanating from Washington, DC—are probably viewing 2025 from under the dining room table with something close to allconsuming dread. On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will reassume the US presidency, and most of the cabinet appointments that have so unsettled the political establishment in the weeks leading up to that date will be embraced by the Republican-controlled Senate.

But negativity and despair are no way to bring in a new year. In two of his books, The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker makes the case for looking past the hysteria of daily headlines to recognize areas of substantial human progress. On measures such as extreme poverty, infant mortality and human rights, despite occasional setbacks like wars and pandemics, things are getting dramatically better, not worse.

Trump, Pinker tells me, “was aided and abetted” in his depiction of a country in decline by the news media, which usually overlooks positive trends and “deliberately puts a negative spin on news,” such as with a headline on falling unemployment that might highlight how some people still have problems finding work.

Pinker is a fan of independent websites that use data to illustrate broad trends and generally portray a more positive view. The Up Wing, an Australian website founded in 2024, recently reported that vaccines have reduced infant mortality by 40% over the past half-century and that global economic growth has lifted more than 1.3 billion people out of extreme poverty.

Recipients of the weekly newsletter Fix the News have learned that Africa has reduced deaths from infectious disease by 42% since 2015, that fatality rates from drug overdoses in the US have fallen for seven months straight and that solar power installations are accelerating around much of the world and global capacity recently hit 2 terawatts.

“Our view is that the world is bad but that it’s better in most ways than people imagine. It’s probably the best time ever to be alive,” says Keith Moore, head of editorial at the Gapminder foundation, which is headquartered in Stockholm. The organization’s site quizzes readers to reveal their misperceptions on migrants (only 15% are refugees who flee their homes), population growth (it’s slowing), beef consumption (humans eat more fish) and other issues. “One place they do overestimate progress is on climate. People think we are transitioning faster than we actually are,” Moore says.

Even those who typically read climate news with a deep sense of foreboding can find a few reasons for hope. More than 40% of the world’s electricity came from zero-carbon sources in 2023 for the first time, according to BloombergNEF. Thanks to a sagging economy and rapid adoption of clean energy, the carbon emissions from China, responsible for 30% of 2023’s global total, may have already peaked.

Trump and his congressional allies are likely to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and prod energy companies to increase fossil fuel production. But they’re also likely to spur the development of nuclear power in the US, a technology that makes some people squeamish but which many scientists think must play a major role in driving the world toward decarbonization.

Several physicians are even finding reasons to be hopeful about public health. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is likely to campaign against ultraprocessed foods that have contributed to high obesity rates, even as he rails dangerously against vaccines and fluoride in drinking water. “I think there’s been too much negativity. What he’s really doing is questioning things,” says Shebani Sethi, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University, who notes that life expectancy in the US now lags Europe’s after their being even 50 years ago. “It would be such a win for us to start changing the food supply.”

It’s also quite possible that Trump, with Elon Musk’s help, could cut regulations, boost business activity and make the government more efficient. This isn’t meant to dismiss the consequences of Trump’s promised mass deportations or the long-term significance of another round of his judicial appointments. It’s simply a case for holiday cheer for those who might need an extra helping of it.

Because one can’t hide under the dining room table forever.

The Year Ahead

After an eventful 2024, here’s our annual foreshadowing of the people, feuds, politics, economic shifts and technological changes that will matter in 2025

• Taking the long view to make a case for optimism
• Trump’s economic agenda won’t hurt right away
• In Norway, the electric vehicle future is now
• What’s the price, you ask? That depends
• Keeping carp from ruining Great Lakes fisheries
• The feuds to follow in 2025
• The Right Stuff: What to treat yourself with this year
• What happens when the crypto biz is unleashed?
• AI and EVs drive a surge in America’s need for power
• Ten books to look forward to
• Even if the wars end, the world will pay
• China’s rescue plan fails to shore up housing prices
• Growing pains for AI    
• Search chatbots could upend the internet economy
• Grand Theft Auto VI may finally be ready to rule
• The Property Brothers size up the renovation market
• Big Pharma will add to the menu of weight-loss drugs
• Tickets are going fast for live entertainment
• Decoding the lingo of today’s office mortgage lender
• Private credit: It’s not just for billionaires anymore
• A look at 2025 through the eyes of those turning 25
• Fifty companies to watch

Inside the Global Trade in Human Eggs

• From India to Taiwan, Argentina to Greece, women are providing this increasingly valuable resource, sometimes unwittingly, to a booming fertility industry. In a special Bloomberg Businessweek investigation, their interwoven stories illuminate the lucrative, largely unregulated business of helping families have children

Pursuits

• Travel Special: A still unspoiled Algeria or Spain’s next big thing or hot vacations in cool places—we give you the 25 places to go in 2025

Exit Strategy

• Can you guess which of these priciest prices is right?

скачать журнал: Bloomberg Businessweek (January 2025)