Are electric cars improving?

It’s very easy to form the view that the modern world is coming apart. We are constantly confronted with an onslaught of negativity: frightening headlines, alarming research findings, and miserable statistics.

There are indeed many things on the planet that we should be greatly concerned about. But fixating on horror stories means that we miss the bigger picture.

When world leaders meet for the climate-change summit in Copenhagen this December, they will make decisions that will affect the world for many generations. Three months before that meeting, there is an alarming absence of serious discussion about what these decisions should be. What passes for debate is usually a shouting match between those who believe that climate change is not real and those who believe that it will end life on Earth. We are all, it seems, either "deniers" or "believers." (...) 

Humans are partial to bad news. Media outlets reflect and shape this preference, feeding us woe and panic. Long, slow, positive trends don’t make it to the front page or to water-cooler conversations. So we develop peculiar misperceptions, especially the idea that a preponderance of things are going wrong.