Everything,almost everywhere,is slowing down

Abstract

In the decades, and especially the years, immediately before the 2020 pandemic swept the world, almost everything that we routinely measured about human lives, worldwide, was already slowing down. Much was still rising, our levels of debt, the information we produced, our numbers on the planet, but it was not rising as fast as it has been rising before. Those few things that were still accelerating worldwide before the pandemic: air flights, pollution, global surface temperature—all slowed with the onset of the pandemic. We cannot know what will happen next, but we should not accept suggestions of renewed acceleration unless they are accompanied with new and convincing evidence.