">Weather-fixated television news would make us all think that disasters are getting worse. They’re not. Around 1900, 4.5 percent of the land area of the world would burn every year. Over the last century, this declined to 3.2 percent. In the previous two decades, satellites have shown further decline — in 2021, just 2.5 percent burned."
If that's better or not is up for debate because we lack a clear understanding of our environment as a complex system. The necessity of wildfires and their positive and negative impacts on ecosystems is still lacking. This superficial quantification without having a good idea of the genuine impact of our actions on our ecology is one of the biggest problems with this "number goes up/down equals good/bad" mode of argument that's motivated by trying to convey 'good news'.
Trying to reason about the health of a system from the health of individual parts is not useful. Because it's the interaction of the parts that determines its robustness, not the parts taken individually. You may have improved the performance of seven of your organs, if your hearts not around to pump any blood to them you got a problem.
If that's better or not is up for debate because we lack a clear understanding of our environment as a complex system. The necessity of wildfires and their positive and negative impacts on ecosystems is still lacking. This superficial quantification without having a good idea of the genuine impact of our actions on our ecology is one of the biggest problems with this "number goes up/down equals good/bad" mode of argument that's motivated by trying to convey 'good news'.
Trying to reason about the health of a system from the health of individual parts is not useful. Because it's the interaction of the parts that determines its robustness, not the parts taken individually. You may have improved the performance of seven of your organs, if your hearts not around to pump any blood to them you got a problem.