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Infographics (4,077 posts)

Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970s

In the 1970s, oil spills from tankers — container ships transporting oil — were common. Between 70 and 100 spills occurred per year. That’s one or two spills every week.

This number has fallen by more than 90% since then. In the last decade, no year has had more than ten oil spills, as shown in the chart.

The quantity of oil spilled from tankers has also fallen dramatically. Over the last decade, the average is less than 10,000 tonnes per year, compared to over 300,000 tonnes in the 1970s.

Explore more charts on oil spills on our dedicated topic page.

Deforestation is no longer inevitable

In the past, forests around the world were cut down on a massive scale. We lost some of the world’s richest ecosystems.

In recent decades, the picture has become more complex. Deforestation has not ended, but it is no longer happening everywhere. Since 1990, some regions have continued to lose large areas of forest, while others have slowed this long-run trend — and even reversed it.

The map shows regional changes in forest area based on the latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Deforestation has been particularly large in South America and Africa. At the same time, the forested area has expanded in Europe, North and Central America, and large parts of Asia.

These gains show that deforestation is not inevitable. When pressure on land falls, forests can return.

I previously wrote about why deforestation is happening, and what we can do to bring the long history of deforestation to an end.

Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994

Concluding thoughts
Overall, the main conclusion of our paper is that there is nothing systematically wrong with US immigration policy regarding the fiscal effects of immigrants. There is nothing unsustainable about the US immigration system. We could have scaled immigration as it existed without burdening government budgets. For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have wrongly claimed that immigrants are behind the growth in debt and that the US immigration system allows foreigners to take advantage of Americans’ generosity. Our data completely repudiates this view. Immigrants are subsidizing the US government. The best way to balance the budget is to reduce spending—particularly on wealthy retirees—but rather than hinder our efforts to control deficits, immigrants are helping.