The reason there is so much bad news is that bad news sells newspapers and advertisements. The more scary or shocking, the better.
We have news channels which run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and in order to keep people watching, they have to put out news which people will be interested enough in to watch.
You would think that America is a dangerous country where people are murdered every day just for the fun of it, and that things continue to get worse. But, in fact, the opposite is true. Violent crime and murder have been declining for decades. On the other hand, the numbers of stories aired and printed about these fewer crimes and murders have increased 8 fold.
People have no idea how well they have it in the world nowadays. People in western societies now have an average life expectancy of more than 70 years. It wasn't that long ago when average life expectancy was half that amount.
In terms of the environment, it's a sticky issue. Things in America have improved. Air quality is better, there is less water pollution, and people now swim and fish in waterways which were completely poisonous a century ago. More can be done, but the situation is not nearly as bad as many people believe. I remember in the 1970's in California when there were days when the smog was so heavy that kids were not allowed out of the classroom for recess. The air in California is now much cleaner, and it's been many years since kids were kept indoors because of air pollution.
As for wars, modern warfare is not fought on nearly the same scale as it was in the past. No one here remembers the hardships of the second World War, how all the young men were over seas, how things like flour, sugar, meat, and gasoline were rationed. When you couldn't get tires or a chain for your bicycle because the materials to make those things were being used for guns and jeeps instead.
But people nowadays seem to want to feel that the world is a dangerous place, and that "something must be done" to make things better. Since fewer people are religious nowadays, they need other things to "believe in". It's comically stupid, but it's encouraged. If people stopped worrying about stupid and irrelevant things, they might take a closer look at those things which really matter, and actually do something useful about them. They might understand that they are lied to by a press which exists only to keep them in fear, and are ruled by governments which operate in the same manner.
"Global Warming" (now called climate change) is a prime example. We have been deluged by reports that temperatures are rising, arctic ice is melting, polar bears are dying, etc., all because we are using too much energy. We are told that islands in the Pacific will disappear, that the coastlines in America will be submerged by rising seas, and that the world will be destroyed unless we do something to slow down the release of Co2 into the atmosphere.
But what is the solution we are offered? There really isn't one. Even the famed Kyoto treaty would only amount to a single-digit percentage in reduction of Co2 gases. The only remedy the government and industry can come up with is a carbon-trading scheme. This scheme is utter nonsense. It is merely another form of government and industry control which is actually paid for by you and I. Another form of tax (or wealth distribution) which does little to nothing for the environment, but increases the power and bureaucracy of the world's governments.
In order to push this scheme down the throats of the world's people, we are fed these news stories of gloom and doom so that we swallow without complaint.
But, we are finding that things are not as we've been told about "climate change". Polar bears are not dying. Populations have increased many fold over the last century, and continue to increase at this moment. The northern Arctic sea ice which disappeared at the end of the last century is making a comeback. Ice is breaking away from the coasts of Antarctica, but ice formation in the center of the continent is at the highest levels ever recorded. Sea levels have not increased measurably anywhere in the world. The warming projections of the IPCC reports of the late 90's have not been met, and in fact, the opposite has occurred, temperatures have decreased. There is (and always has been) evidence that Co2 does not trigger global warming, and it's being discovered that the global warming of the last century has followed solar activity trends, and has been completely unrelated to "greenhouse" gases.
But no one wants to hear this. Good news is not news.
Another interesting read:
Warmist conspiracy exposed? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog