Smoking has already killed far more people this century than in the entire 20th century

There are two ways to produce seafood: catch fish in the wild or farm your own. Seafood farming is often called “aquaculture”. Aquaculture is dominated by the farming of fish, but also includes other organisms, such as crustaceans and aquatic plants.Aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last few decades. In fact, as the chart shows, it has overtaken wild catch since 2013.This has relieved some pressure on wild fish stocks: if this increased demand for fish had been satisfied by wild catch, then many more would be severely overexploited.Read more in our article on the rise of aquaculture.

The United Kingdom was the birthplace of coal. It has now, effectively, died there.As shown in the chart, in the late 1980s, around two-thirds of the UK’s electricity came from coal. By the time I was born in the 1990s, this had dropped to just over half.The use of coal has plummeted in my lifetime. It now makes up around 0.1% of the UK’s electricity.Coal was first replaced by gas, but is now being pushed out by wind, solar, and biomass.Explore more charts on the death of British coal.

Forty years ago, young people had higher literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa than in South Asia. You can see on the chart that the region had a 10-percentage-point lead in 1985.But things have changed a lot since then. Sub-Saharan Africa now lags by more than 14 percentage points.While literacy has improved in both regions, it has done so much faster in South Asia. There, almost all young people have basic reading and writing skills. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them do, but there is still a significant lag behind other world regions.In South Asia, the increase in literacy rates among young women has been particularly dramatic. In the mid-1980s, only around 40% had basic reading skills. That has more than doubled to over 90%, and the gap between young men and women has essentially closed.Explore how other educational and literacy measures compare across countries, age groups, and gender in our work on global education.

Just a decade ago, almost three times as much electricity in the European Union was coming from fossil fuels as from solar and wind.But last year, for the first time, solar and wind produced more than coal, gas, and oil combined. They accounted for just over 30% of total electricity production.You can see this rise of solar and wind — and fossil fuels’ decline — in the chart.This record happened despite a poor year for wind output due to low wind speeds and a slight increase in gas to compensate for lower hydropower output from dry conditions.Explore more data for specific European countries based on the latest update from Ember.

4,510 objects were launched into space in 2025, surpassing the previous peak of 2,903 objects in 2023 by a large margin.The data shows that US agencies and companies were responsible for launching 3,708 of these objects — 82% of the global total.The vast majority of these American launches consist of small satellites deployed as part of large commercial “constellations”. These interconnected networks of satellites now account for the bulk of all objects sent into orbit.The rapid growth of satellite constellations makes it possible to expand Internet connectivity, but it also increases concerns regarding space debris and the congestion of Earth’s orbital environment.Explore our interactive chart of objects launched into space.

Forty years ago in Japan, two babies were born for every person who died. Twenty years ago, these numbers were equal. And today, the ratio has reversed: one baby is born for every two people who die.In the chart, you can see this change in the number of births and deaths over time.Since deaths now greatly outnumber births, and because immigration is low, Japan’s population has started to shrink.See which other countries now have more people dying than being born.