Noticed this thread for the first time, decided to start at the top, and, uh
Loving everything else though
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This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mind-blowing science, and the best bits of the internet (not necessarily in that order). One third of your subscription fee goes to charity.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
The Keystone XL pipeline has been officially terminated, cementing one of the biggest environmental victories of all time. Activists managed to delay the $9 billion, 830,000 barrel per day, Alberta oil sands ‘dirty climate bomb’ for 12 years, and in the process, give birth to much of the modern climate movement. Take a moment to appreciate this, it’s really sweet. Even the most idealistic frontline warriors didn’t expect it to end this well.
It’s amazing how quickly industrialists seem to develop a conscience when there’s a threat to their bottom line. This time, it’s Italian automotive giant Fiat that suddenly cares about the fate of the planet, saying it will be an all electric brand by 2030. “This is our greatest project.” Indeed. Engadget
The United States has the world’s second largest fleet of coal plants, and 80% of them are now either more expensive to continue operating compared to building new wind or solar, or are set to retire in the next four years. If you think the last four years were bad for US coal, the next four are going to make them feel like a cakewalk. Meanwhile, Romania, one of Europe’s last remaining coal holdouts, says it will close all of its coal mines by 2032, introduce ecotaxes, discourage the registration of cars older than 15 years and boost scrapping schemes for polluting vehicles, and Canada says it will no longer approve thermal-coal mining projects. C’mon Straya.
Over half a million people in Senegal just gained access to clean electricity after two solar PV plants were switched on, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a massive $100 million off-grid solar project has been approved to bring power to three northern cities that currently have no connection to the grid. In Spain, renewables produced half of the country’s electricity for the first time ever last month, reaching 50.7% of supply, and in Texas, four months after Republicans falsely blamed clean energy for the failure of the electric grid, investors have decided just what the state needs: more clean power. 15GW, the equivalent of Finland’s entire electrical capacity, is now under construction or in advanced development, more than double three years ago. Bloomberg
Own the libs
Good news you probably didn’t hear about
There’s been a new update on progress towards SDG7: the number of people without access to electricity has declined from 1.2 billion to 759 million in the past decade, the number connected to mini grids more than doubled during the same time period, and access to clean cooking solutions has grown by 1% annually.
The US government will make $1 billion in grants available to narrow the digital divide, expanding broadband access for Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. Only half of households on tribal lands currently subscribe to a home internet service. The Verge
Your regular reminder that social attitudes can and do change, sometimes in the space of a single generation. Support for same-sex marriage in the United States is now at an all time high of 70%, up from 60% in 2015 when it was legalized, and from 27% in 1996, when Gallup first started asking the question. Hopefully we’re also at the beginning of a similar shift in India, with news that Tamil Nadu has become the first Indian state to ban conversion 'therapy’ after an unprecedented and progressive judgment by the Madras High Court last week.
A decades-long effort to infuse mosquitoes with a virus-blocking microbe has culminated in a trial in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that achieved a 77% reduction in cases and an 86% reduction in people needing hospital care. Not only was the science behind this world class, it’s also one of the best examples we’ve ever seen of community engagement. They had to convince 90% of the community before releasing the mosquitoes, requiring years of meetings, letting people in to see the labs, using Whatsapp for engagement, and employing over 10,000 local volunteers to place the mosquito eggs in people’s backyards. Development specialists take note: this is how to help, not through patronage, but through partnership.
The global effort to eradicate polio just received a major boost with the release of $5 billion in new funding from The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership by national governments and health groups. Most of it will be spent on vaccinations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries in the world where outbreaks of wild polio still occur. NYT
Health workers vaccinated a child in December, in Kandahar, where the polio vaccination effort resumed after a seven-month pause. Credit: Muhammad Sadiq/EPA
CORRECTION
In The Crunch No. 137, we wrote the following: Thanks to alternative penalties for non-violent crimes, the number of people incarcerated in the United States in 2020 plummeted by 1.7 million from 2019 (AP). This was a mistake. The accompanying article reports that “the percentage of U.S. residents who are in prison has dropped by 17%” and that the number of incarcerated individuals dropped to 1.7 million from 2019 to 2020. A significant drop, to be sure, but since there were 2.3 million incarcerated people in 2019, a 1.7 million drop would virtually erase the US prison system.
Thank you so much to eagle-eyed subscriber, Mike Gillis, for spotting our mistake.
Life finds a way
A coalition of more than 40 groups, ranging from local NGOs to governments to international organizations, has mobilized $43 million for efforts to restore degraded habitats in the Galápagos Islands. The initiative aims to reintroduce 13 extinct species, and help increase the population of 54 threatened species.
Indonesia is home to 7.9 million acres of mangroves, more than any other country. In 2020, the government announced a plan to replant an additional 1.5 million acres by 2024. In the background however, an unsung army of ordinary Indonesians has been toiling for decades to restore these habitats. South Korea also has some big tree planting plans, saying it will plant three billion new trees over the next 30 years after joining the WEF’s One Trillion Trees initiative.
A revolutionary new conservation program in southern Ecuador, funded by a small fee on municipality water, has achieved spectacular success, re-wilding 1,500 ha and putting an additional 337,000 ha under conservation. It represents a simple, yet effective model that can be replicated across the world… In other good news from South America, Chile has passed new legislation, based on recommendations from environmental groups presented back in 2019, that will reduce the country’s plastic waste by more than 23,000 tons per year.
The total value of meat products sold in Germany fell by 4% in 2020 compared to 2019. By contrast, sales of plant-based alternatives skyrocketed by 39%, suggesting there has been a permanent shift in tastes, especially from younger consumers. Furry friends will also be pleased to hear that Israel has become the first country to completely ban the sale of all fur products, including imports and exports. Expect this to be the first in a long list over the next few years.
The critically endangered Polish wolf has recovered to an estimated population of 3,000, a massive leap from the mere 60 in existence in the early 1970s. It’s always the same story with these endangered species recoveries: decades of unseen, thankless work from scientists, conservationists and activists. That’s also what’s happened in Bulgaria, which now has a stable population of around 80 griffon vultures, more than 40 years after the birds were declared extinct in the Balkan nation. There are now at least 23 mating pairs, who have been breeding in the wild since 2016.
Making an artificial nest
Constructing the vulture aviary
Despite numerous challenges, they decided to… carrion. Seriously, check out the full gallery it’s awesome.
Indistinguishable from magic
The Metaverse just got another step closer, with an early access release of Unreal Engine 5, which makes the boundary between the digital and real worlds much blurrier. There’s no point in explaining this, you have to see it. Here’s the video announcement, and then check out this real time rendering of a simulated rockfall on the Nordic Coast. WTAF.
Lithium is going to be an essential element in our efforts to stop the world from burning, but its extraction comes with heavy environmental costs. Good news then, from researchers in Saudi Arabia, who have figured out a cost effective way to extract high purity lithium from seawater, which contains 5,000 times more lithium than land.
Scientists have come up with a blood test called an ExoSCOPE that tells them within 24 hours whether or not targeted cancer therapy is having an effect on tumor growth. Such a quick turnaround means that the treatment can be quickly adapted or rethought. Science Alert
Biologists from Cambridge have rewritten the genetic code of a synthetic bacterium that altered not only its DNA but also the cellular machinery that turns genes into biochemical products. This created a new organism that grows like E. coli but with additional properties. Knowledge of how to manipulate and edit DNA is well established, but until now it has not been possible to alter the 3 billion year old code through which DNA instructs cells to form the chains of amino acids that make up the working molecules of life. That is no longer the case. “This is potentially a revolution in biology.” Science Daily
Humanity has achieved a new milestone in our efforts to harness the power of the stars. Last week the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ fusion machine created a writhing loop of plasma that reached 120 million degrees Celsius, eight times the temperature of the core of the Sun, and then clung onto it for 101 seconds. Crazy.
The infrared image of the “artificial sun” successfully burning at 120 million °C for 100 seconds. Source: Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institute of Material Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The information superhighway is still awesome
This is one of the simplest, yet most useful reframes we’ve ever seen. Instead of thinking about sleep as a chore, think about it as an opportunity . Atlantic columnist and general wise old dude, Arthur C Brooks, already has us sleeping better. Do yourself a favour and read this. Thank us later.
Not one, not two, but THREE incredible pieces of sports journalism for you this week. Alex Perry has an extraordinary story about one man’s quest to expose the murky underworld of international swimming (we promise you will never look at the Olympics in the same way again), then Sam Anderson almost converts us into basketball fans with a masterpiece on (possibly) the greatest basketball team of all time and finally, William Ralston offers up an unexpectedly fascinating deep dive on how the UK became the Silicon Valley of turf.
China is not a monolithic society, but instead one that is fracturing in complex and challenging ways. Beneath the facade of triumphalist nationalism lies a potent set of rifts around gender, ethnicity, urbanism and inequality that are getting very ugly. We’ve been waiting for someone to put this into words for years; props to Elizabeth Economy (talk about a name being a destiny) for nailing it. Foreign Affairs
On a related theme, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’re probably aware that the lab-leak theory for COVID-19 is very much back on the table. This article from Vanity Fair does the most even-handed job at explaining why. Occam’s Razor seems useful here - the simplest answer is that the origin is natural - but it also seems impossibly unlucky that one of only two coronaviruses research labs in the world sat 280 meters from the wet market where it all supposedly started.
Our belief that complex human societies arose 10,000 years ago is a truth so widely accepted we never question it. Time to think again, following the discovery of an 11,500 year old settlement in Turkey. You can read more about Göbekli Tepe itself in Archeology, and there’s also a great essay by Samo Burja in Palladium on what it all means.
We have no reason to assume complex societies can only be found after the last ice age. Rather, they may have been with us for a very long time—perhaps from our very beginning. The environment of evolutionary adaptation for Homo sapiens as we now know ourselves wasn’t the wild savannah; rather, it was complex society all along.
Göbekli Tepe vulture stone, the world’s first-known pictograph. Sue Fleckney
Humankind
Meet Lisa Carne, an American marine biologist who has helped save the world’s second largest coral reef through a radical restoration project launched ten years ago.
Growing up in California, Lisa always had an affinity for the ocean. In 1994, after graduating with a biology degree, Lisa travelled to Southern Belize and started working as a volunteer research assistant at the Smithsonian field station in Placencia, where she witnessed the impact that climate change and rising sea temperatures were having on ocean habitats.
In 2001 Hurricane Iris devasted Belize, turning the magnificent coral reef into ‘a wasteland.’ Instead of waiting for a large organization to come up with the solution, Lisa devised her own radical plan. After noticing living pieces of Elkhorn coral that had broken from the reef but were still alive, Lisa questioned if it was possible to restore the reefs by transplanting coral?
Lisa worked tirelessly for years, trying to convince people that her transplanting experiment was viable. In 2006 she finally received a research grant to create a natural laboratory and coral nursery. Local fishermen and tour guides were the first to notice the reforested reefs and offered to help with the planting. In 2013 she registered a community-based NGO called Fragments of Hope to continue the restoration work and developed a coral restoration training course, which has certified over 70 Belizeans to date and helps supplement local people’s income with restoration jobs.
In 2014 she was named an Ocean Hero by Oceana Belize and in 2017, Fragments of Hope received the Lighthouse Activity Award from the UN Secretariat for Climate Change. What started as a very personal labour of love is now considered the Caribbean’s most successful reef restoration project, and today conservationists around the world follow Lisa’s lead.
When we first started maybe one or two people were doing reef restoration. But nowadays, everybody’s doing it. I joke that it’s like yoga now.
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This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mindblowing science, and the best bits of the internet (not necessarily in that order). One third of your subscription fee goes to charity.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Solar is on a tear worldwide, and especially in the United States. The first three months of 2021 saw 2.5 Hoover Dams worth of capacity added to the grid, a 46% increase compared to the same period in 2020. Solar and wind accounted for 99% of all new power generation capacity in Q1. Endgame for coal and gas.
It’s the same story everywhere. IRENA now estimates that over 800 GW of global coal generation is more expensive than building new wind and solar, which is very bad news for any financial entities still exposed to the coal sector.
Case in point: since 2014, Chinese companies have financed 52 overseas coal projects, worth a combined $160 billion. It’s one of the worst investment decisions of all time. Only one plant has gone into operation, and 33 have been shelved or cancelled, with plenty more still to come. No new projects were announced at all in 2020. So much for those coal pipelines.
While we’re on coal pipelines, India might have already hit peak coal burn. Great piece in Bloomberg on how a major new investment in renewables by the country’s largest power company signals the beginning of the end for thermal energy.
Meanwhile, in Europe, another bad week in court for fossil fuels. A Brussels court has ruled that Belgium’s failure to meet climate targets is a violation of human rights, and recognized 58,000 citizens as co-plaintiffs. The historic judgement follows similar, recent rulings in the Netherlands, Germany and France. Guardian
Two pieces of good news for the hard to decarbonize parts of the economy. Engineers in Sweden have successfully produced 100 tons of sponge iron from hydrogen, a major milestone in the race to produce green steel, and in Germany, gas for heating is down nearly 15% in the past four years, while heat pumps crossed 50% market share last year.
A rare bit of good news on the home front too. In a bid to become the ‘Norway of Australia’ the state of New South Wales has unveiled a massive $490 million package of new incentives, tax cuts and spending on fast-charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Here’s a list of the cars that benefit the most. C’mon Victoria.
A few months after Audi announced a 2025 carbon neutrality target, the German carmaker has thrown down the electric gauntlet yet again, declaring that from 2026 it will no longer launch new combustion engine models, not even hybrids. Only pure battery vehicles will be developed. That’s five years away. Der Spiegel
Why say “liquid cooled two speed transmission” when you can say Flüssigkeitsgekühlten Zweigang-Getriebe ? We’re making an executive decision. From now on, all car-related images in this newsletter will be labelled in German.
Good news you probably didn’t hear about
Bangladesh, home to 160 million people, has been heralded a ‘development miracle’ as it celebrates its 50th year of independence. Since 1991, GDP per capita has increased seven fold, 24 million people have been lifted out of poverty, life expectancy has risen to 73 years, infant and maternal mortality rates have fallen by a factor of five and the literacy rate has increase from 35% to 74%. Daily Star
A study in The Lancet of 21 low, medium and high income countries has found that there has been no increase in suicide rates and that 12 countries actually recorded a decrease. This good news has been attributed to increased awareness, better access to mental health services, financial relief packages and new connection points within local communities.
Saudi Arabia has officially allowed single, divorced or widowed women to live independently in a house without permission from father or any other male guardian. “An adult woman has the right to choose where to live. Families can no longer file lawsuits against their daughters who choose to live alone.” Gulf News
More than 1,800 schools in the Indian state of West Bengal have installed mini-solar plants in the past two years, and there are plans to expand installations by 1,000 schools a year until the number reaches 25,000. Schools have used the savings for tree-planting, additional teachers, computer classes and sanitation upkeep. Reuters
Workers with disabilities in Hawaii will be guaranteed fair wages, after an old labour law that allowed employers to pay them less was given the boot. It’s welcome news for the 26,000 people who live in Hawaii with some form of disability. Guardian
The Passamaquoddy tribe in Maine have brought back their ancestral land of Pine Island, 160 years after it was taken from them. With the help of a grant from conservation charities, the small tribe raised enough money to purchase the island back, which has been their home for over 10,000 years. The Hill
Our concept of land ownership is that nobody ‘owns’ land. Instead, we have a sacred duty to protect it. This feels like finding a lost relative - Donald Soctomah, Passamaquoddy Historic Preservation Officer
Donald Soctomah rows a birch bark canoe with his son, also named Donald. The canoe was built based on a 21-foot Passamaquoddy canoe dating from 1850.
Life, uh, finds a way
Following the shutdown of coal mining in the Svalbard region of Norway, the government has started cleanup operations and expanded the boundaries of a national park by 2,914 km2 to include the former coal sites. “Our goal is for Svalbard to be one of the best-managed wilderness areas in the world." Barents Observer
Gabon has passed new laws to protect the country’s 69 species of sharks and rays. The landmark measures include new laws to fully regulate shark and ray catches, and highlight a new global initiative launched on World Ocean Day to save these endangered marine species.
Tanzania is hopeful of reaching a ‘zero-elephant-poaching’ target after making thousands of arrests, including 21 kingpins of the illegal trafficking trade. Since 2014, the elephant population has increased by 17,000, remarkable progress for a country that once had the unenviable status of the world’s elephant killing fields.
A ‘drastic times, drastic measures’ approach has proved successful for two radical conservation experiments on different sides of the globe. In Southwest America, the population of the Mexican wolf has been bolstered by a fostering program which placed captive born pups into wild dens, while in Australia, a ‘headstarting’ method has saved the bridled nailtail wallaby from extinction by giving juveniles a few years in protected areas, before released them back into the wild.
Animal rights activists in China have pulled off an incredible rescue mission, removing 101 moon bears from a bile extraction facility and transporting them over 1,200 km to a rehab centre. It took years of planning, and involved three convoys of nine trucks each, and a dedicated team of vets and carers who will continue to rehabilitate the bears as they settle into their new home.
This unprecedented, historic and momentous event has been eight years in the making. It has been the most challenging, unpredictable and emotional journey we have been on as an organisation.
Indistinguishable from magic
Did you know Earth has a heartbeat? A new study of ancient geological events suggests regular surges of geological activity every 27 million years. "These cyclic pulses of tectonics and climate change may be the result of geophysical processes, or alternatively astronomical cycles associated with the Earth’s motions in the Solar System and the Galaxy."Science Alert
Speaking of celestial motions, we unofficially have two space stations now, after Chinese astronauts arrived at Tianhe Harmony of the Heavens , the living quarters of their new space station. Early lead for the Chinese in the space name race here. Their rocket was called Divine Vessel and the finished space station will be called Tiangong Heavenly Palace . C’mon NASA. SCMP
By studying robins, British biologists may have cracked the mystery of how birds sense the Earth’s magnetic field. A molecule in their eyes called cryptochrome 4 that is sensitive to magnetism gives them an inbuilt living compass that allows them to migrate over thousands of kilometres. BBC
Scientists in New York have made a breakthrough in explaining how olfaction works, capturing the first moment when a smell actually binds to a living molecule. “Although we’ve had access to receptors as molecules for a long time, no one’s ever actually seen with their eyes what it looks like when an odour binds to a receptor.” Quanta
One for all you circular economy and recycling nerds. A Taiwanese team has created the world’s first hospital ward built out of recycled materials. The walls are made from 90% recycled aluminum, the insulation from recycled polyester, and cupboard handles and clothes hooks from recycled medical waste. CNN
And here’s one for the Metaverse junkies. A competition between 3D artists to recreate the same walking animation has been compiled into an amazing 9 minute montage. The range is incredible: sci-fi vistas, gods and monsters, otters in Napoleonic uniforms, a dad hauling a huge teddy bear on his back for his daughter, all set to beautiful music. Verge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKBs9l8jS6Qhttps://futurecrunch.com/content/images/2021/06/WLKING.gif(image larger than 8 MB)
The information superhighway is still awesome
This brilliant, mind-expanding essay takes Gaia theory and adds a technological flavour, arguing that Earth has very recently evolved a smart exoskeleton, a distributed sensory organ capable of calculating things. The author proposes that technology isn’t unnatural, but instead an essential step on the path to planetary intelligence, an Earth that becomes, in effect, self-aware. Whoa. Neoma
Robinson Meyer has come up with a great name for something very familiar to clean energy enthusiasts, the virtuous circle by which policy scales new technology, making it cheaper, which enables more ambitious policy, which makes clean energy even cheaper. On and on it goes, the clean energy flywheel. Or, as he calls it, The Green Vortex.
What if, asks Xiaoyu He, success is the enemy of freedom ? This is an old conundrum, but one worth investigating again as we emerge blinking into the post pandemic light. Human flourishing depends on exploration and openness to new experience, and yet the most successful people are the least incentivized to explore further. Fortunately, the author has a solution.
A truly world class piece of science journalism by Rowan Jacobsen. As transformational as the genetics revolution has been, at its heart has always been a mystery: proteins. Thanks to recent breakthroughs however, the mystery is clearing up and we’re starting to see the first designer proteins emerge from labs. Welcome to ‘the Amino Age.’ SA
Kílian Jornet is the most outrageously talented mountain runner of all time, someone who once ran up and down Everest in 17 hours. Having achieved everything there is to achieve in the sport, his thoughts have now turned to climbing mountains purely for the love of it - the mountaineering equivalent of a spiritual surfer.
I want to be an 80-year-old boy. I want to experience every phase of my love for the mountains with total madness, with my eyes shining brightly, my heart beating wildly and out of control, my legs shaking from having just climbed up a mountain. Until, when I’m truly old, my body stops working for good.
‘This is the way I want to be’: training in Norway. Photograph: Kilian Journet/Reuters
Humankind
Meet Gaurav Rai AKA ‘Oxygen Man’, a 52 year old general manager in Patna, India, who turned his personal battle with COVID-19 into a live-saving mission for over 1,400 people by providing free oxygen tanks to critically ill patients.
In July 2020, Gaurav tested positive to COVID-19 and was rushed to his local hospital. Due to a shortage of beds and oxygen cylinders, he was left to wait beside the staircase of the ward, gasping for air. His wife Aruna took matters into her own hands and after five hours of searching, found an oxygen tank for her husband through a private connection. This was a turning point for Gaurav, “I realised how a small oxygen cylinder could save a life. I told my wife that I would pay it forward if I survived .”
While recovering at home, Gaurav and his wife pooled their savings to buy ten oxygen cylinders and launched an oxygen bank from their basement. Gaurav would wake every day at 5.30am, load the oxygen cylinders into his own car and deliver them to patients across the city. When cases continued to spike, the couple purchased more cylinders. However, thanks to social media, news of their small endeavour started to spread, and donations began to pour in.
Today Gaurav’s oxygen bank has over 200 cylinders and has extended across 18 districts of Bihar. Unable to personally deliver to the growing demand, Gaurav requests people collect the cylinders from his house, but he always keeps a few spares in his car for emergencies. Without a single day’s rest or any financial gain, Gaurav celebrates the recovery of each person he helps with a cake.
There’s a twist in Gaurav’s story,. In December 2019 an infection paralysed his vocal cord, and unable to speak, he felt so lost that he contemplated suicide. An unintended side effect of his COVID-19 battle seven months later was that it restored his voice and gave him a new purpose in life. “ I told my wife if God makes me survive, I will do something for mankind. I was cured in a few days, and it seemed that The Almighty indeed chose this task for me ."
Gaurav Rai loading oxygen cylinders in his car for delivery; Photo by Ranjan Rahi
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Sold in the form of form of powder, tonic or pills, bear bile is considered to be a ‘cure’ for a range of ailments from acne, hangovers, colds, sore-throats, haemorrhoids, conjunctivitis and even cancer. But it comes at a devastating price for the bears, and many never escape the torture of bear farming.
In case anyone else is curious about bear bile farms.
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
A gentle reminder that as of Tuesday this week, over three billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world. Most media outlets are focusing on how badly the rollout is going, and while those criticisms are valid in some countries (8% in four months is hard to spin, even for Scotty From Marketing), globally the numbers tell a very different story. Not that you’d know it from the headlines, but the pace is picking up: it took 20 weeks to give out the first billion doses, but only four to give out the last billion.
This is easily the biggest and fastest vaccination effort in human history. Our species has never done anything remotely like this before. The manufacturing and distribution challenges are unfathomably hard, and that’s before you get to the all-too-human problems of bureaucratic screwups, political cynicism, and a natural distrust of any new technology. Given the obstacles, it’s amazing that we’ve got this far, this quickly. Perhaps a moment of appreciation is in order?
A villager receives a dose of COVID vaccine during a door-to-door drive in West Bengal, India on Monday 21st June, one of 8.6 million doses administered on that day.
A moment of appreciation too, for a successful, multi-generational effort to eliminate malaria in China. It’s the 40th nation in the world to achieve malaria-free status, and the first in the western Pacific region in 30 years. Not bad for a country that used to report 30 million cases per year in the 1940s. Some good news from Tanzania too, which will allow pregnant girls and teen mothers the opportunity to resume secondary education, overturning a 4-year ban that prevented thousands from finishing their studies.
In Canada, a welcome win for LGBTQI+ rights with the passage of a historic bill criminalizing conversion therapy. It joins Germany, Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan as countries that have outlawed the practice nationally. Further south, Connecticut has restored voting rights to people with past convictions, marking a milestone in the push to end criminal disenfranchisement, and in Montana, 18,000 acres of wildlife reserve, known as the National Bison Range, has been formally handed back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes who will now manage it in perpetuity.
Bad news for fat cats, good news for everyone else, as the world’s largest economies have taken a decisive step forward to make multinational companies pay their fair share, setting an international minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%. In Iran, a set of reforms has been passed to ensure that proper schooling is made available to all migrants, including thousands of undocumented children, and in Europe, 33 cities have signed an International Alliance of Safe Harbours Agreement allowing them to take in more refugees rescued at sea, to distribute the load more evenly away from hotspots in the Mediterranean.
Finally, while it’s not technically good news we thought we should still include the latest figures from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program on global conflict-related deaths during 2020. Although the numbers are down from their highs of the mid 2010s, and down significantly from a generation ago, there was a slight uptick in both global conflicts and battle deaths last year. A sobering reminder that progress is never a straight line.
Source: UCDP
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Heralded as ‘a law of laws’, the EU has approved landmark legislation to enshrine greenhouse gas emissions targets into law, requiring a 55% reduction by 2030, net zero by 2050, and the creation of a carbon budget for 2030-2050 that meets climate goals. It’s a very, very big deal. You can already see the ripples: Volkswagen immediately announced it would stop making combustion engines in Europe by 2035, and Ford and Volvo said they would start all-electric production in Europe by 2030.
Canada can see the writing on the wall too, announcing a ban on the sale of new fuel-burning cars and light-duty trucks from 2035, and Maine says it will no longer invest in companies with big oil and gas portfolios, making it the first state in the United States to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Perhaps they’d gotten wind of a recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas of oil and gas executives, which included this little gem:
We have relationships with approximately 400 institutional investors and close relationships with 100. Approximately one is willing to give new capital to oil and gas investment.
Ouch.
Or perhaps they’ve been paying attention to the latest projections by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which say that wind turbine service technician and solar panel installer will be the country’s fastest and third fastest growing occupations in the next decade. Reminds us of this graph, which might be one of our favourites of the entire Trump era (still waiting for that NYT visit to ‘Wind Country’).
The world’s industrialists and financiers can certainly smell the blood in the water. The Financial Times is reporting that the vast majority of new coal-power plants being planned around the world will not make back their upfront costs, including all of those under construction in China. Specifically, 92% of facilities proposed or under construction globally will now cost more to build than the future cash flow they will generate. Pipelines? More like pipe dreams.
Right on cue, China’s biggest bank has dumped a plan to finance a $3 billion coal-fired power plant in Zimbabwe, Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co has eagerly offloaded its investments into Indonesian coal, and South Korea’s three big insurance companies will stop underwriting coal-power projects, thanks in part to some serious people power.
One of Malaysia’s biggest banks RHB has announced a coal exit by 2022, in Bangladesh, regulators are scrapping plansfor 10 coal-fired power plants in favour of renewable energy (that’s another 8GW off the table), and North Macedonia and Montenegro have become the first countries in the Western Balkans to announce coal exits, saying they will close their plants by 2027 and 2035 respectively.
All that dirty energy is going to have to be replaced, which is why California just approved a massive 11.5GW of clean energy to replace gas and the state’s last nuclear power plant, and why fossil fuels billionaire and Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is making ‘a green pivot’ with a $10.1 billion investment into clean energy over the next three years. “I envision a future when our country will be transformed from a large importer of fossil energy to a large exporter of clean solar energy solutions.” Sounds good to us.
Now, if someone could just tell Scotty From Marketing.
The only home we’ve ever known
The entire landmass of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, 3,800 km2 of pristine wilderness that you’ve definitely seen in a nature documentary, will be designated as a protected area, complementing an already existing 1.24 million km2 marine reserve.
In other conservation news, a vast area of breathtaking beauty ranging through Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo is about to become a national park, creating one of the largest protected areas in Europe, and in the United Arab Emirates, the population of the endangered Arabian oryx has increased by 22% in four years thanks to a reintroduction programinside the country’s largest nature reserve.
It’s probably worth mentioning, for the second time in this newsletter, that in the last decade, an area larger than Russia has been added to the world as parks or conservation areas. To give that success a different perspective, of all the land ever protected and conserved by official action, 42% was in the last ten years. More than 17% of the world’s landmass is now protected from development.
Anela Stavrevska-Panajotova, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) National expert for management plan, presents the new Shar Mountain National Park on a map, during a media briefing on Shar Mountain, in the northwest of North Macedonia, Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
Meanwhile, quiet, clean, and green are not words you would typically use to describe a construction site, but on one of the busiest streets in the heart of Oslo, there’s something special going on: in a world-first, all the machinery used on site, excavators, diggers, and loaders, are now electric. In New Zealand single-use plastics will be phased out by 2025, with bans on cotton buds, packaging, cutlery, straws, and fruit labels beginning next year - measures that could remove over 2 billion single-use items from landfill each year.
Along with those carrots, there’s also a new stick, with ‘ecocide’ on its way to becoming the fifth crime at the International Criminal Court. Big polluters and many political leaders will be sleeping a little more uneasily after a six month deliberation by a team of international lawyers unveiled the new definition which ranks ‘attacks on nature’ on par with war crimes.
Ecocide
Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.
Indistinguishable from magic
Here’s something you don’t see every day - a dual-mode flying car. This one just completed the first ever inter-city trip between two airports in Slovakia. After landing, the plane transforms in under three minutes into a sports car ( I think I might have drawn this exact thing when I was six - Gus ).
It’s an almost universal feeling: the thrill of hearing a mysterious new bird song, usually followed by a question: What was that bird? The question just got much easier to answer, with the release of a new AI-powered app that can identify 400 species from North America. Merlin
Using a not-dissimilar kind of technology, a simple blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer has been shown to be accurate enough to be used as a screening tool for over 50s. Britain’s NHS will begin a pilot scheme of the test with 140,000 people this year. If it achieves the same kind of results, then this test will be used for millions of patients by 2025.
A startup co-founded by Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna has successfully used CRISPR to treat patients for transthyretin amyloidosis, a devastating disease in which a build-up of a protein affects a patient’s heart and nervous system. It’s the first time ever that the gene-editing technology has been injected straight into the patient’s bloodstream and successfully found its way to the problem, opening the door for a much wider range of treatments. NPR
In Israel, the world’s first industrial cultured meat facility has opened, capable of producing 500 kilograms of slaughter-free meat per day. It’s a big step forward on the road to making scalable cell-based meat production a reality. New Atlas
A Swiss company has unveiled a revolutionary machine capable of growing new skin for burn patients. Using a small sample of healthy skin, cells are grown in a laboratory and then combined with a hydrogel to produce large quantities of new skin. The result, denovoSkin, is one millimetre thick, the same as the average natural dermis and epidermis. A sample the size of a stamp can end up as a piece almost the size of a place mat. “It’s not artificial skin, but it’s not exactly natural skin either.”
Medicine Sans Frontiers have turned to additive manufacturing at their Gaza offices, to print face masks designed to speed up healing and reduce scarring. The masks are part of a larger program which provides 3D printed masks and prosthetics to burn patients, and so far has treated more than 100 people from Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Haiti. AFP
The information superhighway is still awesome
This is the best written, most detailed, and most compelling account we’ve come across of what ketamine treatment for PTSD feels like, by the executive editor of Popular Science, Rachel Feltman. “I experience a mental quiet I have never known before. I’m able to have one single thought at a time. I luxuriate over each notion like it’s a piece of chocolate melting in my mouth. I am achingly kind to myself in these moments, and I ache to be so kind to myself at all times.”
Ezra Klein sat down with a technologist, a policymaker, a professor and a novelist to talk about climate change and democracy, and the result is an unusually lucid and nuanced conversation about where things might be headed. Come for the KSR, stay for some very careful tiptoeing around geoengineering. NYT
Business journalism and comics aren’t exactly natural bedfellows, but that’s what makes this ‘article’ all the more fun. It’s the story of how Turkish thieves stole $40 million of copper by spray-painting rocks, which already gives you a pretty compelling headline, and that’s before you get to the illustrations. To The Internet - more of this kind of thing please.
Or this, a crushing meditation on identity and desire by a lonely mother, and even this, an all too familiar memory, years later, of what searing teenage embarrassment feels like.
Kevin Maguire is doing such a good job over at the New Fatherhood, it feels like he’s really plugging a big hole in online conversations around parenting. In this post he explores the search for purpose that confronts so many new dads, and ends up stuck “in between two mountains” but perhaps, finally with a pathway out.
Breathtaking, in so many senses of the word. One of the world’s best freedivers, Toulouse Néry, and his wife, Julie Gautier, created this masterpiece in 2019. We guarantee it’s one of the most amazing things you will ever watch, an underwater journey “in the space between two breaths.” Stick with it for the sound of cracking ice sheets, and the sleeping sperm whales. Humans are amazing .
Humankind
Meet Nancy Hernandez, a 60 year old survivor of human trafficking in Tampa, who has transformed her trauma into a mission to help survivors of abuse create a better life for themselves and their families.
Born in Puerto Rico to a poor and dysfunctional family, Nancy was 18 when she visited New York and met an older man who promised her the American Dream. Her dream spiralled into a nightmare when Nancy’s new husband pimped her out to drug dealers and forced her to traffic drugs inside her body around the world. For 27 years Nancy endured daily abuse without any hope of release.
Her escape came by chance when her husband was killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve in 2006. Nancy was 45 years old and finally in control of her life, “it was a new beginning, at a time when I thought I couldn’t change anything.” But she was dealt another blow, a cancer diagnosis attributed to the harsh chemicals her body had endured. Not one to throw away her second chance, Nancy survived her cancer battle, found God and returned to the streets of Tampa with a single purpose - to give other survivors the help that she spent years searching for.
Nancy’s mission started small, collecting donations to buy food. Every day she walked down Nebraska Avenue, handing out sandwiches and water to survivors of abuse and listening to their stories. Driven by faith and grit, Nancy created a network of support and helped women find homes, food and health assistance. In 2014 Nancy formalized her charitable acts into a non-profit Mujeres Restauradas por Dios , ‘Women Restored by God’.
The organisation opened its first brick-and-mortar location last month, on Nebraska Avenue, not far from where Nancy started handing out sandwiches 14 years ago. Her network includes 43 organizations that help survivors navigate everything from insurance and mental health to financial assistance. Mujeres Restauradas por Dios also played a key role in finding services for people evacuated from Puerto Rico after the devastation of hurricanes Irma and Maria, and hasprovided 1.5 million pounds of food to over 7,000 families during the pandemic. There’s always food and a toiletries pantry on site.
Today she’s heralded as a local hero in Tampa, but she’s never forgotten what it feels like to be powerless. Her message to survivors is clear and powered by hope and solidarity - “You can get out of there. You are not alone. This woman is here for you. This woman is here to help you.”
Food donations are unloaded at the new offices of Mujeres Restauradas por Dios by Nancy Hernandez, left, and volunteers Dulce Reyes and Yesenia Guerra.
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@seities Don’t know if you have seen it/are interested but young suzzer is about to run a walrus
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
India has made amazing progress in reducing visceral leishmaniasis , commonly known as kala-azar. You’ve probably heard of it in western media as the “flesh-eating disease” (it’s like crack for newspaper editors). According to a new report from the WHO, the number of cases has decreased by 97% since 1992. Last year, there were only 2,048 cases, and 37 deaths.
Cancer death rates continue to decline in the United States for all racial and ethnic groups. For men, the death rate dropped by an average of 2.3% a year between 2015 and 2018; for women, an average of 2.1% during the same time period. STAT
With more people living longer lives, the overall number of Alzheimer’s cases in rich countries has risen. What you might not know however, is that the actual percentage of people with the disease is falling - there has been a 16% decrease in Alzheimer’s incidence in the OECD decade-on-decade since 1988. El Pais
Last month marked the ten year anniversary of a groundbreaking treaty establishing global labour standards to protect the rights of domestic workers. Over the last decade, 32 countries have signed up, comprehensive laws have been passed in several of them, and there have been improvements in many others, including minimum wages, rest days, paid holidays, written contracts, access to labour courts, and collective bargaining agreements. The International Domestic Worker Federation, founded in 2013, now has half a million members worldwide. HRW
Domestic worker and human rights organizations join forces to demonstrate at the opening of policy negotiations at the International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, June 2010. Credit: Jennifer Natalie Fish
California, home to 40 million people, has just passed a budget with a massive increase in education spending, including universal kindergarten for 4 year olds and the United States’ first free breakfast and lunch program for all students. Edsource
Work has begun in Chile on the world’s first constitution to be drafted by an equal number of women and men. The historic moment is a direct result of the 2019 protests that challenged inequality in one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries. NBC
Urban planners across Europe are redesigning transport systems to be more accessible to all genders. For over a century, the male commute to work by car has been favoured, with wide roads that left little room for footpaths commonly used more by women. Change is now afoot in Paris, Barcelona and Vienna, where new policies are favouring pedestrians and cyclists. Bloomberg
Barcelona is converting one in three of its streets into small parks. 21 new plazas like the one below will be made at road junctions. Safe outdoor space within 200 metres of all homes that cater to pedestrians, offering shaded spaces in summer and facilitating spontaneous children’s play.
A city made for humans, not cars.
A nationwide movement to ban ‘tampon taxes’ across the United States is gaining momentum. Maine, Louisiana and Vermont just passed laws exempting menstrual products from sales taxes, and lawmakers in 20 other states have introduced similar legislation in the last 12 months. 19thnews
File under “most unsurprising news ever.” The world’s largest and longest trial of a four day work week resulted in a massive increase in well-being for its participants. Around 1% of Iceland’s working population took part, cutting their week to 36 hours with no reduction in pay, and no reduction in productivity either. Independent
File under “the news doesn’t tell you what’s happening in the world, it tells you what’s rare.” The proportion of Americans who consider themselves to be thriving reached 59.2% last month, the highest since Gallup started asking the question 13 years ago. The pollsters think it’s down to three things: an incredibly successful vaccination rollout, improving economic conditions, and perhaps most importantly, the psychological benefit of renewed social interaction.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
After reducing coal to less than 2% of its energy mix in 2020, the UK is bringing its end of coal target forward by a year, to 2024. That means that in just over 40 months, the country that gave us coal-fired electricity in the first place will become the first major industrialized economy to switch coal off. For good. Reuters
Spain won’t be far behind. It’s just joined an alliance of 23 countries committed to closing all their coal plants by 2030. The country is already on the leading edge, with 85% of coal capacity due to close by the end of 2022. Euractiv
Americans consumed fewer fossil fuels last year than they have in three decades. Consumption of petroleum, natural gas, and coal dropped by 9% compared to 2019, the biggest annual decrease since the EIA started keeping track in 1949. As a result, greenhouse gas emissions fell to a 40 year low.
The average utilization rate of India’s coal-fired fleet has collapsed to 53% in the last financial year. Why does this matter? Because most of India’s coal plants were financed on the assumption they would be running 85-90% of the time. At current rates, it costs less to build new wind and solar than to keep those coal plants running. Money talks. IIEFA
Seriously. Money talks. We’re halfway through 2021, and more green bonds have been issued worldwide than in all of 2020 (which was already a record year). Sustainability is suddenly very, very sexy. Every major activity is above last year’s trend lines: Corporations are making more pledges to procure clean energy, financial markets are issuing more sustainable debt, and investors are putting more money into ESG themed exchange-traded funds.
On that note, we thought it was worth reproducing in full this tweet, by Australian energy journalist, Ketan Joshi:
The only home we’ve ever known
Local volunteers and students in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated state, have done it again, planting 250 million saplings in a single day as part of a mission to increase forest cover to 15% within the next five years. DW
The EU’s ‘great packaging purge’ has officially commenced. As of the 3rd July, plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, balloon sticks and polystyrene drink and food containers are no longer available for sale across the continent. DW
Lawmakers in Tierra del Fuego have chosen environment over industry, banning salmon farming in the waters of the South American archipelago. Chile exports US$4.4 billion of salmon each year but the impact on local ecosystems, including the macroalgae forests had become a growing concern. Mercopress
California’s new state budget has allocated millions of dollars to phase out swordfish nets. The measures will prevent the deaths of hundreds of whales and sea turtles and hundreds of dolphins, seals and sea lions over the next decade. SF Chronicle
New research has shown that falling air pollution in the United States between 1999 and 2019 accounted for an almost 20% increase in agricultural yields in the nine states – Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin – that produce about two-thirds of US maize and soybeans.
Another pipeline bites the dust. The proposed Byhalia Connection, a crude oil pipeline in Memphis, has been abandoned, following a vocal campaign by local activists and celebrities that highlighted the potential threats to the drinking water of mostly black neighbourhoods. USA Today
The Wild Ingleborough project is now underway in the UK, aiming to transform 1,200 hectares of heavily grazed pastures in the Yorkshire Dales into new native woodland. 300 hectares have already being restored, with rowan, hawthorn and hazel trees planted, and hundreds of metres of drystone wall rebuilt. Country Life
Through this project, we want to show that a wilder world is a more stable one, with nature more resilient and able to adapt to change. Together with our partners and the local community, we hope to create a rich, diverse landscape for people and wildlife to thrive - Tanya Steele, Chief Executive, WWF
Where limestone pavement has been allowed to regenerate, plant life grows and the landscape in the Wild Ingleborough project site moves towards a wilder, more natural state. Credit: Andrew Parkinson / WWF-UK
Indistinguishable from magic
The first fully flushable, biodegradable pregnancy test is now available for sale in the US. The country uses 20 million tests every year, which have been accumulating in landfills for decades. These new tests, developed over six years by a women-led team, are the first major update to pregnancy testing since the 1980s. Byrdie
Paramedics in the UK have a new teammate - a robot that does the CPR for them. The robot, unlike a human, doesn’t get tired or change its delivery, meaning it can deliver high-quality CPR for as long as required, freeing up its human counterparts to focus on the clinical care. Independent
Researchers at the University of St Andrews have shown that elite freedivers have brain oxygen levels and heart rates equivalent to seals, whales, and dolphins. “We measured heart rates as low as 11 beats per minute and blood oxygenation levels, which are normally 98%, drop to 25%, far beyond the point at which we expect people to lose consciousness.” Arf!
Biologists in Chicago have developed a method, powered by machine learning, that allows them to watch how the human body converts glucose to energy at both the cellular and sub-cellular levels. This is the first time this kind of imaging has been possible, and could lead to an array of new treatments for multiple diseases. Sci Tech Daily
This one takes a little while to get your head around, but we promise it’s worth it. Someone just simulated the amount of time it would take for a space-faring civilization to colonize the Milky Way and the results are confounding. It sounds like sci-fi, but the assumptions are pretty conservative: spacecraft that travel at 30km per second, comparable to our own, an interstellar range of 10 light years, and 100,000 year gaps in between the establishment of new colonies. Even then, it only takes a billion years to colonize the galaxy (and things speed up really fast when you get to the centre). So… where are they ? And no, grainy videos from an F16 dashcam don’t count. Spice up your next Fermi’s Paradox conversation and read this, honestly, it’s great. Universe Today
https://youtu.be/hNMgtRf0GOghttps://futurecrunch.com/content/images/2021/07/Space-Civilization.gif(image larger than 8 MB)
Animation showing a hypothetical settlement of the galaxy. White points are unsettled stars, pink spheres are settled stars, white cubes represent a settlement ship in transit. Once the Galaxy’s center is reached, the rate of colonization increases dramatically. Youtube
The information superhighway is still out there, buried beneath the noise
Two excellent essays on culture and politics in China, through two very unexpected lenses. The first is from Rolling Stone, and looks at what happens when rock n’ roll comes into contact with an authoritarian state intent on stamping out any hint of rebellion, the second has the irresistible title of Ketamine and the Return of the Party-State, and is one of the best pieces of political analysis you’ll read this year.
“At the beginning of the pandemic my homesickness was a pebble, a small stone I carried with me throughout the day. Now, fifteen months later with no end in sight, as Australia’s borders tighten and its fear of others makes the world even smaller, my sadness grows.” Sisonke Msimang on homesickness, grief and global injustice. Heavy, beautiful. Guernica
So meta. 23 newsletter writers… on their favourite newsletter writers. The Cut
Marc Andreessen interviewed by a mild-mannered, centre-left economist, and an ultranationalist, alt-right fascist troll, respectively. If nothing else, you’ll find a window here into a worldview held by many in the tech industry. You decide.
Former Olympian and British diplomat, Cath Bishop, on redefining what winning looks like in the 21st century. Instead of simply checking if we’ve completed a number of tasks or achieved a set of short-term outcomes, we’re better off asking 'how have we made progress towards our longer-term purpose?" Taking Time
Razib Khan is one of our favourite Substack writers, and our go to for anything on ancient human genetics. He’s got the lowdown on what the discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ means for the human family tree, including a reminder that most of humanity is descended from a group of about 10,000 people that left Africa roughly 60,000 years ago. Altogether now! " Race is a meaningless concept ." *
This is not what genetic diversity looks like: human faces from Santa Fe, New Mexico / Stockholm, Sweden / Shanghai, China / Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia / Uluru, Australia and North Sentinel Island. All of these people are more genetically similar than any two Africans.
Humankind
We’ve never profiled a celebrity in this section before (the whole point is to introduce you to people that don’t usually make it into the news). On the eve of the Euro2020 finals though, we’re making an exception for Marcus Rashford.
The 23 year-old British footballer is famous as a forward for Manchester United and England, but last year he traded soccer goals for humanitarian ones. It all started with a tweet. On 19th March 2020, a day after the UK announced it would cancel meal vouchers over the summer holiday, Marcus jumped onto Twitter arguing that it was the government’s responsibility to support the children who relied on free school meals to eat. A groundswell of support followed and suddenly the footballer, who rarely expressed opinions, found himself front and centre of a furious public policy debate.
Marcus understood the value of a £15-a-week school meal voucher. He was raised by a single mum, who worked multiple jobs, and often scarified her own food to make sure Marcus and his 4 siblings were fed. Posting an open letter to his local MP, he urged his 4.4 million followers to do the same and explained “ the system was not built for families like mine to succeed, regardless of how hard my mum worked. As a family, we relied on breakfast clubs, free school meals, and the kindness of neighbours and coaches.”
The next day the government announced a Covid summer food fund, giving 1.3 million kids meal vouchers over the holidays. Marcus joined forces with the charity FareShare to help fill the gap for the rest. By October, he was on a mission again, petitioning for an extension of out-of-term free school meals until Easter 2021. When the government refused to budge Marcus appealed to businesses to offer free meals and food to people in need. The response was astonishing, from small cafes to supermarket chains, Marcus retweeted pledge after pledge forcing the government into a second U-turn, extending the school food programme into the Easter, summer and Christmas breaks in 2021.
Through his work with FareShare, Marcus has helped raise enough money to distribute over 21 million meals to children and families who might not otherwise have eaten. In October 2020 he became the youngest person to top The Sunday Times Giving List and has vowed to “fight for the rest of my life” to end child hunger in the UK.
Rashford takes the knee before a Euro2020 warm-up match against Romania
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Chicken will make it to the plate still. Thanks goat!
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
Portugal has shut down its last coal-fired power plant, nine years ahead of its 2030 target. It’s the fourth country in the European Union to stop burning coal - Belgium quit coal in 2016, and Austria and Sweden followed suit in 2020. AP
India has achieved its target of having 40% of installed electricity powered by non-fossil fuel energy sources. Energy, mainly from renewables and a small amount of nuclear sources, generates 156.83 of 390.8 GW of the country’s electricity. India is committed to reaching 500 GW of clean energy by 2030. Economic Times
Germany’s new government has announced a new climate protection programme that will bring forward its coal exit by 8 years to 2030. The country’s aim is to increase renewable capacity from 65% to 80% of its electricity needs. C’mon Australia! Reuters
Canada is fast-tracking legislation to ban the practice of LGBTQ+ “conversion therapy". If successful, Canada will join Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, and Malta where the practice is already banned. Guardian
Another win for for LGBTQ+ rights. In Chile, landmark legalisation has finally recognised same-sex marriage. The victory comes after a 4 year campaign by activists and the new legislation will enable same-sex couples to adopt children. Chile joins a growing list of Catholic Latin American countries who have legalised same-sex marriage including Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and 14 of Mexico’s 32 states. BBC
Good news for a furry friends in Spain. New legislation now recognises animals as “sentient beings". 200,000 animals are abandoned in Spain each year and advocates have fought hard since 2017 for this law, which will protect animals from being mistreated, abandoned, or separated from one of their owners in the case of a divorce or separation. IFL Science
The largest-ever study of psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, has revealed the psychedelic drug is a highly effective alternative for treatment-resistant depression. 29.1% of patients in the highest dose group were in remission 3 weeks after a single dose, and more than a quarter of those patients sustained remission three months after. STAT News
“Everyone agrees such a result hasn’t been seen before in depression research, so we’re incredibly happy with that result.” - Lars Christian Wilde, Co-founder and President of Compass
Researchers in Cambridge are developing a biodegradable glitter made from cellulose nanocrystals rather than microplastics. Although cellulose is naturally clear, it creates colours through a process called self-assembly, in which the crystals align and twist, refracting light. Although the glitter alternative will be pollution-free, it promises to be just as annoying for parents! Eco Watch
Warning: Trigger alert for parents everywhere!
The only home we’ve ever known
For the first time, scientists will map the world’s underground fungal networks, which until now have been largely unexplored. Understanding these interconnected webs called mycelium could help us tackle climate change. Fungal networks store billions of tonnes of CO2 and act as nutrient “highways” for plants and trees and allow them to communicate. The map will identify sites with the potential to store more C02 and help protect them from external threats like agricultural fertilisers. Guardian
“An understanding of underground fungal networks is essential to our efforts to protect the soil, on which life depends, before it is too late.” - Jane Goodall, who is an advisor on the project
Nepal is on track to become the first country to double its tiger population in 2022. It’s part of TX2, a global imitative supported by Russia, Nepal and 13 other countries. Nepal’s tiger population has grown steadily from 121 tigers 11 years ago, to 235 tigers 3 years ago and the country is likely to reach the 250-mark next year. The Star
A mother rests with her two-month-old in Bandhavgarh National Park, where—contrary to the global trend—managers have built up tiger numbers. (Photograph Steve Winter, Nat Geo)
After 35 years of conservation, the population of the endangered Burrowing Parrot in Chile has increased from 217 in 1986 to over 4000. The success is largely due to the protection of Río de los Cipreses National Reserve which contains the native plants that are a vital part of their diet. Evolve to Ecology
WildEast, an innovative project in East Anglia in the UK, will rewild an area 3 times the size of New York City and create wildlife corridors across some of the country’s most intensely farmed land. The project, initiated by 3 estate owners who all committed their land, aims to restore biodiversity to 618,000 acres by 2070. Mongabay
This could be the world’s biggest sex event! Coral along the Great Barrier Reef has spawned; releasing trillions of eggs and sperm into the ocean and giving ecologists hope for the reef’s recovery. Two-thirds of the coral across the reef was damaged by unusually warm ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017 and 2020. Marine scientists and local tourism operators are using ‘coral IVF’ to collect the eggs from parts of the reef that have spawned significantly and transport them to restore parts of the reef that have suffered the most damage. NPR
“The reef has gone through its own troubles like we all have, but it can still respond — and that gives us hope. I think we must all focus on the victories as we emerge from the pandemic.” - Gareth Phillips, Marine Scientist
New hope for China’s coastal wetlands with satellite imagery showing significant recovery over the last 10 years. After decades of destruction, mainly due to economic development wetland areas decreased between 1984 and 2011 but started rebounding after 2012. The turnaround is attributed to several conservation projects that started in the 1990s, when China realised the importance of these vital ecosystems and sprung into action. Mongabay
Humankind
Saving the world’s oceans with YouTube
Meet Mark Rober and Jimmy Donaldson AKA ‘MrBeast’, two of the world’s most popular YouTube personalities who are on a mission to raise $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of waste from oceans, rivers, and beaches over the next 3 years.
If you’re over the age of 25, these names probably won’t sound familiar but mention them to any young members of your family, they’ll reply with loud squeals and fist pumps.
At 23-years old, Kansas-born Jimmy (MrBeast) is one of the most-viewed people on YouTube with over 72 million subscribers tuning into his big money giveaways and stunts. Meanwhile 41-year old Mark is an ex-NASA engineer, who applies his experience from working on projects like the Curiosity rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to crazy experiments for kids, making him the world’s coolest science teacher with almost 20 million subscribers.
The two YouTubers first joined forces in 2019, turning their popularity into purpose with #TeamTrees, a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation where they aimed to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees. The initiative became one of the largest creator-led fundraising campaigns in history, bringing in over $23 million and two years on is still receiving enough donations to plant 2,600 trees per day.
For #TeamSeas, Jimmy and Mark have partnered with non-profit organisations Ocean Conservancy, a volunteer based program and Ocean Cleanup which uses a solar-powered machine to remove trash. Both organisations have pledged to remove one pound of rubbish for every dollar raised. Since launching on October 29th, #TeamSeas has already raised over $17 million.
Although many people still see YouTube as a platform for silly videos and gaming, Jimmy believes it can be a powerful driver for change and wants wants to prove that “Gen Z” can make a difference beyond “just retweets.” And there’s every chance the difference these two Youtubers make will impact not just their sizable audiences but future generations as well.
“Some of the challenges we face won’t be solved in our lifetime, but this is one that we can solve. The Great Pacific garbage patch is big, but in 10 years, with the right funding, we can remove that out of the ocean.”- Mark Rober
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
Vaccine distribution is finally picking up speed outside rich countries. COVAX, the global vaccine sharing initiative, delivered a record-breaking 309 million doses of covid vaccine across 70 low and middle income countries last month. As of 30th December 2021, the UN-backed scheme had delivered roughly 910 million doses around the world. WaPo
“Our projections show that supply should be sufficient to vaccinate the entire global adult population and to give boosters to high-risk populations, by the first quarter of 2022.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General, WHO
In a rare display of unity, the world’s superpowers have agreed a nuclear war must never be fought. Leaders from China, UK, US, Russia, and France just released a joint statement pledging to ‘reduce strategic risks’ and work together to create an atmosphere of security. SMH
UNICEF has updated data on global child mortality trends, and it’s really good news. Thus far, the pandemic has not resulted in the feared reversal - rather, child mortality actually decreased in 2020, to 37 deaths per 1,000 live births. The longer term trends are even more encouraging, with the under five mortality rate falling by more than half since 2000.
That little pink circle represents millions of lives saved in the last twenty years.
Tanzania has lifted a 20-year ban preventing adolescent mothers from attending school. The ban was rooted in policy from the 1960s that included a mandatory pregnancy test and potential arrest if pregnant. Under the new law, young mothers will be allowed to resume their formal education after giving birth. Citizen
Canada and France have just outlawed conversion therapy, passing comprehensive legislation within days of each other. Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania, and Germany have already fully or partially banned the practice and another 11 countries, including New Zealand, Mexico, Spain, and Britain are currently working towards reform.
Further victories for human rights around the globe. A Taiwanese court made a landmark ruling allowing a man to legally adopt his husband’s non-biological child, Israel has lifted its surrogacy ban, allowing single men and same-sex couples to pursue surrogacy, and new legislation in the Faroe Islands has granted equal parental rights for same-sex couples.
The only home we’ve ever known
Ten countries in the western Indian ocean are joining forces to create a network of marine conservation areas dubbed the ‘Great Blue Wall’. The first stage of the project will be in the Pemba Channel off the coast of Tanzania, and focus on restoring coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass meadows. Mongabay
An international group of researchers has compiled the first database of marine conservation efforts in China, and the results have surprised everyone. The country has 326 protected areas covering almost 13% of its territorial waters — and the researchers still aren’t sure they’ve found all of them. Hakai
France has started 2022 on the front foot, with a ban on plastic packaging for 30 fruits and vegetables coming into effect on the 1st January. An estimated 37% of fresh produce was sold in plastic packaging in France last year and the new measures should eliminate over a billion pieces of packaging per year. Guardian
Policy changes in the UK mean that farmers will now receive taxpayers’ cash to rewild their land. Previously, farmers were given grants based on how much land they farmed, but will now be paid for environmental improvements instead. Rewilding is having a big of a moment in the UK; the Independent has a great list of some of the projects already underway.
A historic win for animal rights in Italy, with new legislation banning fur farming across the country. The amendment includes an immediate ban on the breeding of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas and the closure of 10 remaining mink farms by June 30, 2022. Italy is the 16th European country to outlaw the practice. Ecowatch
In thirty years of the animal rights battle this is our best victory. Finally, a parliamentary vote sanctions the end of unspeakable suffering inflicted on animals only in the name of profit and vanity.”
Michela Vittoria Brambilla, President of the Parliamentary Intergroup for Animal Rights Italy
New data from wildlife surveys shows Mexico’s endangered jaguar population increased by 20% between 2010 and 2018, giving conservationists confirmation that their strategies are working. Protection measures have included the creation of wildlife corridors and incentive programs with local communities.
Two jaguars on a riverbank in Mexico. Photo credit: Gerardo Ceballos
Jaguar census map: Current geographic range of jaguar (Panthera onca) in Mexico (blue, Ceballos et al. 2018) and records from the past 20 years. Credit: Ceballos G et al 2021
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Another carmarker is going all-electric. Chrysler says it will stop producing combustion engine powered vehicles by 2028. Also, Hyundai quietly announced at the end of last year that it’s closing its combustion engine development division at its R&D centre. “Now, it is inevitable to convert into electrification.”
The Czech Republic has brought forward its coal phase out date to 2033, five years ahead of its original target, and South Korea has permanently shut its two oldest coal-fired power plants, and plans to retire another 24 by 2034. Expect these dates to come forward over the next few years as the economic burden of expensive coal really starts to bite.
In 2016, as part of the Paris Agreement, India committed to achieving 40% of its electricity capacity from non-fossil energy sources by 2030, a target climate activists lamented was not nearly ambitious enough. They’ll be pleased then, that India has officially achieved that target nine years ahead of schedule . Economic Times
We’re suckers for a good demolition video, and this one is the perfect combination of spectacle and symbolism. Scotland has officially ended its coal-powered history by demolishing the huge chimney at Longannet in Fife. Built in 1970, it was part of what used to be the largest coal plant in Europe, and the largest freestanding structure in Scotland. BBC
Half a century and 700kg of explosives later, it’s a pile of rubble next to the mouth of the River Forth.
Good news from China. A new regulation has been issued by the SASAC (a ministerial-level organization directly underneath the all-powerful State Council), stating that all of China’s state-owned enterprises need to achieve a 50% share of renewables in installed power capacity by 2025. In case it’s not apparent, this is a really big deal.
Staying with China, new data shows the country’s EV market continues to go gangbusters. Sales, which skyrocked by 154% last year to 3.3 million, are forecast to almost doubleagain this year. The best-selling vehicle in the country? A $4,500, tiny, no-frills, three-door vehicle about the same size as a Smart car, called the Yuling Mini.
A Swiss company is planning on building a floating array of 33 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 15 MW, off the coast of Italy, Apparently it’s not even a headline anymore that someone wants to float Eiffel Tower-sized turbines in the Ionian Sea, we’re all just like, “yep, heard about that last year.” Offshore Wind
We’ve been around long enough to remember the outrage in the early 2010s about Queensland’s Galilee coal basin, a dozen coal-mining projects that would have almost single handedly blown out the global carbon budget. Quietly and largely unannounced the projects – and their associated jobs claims – have fallen away. So far, one has made it out the gate, and even that’s looking shaky.
Texas is still the US state that most people associate most closely with the fossil fuels industry (a century’s worth of fortunes, won and and lost, tends to have that effect). You might be surprised to hear that nearly 40% of the Lone Star state’s power was carbon free in 2021. Just gonna go and leave this one here…
Drill baby dri… oh
Indistinguishable from magic
Forget everything you learned at school about lightning. Scientists in the Netherlands have for the first time, revealed lightning being born inside a thundercloud. Using radio telescopes, they achieved a frame rate 200 times faster than previous efforts, successfully unveiling the mysterious process by which bolts arise, grow and propagate to the ground. Quanta
Paleontologists in the UK have made an astonishing fossil find: an almost completely intact, gigantic prehistoric ‘sea dragon’. The 10 metre long ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in Britain, and you should really check out these pictures. Imagine this thing versus Jaws? BBC
After several tense days, the largest and most sophisticated space telescope of all time is now complete. The last of its hexagonal mirror segments just locked into position, creating one 6.5-metre-wide, gold-coated cosmic eye. The move caps two weeks of flawless engineering manoeuvres - the most complex astronomical deployment ever attempted in space. Nature
The Webb deployments have been perfect. We are now all part of history as we watch this magnificent machine getting ready to explore the Universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope, shown in this artist’s illustration, has successfully unfolded its mirrors and sunshield after launch. Credit: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/NASA GSFC/CIL
Seven months after its last fusion record, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has smashed it once again. Their ‘artificial Sun’ tokomak has maintained a roiling loop of plasma superheated to 120 million degrees °C Celsius (216 million degrees °F) for a gobsmacking 1,056 seconds. This is a significant advance in the pursuit of fusion energy. Science Alert
Doctors in Maryland have transplanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans. Guardian
Off the beaten track on the information highway
Dan Wang’s annual letter is something of an institution at Future Crunch, we link to it every year. Ben Thompson, from Stratechery, calls him “one of the deepest thinkers and most careful observers of the world that I know.” You can see why. Unparalleled, insider analysis of China, combined with critiques of Italian opera, amazing book recommendations, and a cycling travelogue.
Bathsheba Demuth, a historian from New England, journeys to the Bering Sea to understand gray whales, and their relationship with the Chukchi and Yupik people who still hunt them. A beautiful piece of writing about a way of life we had no idea existed. When she returns home to tell her story, listeners are shocked. “Don’t confuse the distance civilisation keeps from death with the end of dying.” Granta (non paywall version here).
Noah Smith is simultaneously one of the most prolific and most insightful economists on the internet. We don’t know how, but his posts are consistently excellent. Here he is in conversation with Tyler Cowen (who should need no introduction), and we also recommend his interview with Patrick Collison, from Stripe. Two goldmines of fresh thinking. Highly recommended.
If you were born before 1990 then Jason Guriel’s lament about modern day media’s tyranny of choice might strike a chord. " Owning physical media forced you to reckon with it, to appreciate it. We steeped ourselves in stuff, and the stuff would start to sink in. Art has always required second—and third and fourth—chances to saturate the mind." Yale Review
The Economist has a great interactive article about the work of Zimbabwean archaeologist Shadreck Chirikure, and how his research is forcing the world to reimagine the story of ancient African civilisations. News organisations tend to use this format as a bit of a gimmick, but it works perfectly here, with the visuals really bringing the story to life.
Humankind
‘First Aid’ for mental health in Bangladesh
Meet Fairooz Faizah Beether, a young woman in Bangladesh who has transformed her battle with depression into a movement that is challenging deep rooted stigmas around mental health and giving thousands of young people access to help whenever they need.
Born and raised in Khulna, Fairooz was only 13 years old when her father was murdered. As an only child, she carried the trauma alone and her mother, recognising her daughter’s depression, got Fairooz the help she needed. Although ‘talk therapy’ was regarded as taboo in her country, the experience ignited a deep calling to raise awareness and help others who were struggling.
While studying at her local university, Fairooz was part of a group assignment that asked students to identify a social problem and design a solution. To tackle the issue of mental health, Fairooz and her peers created a simple online form to connect anonymous visitors with mental health counsellors, but struggled to find enough qualified professionals. Inspired by a term in psychology known as ‘para counsellors’, the team changed their strategy to a ‘first aid service’ for mental health by empowering people to provide emergency mental support to others.
In 2018, Fairooz launched the Moner School: a youth-led mental health platform, providing education, para counselling workshops and a 24/7 online first-aid service, as well as contact with mental health professionals. To increase awareness, Fairooz has openly shared her struggles with depression and despite being initially shamed, the stigma in Bangladesh is beginning to fade. In 2021, the Moner School organised the country’s biggest mental health workshop reaching 11,000 youth across Bangladesh.
Fairooz is now turning her focus to giving primary school children the same tools that helped her overcome tragedy in her early life. "We believe the experiences of early childhood can leave a more significant impact later in life. We want to reach every single school in Bangladesh to train them for mental health, body shaming, and bullying.
Fairooz Faizah Beether, founder of Moner School.
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
Cancer mortality rates in the United States have dropped by a third since the 90s due to ‘major progress’ in early detection and treatment for lung cancer. Lung cancer mortality decreased by 5% each year between 2015 and 2019 and is attributed to annual screenings and smoking prevention programs. CNN
I’m an oncologist, so I’m an inveterate optimist. But I think the key message for the public is that there’s room for optimism across all types of cancer.
Dr. Deb Schrag, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre
Last weekend, Uganda conducted a door to door vaccination program to immunise eight million children against polio - in just three days. Uganda has achieved incredible results in childhood health over the past 20 years, with the mortality rate for under fives dropping by more than half. East African
A ground-breaking change to health regulations in Canada will allow patients suffering from serious mental health illnesses to access psychedelic therapies, including psilocybin and MDMA. The amendment represents a ‘seismic shift’ towards the legalization of psychedelics, which can be effective in treating PTSD and depression. Calgary Herald
Fatal police shootings in America dropped by 13% between 2020 and 2021, reaching the lowest annual number on record. Biggest drop? Florida. Increased public accountability and initiatives replacing armed officers with healthcare and social workers for mental-health related 911 calls contributed to the decline. ABC
Police officers follow participants of the March for Abortion Access, on Oct. 2, 2021, in Orlando, FL. Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP
The Kenyan government has made a historic commitment to the rights of women and girls, vowing to end gender-based violence by 2026. $23 million has been allocated to prevention and response services, research, and the establishment of a survivors’ fund. The achievement comes after decades of tireless advocacy. Gates Foundation
Landmark legislation in the Philippines has banned child marriage, constituting the practice as child abuse. This is a big, big moment for the country with one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage. Bravo to the activists who made this happen. SCMP
Technology, education, and community efforts have helped Bangladesh reduce cyclone-related deaths more than 100-fold since 1970. The country’s multi-layered approach is leading the way for other developing countries to better manage the risks of climate disasters. New Humanitarian
Our parents did not learn about disasters when they were young, but we do. Climate change will bring bigger disasters in the future, but we know we can prepare for them. We are not afraid.
Purnima Sadhu, 16-year-old student in Bangladesh
Source: World Meteorological Organisation
The only home we’ve ever known
Ecuador has expanded its protected waters by 60,000 km2, building upon the existing Galapagos Marine Reserve, which already protects 138,000 km2 of ocean from extractive activities. Together, Costa Rica and Ecuador have now connected some of our ocean’s most important migration pathways, and two of its most biologically significant and productive habitats. DW
These islands teach us something about ourselves.
What if we didn’t set ourselves up as masters over this Earth, but as its protectors?
Guillermo Lasso, President of Ecuador
Over a thousand fin whales were seen swimming last week in the seas off Antarctica, the same ocean they were driven to near-extinction last century. Conor Ryan, the @whale_nerdthat spotted them, said that in 20 years at sea he’s never seen anything like it. “Words fail me. I’ve seen maybe 100 fins here before in previous years."
A new National Estuarine Research Reserve will be established in Connecticut, spanning 211 km2 along the south-eastern coast. The project will protect coastal forests, grasslands, marshes, beaches, and seagrass meadows, including 36% of the critically important Long Island Sound eelgrass ecosystem. The Day
A new survey in India has found forest and tree cover has increased by 2,261 km2 since 2019, and now covers almost a quarter of the geographical area of the country. While the government will continue conservation efforts, its focus will also turn to enriching the quality of these existing areas. Live Mint
For the first time this century, Beijing’s air quality met China’s national standards in 2021. The biggest achievement was the reduction of PM2.5, the most dangerous pollutant, which fell 13% last year, with levels down to a third of what they were a decade ago. CREA
Organisations in New York that throw out more than two tonnes of food each week will be required to donate or compost the waste under new legislation. The law will help the 2.2 million people struggling with food insecurity and cut emissions from the millions of tonnes of food waste produced each year. Eco Watch
Giraffe populations across Africa have rebounded by 20% since 2015. Targeted conservation measures, relocation programs and field research have contributed to the rise. Scientists also recently uncovered genetic evidence that there may be four species of giraffe rather than one, three of which have considerably increased in population. NatGeo
“On the neck of a giraffe a flea begins to believe in immortality” ~ Bill Vaughan. Image:WLDavies/Science
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Slovenia says it will stop using coal for generating electricity by 2033, one of the last EU countries to announce a coal phaseout, South East Asia’s largest coal miner just announced it’s divesting its entire coal business, and India’s richest person is investing $80 billion in clean energy in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Wind became the main source of electricity generation in Spain last year, registering 23% of total production. Overall, renewables produced 46% of the country’s electricity in 2021, an increase of almost 10% compared to 2020 (a decade ago, renewables’ share was less than 15%). Windpower Monthly
Good news here down under. Australian homes and businesses installed just over 3GW of rooftop solar in 2021, a new annual record. There’s now about 17GW of solar on the country’s roofs, not because Australians think it’s the right thing to do, but because they think it’s the cheaper thing to do. Oh, and the state of South Australia just ran for one weekon wind and sunshine alone.
Better move those goalposts, baseload’ologists.
Scotland has just finished leasing a mind-boggling 25GW of offshore wind. Even more amazing, almost 60% will be floating turbines, the first time this technology will be deployed commercially at scale. That has huge global significance; it means that offshore wind can be built in places with deeper coastlines, like Japan and Taiwan. FT
The diesel death march is picking up pace. Sales of EVs in Europe overtook diesel models for the first time ever in December. That’s a big milestone! More than a fifth of new cars sold across 18 European markets, including the UK, were powered exclusively by batteries, while diesel, once the most popular engine option, accounted for less than 19% of sales. FT
(also, the all-electric Porsche Taycan is now outselling the 911).
For a view of where things are heading, Norway’s experience is instructive. Only 8% of new cars sold there last year ran purely on gasoline or diesel, while two thirds were electric, and most of the rest were hybrids. The view of Norwegians as environmental diehards is wrong too - they started with exactly the same EV skepticism we’re seeing in other parts of the world right now. NYT
BP says its fast electric vehicle chargers are on the cusp of becoming more profitable than filling up a petrol car. " If we compare a tank of fuel versus a fast charge, we are nearing a place where the business fundamentals on the fast charge are better than they are on the fuel. " Reuters
Electron station?
Indistinguishable from magic
Chinese researchers have developed the world’s first lightweight, flexible body armour capable of protecting soldiers from tank-piercing weapons. Inspired by the shape of fish scales, and built out of silicon carbide, the armour can stop 7.62mm bullets fired at point-blank from penetrating its composite materials (nothing new under the sun? ) SCMP
Dutch engineers have invented a super sensitive infra-red sensor that’s cheap and easy to make, small enough to fit in a smartphone, and ready for immediate use in industrial monitoring and agriculture. The sensor is capable of analysing, for example, the nutritional content of milk or classifying different kinds of plastics. Sci Tech Daily
In news that should strike fear into the hearts of Tesla fanboys around the world, German engineers are starting to get serious about electric motors. BMW’s fifth generation EV engine doesn’t require any rare earth metals or magnets, allowing for higher RPM, more torque, and even more power. Motor Trend
Scientists at Stanford have developed an ultra-rapid genome sequencing technique that allows them to diagnose rare genetic diseases in an average of eight hours — a feat unheard of in standard clinical care. They now plan to offer sub-ten hour turnarounds to ICU patients at Stanford Hospital and the Children’s Hospital and, eventually, to other hospitals around the world.
Biogeochemists (yes, that’s a thing) from the Max-Planck-Institute in Germany have used data from satellites and hundreds of carbon-monitoring stations worldwide to create an animation of the Earth ‘breathing’ as carbon is taken up and released as the seasons change. Hard to look at this and not think of James Lovelock.
Source: Markus Reichstein
Off the beaten track on the information highway
Don’t know if Harpers has recently had a change of editorial leadership or something, but whatever they’re doing it’s working. Jessica Camille Aguirre’s account of her time spent in a biosphere in Arizona with an eccentric inventor is fantastic, and should be required reading for anyone with dreams of living on another planet ( soft paywall ).
William H Janeway, author of the indespensible Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, has a timely op-ed in Project Syndicate. He warns that years of low interest rates and high liquidity have cemented the idea of ‘capital as strategy.’ The problem, of course, is that capital is not a strategy; rather, it’s a resource whose supply and cost are highly variable historically.
Really enjoying Rachael Maddux’s newsletter, Vanitas, “about life, death and other dumb stuff.” Quite personal, and very writerly, so stay away if that’s not your thing.
There’s grumpy old men… and then there’s grumpy old men . Charlie Stross belongs firmly in the latter category, but we’re willingly to forgive him because he’s unfailingly smart and entertaining. Here’s his latest tirade against the forces of darkness. “It is now early 2022 and I clearly wasn’t pessimistic enough.” Antipope
Sci-fi demigod Neal Stephenson grants a rare interview to the NYT, in which he touches on storytelling, climate fiction, the Enlightenment, geoengineering, and what just might be the best ever explanation for why dystopias are so much more prevalent in popular culture than utopias.
Nice intro here to the work of Achille Mbembe, a Cameroonian political theorist and one of Africa’s leading public intellectuals. His area of interest is planetary politics, and what sets him apart in this field is his ability to draw on the animist metaphysics of precolonial Africa, with its emphasis on ‘the precariousness of life.’ Neoma
Humankind
Mr Borboroglu’s Penguins
Meet Pablo Garcia Borboroglu, a 52-year old biologist in Patagonia who has dedicated his life to studying and protecting the world’s penguin populations. His global conservation effort has saved over 1.6 million penguins and created 32 million acres of protected ocean and coastal habitat.
Pablo’s passion for penguins was inspired by his grandmother. As a young boy Pablo was captivated by her bedtime stories about travelling by horse and cart in the 1920s across Argentina to the Atlantic coast to see the penguin colonies. Pablo chose to study law at university and pursue a career as an ambassador, but never forgot his grandmother’s stories.
In the late 1980s, Pablo took a sabbatical from his studies to join volunteers in southern Argentina who were saving penguins from oil spills that were killing 40,000 birds a year. Although Pablo helped save thousands of birds, washing each one with soap and water, he knew a bigger change was needed. “When I released the first one back into the wild, it clicked – I realized that one individual action can have a big impact, so I started to scale up.”
By raising public awareness around the issue, Pablo forced the Argentinian government to create new tanker routes and prompted oil companies to change their practices. Pablo returned to university to earn a PhD. in biology and spent the next three decades researching penguins and working with governments around the world to make informed decisions about conservation.
In 2009, Pablo established the Global Penguin Society with a mission to protect the 18 different species of penguins through scientific research, the management of habitats and public education. The organisation has established numerous protected areas to safeguard nesting and feeding areas and has involved more than 7,000 children in education programs because Pablo believes “change begins with them.”
“The only way to be healthy is to be connected to wildlife. When we benefit penguins, we benefit the oceans, and we also benefit people.”
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I always open these in a new tab and then eventually read them. Thanks for posting.
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This thing has up to 610hp and 811 lb-ft of torque. To put that in perspective my old '96 Camaro Z28 that I had put some work into upgrading back in high school/college was probably a 12 second car - it was as fast as a stock Corvette. It had around 300hp and 300 lb-ft stock, I estimated it at about 400hp and 380 lb-ft modified.
Now that was a long time ago, but even by today’s standards the top end Corvette Z06 has 670hp.
So it looks like performance is not going to be the issue that keeps people who like sports cars from getting EVs.
1 Like
Good news you probably didn’t hear about
The WHO just published new data on global access to cooking fuels. In 1990, 53% of the global population used wood, charcoal, kerosene or dung. By last year, that proportion dropped to 36%. In actual numbers, that means that in a single human generation, an extra 2.48 billion people are now cooking with electricity or clean stoves.
India just completed its fifth National Family Health Survey, and hidden deep inside the impenetrable PDFs is some truly extraordinary data (keep in mind this is a country of 1.38 billion people). Between 2015 and 2020:
- The proportion of women with ten or more years of education increased from 35.7% to 41%.
- Contraceptive use increased from 54% to 67%.
- Teen pregnancy declined from 51 to 43 per 1,000 women.
- The neonatal mortality rate declined from 29.5 to 24.9 per 1,000 live births.
- Under-five mortality rate declined from 49.7 to 41.9 per 1,000 live births.
- The fertility rate decreased from 2.2 to 2.0, and is now below replacement levels in 23 of India’s 28 states.
- Access to improved sanitation skyrocketed from 48.5% to 70.2%.
- Access to electricity increased from 88% to 96.8%.
- Households using clean fuel or electricity for cooking increased from 43.8% to 58.6%
- Households with at least one person covered on a health insurance scheme increased from 28.7% to 41%.
Seems like an appropriate place to leave this tweet:
New legislation in Pakistan has significantly strengthened protections for women in the workplace. The law expands the definition of harassment to include “discrimination on the basis of gender, which may or may not be sexual in nature” and will protect domestic workers and students, as neither group were covered previously by law. HRW
A landmark court ruling in India will give sex workers identity documents, allowing them to access social welfare, bank accounts and voting. Although prostitution is legal, the lack of identification papers within the sex industry has left many workers vulnerable to trafficking and poverty. The reform comes after a decade of petitioning by a collective of sex workers in Kolkata. NYT
Thailand is on track to decriminalize marijuana, with a proposal to remove the plant from the list of controlled drugs. Currently, the plant is a category-5 narcotic drug and possession can lead to hefty fines and up to 15 years jailtime. Medical cannabis is already legal and can be used in foods and cosmetics. SCMP
A worker inspects marijuana leaves at a farm in Thailand. Photo: Reuters
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
The 27 countries of the European Union installed 25.9 GW of new solar capacity last year, an increase of 34% over 2020. That makes 2021 the best year for solar in Europe’s history. All EU states are now on track to reach their 2030 solar goals, with Latvia and Estonia already across the line, and Poland, Ireland, and Sweden expected to reach their targets next year. Yale360
Germany is ramping up its decarbonisation plans. The new government of Europe’s powerhouse economy is proposing 2% of total land area for wind power, will oblige all new commercial buildings to install solar, is targeting 50% of all building heating to be carbon neutral by 2030, and aims to cover 80% of total power demand with renewables by that date. PV Magazine
China built more offshore wind capacity in 2021 than the rest of the world managed in the last five years put together. Just to put that in context, the UK previously had the most offshore wind, with 10GW. China has just built 1.5x that in a single year, and twice as much as the IEA forecast in… December 2021. CCTV
Source: @DrSimonEvans
Israel and Jordan have put aside their former differences, with a radical barter agreement to combat the impacts of climate change. Water-scarce Jordan will provide about 600 MW of solar-generated electricity to Israel in exchange for 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water. Environmentally and politically, the agreement is “good reason for cautious optimism.” DW
It’s a win-win situation and a model for out-of-the-box thinking on climate security.
Gidon Bromberg, co-founder EcoPeace Middle East
In the home of cheap fracked gas, gas is proving to be not so cheap after all. Clean energy in the United States is now definitively less expensive - which is why gas powered generation is being replaced by wind and solar. Solar capacity is now 20 times greater in the US than it was in 2011, and wind capacity has more than doubled. Economics, not ideology, is driving the transition. EIA
Source: EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook , January 2022
First Norway, now Switzerland. Last year, an electric car sold more units in the country than any other car (gasoline, diesel, hybrid, etc.). The Tesla Model 3 didn’t just rule all electric sales, but all types of cars. Comparing November 2021 to November 2020, new car registrations for electric vehicles grew by +63%. Clean Technica
Tesla’s factory in California is now the most productive auto plant in North America. Last year it produced an average of 8,550 cars a week, more than Toyota’s juggernaut in Kentucky (8,427 cars a week), BMW’s Spartanburg hub in South Carolina (8,343) or Ford’s iconic truck plant in Michigan (5,564). Bloomberg
Also… 1,200 km on a single charge? Better move those goalposts, range anxiety-ists.
The only home we’ve ever known
Portugal has created Europe’s largest marine reserve to protect 2,677 km2 around the Selvagens Islands, an archipelago in the North Atlantic. Europe has lagged behind the rest of the world in marine protection, and it’s hoped Portugal’s decision will prompt other countries to take action. Tree Hugger
The Biden administration has committed over $1 billion to the restoration of Florida’s Everglades. The mammoth project will increase protection for hundreds of endangered plant and animal species and maintain the crucial source of drinking water for Florida’s 8 million residents. Miami Herald
The world’s largest oyster restoration has been achieved on the Piankatank and Great Wicomico rivers in Virginia with over 1,000 acres improving water quality and habitat for other wildlife. The initiative is part of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement which aimed to fully restore oyster populations in the bay’s tributaries by 2025. So far, four of the six targeted tributaries have met their restoration goals. Free Lance Star
We’re recognizing that natural resources are infrastructure, and they need to be taken care of just like we would roads or buildings.
Ralph Northam, Governor of Virginia
Indigenous farming practices are starting to gain serious momentum across western America. In Arizona, there were 291 farms with a Native American farm operator in 2002; today that number has expanded to more than 11,729 farms. Indigenous practices focus on “trying to reconnect with place by developing sustainable, organic produce for community members.” Civil Eats
The EU has taken its first steps towards banning live animal exports, and enforcing stricter rules to ensure humane transportation for slaughter, fattening or breeding. New rules will target overcrowding, food and water supplies and cap journey times at eight hours for domestic animals, and four hours for pregnant ones. World Animal News
A forestry company in Finland is at the helm of a huge new rewilding project to restore ecosystems impacted by decades of logging. Although 77% of Finland is forested, commercial plantations have destroyed almost all of the old growth. The restoration work will involve nine river basins and focus on recreating old spawning grounds for fish and rebuilding sustainable ecosystems. Guardian
People are starting to understand that rivers and clean waters are like the heart and lungs of the country. Finland doesn’t really have anything else other than nature.
Arttu Kuiri, Program Lead
Africa’s Great Green Wall is the world’s most ambitious reforestation project, with funding to match. 15 years in, has the project lived up to its hype? In Niger at least, the answer is yes. As of 2020, nearly 400,000 ha of desert has been restored, with the improved soil supporting an abundance of crops. Hundreds of communities are now working together to create economic opportunities from their thriving landscape. NYT
https://vp.nyt.com/video/2021/11/01/96938_1_00exposure_2_wg_720p.mp4https://futurecrunch.com/content/images/2022/01/GGW.gif(image larger than 8 MB)
Nomao Alkali, a standing on near his farm in the Great Green Wall.
Indistinguishable from magic
A major milestone has just been reached in quantum computing. Three separate teams from Australia, the Netherlands and Japan have all achieved over 99% accuracy for silicon-based quantum computing. That means silicon, along with superconductivity and ion traps, is now a serious candidate for creating large-scale quantum computers. Science Alert
Swiss roboticists have managed to get a quadrapedal robot to hike up a 1,098 m mountain in 31 minutes, about four minutes faster than average human hiker. What’s so impressive is the robot’s ability to combine visual perception with proprioception – a sense of touch – based on leg contact, allowing it to tackle rough terrain more efficiently and without falls or missteps. ETH
Engineers from Siemens and Ohio State University have invented a new kind of MRI machine that uses a lower magnetic field, but achieves the same resolution. That means less radiation exposure, access for patients with implanted medical devices, and a whole new way of imaging hearts and lungs. Laboratory Equipment
This is an important advancement for patients with cystic fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, heart failure, COVID-19 and any other disease where we’re trying to understand shortness of breath and evaluate both the heart and lungs.
Orlando Simonetti, OSU
Harvard and Broad Institute scientists have just launched a new generation of molecular carriers for delivering gene-editing technologies. Called engineered virus-like particles (eVLPs), they can deliver CRISPR and base editing to a myriad of organs with minimal side effects. Compared to previous methods, the eVLPs are far more efficient at landing on target, releasing their cargo, and editing cells. GEN
A super simple solution - putting LED lights on gillnets in Mexico - just achieved incredible results. Lighted gillnets reduced total bycatch by 63%, which included a 95% reduction in sharks, skates and rays, 81% reduction in squid, and a 48% reduction in unwanted finfish. Best of all, it was a win-win; making life easier for fishers by reducing the amount of time untangling bycatch in their nets. Forbes
Information superhighway
Super interesting piece on why English is such a strange language. Includes tidbits on why we don’t have genders, why we think big words are fancy, the weirdness of dangling prepositions and why '‘Hickory, dickory, dock’ isn’t a nonsensical phrase or an Agatha Christie novel, but actually part of the counting system in Celtic. Aeon
This is one of the coolest things we’ve read in a long time. Jane Metcalfe and her excellent team at NEO Life have a list of what to expect from the ‘neobiological revolution’ this year, and wow. Large-scale genome synthesis, genetic counselling, AI-led drug discovery, ageing clocks, light, sound, and electrical neuromodulation, and synthetic biology for carbon removal, among others.
Noooo… say it ain’t so! Apparently the kids don’t think GIFs are cool any more. "The 22-year-old software engineer from New York felt a flood of emotions at discovering, in 2018, what they now describe as ‘a relic.’ They were amused; they were embarrassed; it was a bit like finding an old diary. The folder was entitled “Reaction GIFS”. Vice
Johann Hari’s new book, Stolen Focus, is great. What sets it apart from the usual hand-wringing about technology’s effect on our attention is its reframing of the problem as systemic (rather than personal) and a really eye-opening chapter on children’s education near the end. Whew. Here’s a taste.
On a similar theme, Joe Pinsker thinks it might be a good idea if we all just stopped being so available. His argument is that it’s not technology in and of itself that’s stressful—it’s people’s expectations. Maybe its time to stop apologising for our delays, and stop expecting it from others too? Atlantic
This is going to feel ridiculously niche, especially for our American readers but - if you are a fan of rugby (the greatest contact sport in the world) then you need to subscribe right now to Squidge on Youtube. His depth of analysis and knowledge of the sport makes the television pundits look like schoolchildren commentating on a game of tag.
With the Six Nations coming up, you have no excuse. By way of introduction, here’s his team of the year for 2021.
Humankind
The Scholarship
Meet Verda Tetteh, a 17 year old high-school student from Massachusetts, who turned down a $40k scholarship, insisting her school give the money to a student in greater need.
Vedha moved from Ghana to America at 8 years old. Despite knowing little English, she was determined to excel at school and quickly became a straight-A student, taking extra classes and creating initiatives to ‘make the school a better place’.
No one was surprised when Vedha was awarded the ‘general excellence scholarship’ at her high school graduation. However, the audience were left stunned when, ten minutes after accepting the scholarship, Vedha approached the podium and announced a change of heart. “I would be so very grateful if administration would consider giving the … scholarship to someone who is going to community college.”
Vedha’s generosity was inspired by her mother Rosemary who enrolled in community college after arriving in America, to help her upskill into a better job so she could better support her four children. For years, Vedha watched her mother work two jobs, 80 hours a week, while attending college. At the age of 47 years old, Rosemary graduated with a bachelor’s degree in science, showing her daughter firsthand, the real value of education.
Today, Vedha is studying chemistry at Harvard University with plans to become a doctor. Her tuition, room and board are covered by other scholarships, and her old high school has redistributed the money she gave up to two students who will receive an annual donation of $5,000 over the next four years. Vedha now hopes to create another scholarship for immigrant students to help them reach their dreams of a college tuition.
“You don’t have to have the world to be able to give anything, you know, the little you have, just think about others around you and how you can help.”
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Another victory over the forces of evil:
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
New research has shown that nearly 5.4 million cancer deaths have been avoided in the EU between 1989 and 2022. Since 2017 alone, the cancer death rate has fallen by 6% in men and 4% in women, and in 2022 it’s estimated there will be 369,000 fewer deaths compared to the peak back in 1988. Medical.net
Jimmy Carter’s dream of making Guinea Worm the third ever disease to be fully eradicated is within reach. Only 14 cases were recorded in 2021. Decades of health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa have dramatically decreased the disease, which, 35 years ago was infecting 3.5 million people. Al Jazeera
To say that we only have 14 human beings on a planet of almost eight billion people is a phenomenal track record.
Adam Weiss, Director of The Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Papua New has abolished the death penalty because "it’s not an effective deterrent to serious crime.” The country abolished capital punishment in 1970 but reintroduced it in 1991. Amnesty says 144 countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, and last year saw the lowest number of executions globally in more than a decade. SBS
Did you know that over 75% of India’s adult population has now received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine? In just over a year, 714 million people have been fully vaccinated, at an average rate of almost 18.6 million a day. This is easily the most successful vaccination campaign by any country in human history. Economic Times
The successful phase-out of leaded gasoline and leaded paint and pipes has significantly reduced rates of lead poisoning around the world. In 1978, the average concentration in American children was almost five times the levels today. OurWorldinData
Divorce is getting less nasty in wealthy countries. Legal reform and access to mediation have made the process cheaper, faster, and less traumatic for children, and cultural shifts have helped too - with more mothers in the workforce and fathers actively involved in child-raising, shared custody agreements are on the rise. Economist
In his weekly general audience at the Vatican, Pope Francis has appealed to parents to “never condemn your children” with different sexual orientations. Meanwhile in France, legislation banning conversion therapy has been passed 142-0 by the National Assembly, as the country marks 40 years since decriminalizing homosexuality. It’s a long road, but nice to be reminded sometimes about how far we’ve come.
The only home we’ve ever known *
After more than 150 years, the legal ivory trade in Hong Kong has come to an end. Landmark legislation has banned the sale of ivory products. The new rules ban the ‘import, re-export, and commercial possession of elephant ivory’ but exclude antique pieces dated before 1925. Wild Aid
Dolce & Gabbana has banned fur and angora from all future collections. It’s a huge win for campaigners who fought for this for decades. The announcement follows other luxury brands like Moncler, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga who have also recently gone fur free. Vogue Business
We wholeheartedly celebrate Dolce & Gabbana’s decision to eliminate animal fur and angora from its designs. Consumers have made it abundantly clear: fur is cruel, outdated, and ugly.
Julie Massa, Fur Campaigner, In Defense of Animals
A big win for mangrove conservation in Mumbai, with 53% of mangrove cover legally declared a forest by the end of 2021, a 30% increase from the beginning of the year. Mangroves play an important role in mitigating the impact of climate change, and a further 3,000 ha will be protected in 2022. Hindustan Times
After decades of conservation efforts, the Channel Islands, off the coast of Southern California, have been successfully restored. The islands are now home to a healthy population of bald eagles and other formerly threatened species including the island fox, peregrine falcons and the island scrub jay are thriving. The islands also now host the largest seal and sea lion rookery in the world. HCN
Conservation efforts on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula are working. In the 1990s, populations of pumas, tapirs, and peccaries fell to almost zero, but protected reserves gave many species a chance to recover completely. Conservationists are now focused on creating and protecting wildlife corridors, for jaguars and other roving species to roam and grow. Mongabay
Speaking of wildlife corridors, they’re gaining momentum around the world. Wildlife bridges and crossing structures are allowing animals to safely cross highways, reducing the risk of vehicle collisions. Banff National Park in Canada boasts the most wildlife crossings in the world, with 38 underpasses and 6 overpasses. Now Toronto
A record 247,000 Western Monarch butterflies overwintered in California last year, a dramatic increase from just 2,000 in 2020. The boom has been linked to an increase in native plants and reduced pesticide use. Efforts to protect the butterfly’s habitat are also underway with transportation and energy companies agreeing to ‘rights-of-way’ corridors and wintering sites across the US. Mongabay
Also… enough with all the drawings of dead butterflies!
New Zealand’s fur seal population has bounced back from near extinction, with 200,000 seals now thriving along the coastline. The victory has led conservationists to an unexpected problem, as they now face questions around how to manage the interactions between the seals and their human neighbours. Guardian
As we enter the Year of the Tiger, the WWF has released a report showing the century-long trend of wild tiger decline has finally been reversed. Highlights from the report include the creation of the world’s largest tiger protected area in China, a national park in Russia, and the transformation of a transboundary corridor between India and Nepal from 115 hectares to 3,800 hectares of forest, encompassing over 6,000 community members and stewards of the land. WWF
Wild tigers have made remarkable progress over the past 12 years. The species had been in continual decline for about a century until the historic reversal of that trend in 2016.
Ginette Hemley, Senior Vice President, WWF-US
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
China is reforming its national electricity market, with new regulations that will force all of the country’s coal-fired generation to compete with renewables by 2025. This comes on top of news that non-fossil fuel energy sources such as wind, nuclear, solar and hydro are on track to make up more than half of China’s total power generation capacity by the end of 2022. Reuters
A federal judge just invalidated the biggest offshore oil and gas lease sale in US history - 80 million acres of drilling leases issued by the Biden administration — stating that it acted “arbitrarily and capriciously”. Instead of updating an environmental study performed during the Trump administration, the Biden administration simply repurposed the study without any changes. Reuters
White flag time at Southern Company’s Georgia Power, one of the United States’ biggest utilities, and once one of the most adamant coal-burning utilities/lobbying forces. It plans to close its entire coal fleet by 2028, replacing it with renewables and fossil gas. The Hill
Fossil-free steel is coming sooner than anyone thought. Sweden’s SSAB, a pioneer in making steel from hydrogen, is bringing forward the closure of its coal-fired furnaces from 2045 to 2030. This will eliminate eight million tonnes of carbon a year, reducing Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10%, Finland’s by 7%, and with the European carbon price at around €90 a ton, looks like a clever financial decision too.
Eastern Pacific , one of the largest privately-owned ship management companies in the world, has just announced it will no longer carry coal. “This is intended to be a message to the maritime industry that decarbonisation isn’t exclusive to how we move ships - what we move also matters.” Marine Log
The electric equivalents of the Ford F150, the Honda CRV, Lexus RX and the Toyota Corolla - some of the most popular cars in the United States - are now officially cheaper to ownthan their petrol-powered counterparts. Turns out not filling your car up with dinosaur juice all the time saves a whole lot of money. FastCo
The world spent $755 billion on low carbon solutions last year, up from 27% in 2020, and 14% of all venture capital now goes into climate tech, 2.5x pre-pandemic investment levels. While it’s exciting to see the money finally pouring in, we’ve still got a way to go - McKinsey estimates it’s going to take $9 trillion a year to get to net zero by 2050, or 12 times as much as the world is spending today.
We’re still in the early days of the energy transition…
Indistinguishable from magic
Thirty years ago, astronomers confirmed the existence of planets outside our solar system. Since then, like transistors in a circuit, the number of known exoplanets has doubled roughly every two years , and in a few months we’re going to gain the ability to see whether they have life-indicating elements such as water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, or methane. Buckle up. The Ringer
OK we did not know this. The human brain, rather than analysing the world as a series of snapshots, perceives any given moment as the average of what we saw in the past 15 seconds. That means that, in effect, your brain is a like a time machine, living ‘in the past’ to allow it perceive a stable environment and handle everyday life. Whoa. The Conversation
Human clinical trials have started for an HIV vaccine based on the same mRNA technology found in COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers will monitor 56 adults for six months in the Phase 1 trial, typically the first step in a long road to study the safety and efficacy of a vaccine. This is a big moment for mRNA technology, and may just turn out to be the most positive legacy of the pandemic. WaPo
British scientists have created a machine learning algorithm that can identify someone’s 12 month risk of heart attack from routine eye scans, with an accuracy of 70%-80%. The use of deep learning could revolutionise the way patients are screened for signs of heart disease, offering a second referral mechanism for cardiovascular examination. University of Leeds
In a significant advance for regenerative medicine, scientists have found a way to harness the cells of adult African clawed frogs to regrow an imperfect but functional limbs. The hope now is to recreate the same results in mice, and eventually, some form of regeneration in human patients to restore tissues or organs. NYT
A robot at John Hopkins has performed keyhole surgery on a pig without the guiding hand of a human, a significant step towards fully automated surgery. The robot excelled at suturing two ends of intestine (one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in abdominal surgery) producing “significantly better results than humans performing the same procedure.” Gizmodo
The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, seen here performing laparoscopic intestinal anastomosis surgery on pig, is the first robotic system to plan, adapt, and execute a surgical plan in soft tissue without human intervention.
Information superhighway
In honour of the passing of Buddhist monk, peace activist, poet and teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Emergence Magazine has compiled his Ten Love Letters to the Earth. Try read some of these out loud - they have the most amazing, meditative quality, and the messages are simple, but profound. “Understanding is love’s other name.”
Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks was probably the most impactful book we read last year, so you can imagine how pleased we were when we heard he was being interviewed by Krista Tippet. This conversation takes a little while to get going but once it does there’s so much great stuff in there. On Being
UX designer Tom Whitwell puts together a great annual list called “52 things I learned” and it’s always filled with the most satisfying kind of eclectica. Even better, Jason Kottke, one of the internet’s best hunter gatherers, decided to do his own version for 2021 and it’s just as good.
If like us, you’re emerging blinking into the light after two years of limited socialising, your listening skills could probably do with some brushing up. This is a really great guide, complete with the author’s own illustrations. Repeat after us: stop trying to be right, stop hogging the conversation, avoid one-upmanship, ask questions, and embrace reciprocity. Medium
This might just be the most perfect ten minutes of ski film ever created. Putting every single one of his skills to the ultimate test, the insane, flawless collection of lines puts Markus Eder up there amongst the best all-around skiers to ever grace this planet. It’s a display of visual excellence, versatility, and mind-blowing trickery, and you should definitely watch it right now.
Humankind
The Plastic Man of Senegal
Meet Modou Fall, a 48 year old former soldier turned environmentalist from Dakar, Senegal, who has dedicated the past 15 years of his life fighting the war on waste. Known as 'plastic man’, thanks to his homemade suit constructed out of plastic bags and cups, Modou is on a mission to repurpose old tyres and use them to plant trees across his country.
In 1998, Modou was stationed in rural eastern Senegal as an army officer, when he noticed herds of cows were getting sick after consuming fragments of plastic bags. It was a lightbulb moment: he had witnessed firsthand the impact of waste on the environment. Modou left the military and set up a t-shirt stall in Dakar’s busy Sandaga market. Shocked by the amount of packaging, he tried to persuade fellow shopkeepers to dispose of their waste properly, but no one listened. Fed up with waiting, Modou spent 13 days cleaning up the market himself. and then decided to broaden his mission.
In 2006 he used his lifesavings of $500 to start his foundation Clean Senegal. Dressed in his ‘plastic man’ costume, Modou approached shoppers at markets, offering to trade their plastic bags for paper ones. When they agreed, he’d tie their plastic bags to his costume, adding to its colour and craziness and he soon became a regular presence at protests and events.
In 2020 Modou launched a new project: Million Trees, Million Tyres. Throughout Senegal, old tyres lie strewn across roads and beaches with few prospects for reuse. After watching a YouTube video, Modou taught himself how to transform tyres into planters, and set himself a mission to plant one tree for every home across the country. Today, Modou’s army of volunteers provide thousands of seeds and tyres a year, and local lime, mango and moringa trees are already providing shade and nutrition across Dakar. With lockdowns easing, Modou’s planting mission is ramping up again, with local schools and authorities jumping on board.
“If you have the means to build a mosque, you do that. If you don’t, fine. If you have the means to build a hospital for people to treat themselves at, you do that. If you don’t have the means, fine. But one thing everyone can do is to plant a tree.”
Modou Fall takes stock of the trees he and his volunteers planted at an elementary school in Guédiawaye, Senegal, Oct. 31, 2021.
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Good news you probably didn’t hear about
You don’t hear about much about rubella (German measles) in rich countries these days, because science. In poor countries though, it’s still the leading cause of birth defects. Some welcome news from the WHO then - between 2012 and 2020, the number of countries that introduced the rubella vaccine increased from 132 to 173, resulting in a 48% drop in cases. 70% of the world’s infants are vaccinated and elimination has been verified in almost half the world’s countries.
Nigeria is making steady progress towards ending open defecation, with over 60 local government areas now declared open defecation free. In 2006 over a quarter of Nigeria’s population practised OD, which is linked to disease outbreaks like cholera, diarrhoea, and typhoid. Today that number has declined to 18%. Prime Progress
One thing COVID taught us is that infrastructure can be built quickly when the will is there. While much of the world stopped at plexi-glass shields in retail shops, the Philippines undertook the largest bike line construction program in its history, building 500 km of bike paths to replace public transport in under a year. World Bank
A historic ruling in Ecuador has given the country’s 14 indigenous groups the power to veto mining and oil projects on their lands. Indigenous communities must now be consulted and give consent before any extractive projects can commence on or near their territory. Mongabay
The global movement towards a four day work week is gaining momentum, with workers in Belgium now legally entitled to a 38 hour working week as part of new labour reforms to tackle burnout. Scotland, Spain and Japan are also trialing the idea following Iceland’s success, where 86% of workers now work shorter weeks or have the right to ask to do so. Euro News
With this agreement, we set a beacon for an economy that is more innovative, sustainable, and digital. The aim is to be able to make people and businesses stronger .
~ Alexander de Croo, Prime Minister of Belgium
In one of its most significant workplace reforms in decades, the United States will end forced arbitration agreements for survivors of workplace sexual assault and harassment. Arbitration clauses are buried in millions of employment contracts and have long served as loopholes for offenders. The victory comes five years after the #MeToo movement burst into global public consciousness. ABC
A big win for human rights, as New Zealand becomes the latest country to ban conversion therapy. The new law received 107,000 public submissions; the highest number ever received for a piece of legislation. The practice is also currently outlawed in Canada, France, Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania, and Germany. Guardian
To all those who have been affected by conversion practices or attempts at them, we want to say, this legislation is for you. We cannot bring you back, we cannot undo all of the hurt, but we can make sure that for the generations to come, we provide the support and love you did not get and protect you from the harm of those who seek to try to stop you from being who you are.
~ Grant Robertson, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand
#facepalm
In last week’s edition we said the Snoqualmie tribe’s ancestral lands were in Oregon. We got that wrong! The tribe actually has its roots in Washington State, not Oregon, and the land they acquired is just east of Seattle. Thanks to subscribers Ellie Sheldon and Jim Wiggins for keeping us accountable.
The only home we’ve ever known *
More than 100 countries have committed to strengthening protection measures in international waters to combat illegal fishing and reduce plastic pollution. This comes after the conclusion of the first global summit dedicated solely to the ocean. The EU and 16 other states also agreed to pursue a global agreement by the end of the year to regulate the sustainable use of the high seas. Guardian
Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to hold joint patrols in the waters between their countries to stop to illegal fishing. Malaysia loses $1.4 billion to foreign fishing vessels each year while Indonesia loses around $2 billion. The patrols will focus on the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s most heavily trafficked shipping lanes. Mongabay
Hawaii has become the first US state to ban shark fishing with new legislation making it illegal to “knowingly capture, entangle, or kill any species of shark.” It’s not the first time Hawaii has led the way for shark conservation; in 2010 it was the first state to ban the possession and distribution of shark fins. Planetary Press
We are well aware of how important sharks are to maintain healthy marine ecosystems. We also recognize their importance in native Hawaiian cultural practices and beliefs.
~ Brian Neilson, Hawaiian Division of Aquatic Resources
Good news for dogs! A decade ago, 2.6 million stray dogs and cats were being euthanized in America each year. However, thanks to dog-relocation networks, animal rescue and increased demand for pets during the pandemic, the number of euthanised dogs has now fallen to a historic low of 390,000. Time
Well, here’s a twist … tax receipts from surging gun and ammunition sales in the US have boosted funds for federal conservation programs to a record $1.1 billion. Thanks to forward-thinking legislation created in 1937, tax money from hunting and shooting equipment is distributed into conservation grants to stop the decline of fish and animal species. Outline
Federal protections for gray wolves have been fully restored across most of the US after a federal court ruled that existing populations could not be sustained without proper measures. The recovery of wolf populations from near-extinction in the 1930s has been a historic conservation victory, but different administrations have tried to scale back protections since they were first enacted in 1974. NPR
Credit: Nat Geo Kids
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
There’s an election happening in Australia this year, so naturally anti-renewable campaigns have reached fever pitch. The country however, now has 25GW of installed solar capacity – the most per capita in the world. This caps off a record-breaking year in 2021, when more than 3GW of rooftop solar was installed by households and businesses. RE
More good news down under. Despite the best efforts of the Australian government to prop it up, the gas industry is getting destroyed by clean energy. Wind and solar provided five times more power than gas in 2021, while gas generation reached its lowest level in 15 years. Coal is down to 62.8% too, its lowest level since the interconnected national market began in 1999. The Age
And even more! After seven years, the epic legal battle to protect the pristine Bylong Valley in Australia from a massive new coal mine has been won. The case pitted local residents against the government-backed multinational KEPCO. This project would have generated over 200 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental Defenders Office
OK it’s been a bumper week for clean energy in Australia. The nation’s largest coal-fired power station, which supplies 20% of NSW’s daily power needs, is closing in 2025, seven years sooner than originally planned.
Think of the fastest growing ten year old companies ever at scale. Which come to mind? Probably a tech company - Google, Facebook or Amazon. Nope. It’s the world’s leading lithium-ion battery manufacturer. If someone told you a year ago a battery maker would be just as large and growing several times faster than Google or Facebook, you wouldn’t have believed it. Yet here we are.
How is this possible? Because high performance batteries are as foundational a technology as the steam and internal combustion engines. They are the ‘motor’ (they literally enable motors) for a global economy that will increasingly run on electricity, not combustion. And the transition is just getting started…
New York’s state pension fund is selling $238 million of stocks it holds across 21 shale oil and gas companies, saying they’re not moving fast enough to a low-emissions economy. In Denmark, one of the country’s biggest pension funds is ditching $300 million of oil and gas bonds bonds by December, after concluding the assets pose a growing risk to returns.
Japanese carmakers squandered their leadership in the EV space a decade ago, and aren’t keen to make the same mistake again. Honda just ended all vehicle production at its legendary Sayama ‘mother factory’ in Tokyo, which has been building petrol-powered cars since 1964, and Nissan says it’s ending combustion engine development in all markets except the United States.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, hybrid and electric vehicles surpassed more than 10% of light-duty vehicle sales in the US for the first time ever. On Thursday last week, the US government announced a $5 billion plan to blanket states with electric-vehicle chargers. And in case you were watching the adverts at Super Bowl LVI, top takeaway seemed to be:
Indistinguishable from magic
A new machine learning trick that turns 2D images into 3D views is getting the geeks very excited, with the potential to shake up gaming, robotics, and autonomous driving. The technique, dubbed ‘neural rendering’ exploits the way light travels through the air and calculates the density and color of points in 3D space. “It is ultra-hot, there is a huge buzz.” Wired
DARPA just turned a US Army UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter into an autonomous drone. The aircraft completed a 30 minute flight without any crew, piloted by an algorithm that didn’t just fly, but took over key pre-flight procedures, including power, secondary control, wind checks, and elements of adaptive flying like take-off and landing. Lockheed Martin
A revolutionary pacemaker that re-establishes the heart’s naturally irregular beat is set to begin clinical trials in New Zealand, following successful animal trials. By matching the pacemaker to the lungs, the device allows the heart to beat more naturally, resulting in a 20% improvement in its ability to pump blood through the body. Freethink
This story is straight out of a Richard Morgan novel. Scientists at UCL have developed a cancer therapy called minimally invasive image-guided ablation or MINIMA, which involves “guiding a ferromagnetic thermoseed to a tumour using magnetic propulsion gradients generated by an MRI scanner, before being remotely heated to kill nearby cancer cells.” WTF.
Stephen Hawking’s unsolved blackboard…
… and SpaceX’s new concept video for Starship. While this is more science fiction than science, just remember, they are actually going to try pull this off. The launches, the orbital refuelling, a catching tower, a lunar flyby, a lunar lander , Starlink deployment, point to point transport and then Mars - and that’s just the stuff we know about.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere ~ Carl Sagan
Information superhighway
Have you heard about The Hum? It’s an unexplained, global phenomenon in which a group of people in one place will start hearing a low droning sound with no discernible source. Imogen West-Knights investigates for the Financial Times, and in the process, uncovers an inexplicable mystery.
“What I heard then made my back prickle with dread. It was an ominous beat, almost more of a pressure on the eardrum than a sound, something truly chthonic. Another recording sounds like if you put your ear to someone’s pregnant stomach to hear a heartbeat. The sound of something waiting to be born.”
Nice piece on the ‘science’ of love, unpacking the question of whether it’s something predictable, that follows certain patterns, or something that develops unpredictably, even chaotically. Is it something that can be found? Or something that grows over time? One of those classic dualities (like nature vs. nurture) that appears simple, but turns out to be infinitely, beautifully complex. Vox
It seems like it’s a journalistic rite of passage to lament the loss of friendships in middle age. This, from The Atlantic, is one of the better examples of the genre. Our biggest takeaway? The thing that kills friendships isn’t a lack of contact, or even differences in worldviews. It’s envy, the sin that Socrates called “the ulcer of the soul.”
Washington DC is not a swamp.
Christopher Butler has a great explanation for why spending the past two years on screens has felt so miserable: we’ve all been stuck in the Uncanny Valley of digital technology, and it’s not a very nice place to be. The word uncanny apparently, comes from the Scottish lexicon, and means maliciously occult ( so that’s why the Zoom calls are so soul-destroying).
This is so good. We tend to think about robots as killing machines rather than caring machines. And yet, caring might be what they’re best at, offering ritual, presence, and acceptance. Perhaps it’s time for an update to the Turing test? For a machine to pass as a person, it must not just be mistaken as human but loved as one. Real Life
The winners of the Underwater Photographer of the Year Competition are in, and there are some absolute stunners this year. Here’s our favourite, from the Wrecks category. Discover Wildlife
Abandoned S hip. © Alex Dawson
Humankind
Saving the ocean one butt at a time
Meet Lisa Chen, a marine biologist in Canada who created Let’s Talk Butts, a global conservation and education campaign focused on clearing cigarette butts, the world’s most littered item, from our oceans, and empowering non-English speaking communities to drive their own clean-up campaigns.
Raised in a conservative Chinese Canadian family, Lisa always had an affinity with the ocean. After graduating from university, she was determined to use her biology degree to fight climate change, but when she struggled to find a job, decided to travel around south-east Asia for six months instead.
It was on this trip that Lisa found herself on a remote beach in Malaysia that was covered in plastic waste and cigarette butts. Curious about why residents didn’t step in to clean it up, Lisa discovered that it wasn’t a lack of care that stopped them, but a gap in knowledge. Information about the impact of plastics and cigarettes on the environment had never been translated into their language.
Lisa realised that to solve the climate crisis, global inequality needed to be addressed. She returned to Canada on a mission to combine science with social justice and in 2019 launched the Let’s Talk about Butts campaign to raise awareness . The campaign educated people about the microplastics and toxins contained in cigarettes, and the power of a single butt to contaminate 500 litres of water for ten years.
What started as a local project in Canada has now scaled to five other countries. Lisa’s website helps communities around the world map out cigarette hot spots and create safe collection containers to ensure the butts get recycled. True to her word, campaign pamphlets have been translated into local languages to help drive a bigger change.
I have learned we will not win the race against climate change unless we fund more than just science education. We also have to fund economic development and empower people to be confident about reaching decision-makers.
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I don’t know about the rest of you, but today in particular I can do with some good news about the world we live in. Once again as a reminder, I am copy/pasting from futurecrunch.com where I am a paid supporter of what they are doing. Consider doing the same if you are willing and able.
Good news you probably didn’t hear about
The surly drums of war are beating loudly in Eastern Europe, and the world’s media is focused intensely on events in Russia and Ukraine, a vivid reminder of the darker side of human nature. It’s a scary moment, representing the possible dissolution of the post-war order and with it, perhaps the end of the 77 year Long Peace. Coming off the back of a two year global pandemic, and amidst rising economic inequality and an ever-worsening climate crisis, the future feels more uncertain than ever.
We thought this might be a good time then, to remind you of our better angels. Specifically, an angle to the COVID-19 story that remains glaringly absent from our screens. In the 25 months since scientists first shared news of the virus over half the world’s population has been fully vaccinated. We’ve given out 10.6 billion shots so far, and just crossed the point at which supply to developing countries started oustripping demand. In other words, we’ve now got all the available supply we need for all the countries in the world.
Tragically we’ve lost millions during this pandemic, but we’ve saved millions too thanks to those vaccines, which are a freaking miracle. Medical science has been changed forever; the research invested into combatting the virus has already ushered in significant progress with other diseases. Studies into long Covid are now shining a light into previously neglected areas like blood-clotting and chronic fatigue syndrome, scientists are looking at how Covid treatments can help dengue, Zika and Ebola, and have their sights set on using mRNA technology to treat HIV, skin, breast and colon cancer, and ultimately end malaria.
This is just one of the many stories out there that isn’t about Vladimir Putin, if you’re willing to look. There are others. For example:
Colombia has decriminalized abortion procedures up to 24 weeks of gestation. The progress is thanks to the feminist ‘green wave’ sweeping Latin America with pro-choice advocates sporting green bandanas. Abortion was recently decriminalized in Argentina and Mexico, and Ecuador has decriminalized the procedure in cases of rape. Al Jazeera
It’s an awakening of women’s rights. We’ve arrived at a moment in which we were tired of being left behind and just started reclaiming our rights. For many years we were just waiting.
Paula Avila-Guillen, Executive Director of the Women’s Equality Centre
Women celebrate Colombia’s constitutional court decision to decriminalise abortion until 24 weeks of gestation, in Bogota, Colombia [Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters]
Japan’s ten year cancer survival rate has increased to 58.9%. This is a disease that was once said to be incurable, but the survival rate has steadily increased alongside medical advances. Prostate cancer in Japan now has the highest survival rate at 99.2%, followed by female breast cancer at 87.5%, colorectal cancer at 69.7% and stomach cancer at 67.3%. Nippon
More good news from Japan, with crime hitting a new post-war low for the seventh consecutive year. The number of criminal offenses peaked in 2002 at 2.85 million, but have steadily declined since. In 2021, 568,148 offences were recorded. Nippon
A landmark ruling for human rights in the Middle East, with a court in Kuwait overturning legislation used to prosecute transgender people. The 2007 law, allowed authorities to arrest people whose appearance did not match the gender on their ID card. It’s a rare advance in a region where being gay or transgender, if not expressly against the law, is usually treated as such. Irish Times
Israel and India have taken their first formal steps towards outlawing conversion therapy, banning medical professionals from providing the therapy. Doctors now face severe disciplinary action including potential revocation of their license.
This is a victory in the general struggle for tolerance and equality, but in my eyes, it is more basic and more critical because this is also a struggle for life itself, this is truly saving lives.
Nitzan Horowitz , Minister of Health, Israel
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announces circular banning LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, February 14, 2022 (photo credit: MIRI SHIMONOVICH/GPO)
The only home we’ve ever known *
Without much fuss and even less public attention, America is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar shift to cage-free eggs in response to new laws and demands from restaurants. Cage-free housing has soared from 4% in 2010 to 28% in 2020, and is expected to reach 70% by 2025. The change marks one of the animal welfare movement’s biggest successes after years of battles with the food industry. AP
The Tequila fish has successfully been reintroduced the into the wild in Mexico, 18 years after it was declared extinct. In 1998, five pairs of fish were sent from a UK zoo to Michoacana University, where the population was protected and expanded. 1,500 fish were recently released into the river in Jalisco and the local community are playing a key role in monitoring the progress. BBC
Conservationists and ranchers in America are turning to an unusually hairy solution to restore the country’s lost prairie: bison! Prairies co-evolved with bison - the ecosystem depends on their grazing disturbance. In 1993, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma reintroduced bison and today it’s the largest protected piece of tallgrass prairie on earth, spanning 39,650 acres. PBS Terra
The global bike boom is ramping up with families from Barcelona to San Francisco forming bike-trains to get kids to school safely - adult chaperones (sometimes dressed in superhero costumes) riding along a predetermined route, picking up kids along the way. Within the next 15 years, Milan will boast one of the most comprehensive bike lanes networks in Europe with 750km of bike paths connecting 80% of residences and essential services, and Berlin’s city centre could soon become the world’s largest car-free urban area under proposals being considered by the city government, after three friends in a bar hatched a radical idea that was signed by 50,000 citizens, calling for a blanket ban on privately-owned cars.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic just received seed donations from Sudan, Uganda, New Zealand, Germany, and Lebanon. The vault is located halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and holds over 1.1 million seeds from nearly 6,000 plant species. It was created in 2008 to preserve the diversity of the world’s crops from war, disease, and environmental threats.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Power companies in the United States have shut down 71 GW worth of coal plants since 2015, and a further 84 GW are scheduled for closure by the end of 2028. The bloodbath is thanks to falling renewables costs, and the EPA’s Effluent Limitation Guidelines, which regulate coal ash and toxic metals to protect drinking water supplies. S&P Global
Nordea, the biggest bank in the Nordic region, has announced it will cease all lending to offshore oil and gas (it currently has a €1 billion portfolio of assets in the sector). The bank also says it expects to devote more of its financing to the energy transition, with a fourfold increase in lending between now and 2025. Nordea
British bank Natwest cut lending to oil and gas clients by 21% last year, and just announced it will ditch coal companies that don’t have credible decarbonisation plans. French insurer CNP Assurances will no longer finance new oil and gas, and Dutch pension fund PFZW will disinvest from any fossil fuel company that doesn’t have a ‘convincing and verifiable’ strategy to meet the Paris agreement.
The United States electricity sector has passed a massive milestone in the energy transition: the amount of gas used for power generation has likely peaked and begun a long-term decline. It’s a critical turning point. The days of gas growing and gaining market share are over, and the beginning of a long, structural decline is now underway. IEEFA
Source: IEA
The flipside is the gold rush into clean energy. As we put the finishing touches on this newsletter, the biggest auction of offshore wind leases in US history was still going strong after 21 rounds, with 13 companies still competing, some $1.5 billion in high bids and a per-acre price that’s already reached $3,144 - more than triple the previous record ($1,043). Bloomberg
Seriously, gold rush. Australia now boasts a pipeline of $830 billion of renewable projects, encompassing onshore and offshore wind, solar, hydrogen and storage. Nearly 1,300 projects have been put forward by around 600 companies amounting to ~400 GW of new capacity, more than enough to supply the country’s power needs several times over. RE
Or maybe a new oil rush? Texas now has 106 GW of solar in its proposed pipeline. The motivation is clear: the Lone Star state boasts the fastest growth in power demand in the US, cheap land and abundant sunshine. “No one is sitting around saying ‘Are new solar additions going to slow down or collapse?’ The only question seems to be ‘How high is this going to go?'" Bloomberg
The US government has launched a $9.5 billion investment program to reduce industrial emissions. The plan, funded by last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, will establish green hydrogen hubs across the country, procure low-carbon materials for federal construction projects, and establish carbon trading policies to reward clean American industrial materials. White House
Moar hydrogen. A new project has been announced in Spain that will use 9.5GW of solar energy to supply 7.4GW of green hydrogen to supply steelmaker ArcelorMittal and fertiliser producer Fertiberia. “ We bring a historic message to all energy users: green hydrogen is now a full-fledged commodity, able to compete with coal, oil and natural gas in both costs and volumes ." Recharge
See if this story sounds familiar: a few years ago, experts were skeptical that heavy vehicles could ever be electrified. Now, a detailed new study has found that transit and school buses, shuttle and delivery vehicles and garbage trucks will be cheaper than their diesel alternatives by 2027 (that’s five years away). EDF
Wind turbines generated almost half of the UK’s electricity at one point last Friday, as gale force winds from Storm Eunice swept through the country. At 5:30am turbines were meeting 48.5% of electricity needs, and over the course of the day wind contributed around 39% to the overall energy mix.
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame! ~ William Butler Yeats
Indistinguishable from magic
A whole lot of mind-blowing astronomy news this week. In no particular order: the largest and most accurate simulation of the universe ever created, the discovery of the first ever rogue black hole, a 5 megaparsec galaxy (so large it will ‘break your brain’) and a map of the Milky Way’s dramatic history of violence.
DeepMind’s streak of applying AI to hard science continues. Their deep reinforcement learning algorithm has been trained to adjust magnetic fields inside a tokamak, controlling the superheated soup of matter inside a nuclear fusion reactor, and the company has also collaborated with mathematicians to bridge two areas of knot theory long thought to be related.
A new system for flapping robot wings called electromechanical zipping has been developed by engineers in Bristol, a technique inspired by bees and other flying insects that does away with motors and gears. The ‘liquid-amplified zipping actuators’ provide more power than insect muscle of the same weight, and can fly a robot across a room at 18 body lengths per second. Inside Unmanned Systems
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature
Hello to a new scientific field. Soil bioacoustics is the practice of listening to underground sounds to reveal what life forms reside below our feet, and how they eat or hunt, how they slither past each other unnoticed, or drum, tap and sing to get one another’s attention. "Life underground is a black box. As we open it, we realize how little we know.” Knowable
A team of doctors at UCLA have cured the third person ever, and the first woman, of HIV, using a new transplant method involving umbilical cord blood. Why does this matter? Because cord blood is more available than the stem cells used in the bone marrow transplants that cured the previous two patients, and does not need to be matched as closely to the recipient. NYT
The first-ever gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease has been successfully given to two babies. The first child received the treatment at the age of 2 ½ and today, aged 5, is healthy and seizure-free. A second child treated at 7 months remains seizure-free today at the age of 2. To put this into context, here’s a description of Tay-Sachs by one of its discoverers, neurologist Bernard Sachs, in 1887:
Nothing abnormal was noticed until the age of two to three months, when the parents observed that the child was much more listless than children of that age. The child would ordinarily lay upon its back, and was never able to change its position … it never attempted any voluntary movement … the child grew steadily weaker, it ceased to take its food properly, its bronchial troubles increased, and finally, pneumonia set in, it died August, 1886.
An absolutely horrifying disease, that’s been with us for centuries, and for which we’ve never had a cure. Until now.
Thanks science.
Information superhighway
Ever heard of the Moon Trees? In 1971 Stuart Roosa, one of the Apollo 14 astronauts, took a small bag of tree seeds with him on a journey round the moon. A few years later, some of the seeds — sycamores, redwoods, pines, firs, and sweetgums — were planted across the United States, to see how they would grow. At least 100 are still alive today. TreeHugger
What an amazing essay by Devin Kelly. On the surface, it’s about a unique endurance event, a 3,100 mile running race around a single city block in Queens. Underneath, it’s so much more, a tribute to the joy of the struggle, the distinction between attention and information and how gentleness, grace and care can be found in the most unlikely of places. Longreads
Ever been distracted in a virtual meeting and started shopping online? Or frantically tried to fix the webcam for your child’s online class while on the phone with a client? This one’s for you. If you’re one of the millions who’s ridden out the pandemic working remotely, you’ll know the feeling of The Great Smushing: the accelerated erosion of the work/home/leisure boundaries in our lives.
Homeschooling, 2020. Photograph: Helge Skodvin/Institute
Emma Thompson (yes, that Emma Thompson) with a simple and beautiful meditation on what it’s like when three generations of women are together. “We are constantly exchanging ever-altering resonances, and balance occurs. Instead of grieving my mother’s ageing, instead of envying my daughter’s youth, I find I am buoyed up and calmed down by turn.”
Time to get your reapolitik on. This op-ed in Foreign Affairs argues that Xi’s growing alignment with Moscow presents a catch-22 for China. As it competes with the West over global order, Russia becomes a more attractive security partner. But by elevating the relationship with Russia - and doing so in the middle of a Putin-provoked crisis - Beijing is inviting pushback it can’t afford.
Genevieve Bell is in excellent form here on the Metaverse. What sets this apart from a million other articles on the same subject is her curiousity about the historical roots of the idea, which go way beyond Snow Crash, and into the long and complicated human practice of inventing worlds. MIT Tech Review
RIP Paul Farmer, one of the best human beings to grace the planet in our lifetimes. “There are so many people that are alive today because of that man.” NYT
Humankind
The Man with the Golden Arm
Meet James Harrison, an 85 year old retired railway administrator from New South Wales, Australia who donated blood for six decades and saved 2.4 million babies.
In 1951, 14-year-old James underwent major chest surgery and received a transfusion of 13 units of blood. During his three month hospital stay, James’ father reminded him that he owed his life to the anonymous donors and although James was too young to give blood at the time, he vowed to become a donor. True to his word, two days after his 18th birthday James made his first blood donation and continued donating over the next decade, even though he hated needles.
Around the same time, thousands of Australian babies were dying each year from haemolytic disease of the newborn, or HDN, a condition caused by a blood incompatibility between the mother and foetus. Thanks to a breakthrough in the mid 1960s, doctors realised they could prevent HDN by injecting a pregnant woman with a rare antibody from donated plasma. When researchers scoured the blood banks only one name was a match: James Harrison.
A regular donor by this point, James didn’t hesitate when scientists reached out to him. His plasma was used to develop an injection called Anti-D and in 1967 the first dose was given to a pregnant woman. Over six decades James’ blood created millions of Anti-D injections and it’s estimated he saved 2.4 million babies across the country, including two of his grandchildren. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why James’ body produced the rare antibody, but they believe it’s because of the blood transfusions he received as a teenager.
James made his final trip to the donation centre in 2018, at 81 years old. He’d given 500-800ml of plasma almost weekly, with only 10 donations from his left arm and 1,162 from his right “golden arm.” Even at his last round, he averted his eyes when the needle was inserted into his arm. Although every ampul of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it, he doesn’t consider his contribution anything out of the ordinary.
“Some people say 'Oh, you’re a hero.’ But I was in a safe room, donating blood. They gave me a cup of coffee and something to nibble on and then I just went on my way. No problem, no hardship.”
James Harrison during his last blood donation, May 11, 2018, in Sydney.
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