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.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
New Ireland has become the first province in Papua New Guinea to successfully reduce transmission of lymphatic filariasis, commonly known as elephantiasis - a remarkable achievement in a country where transmission rates are as high as 70%. “We are proud to be the first province in our country to achieve this historical milestone and come very close to getting rid of this terrible disease,” WHO
Four brave women in South Africa have successfully overturned a set of apartheid-era marriage laws that denied women equal property rights. Thanks to Elizabeth Gumede, Thokozani Maphumulo, Matodzi Ramuhovhi and Agnes Sithole, around 400,000 elderly black women will now have equal access to matrimonial property. Berea Mail
Switzerland will become the 30th country to legalize gay marriage, after 64.1% of the population voted in favour of reform. The victory comes after a long campaign by advocates, and a demand from the opposition government for the issue be decided by public referendum in 2020. BBC
In 2009, Mexico City became the first Mexican state out of 32 to legalize same-sex marriage. Eleven years later, that number has reached 23, after Sonora, a large northern state, approved a new law on Thursday - a day after the central state of Queretaro, long regarded as one of the most conservative in the country, approved similar legislation. VOA
A landmark victory for LGBTQ+ rights, with a Taiwan court overturning a rule that required trans people to have surgery to remove their reproductive organs before they could be legally recognised in their correct gender. "Self-determined gender is a cornerstone of a person’s identity, and this ruling highlights the advancement of gender equality and human rights in Taiwan.” Pink News
The microstate of San Marino has ended a 150-year ban on abortion, making it one of the last countries in Europe to grant women full autonomy over their bodies. Total bans on the procedure remain in Malta, Andorra, and the Vatican, while Poland reintroduced restrictions earlier this year. CGTN
The Philippine Senate has approved a bill to raise the minimum age of sexual consent from 12 to 16 years old, overturning a century-old law on statutory rape. It’s a historic win for child rights advocates who fought for this for years, and a huge step forward for a country with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world. Benar News
This is as much a victory for our children as it is a victory for all advocates, civil society organizations, women’s rights groups, and concerned parents and individuals committed to protecting and defending every Filipino child ~ Senator Risa Hontiveros
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Harvard's fossil fuels divestment was just the beginning. In the weeks since, many others have followed, including Boston University, the University of Minnesota, and the MacArthur Foundation. Ten of the twenty richest colleges in America have now divested, the result of countless hours of work by activists helping to rob coal, gas and oil companies of their social license. The Crucial Years
Unless you’re a Canadian retiree, you’ve probably never heard of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. It’s Canada’s second-biggest pension fund and the world’s twelfth biggest, and now it's divesting too - another $315 billion out of play for the fossil fuel industry. CBC
The US EPA has issued its first major regulation directly limiting greenhouse gases, requiring an 85% reduction of HFCs by 2036. This will eliminate the equivalent of 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, three years’ worth of emissions from the electricity sector. Fridge and air conditioning lobbyists, it seems, don't have quite the same clout as their Exxon counterparts. NYT
China has also agreed to limit emissions of HFCs, as the country begins enforcing its obligations under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which took effect this month. Reuters
Remember Australia's mega wildfires of 2019/2020? Around 80% of the 715 million tons of carbon dioxide that was released has already been sucked out of the atmosphere by giant ocean algal blooms seeded by the nutrient-rich ash. Thanks Gaia. New Scientist
Italy's biggest energy utility Enel, is accelerating the retirement of its coal fleet, bringing the end date forward from 2030 to 2027. It also plans to triple renewable energy generation from 49 GW today to 145 GW by 2030, and increase electric vehicle charging points from 186,000 to more than 4 million.
Sri Lanka will cease building new coal-fired power plants, and has set a target of achieving 70% of all its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2030. "Our aim is to transition away from fossil fuels, promote decarbonization, and make Sri Lanka a carbon neutral country by 2050." Reuters
The Romanian government has committed to ending all coal power production by 2032, with the bulk gone by 2025. It's the 19th country in Europe to announce a coal phase-out, and if the experience of countries like Portugal and Greece tell us anything, it’s that once a commitment has been made, the actual exit comes far faster than first planned. Beyond Coal
Colombia has issued a new power plan that rules out building any new coal plants, and relies on major growth of solar, wind and hydro generation. The new plan effectively scuppers two proposed coal plants – the 465 MW Termobijao power station and the 1125 MW La Luna plant – which have been permitted but for which construction has not yet commenced. BNAmericas
Ford, the company that brought humanity the production line, is spending $11.4 billion to build two new factories in Tennessee and Kentucky for batteries and electric pickup trucks. Together, they'll create over 11,000 jobs, and the Tennessee factory will be Ford’s largest ever — and its first new American vehicle-assembly plant in decades. Atlantic
The only home we've ever known
Half a million acres of Scottish Highlands, stretching from Loch Ness to Kintail, and encompassing Glens Cannich, Affric, Moriston and Shiel, will be rewilded over the next 30 years thanks to a community led project known as the Affric Highlands. It will become Europe's tenth official rewilding area. Irish Tech News
From 2023, the sale of fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping will be banned in supermarkets and grocery stores in Spain. The ban is one of a series of measures from the country's new Ministry for Ecological Transition, who are also planning alternatives to bottled water and single-use drinking cups at public events. El Pais
Big wins for animal rights in Hawaii with the passing of seven new laws. The intentional killing of sharks has been banned, along with the release of balloons that threaten marine life. Cosmetics that use animal testing are now prohibited and new laws have been passed to improve companion animal welfare and protect vets from liability for providing emergency treatments. World Animal Rights
After decades of negotiations, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have finalized a $1.9 billion water rights settlement that resolves thousands of tribal claims to waterways throughout western Montana. The agreement also provides funding for habitat restoration and officially transfers control of the National Bison Range to First Nations. Grist
Some of Australia's most beautiful natural sites, including the Daintree, the oldest tropical rainforest in the world, have been returned to Aboriginal custodianship. After years of negotiations, four parks covering more than 160,000 hectares will now be co-managed by the Queensland government and the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people, and eventually transition to being run solely by First Nations people. ABC
Indistinguishable from magic
Fossil footprints found in an ancient lake bed in New Mexico have completely upended the Clovis theory of how humans arrived in the Americas - putting them there a staggering 7,000 years earlier than previously thought. Combined with new genetic sequencing technology, the discovery suggests the first peoples of the New World were not the ancestors of today's Native Americans, but instead more closely related to the indigenous people of Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Scientists have used machine learning to create a new drug regime for children with a deadly form of brain cancer. An algorithm worked out that a drug called everolimus could enhance the capacity of another, called vandetanib, to sneak through the blood-brain barrier and treat diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. Both drugs are already approved to treat other types of cancer. Guardian
Big month for GMOs. India unveiled a new herbicide-tolerant rice that can be directly sown into the soil, cutting water use by half, the Philippines became the first country to approve the commercial production of nutrient-enriched Golden Rice, and in Japan, a tomato that reduces high blood pressure has become the first CRISPR-edited food in the world to go on sale.
Neuroscientists in New York have managed to track a million different neurons in a mouse brain simultaneously, using a new imaging technique called 'light beads microscopy' that uses lasers to trigger fluorescence in living cells. As the cells light up, scientists can see how they're interacting, a big step towards one day being able to track the activity of human brains. Singularity Hub
The US Army can now print concrete barracks, bunkers and other structures. It recently completed the largest 3D printed structure in North America, a 350 m² building set to house up to 72 personnel while they train for missions in Texas or overseas. They'll become the first soldiers in the world to live in 3D-printed barracks. Popular Mechanics
The information superhighway is still out there
In 2005, an alternate reality game asked players to find a man named Satoshi based just on a photograph. Fifteen years later, the mystery was solved. This wonderful story from Wired, about one woman's epic quest to finish a game, is also a love letter to the 'good internet,' and the fabric of an old fictional universe, now buried beneath the new strata of social media.
Here's the corollary. Everyone is losing their minds online because the combination of mass fame and mass surveillance channels our most basic impulses—toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for—into the project of impressing strangers, a project that cannot, by definition, sate our desires but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways. New Yorker
Bit of a theme going on this week. Claire Evans takes the internet = forest metaphor and runs with it. "Going online today is not an invigorating walk through a green woodland—it’s rush-hour traffic alongside a freeway median of diseased trees, littered with the detritus of late capitalism. If we want to repair the damage, we must look to the wisdom of the forest to learn how sustainable, interdependent, life-giving systems work. New Republic
What the hell is going on China? Richard McGregor's guess is about as good as anyone's. Nikkei
Sam Kriss on why astrology matters. None of today's cool young astrologists actually believe the stars affect our lives, but that's not the point. The point of astrology is to make meaning, to allow people to connect to the vastness of existence, to retain a sense of magic - something we've been trying to tell our more literal-minded friends for years. First Things
Alexey Molchanov, history’s most daring freediver, is reaching improbable depths—and discovering a new kind of enlightenment as he conquers one of the world’s wildest sports. Amazing account of an international vagabond community that moves from dive spot to dive spot, encountering the ocean's riches, and experiencing things no other human has. GQ
Humankind
Rebuilding Nepal, brick by brick
Meet Bina Shrestha, a social entrepreneur, wife, and mother in Nepal who co-founded an engineering company to build affordable, disaster-proof homes in the wake of the 2015 earthquake.
Bina was running a successful cleaning company when the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit, killing over 8.800 people and destroying 800,000 homes across the country. Bina joined the humanitarian response with her husband and son, quickly realising the full scale of impact. Without homes to live in, dropout rates from schools increased, disease spread around temporary housing and women and girls were pushed further into poverty as Nepali men were forced to migrate for work. “It was heart-wrenching to see women and children sitting outside their houses that were razed to the ground.”
Focused on the core problem of housing, Bina set out to find a solution. Within a year, she had set up Build up Nepal, a non-profit to create safe, affordable, and sustainable housing and empower local communities to project manage their recovery efforts. Unable to get traditional construction equipment into the small remote villages, Bina researched an ‘interlocking brick solution’ that used a small compression machine to create eco-friendly bricks sourced from local materials.
The technology was a gamechanger. Easy to transport and easy to use, rural communities purchased machines through a payment plan and created micro-construction companies that gave people homes to live in and new employment opportunities and financial stability. The initiative also disrupted Nepal’s dirty fired-brick industry, notorious for child labour and responsible for 2.7% carbon emissions worldwide.
Today, Build Up Nepal has supported 300 entrepreneurs to build 6,000 houses, providing equipment, training, and maintenance to local communities. It has created over 2,900 local jobs and empowered Nepali women to overcome gender barriers to become successful brick-makers, masons, and micro-entrepreneurs.
I believe with determination and genuine effort anything can be achieved; ‘success’ is another name for consistent hard work and the drive to make a difference.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
Do you know we have a podcast? It's called the DNA of Purpose, and it's hosted by our very own Rebecca Tapp. In the latest episode, she explores the role of positive leadership with Jean-Philippe Courtois, Microsoft's president of National Transformation Partnerships. This is a curious and smart conversation about the role of positivity and purpose in business, with one of Microsoft's most senior and experienced people, and one of the world's leading practitioners in this area. We know we're biased, but seriously, it's a great episode. DNA of Purpose
Another member of the FC family, Kaila Colbin, has done an excellent snapshot of the current state of play for lab grown meat, with some brand new data on its exponential cost decrease. The price of cultured meat has gone from $2.3 million per kilogram to just over $20 per kilogram (a 99.999% drop in price) in just seven years. Read it - you'll be amazed. Medium
On that, extremely encouraging note, we'll wrap things up.
Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next week.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team
Oh, and yes, rainbows are actually circles.
What did you think of this edition?
