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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Peace, love and hopefully no more #facepalms. We'll see you next week :)
Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team
