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
The number of women dying during pregnancy or in childbirth across India continues to fall. Government figures published last month revealed that the maternal mortality rate dropped from 122 per 100,000 births in 2015, to 103 per 100,000 in 2019. Experts say India is now on track to hit the UN’s target of less than 70 deaths per 100,000 births by 2030. Telegraph
Two amazing vaccine stories for you this week. Nepal has introduced the typhoid vaccine into its routine immunisation programme, aiming to reach 95% of the country's 7.5 million children. And in Bangladesh, a three day COVID-19 vaccination campaign reached a staggering 12 million people, bringing the proportion of the vaccinated population to 72%.
Drones in Rwanda have made over 265,000 commercial deliveries of medical supplies, and account for three quarters of blood donations delivered outside Kigali. The blood arrives an average of 90 minutes earlier than by road, and there's been a 67% decrease in blood product expiration after the drone delivery programme was put in place. The Lancet
Six years after deliberations first began, Indonesia has passed a landmark bill to tackle sexual violence, providing a legal framework for victims to seek justice. A majority of lawmakers backed the bill in parliament, successfully overcoming conservative opposition in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country. "This is surely a step forward." Al Jazeera
A new report from the UK's Health Security Agency shows there has been considerable progress towards eliminating hepatitis C as a public health problem in England. The prevalence of chronic hepatitis C declined to around 81,000 in 2020 (compared to 129,000 in 2015) – a 37% fall amongst the general population. UKHSA
One of Massachusetts' oldest prisons is shutting down, thanks to reduced incarceration rates and high maintenance costs.The prison is operating at only 68% capacity, because the state now has the lowest proportion of people in jail in 35 years. WBUR
The fruit of that work — the lowest level of incarceration in decades — was achieved by providing at-risk individuals with pathways to positive life choices, creating new re-entry services, and empowering returning citizens to rebuild their lives in meaningful ways.
Terrence Reidy, Public Safety and Security Secretary, Massachussets
According to the IMF, India has almost eradicated extreme poverty and brought down consumption inequality to its lowest levels in 40 years. The proportion of people living in extreme poverty is now less than 1%, and has remained steady even during the pandemic on the back of 'in-kind' subsidies, especially food rations. Hindustan Times
An international fundraising event in Warsaw last Saturday managed to raise over $10 billion from governments, companies and foundations for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, completely filling the UN Refugee Agency’s funding gap. That makes it the most successful charity event in human history. Global Citizen
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
There's an extremely important and hopeful paper out in Nature this week. The researchers find that if all the countries of the world fulfil their climate commitments, we will likely limit climate change to just under 2°C. To put this in context, when we started this newsletter in 2015, the world was on track for 4-5°C. Seven years later, we're in a position to meet the Paris Agreement.
What's even more encouraging about the paper is that the modeling only looks at national pledges, and doesn’t account for the more ambitious plans of cities, states, and corporations. Volkswagen's zero emissions strategy after all, has a bigger impact than Guinea’s, and California’s decarbonization plans matter more than Tuvalu's.
What does this mean for the climate emergency? The bad news is that 1.5°C is no longer in reach because the fossil fuels industry managed to delay action for so many years. That's a tragedy. The good news is that staying below 2°C now seems eminently possible. It's going to require an enormous amount of work, and there are plenty of battles still to come. But the horror scenarios of just a few years ago are no longer in play, and that's gotta be worth celebrating.
While we're on the subject of climate hope, check out this analysis from Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist, who predicts that Putin’s aggression will drive a faster shift to clean energy, catalyzing market conditions and political appetite for renewables to displace fossil fuels. Canary
In more 'Vladimir Putin, Strategic Genius' news, both Japan and the European Union have announced they will be phasing out their imports of Russian coal. That will affect more than a quarter of all Russian coal exports, amounting to around €8 billion loss of revenue per year for Russia.
Russia's ambitions in the Arctic are dead in the water too. Novatek and Gazprom, the country's two biggest fossil gas companies, are fully dependent on western technology, and the latest round of sanctions from the EU have effectively crippled their Arctic operations. With the halt in LNG projects, Russia will not be able to achieve its dreams of a Northern Sea Route either. Barent Observer
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, one of the largest private domestic banks in the Philippines, says it will stop providing financial support for existing coal plants by 2031. In December 2020, it became the first Philippines bank to announce it would no longer provide financial support for new coal power projects. Business Mirror
The Philippines is massively ramping up its solar capacity, with planned projects growing 10-fold in the last year. As of March 2022, the country has 13 GW of solar in the pipeline, up from a paltry 1.3 GW in March 2021, with wind power also growing substantially. PV Tech
Up to 75% of the electricity flowing into the Irish grid can now come from variable renewable sources. It's the first national power system in the world to reach this level, overcoming 'major technical challenges' to succesfully integrate electricity from wind farms, solar farms and interconnectors linking it with other countries. ReNews
Buoyed by a surge in investment and new projects, wind power has become Spain's main source of electricity generation, and just in time, as Europe seeks to curb its energy imports from Russia. The country now plans to become the 'energy breadbasket' of Europe, aiming to generate 74% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030. TechXplore
Maryland has become the latest US state to mandate an end to carbon emissions on a net basis economy-wide by the middle of the century. The package, which includes substantial environmental-justice provisions, has instantly become one of the country’s most aggressive climate change laws. Canary
Consumers in the United Kingdom bought more electric cars in March 2021 than in whole of 2019, despite the overall car market being down by 14% year on year. “At the current rate, sales of new electric vehicles will overtake both traditional petrol and diesel sales by 2025." Guardian
Canada just joined the ranks of countries and states planning to ban sales of combustion engine cars, requiring all new passenger car sales to be zero-emissions by 2035. The government will gradually ramp up pressure on automakers, requiring at least 20% zero-emissions sales by 2026 and 60% by 2030. Engadget
The world is about to pass another important milestone in electric vehicle adoption. Bloomberg is estimating that 20 million plug-in vehicles will be on the road globally by June 2022. That’s remarkable growth from only one million in 2016, and way, way faster than anyone (including BNEF) predicted even a year ago.
The only home we've ever known *
An indigenous community on the southwest coast of Colombia has helped establish a new marine protected area, conserving one of the country’s most undisturbed ecosystems. The Isla Ají MPA will cover 9,425 hectares of coastal ecosystems and 15,174 hectares of marine ecosystems, and is the result of more than two decades of negotiations. WCS
The state of Victoria, Australia is restoring an area five times the size of Melbourne, with plans to spend $31 million to revegetate parcels of land, capturing carbon and creating habitat for endangered wildlife. The scheme, known as BushBank, includes $7 million in grants for traditional owner corporations for restoration on country. Guardian
Scotland’s forests are expanding at breakneck speed: the share of the country that is forested has increased from just under 6% at the beginning of the 20th century, to around 18% today. Scotland now has nearly as much forest as it did 1,000 years ago, and the government has set a target for 21% by 2032. New Statesman
Under new rules proposed by the EU, clothes, furniture and smartphones must be longer-lasting and easier to repair. The rules, unveiled last month, target products at every stage of use, including design, repair and recycling. The EU says it will crack down on companies misleading consumers with false environmental claims, or greenwashing. BBC
A scheme to reintroduce brown bears to the Pyrenees in Spain has achieved remarkable success, with 70 individuals identified in 2021, the highest number for a century. There have been 15 pups born over the course of last year, and 114 newborns since the scheme was launched in 1996. Guardian
There is a welcome and wonderful sight appearing on beaches in the Seychelles. The endangered green turtle is making a comeback, after several decades of protection and monitoring. More than 15,000 annual clutches are now appearing, up from 3,000 in the 1960s. "This is just the beginning. There's potential for this population to double, triple, we're not even sure." The Week
South Australia's endangered sea lion population has been given a chance to bounce back after a decade-long marine conservation program substantially reduced their deaths in fishing nets. Researchers say there's been 98% reduction in sea lion bycatch mortality in gillnet fisheries since the strategy was implemented. ABC
Indistinguishable from magic
Hubble has spotted the most distant star ever detected. Named Earendel, it's positioned along a ripple in spacetime that gives it extreme magnification, allowing it to emerge into view from its host galaxy, which appears as a red smear across the sky. Its light took 12.9 billion light-years to reach Earth, and formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang. The Verge
Engineers from Nebraska have figured out a way to reduce the number of transistors on an integrated circuit by as much as 75%, potentially cutting up to 5% of the world's energy requirements. Instead of electric charges, the new transistors take advantage of spin: a magnetism-related property of electrons that allows them to be read as a 1 or a 0. Interesting Engineering
Gene-edited wheat is here. In Argentina's 2021/22 planting season, HB4, which is engineered to be drought tolerant, was planted on 55,000 hectares — 0.8% of the total area planted, with the goal of producing enough seed for a larger-scale planting in the 2022/23 season. Regulatory processes for HB4 wheat are now also underway in the US, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Breakthrough
The Dutch Microbiome Project looked at the gut microbiomes of 8,208 people aged 8–84 from three generations across 2,756 families. The conclusion? Our microbiomes are almost all nurture, shaped primarily by where we live and who we live with. Only 6.6% of microbial species found in the gut are heritable, whereas 48.6% can be explained by cohabitation. Nature
If you interested in anything to do with biology, drop whatever you're doing and read this article. Alphafold is changing everything. DeepMind has already released the structure of nearly every protein made by humans, and plans to release more than 100 million predictions by the end of this year - half of all the known proteins in existence. Nature
Information superhighway
No idea how Adam Tooze does it - along with Noah Smith, surely the most prolific yet consistently excellent political economist in the world right now. In this essay for the New Statesman he explores what he calls 'the end of the end of history', making the argument that Russia's invasion of the Ukraine might just end up proving that Fukuyama was right all along.
We usually try to stay clear of pop culture in our newsletter, but couldn't resist this. As long time closet fans, we feel like it's finally time to come clean. Grimes is way more interesting than Elon Musk. There, we said it. Now you're going to have to go read this profile in Vanity Fair to see if our opinions are correct.
Never thought about the care economy like this, but it makes a lot of sense. The fantasy of rugged individualism and the comparatively recent and deeply unnatural cultural experiment of the nuclear family has left an entire generation in the lurch. It's not that we mind looking after our kids, or our parents - it's that we resent the lack of options. Culture Study
Earlier this year, Substack asked a number of its music writers to create one-hour soundtracks, designed to help writers find a flow state in their writing practice. Here are seven of the best. Should be more than enough background magic here to keep you going for weeks. Substack
Jonathan Haidt is hugely influential; his 'moral roots' explanation of the difference between conservatives and liberals is a classic, as are his ideas on the coddling of the American mind. Our personal view is that he's a bit overwrought, but then again - he is a psychologist from New York. Anyway, here he is in The Atlantic, explaining how social media has ruined everything. Buckle up: it's a big rant.
And finally, some unashamed, glorious geekery. This is a really fun thought-experiment by one of the world's most pre-eminent astronomers on how many humans could be supported inside an Earth orbit-sized Dyson Sphere. While we're at it, here's the highest resolution photograph of the sun ever taken, and the most up to date map of the observable universe. You're welcome.
Humankind
Real-time justice
Meet Clementine Jacoby, a not-yet 30-year old, former Google software engineer who created Recidiviz, a non-profit technology company using big data to create a fairer criminal justice system and solve mass incarceration across America.
Clementine was five years old when her teenage uncle was imprisoned for a non-violent crime and when he was released ten years later, she watched him struggle to keep a job or stay out of jail. The experience sparked a deep calling to repair a justice system that was failing to help people break the cycle and rehabilitate their lives.
While studying cognitive and computer sciences at Stanford University, Clementine taught dance at a local prison and after graduation travelled to Brazil as a volunteer in a circus performance program aimed at reducing gang-related violence in young offenders. Realising “circus school was clearly a better crime deterrent than incarcerating kids” Clementine decided to tackle her country’s incarceration problem, which stemmed from outdated technology and a lack of unified databases or resources to track what was working.
Clementine was working as a project manager for Google Maps when she experimented with applying the same analytics tools, to update the prison system. In 2017 she launched Recidiviz as a side project, with a mission to help criminal justice agencies safely reduce incarceration by turning complicated prison and parole data into easy-to-view information, allowing decisionmakers to track the impact of programs and policies in real-time.
By February 2019 Recidiviz was a stand-alone organisation and when COVID hit in 2020, thirty states engaged Clementine’s company to help to predict and prevent outbreaks of the virus among prison staff and inmates. During that time, the company also helped authorities identify and release 44,000 ‘appropriate’ inmates across the partnering states.
As the name suggests, Recidviz is also tackling recidivism, “the tendency of a criminal to reoffend” by providing valuable data-driven insights, like whether an incarcerated person has shown progress after a treatment program and how trajectories change when officers help ex-prisoners find stable housing and work. All this data is empowering authorities to reduce incarceration, maximise re-entry success and ultimately create systemic change.
"The focus on finding low-cost solutions was key. If you listen carefully upfront, you’re much more likely to build something of value to the person you’re trying to help."
That's it for this week. We know we promised a charity partner announcement, but we're just working out a few more details before launch. Should be ready by the next edition.
Happy Easter, Ramadan and Passover, wishing you and your loved ones all the best. We'll see you soon.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the team
