183: Middle Out Economics

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.

Give a damn

Our newest charity partner is We Care Solar, an organisation with a simple mission - to light every birth. They provide doctors, nurses and midwives with lighting, mobile communication, and medical devices using off-grid solar electricity. They operate primarily in four countries: Liberia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and most recently Sierra Leone.

We are sending them US$3,500 to fund the installation of a solar system for a community health centre in Sierra Leone. The funds will pay for clean, renewable energy, medical-grade LED lighting, medical grade appliances, including a fetal Doppler and infrared thermometer, rechargeable headlamps for small task lighting, and charging ports for phones and other devices.

Thanks to you, our paying members, mothers attending the clinic will no longer need to include candles or kerosene as part of their birthing kits, and midwives and doctors will be able to provide emergency obstetric care throughout the night. We are so grateful. Thank you for making this happen.

Good news you probably didn't hear about

The WHO says the end of the COVID-19 pandemic is officially in sight. Weekly reported deaths have fallen to their lowest level since March 2020 and attention is now turning towards helping countries 'finish the race'.

Over the past two decades the Global Fund has saved 44 million lives from three of the world’s deadliest epidemics, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. One of the biggest drivers of the fund’s success is its community-led approach. It was one of the first international organisations to give community groups a voice and representation at board level.

Leprosy has decreased from over five million cases a year in the 1980s to just 133,802 cases in 2021. In the past decade there has been a 42.5%  decrease in new global cases. The introduction of multidrug therapy and screening programs have been instrumental in reducing transmission and 14 countries have reported no new child cases for five consecutive years. WHO

Incredible thread summarising efforts in the US to reform bail. The data is definitive. Hundreds of thousands more people are free and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been saved, without any correlated increase in crime. Turns out people are less likely to commit crime if you let them return to their jobs and communities. "We can have more freedom, more fairness, and more safety all at once.”

The idea of a universal basic income is gaining momentum in the US. Since 2020, more than 48 guaranteed income programs have launched to help people to break the cycle of poverty. California is the epicentre of the movement, allocating $35 million over five years for cities to carry out pilot programs. The Los Angeles program is one of the largest, benefiting 3,200 people. NYT

The poverty rate in America plummeted to 7.8% in 2021, the lowest level on record, cutting the number of children living in poverty by nearly half. West Virginia, one of the country’s poorest states, has been on the frontline of reducing child poverty for years. Expanded government subsidies resulted in a decrease in child poverty by nearly three-quarters between 1993 to 2019. NYT

Even temporary support can have lasting impact. There is a great literature that shows improvements in income, especially at early ages, have long-term payoffs for kids.
Christopher Wimer, Centre on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University

The only home we've ever known

You've probably seen this but in case you haven't, Yvon Chouinard, the ‘existential dirtbag’ who founded Patagonia, has given away the entire company to a trust that will use future profits to fight the climate crisis. "Earth is now our only shareholder. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth." Guardian

A second oil company has cancelled its lease in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge following fierce opposition by the Indigenous Gwich’in people. To date, 29 global banks have declined underwriting oil and gas projects in the refuge and 14 international insurances companies will not insure projects in the region. Mongabay

A pair of osprey chicks have hatched in Leicestershire for the first time in two centuries, one of a series of recent successes in rewilding the osprey across the UK. After being hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there are now close to 300 breeding pairs across the British Isles. “It’s been a tremendous success. From a human perspective, we’re making good on what we destroyed." Guardian

The world’s largest shipping company, the Mediterranean Shipping Company, is rerouting its fleet to avoid collisions with endangered blue whales off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The company is working with scientists and marine experts to modify its navigation guidance to reduce the risk of a ship striking a whale by 95%. Business Insider

Italy has officially banned the slaughter of male chicks to end the culling of up to 40 million young birds by the egg industry each year. It follows two years of campaigning by activists, starting with a petition in 2020. France and Germany have also banned culling and a similar petition in the US has exceeded 50,000 signatures. Plant Based News

A group of residents in Columbia Gorge who teamed up with a conservation group have won an epic four-year court battle against two powerful corporations to protect one of North America’s great natural wonders from mining and development. The gorge encompasses everything from grasslands to rainforests and is home to 25 endangered animals and plants. Grist

When people stand up, good things happen. These folks showed up, believed in the cause, and carried it through. When you have community members who do that, it has a profound effect.
Kevin Gorman, Executive Director, Friends of the Columbia Gorge

After a decade of efforts, Sweden has hit a new recycling record, collecting 552,600 tonnes of packaging in 2021, an increase of 6% since 2020. On average, each Swede handed in 53 kg of packaging including 23.2 kg of glass, 18.9 kg of paper and 9 kg of plastic. Warp

Over the past decade Bridgestone has invested more than $100 million into eco-tyres made from guayule, a drought-friendly shrub that produces a compound that's good enough for race tyres. The eco-tyres have been tested on Indy Cars for over a year and provide 'similar or better performance' than traditional rubber tyres. Ars Technica

Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it

Two of the world's top universities have recently published research proving that saving Planet Earth really is cheaper than ruining it. Last month, Marc Jacobson and his team at Stanford showed that for 145 countries, a transition to 100% wind, water, solar and storage would pay for itself within six years, and create 28 million new jobs. 95% of the technologies needed are already fully commercial.

Now another study from Oxford has come to a similar conclusion, showing that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as much as $12 trillion by 2050. If solar, wind, batteries and electrolysers stay on their learning curves for another decade, we will achieve a near-net-zero emissions energy system within just 25 years.

Feels impossible, until it's done. Take California. For years, it clung to its contradictory status as both a climate leader and prolific fossil fuel producer. But no longer. Among the flurry of bills that's been passed in recent weeks are a set of extraordinary, once unthinkable restrictions on the state’s oil and gas industry. New Republic

Headline spotted in the Financial Times last week: We’re Moving Into A More Optimistic Era For Climate Action.

Headline spotted in the NYT last week: Clean Energy Projects Surge After Climate Bill Passage.

Well that happened fast. Clean energy now provides more employment globally than fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Clean energy, which under IEA’s definition includes nuclear power, is now estimated to account for 40 million jobs, more than half of the 65 million energy sector jobs globally.

Contrary to the stories we've been getting from almost every media outlet in the world, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has reduced fossil fuels usage. While global power demand in the first half of 2022 grew by 2.5%, emissions fell by around 1%. Coal consumption by power plants dropped 1.2% and gas saw a small decline too, compared with a 17% jump in wind and solar output. Bloomberg

Never gets old. Vladimir Putin has done more to accelerate the clean energy transition than anyone alive today.

Installations of rooftop solar in Spain have increased ten-fold in 2022. Favourable rules and ample room for expansion, combined with soaring costs for other forms of energy, have accelerated what was already a very strong growth trend in the sun-drenched nation. Who's responsible? See above. Bloomberg

Nine nations bordering the North Sea have announced a massive increase in targets for offshore wind power in the coming decades. The numbers are insane. 76GW by 2030, 193 GW by 2040 and 260 GW by mid-century. To put this in perspective, current capacity in the region is less than 20GW. Time to build. AP

A report on worldwide insurance industry trends by WTW has revealed that coal projects have access to less than a tenth of the insurance funding available for other power projects. Analysts say that coal now faces insurance premium rises of 15% to 20%, whereas all other power sectors range between 2.5% to 5%.

BDO, the largest lender in the Philippines, says it will reduce coal exposure by 50% by 2033 as part of its energy transition program. Big deal for an Asian bank. “Ultimately, BDO does not intend to finance any new capacity that will increase harmful greenhouse gas emissions in the environment.” Manila Standard

Thyssenkrupp, Germany’s largest flat steel manufacturer, has formally decided to begin the move away from coal at its flagship Duisburg plant due to customer demand for green steel. Starting in 2016, 2.5 million tonnes a year will be made using hydrogen-powered direct reduction, about 6% of all German steel production.

In this week's 'it can't be done' news, Volvo is launching three new massive electric truck models. Full scale production has begun on the the Volvo FM, Volvo FH, and Volvo FMX. Each weighs up to 44 tonnes, and designed to cover a wide range of applications including city distribution, refuse handling, regional transport, and construction work. Business Green

Indistinguishable from magic

The earliest sign of civilization is not a clay pot, or tools made of iron, or the first domesticated plants. It is a mended femur. It shows someone must have cared for the injured person, hunted on their behalf, brought them food, served them at personal sacrifice. The first step to civilization is an act of human compassion, and it becomes the foundation to all the great achievements of humankind.
Margaret Mead

Archaeologists have discovered the earliest known example of a successful major limb amputation in a cave in Indonesia. The 31,000 year old skeleton of a hunter-gatherer was missing the lower third of its left leg, which appeared to have been chopped off by a sharp stone tool when they were a child. It's 20,000 years older than the previous oldest known limb amputation. NPR

Buckle up. Nvidia's new flagship AI chip, the H100, is 4.5 times faster than its current fastest production chip, the A100. The H100 is designed as a high-end data centre GPU for machine learning and supercomputer applications like image recognition, large language models and image synthesis. Analysts expect it to replace the A100 before the year is out. Ars Technica

Slowly but steadily, nuclear fusion is moving from being a physics problem to an engineering one. Scientists in South Korea have succeeded in controlling plasma for 30 seconds at temperatures in excess of 100 million° C. While the duration and temperature alone aren’t records, the simultaneous achievement of heat and stability brings us another step closer to viability. New Scientist

British doctors have told health services to prepare for a new era of cancer screening after a study found a simple blood test could spot multiple cancer types in patients. The test was offered to more than 6,600 adults aged 50 and over, and detected dozens of new cases. Many were early stage and nearly three-quarters were not routinely screened for. Guardian

Seems like you can't move without bumping into stories about 3D-printed homes these days. This week, it's a prize-winning, 2,045 square foot, mid-century modern ranch house with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms in Austin, Texas. The walls took less than two weeks to print, and the rest was finished using sustainable construction methods. Builder

The information highway is still pretty super

Evgenia Markovna Albats is widely regarded as the doyenne of independent Russian journalism and at 64, has the stripes to prove it. She's been in Moscow since the war started, but has finally left after it became too dangerous. Here she is reflecting on what life is like there now, and on what's coming next. Rare to get this kind of unvarnished, insider account. Puck

Delia Cai is bang on and very funny on the great resignation, or quiet quitting, or whatever it is we're calling it this week. We're suckers for this very online, burnt-out New York millennial tone. Hard to get right, but when it works, it's so good. "The resulting effect is not so much a lesson on succinctness as it is a clue about which types of people are socially encouraged to communicate in pings of authoritative masculine curtness." Vanity Fair

Middle-out economics is the idea that economies grow not from a trickle-down, or thanks to a nanny state, but from the middle out, through investments in the middle class such as strong unions, good public schools, affordable child-and health care and a robust social safety net. Sometimes naming things is half the struggle! It comes from Michael Tomasky's new book (NYT and Politico reviews).

Eve Peyser spent a week hanging out with members of Mensa, and ended up writing an article that feels like it has very little to do with the validity of IQ as a measurement, or the nature of intelligence, and everything to do with the deeply human need to belong. People are just people, even if the tribal signalling devices change. NY Mag

And then there's the deeply human need to feel. Nordic Larping is a style of role-playing that immerses participants in extreme, make-believe experiences: a village under military occupation, a failing hippie commune, a nuclear bunker. This account by a gay journalist of a conversion therapy Larp is fascinating. As he describes it, similar to the choice to watch a sad movie, just way more intense. Wired

Here's the human side of Ukraine's extraordinary recent success on the battlefield. This map shows the thousands of square kilometres of territory regained from the Russians. Somewhere in there, Ukrainian soldier Vyacheslav Zadorenko liberated his mother from her occupied village.

Humankind

The Predatory Givers

Meet Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton, two former debt collectors in New York who wiped away $6.7 billion of medical debt for millions of low-income Americans.

After decades of chasing people who couldn’t afford their bills, Craig and Jerry rose to the top of their game. Craig grew up in the collections industry, working in his family’s business before moving onto bigger clients like IBM, and Jerry was a four-plus decade veteran of the credit and collections industry.

In 2011, Jerry glanced out his office window and saw the Occupy Wall Street protest gathering in Zuccotti Park. As a child of the 1960s, he felt an old stirring and went down to take a closer look. When the protesters discovered there was a debt collector in their midst, things could have turned bad for Jerry, but instead of opposition he was offered an intriguing proposition.

Occupy were looking for someone to help launch the ‘Rolling Jubilee’, a crowdfunding project to raise $50k with the aim of purchasing $1m of defaulted debt and abolishing it. Jerry called his friend and fellow-executive Craig, who instantly jumped on board, and together the pair helped Occupy abolish $40 million in medical and student loan debt.

Then the unexpected happened: the protestors moved onto the next project and shut Jubilee down. But Craig and Jerry couldn’t let the idea go. After years of chasing money, they were hooked on making a difference and in 2014 launched RIP Medical Debt.

Despite all their experience and good intentions, the charity struggled to make it through its first year. “It was the hardest thing we ever did. We thought it would be easy to raise $500,000, but we struggled to raise $3,000.”

In 2016, two years into the venture, fate intervened again when talk-show host John Oliver purchased a medical debt portfolio worth $14.9 million and donated it to RIP on live television. The charity became an internet sensation and overnight, Jerry and Craig’s fledgling mission grew into a movement, propelled by a flurry of donations.

Over the past eight years RIP has changed the lives of 3.6 million Americans. The charity bestows its blessings randomly but seeks out patients who earn up to four times below the national poverty level. For recipients, the arrival of the thin yellow envelope instantly wipes away years of financial burden and opens up the possibility of a new beginning.

Millions of people are sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide, ‘do I buy medication today or do I pay the water bill, or do I pay the debt collector?’ We simply decided to take the debt collector out of the equation.
Jerry Ashton

That's it for this week, thanks for reading, and thank you again for making the donation to We Care Solar possible.

We'll see you next week.

Much love,

Gus, Amy and the rest of the team