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.
Hi everyone, Gus here. Over the next few weeks we're going to be announcing some changes to the way this newsletter is put together. Nothing earth-shaking, just some tinkering around the edges to make it a better reading experience for you, and a more sustainable operation for ourselves.
First off the ranks is a long-awaited commenting function. Got something you'd like to say about this, or any other edition? You can do that for each edition now. One of the things we've missed the most since we moved away from Substack a few years ago is a forum for this community, so we're delighted to be able to offer it again.
We'd love to hear from you. Other angles, further reading, vehement disagreement, fulsome praise, bad poetry, glaring typos, horrible grammatical errors you just have to point out. We're here for all of it. Just scroll to the end of this post.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
Have you ever heard of the UNFPA Supplies Partnership? It's one of the most impactful, yet least known aid programs of all time, delivering contraceptives and maternal health medicine to adolescents and women around the world. Since 2008 it's prevented 89 million unintended pregnancies, 26.8 million unsafe abortions, 254,000 maternal deaths, and saved 1.6 million children.
Tanzania is one of the world's worst affected countries by malaria, but has made significant progress in the last decade thanks to bed nets, insecticides, and a new vaccine. Malaria-related deaths decreased by 71% between 2015 and 2021, and prevalence among primary school children has also nearly halved, falling from 21.6% in 2015 to 11.8% in 2021. Global Citizen
Global AIDS deaths fell to 650,000 in 2021, down by more than 11% since 2019. While the fight is far from over and huge challenges remain, it's an extraordinary achievement, especially after two years of a global pandemic. The tens of thousands of activists, donors and healthcare workers who made it happen deserve our recognition (they sure aren't getting any from global media). UNAIDS
After decades of advocacy by labour activists, Spain has passed a landmark law improving the rights of domestic workers. The new regulations, which enter into force on the 1st October 2022, will give over 370,000 domestic workers (almost all women) the right to unemployment benefits, appeal against unfair dismissal, and health and safety protections equivalent any other employed person. ILO
Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most authoritarian countries, has become the latest nation to get rid of the death penalty. Capital punishment has been 'totally abolished' in the central African country after the president signed a new penal code earlier this week. Guardian
El Salvador, once known as the 'murder capital of the world' has substantially reduced its murder rate since 2015. Seven years ago, the rate was 103 homicides per 100,000 people - the highest in the world. In 2021, that had dropped to 18 per 100,000, and the downward trend has continued into 2022. El Salvador Info
Youth crime has reached its lowest level on record in the United States. In 2020, there were an 424,300 arrests for violent crime involving persons younger than 18. That's 38% lower than the number of arrests in 2019, half the number of arrests from five years earlier, and 78% below the 1994 peak. Naturally, this story has been making headlines everywhere. OJJDP
Oklahoma, which once had the highest incarceration rate in the US, has achieved remarkable success in reducing prison populations. A series of bipartisan bills has led to a 21% decline in prison populations in the past five years — from 28,342 in 2017 to 22,341 in 2022. Among other achievements, the number imprisoned for felony offenses has fallen by a third, and for drug offenses by 62%.
The only home we've ever known
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States says that concentrations of CFCs, the harmful chemicals that damage the ozone layer, have dropped by just over 50% compared to the 1980s. Scientists say it is a 'significant milestone' on the path to recovery. Euro News
The US Senate has ratified the Kigali Amendment, a global climate treaty that formally phases down the use of HFCs, the industrial chemicals that replaced CFCs in the 1980s. Republicans supported the phase-down as being good for business, while Democrats and climate activists praised it as good climate policy. NYT
Two inspiring river stories for you this week. In the Netherlands rewilding experts are undoing 500 years of engineering on the Meuse River, a project described as Europe’s largest river restoration. In Canada, indigenous communities are co-leading an effort with the government to restore the estuary of the Squamish River, "reopening its lungs, and bringing back the natural being of it.”
Three great ocean conservation stories too. The Republic of the Congo has created its first ever marine protected areas, covering 4,000 km2 off the west African coast, Albania has declared its Porto-Palermo Bay as a nature park, and after a decade of work Canada has unveiled a blueprint for a vast network of marine protected areas across the northern third of its West Coast.
Make it four. Twenty years ago, Indonesia's Raja Ampat archipelago was in trouble due to unsustainable fishing practices. In 2004 authorities incorporated it into a network of over 20,000 km2 of protected areas, and today fish populations have rebounded, coral is recovering and livelihoods for local communities have improved. Earlier this year it was given a Blue Parks Award. CNN
Last week it was Patagonia, this week it's the founder of Lululemon, who has pledged $75.8 million to acquire wilderness in British Columbia. It's one of the largest philanthropic gifts in Canadian history, and will be used to buy forests and repurchase mining, forestry and other resource licenses, turning huge tracts of land into parks managed by indigenous communities. Bloomberg
After being driven to extinction in the United Kingdom in 1979, the large blue butterfly just had its best year since record keeping began 150 years ago. The success is thanks to reintroduction efforts that began in 1983, and the establishment of multiple protected habitats across southwest England. Ecowatch
The unprecedented success of this project is testimony to what large scale collaboration between conservationists, scientists and volunteers can achieve. Its greatest legacy is that it demonstrates that we can reverse the decline of globally-threatened species once we understand the driving factors.
Jeremy Thomas, Professor of Ecology, University of Oxford
Southwest Florida is experiencing its best loggerhead turtle nesting season on record. Numbers dwindled to all time lows in the 2000s, but following efforts by conservationists and volunteers, started to climb again in 2016. “Oh my gosh, it’s nuts. We’ve never seen numbers like this." Marco News
The US federal duck stamp program is one of the most successful conservation programs ever created. Since 1934, it's raised $1.1 billion through sales of stamps, and helped conserve more than six million acres of habitat. Earlier this week the Interior Department announced another $105 million of funding to conserve or restore 116,305 acres of habitat for waterfowl and other birds in 18 states. Mirage
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
The case for climate hope, from an IPCC scientist. Cosmos
Norway's sovereign wealth fund will require all companies it invests in to reach net zero by 2050. This might not sound like a big carbon coup, but it is. The fund is estimated to own around 1.3% of the global stock market, putting it in a position to exert genuine pressure on major companies to clean up their act. Reuters
Liaoning, a province in the northeast of China that was once one of the country's major coal and industrial hubs, has launched a $87 billion plan to expand clean energy production. The province is planning 60GW of renewables, nuclear and virtual power plants, enough combined generation to power all of Thailand. Bloomberg
Japan is forecasting a huge wave of power plant closures this decade. Its Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is now predicting over 43 GW of thermal capacity shutting by 2030. That's 50% higher than previous estimates, and represents a quarter of all the country's fossil fuels capacity. Bloomberg Japan
Electric vehicles are exploding across the United States. Market share in the southeast has doubled compared to last year, Hertz just announced plans to order 175,000 EVs from General Motors, Bloomberg has updated its forecasts to 50% market share by 2030, and none of the car companies can keep up. WSJ
Samsung, one of Asia's biggest industrial giants, has committed to reaching net zero for its mobile, television and consumer electronics divisions by 2030, and across all global operations including semiconductors by 2050. Pepsi and agriculture giant ADM are partnering to implement regenerative agricultural practices on two million acres of American farmland by 2030.
Germany says its gas storage facilities are 90% full, and on track for 95% by November. Robert Habeck, the Minister of Economy, says the country now has a chance of getting through the winter 'comfortably' without Russian gas. Someone might want to let Putin know. DW
Spain is getting serious about cleaning up its air. Due to legislation passed last year, all municipalities with 50,000 residents or more will have to implement low-emission zones within their borders in 2023. According to one Spanish news source, that’s nearly 150 Spanish municipalities. Clean Technica
It's part of a wider trend. The number of clean air zones across Europe has risen by 40% since 2019. Low-emission zones have now been introduced in 320 European city regions, a figure expected to rise to 507 by 2025. All ten of the continent's most popular tourist cities now restrict petrol and diesel clunkers. Guardian
If exponential growth in solar and wind blew your mind... if you never saw the electric vehicle rocket coming... we've got news for you. Heat pumps are next. Switching to a heat pump is one of the few individual actions you can take to drastically reduce your climate impact. Wondering where to start? Try this.
Mercedes just unveiled its long haul trucking prototype. The engineering is incredible. 500 kilometres per charge, 10 ton payload, 1.2 million kilometre battery life, no tail pipe pollution, hardly any noise, and regenerative braking. A timely reminder that electric vehicles don't just replace combustion engine vehicles, they're better on multiple counts.
Long awaited - Our fully-electric @MercedesBenz #eActros LongHaul concept-prototype. The first prototypes are already on the test track and will be undergoing intensive testing on public roads this year. 🔋 See it live & visit us at the #IAA22 now in Hanover! #ChargedForIAA pic.twitter.com/AjxYE2bs8a
— Daimler Truck AG (@DaimlerTruck) September 19, 2022
Indistinguishable from magic
Saturn has three unsolved mysteries: the origin of its rings, why the procession of its orbital plane is coupled with Neptune's, and where its 26.7° tilt came from. Now, astronomers say they have the answer for all three - a missing moon dubbed Chrysalis, which broke apart 160 million years ago, tilting and decoupling the planet, and creating its striking rings. Big Think
High speed internet is available in Antarctica, thanks to a Starlink receiver at McMurdo Station. Meanwhile, over at Boca Chica in Texas, SpaceX super fans have started to move in to be near the action. Come for the Dungeons and Dragons-themed silicon sex toys, stay for a story that says much, much more about the human need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. Verge
First it identified them, now AI is helping scientists come up with proteins shaped unlike anything in nature. Biochemists in Washington have tweaked Alphafold and other AI programmes to create software that designs novel proteins in seconds - potentially unlocking more efficient vaccines, speeding up cancer cures, or leading to completely new materials. “The implications are dramatic." Nature
There are plenty of examples of AI diagnosing X-rays more accurately than radiologists, but they all rely on scans labelled by humans. This story is different. Researchers from Harvard have trained an algorithm on a dataset of 377,000 chest x-rays, but rather than using structured data, taught it to associate images with corresponding medical reports written by specialists in natural language. MIT
Engineering students in California have created a robot that jumps three times higher than any robot ever created, and 14 times higher than anything in the animal kingdom. The robot overcomes biological constraints through a combination of ratcheting, which allows energy to build up, and square springs, which store twice as much energy as triangular-ish, biological ones. Quanta
The information highway is still pretty super
Big Think has put together a special issue on the topic of progress and it's got a lot of good stuff in it. Featuring many names that will be familiar to readers of this newsletter - Rutger Bregman, Tyler Cowen, Kevin Kelly, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Parag Khanna. We recommend starting with this essay by Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data.
Teach kids statistics! Ever wondered why we all learned calculus in high school, only to never touch it again? Turns out that's a hangover from the space race. Times have changed. We live in the Information Age now, an age of synthesis, where analysing complex systems is far more important than partial differential equations. Statistics is a way more appropriate skill. Quillette
Easily the best piece we've seen yet on AI prompts and large language models. Stephen Marche argues that we are teaching computers to play every language game that we can identify, and that it's going to be weird and sublime and we probably won’t even notice it happening to us. Includes a jaw-dropping, computer-written paragraph that we're still recovering from. Atlantic
Why does liberalism endure? According to Janan Ganesh, it's because its enemies confuse its substance (which is compromise-minded) with people’s attachment to it (which is far from compromising). Western ideals are centred around a way of life to do with personal autonomy for which people have consistently endured hardship, up to and including a blood price. FT
Science historian Amanda Rees on why Marche's algorithms and Ganesh's ideals lack something essential. If humans are going to gain a better understanding of the vibrant world around us, and somehow make it through the Anthropocene without wrecking everything, we’re going to need a new conception of nonhuman intelligence. Neoma
Wondering what truly great sports writing looks like? How about a piece on stone skipping? If you're looking to have your faith in both the human spirit and the power of competition restored, then you really need to meet Kurt Steiner. Oh, and you also need to watch his world record of 88 skips in a single throw. Cannot recommend this enough. Outside
Humankind
The grey ghosts
Meet Charudutt Mishra, fondly known as ‘Charu’, a 51 year old scientist and conservationist in India who has spent 25 years protecting wild snow leopards by placing local communities at the heart of his conservation work.
Charu grew up with a deep connection to nature fostered by his mother. He studied biology, then science and in 1997 travelled to the remote village of Kibber in Northern India, to research the elusive snow leopard as part of his PhD in ecology and conservation. He was determined to forge a career in field research, but one brutal moment changed the course of his life.
When a group of angry villagers took turns in ceremonially beating the carcass of a snow leopard that had preyed on their livestock, Charu was horrified. Unable to shake his anger, he approached a village elder to ask how a peaceful community could reconcile killing the creature. The elder responded that “while all creatures have a right to live, we have to do this to take care of our families and livestock.”
The conversation sparked a revelation. Realising that conservation wasn’t a question of willingness but capacity, Charu worked with the village to break the link between snow leopard predation and economic loss. He created India’s first community managed livestock insurance program, designed to share economic losses and reward herders who use an anti-predatory approach. Retaliation attacks fell to zero and Charu grew his mission, co-creating community wildlife reserves and other initiatives to strengthen local livelihoods.
Charu’s approach marked a turning point in conservation. In the late nineties fortress-style conservation, which involved evicting people from the territory of endangered animals, was gaining momentum. But Charu wanted to empower communities to live alongside the leopards, so he set about expanding his unique PARTNERS framework (Presence, Aptness, Respect, Transparency, Negotiation, Empathy, Responsiveness, and Support).
Since 2002 Charu’s community-led program has trained hundreds of conservationists and built 150 local partnerships to protect 150,000 km2 of habitat across five countries. Charu’s work also encouraged 12 snow leopard range countries to sign a landmark agreement in 2013 to increase protection.
Charu’s story is one of love before first sight. Snow leopards are so rare, he spent more than a decade fighting to protect them before he caught his first glimpse of a ‘grey ghost’ in the wild. But on a recent trip back to the Kibber nature reserve he helped create two decades ago, Charu spotted four leopards in just nine days.
This project addresses one significant gap in conservation worldwide – our ability to work effectively with local communities. People are willing to conserve nature. We just need to make them more able to do so.
That's it for this edition, thanks for reading. Some more announcements coming next week, we'll see you then.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the team
