This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mind-blowing science, and the best bits of the internet. One third of your subscription fee goes to charity, and we offset the carbon cost of sending this newsletter here. You can buy a gift subscription here. We're also on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
Humanity just reached a big turning point. For the first time on record, global smoking prevalence has fallen, from 22.6% of people in 2007, to 19.6% in 2019. That's a hugely consequential shift in behaviour that has the potential to massively reduce harm. Tobacco use causes around 8.7 million deaths and approximately $2 trillion in economic damage every year. Tobacco Atlas
Uzbekistan says that 94% of girls aged 12-14 have received a dose of the human papillomavirus vaccine. This will have a big impact: cervical cancer ranks as the country's second-most common cancer among women, and studies have shown that widespread HPV vaccination drives down incidence by around 90%. Gavi
Europe's Child Guarantee is one of the EU's main social policy initiatives, and it's working. The proportion of children classified as 'severely deprived' has decreased from 22.8% in 2009 to 14.6% in 2021. The policy has been particularly successful in eastern Europe. Latvia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary have all seen declines of more than 20%. European Parliament
Visceral leishmaniasis is a horrible disease spread by sandflies, causing severe fever, weight loss, enlargement of the spleen and liver, and anaemia. In the last decade, global cases have decreased from 64,223 in 2011 to 11,689 in 2021, the lowest since 1998. The drop has been particularly noticeable in the WHO South East Asia Region - less than 1,500 cases in 2021, a decrease of 96%. WHO
The DRC's Indigenous Pygmy people have won a major human rights victory with a new law that recognizes them as a distinct people with rights and access to free, prior and informed consent before the government or industry can exploit their land. We, a network of 45 Indigenous organizations, worked for 14 years to get these protections enshrined into law Mongabay
In what might be our favourite ballot initiative from the midterms, Colorado voters approved a measure to provide free meals for all the state's public school students. The measure will help schools pay for the meals by raising $100 million a year through increased taxes on those with incomes of more than $300,000 a year. NPR
The West African nation of Benin adopted one of the continent’s most liberal laws on reproductive rights last year after hearing testimony from gynaecologists about women dying from illegal abortions. A year later, this culturally conservative country, made up mostly of Christians and Muslims, has become one of the few in Africa where a woman's right to choose is broadly available. NYT
Angola is making steady progress in clearing its minefields. HALO, a British non-profit spearheading the effort, has cleared more than 10 million m2 since the end of the civil war in the 1990s. Much of that effort is being led by all-women teams - this photo essay about their work is amazing. NPR
Suicides by active duty members of the US military have decreased substantially over the past 18 months, thanks to increased attention by senior leaders, and the implementation of an array of new programs, ranging from required counselling visits to stress relief education and recreational outings. PBS
Mega-philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has revealed that in the last seven months she and her team have given almost $2 billion in donations to 343 organizations. "I needn’t ask those I care about what to say to them, or what to do for them. I can share what I have with them to stand behind them as they speak and act for themselves." Amen.
Paris, one of the world’s most expensive cities, is also one of the most progressive for low-cost housing. 25% of accommodation is accessible to people on lower incomes, and the French capital is now targeting 40% by 2035. That means a major expansion of public housing so that homes for low-income tenants make up a third of all units. Bloomberg
Presented without comment
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions.
~ GK Chesterton (1910)
Of the tens of millions of tourists from around the world who visit Turkey each year, many spend time in the area where Sunday’s bombing took place. https://t.co/iyV2duE75S
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) November 13, 2022
The only home we've ever known
Lula says Brazil is back, and that climate change will be at the heart of his agenda as he cracks down on deforestation, tackles inequality and rolls out renewable energy. His highly successful Amazon Fund has just been reactivated, and Brazil also just joined Indonesia and the DRC to create a new funding mechanism to protect forests. Between them, the trio are home to half the world's rainforests.
The Global Mangrove Alliance has reported a decline in the overall rate of mangrove loss. More than 42% of the world’s mangroves are now protected, an increase of 17% since 2012. Indonesia holds one-fifth of the world’s total mangrove coverage with more than 2,000 km2 ripe for restoration. Mongabay
A new conservation project is blooming in Devon, aiming to create a network of flower-filled grasslands spanning 1,200 hectares of coastland by 2030. The first 200 acres have already been sown, using 31 seed varieties including yellow rattle and oxeye daisy. The new habitats will attract a wide range of wildlife including voles, bats, birds of prey and butterflies. Guardian
Tetiaroa Atoll, a 12-island paradise in French Polynesia, has been declared rodent free after years of conservation efforts. Scientists are now studying local flora, wildlife and marine environment to establish the world’s first pre-eradication baseline. Mongabay
Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools, one of Africa’s most renowned game-viewing destinations, has maintained a zero elephant poaching rate for the third year in a row - a staggering achievement given 12,000 were poached in the area in the past ten years. More funding for local rangers along with the introduction of tracking technology and smartphones has driven the change. Global Conservation
Since it was formed in 2010, the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature has turned an unorthodox legal theory into a thriving global movement. An estimated 400 initiatives are in progress and 39 countries have recognised the Rights of Nature in national legislation or local law to protect endangered ecosystems and wildlife. Inside Climate New
The Halda River in Bangladesh, the world’s only natural gene bank for several carp species, has made a comeback. At its peak in 1941, 4,000 kg of fish eggs were being harvested, but by 2016 that had dwindled to zero. Conservation efforts kicked off in 2018, and the river has started rebounding. Mongabay
After a disappointing few weeks for plastic recycling in Australia, the government has pledged to recycle or reuse 100% of plastic waste and end plastic pollution by 2040. The lucky country is going to need all the breaks it can get - only 16% of the one million tonnes of plastic in circulation is currently recycled. ABC
The largest fish in the Amazon, the pirarucu, has been saved from extinction thanks to a community campaign to impose strict fishing regulations. The controls have resulted in a population surge, with the number of pirarucu in the Carauari region alone exploding from 4,916 in 2011 to 46,839 in 2021. ABC
The Karuk Tribe in northern California has reignited its cultural practice of intermittent burns as part of a four-year project to prevent wildfires. Low-level and controlled burnings are an ancient and successful forest-management practice. “A cleared floor and less fine fuels such as leaves and ferns, makes it more difficult for wildfires to ignite and spread.” Mongabay
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Climate activists say it doesn't go far enough; fossil fuel lobbyists love to hate it. Yet the apparent mediocrity of the Paris Agreement has hidden an important story that's been playing out unnoticed: it's working. We've made more progress on climate change in the past three years than we did in the 25 years before that. Atlantic
The global economy is far less carbon-intensive than it used to be. The amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP has fallen by 26% since 2000. Growth in carbon emissions is slowing too - their growth rate has fallen from 3% in the 2000s to 0.5% today. We're getting close to that all-important turning point. Economist
Since June 2021, the global pre-construction coal project pipeline has shrunk in 25 of the 34 countries that still have proposed new coal plants. This includes nine countries that have seen their entire pipeline shelved or cancelled. The majority of the world is fast converging on the IEA’s key milestone of no new coal power plants. E3G
Big news. The US federal government is the world’s largest buyer of goods and services by a landslide, racking up a bill of $630 billion every year. Last week, it announced a new proposal requiring all major contractors to disclose their carbon emissions and their plans to reduce them in line with the Paris Agreement. Gov Exec
Amidst the backdrop of this year's global market downturn, climate tech is bucking the trend. 2022 has been a bumper year, with around $6 billion ploughed into climate companies by new funds, and at least $37 billion of 'dry powder' now sitting in the tank ready to fuel climate tech innovation. CTVC
First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the United States, is building a $1.1 billion factory in Alabama. The factory will have an annual capacity of 3.5 GW, continuing the trend of red states getting new solar, battery and EV investments (despite the best efforts of their elected officials). Bloomberg
California, the world's fifth largest economy, just released the world's most ambitious climate action plan. Genuine carbon neutrality by 2045, with a 100% clean energy grid. Over 20 GW of offshore wind, four million jobs, seven million climate friendly homes, six million heat pumps, and a reduction in oil demand of 94%.
Indonesia, one of the world’s largest consumers of coal, has pledged to sharply speed up its energy transition following a $20 billion climate finance deal with wealthy countries. It follows an $8.5 billion deal for South Africa last year, and what looks like an $11 billion one coming up for Viet Nam next month. NYT
Solar power helped seven countries in Asia avoid fossil fuel costs of US$34 billion in the first half of 2022. That's only going to increase, as analysts are now predicting an exponential growth rate of 22% of solar capacity a year until 2030 for five key Asian economies (China, India, the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia). Ember
Gladstone is Australia's carbon capital, a harbour town built on heavy industry and fossil fuels, and the world’s fifth largest coal exporting port. Its local council just unveiled a roadmap to become a renewable energy superpower. "The floodgates have opened and everyone wants to move really fast”. ABC
Mexico is boosting its Paris Agreement pledge, vowing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 35% by the end of the decade. The effort will drive $40 billion in new investments and some 40 GW of additional clean energy generation, including solar arrays in the Sonoran Desert. Bloomberg
Electric car sales continue to skyrocket in China. Full electric vehicles were 22% of the market in October, and hybrids claimed another 9% share. Their range is rising steadily too - there are now around 250 different models for sale, and the average range is 420 kilometers, a 42% increase since 2018. Clean Technica
Indistinguishable from magic
On Tuesday night, NASA launched the most powerful rocket ever built, carrying a gumdrop-shaped capsule on a journey to the moon and back. It marks the start of NASA's Artemis Program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The agency is aiming to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025. AP
IBM has built the largest quantum computer yet. Called Osprey, it has 433 qubits, more than triple the size of its previous record-breaking Eagle and more than eight times larger than Google’s 53-qubit Sycamore. The company says it's on track to release the first 1,000-qubit processor next year.” Good explainer here from Ars Technica on the significance of this milestone.
Introducing The Bestiary Chronicles, a modern fable on the rise of artificial intelligence and a testament to how shockingly fast AI is evolving. The visuals for this free, three part comic were all created using AI-generated art. "It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time. But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so we’re embracing the future as fast as we can."
Also: AI + Dolly Parton = ?
Three great robots for you this week. Engineers at Berkeley have figured out how to teach a four-legged robot to go from blank slate to walking in 20 minutes. Amazon's packing robot can now handle 65% of the more than 100 million items in the company's inventory, and check out this sharp-shootiong farming robot that can weed 500,000 plants per hour with 95% less chemicals.
Just outside Austin, Texas, giant machines are squeezing out 100 three- and four-bedroom homes, the first major housing development to be 3D printed on site. The company building them says it can build the wall system, including mechanical, electrical and plumbing, two to three times faster than a traditional home and at 30% of the cost. The homes go on the market in 2023. CNBC
Personalized cancer treatment is getting closer. A small clinical trial for 16 people has shown that researchers can use CRISPR to get immune cells to attack tumours. It's the first attempt to combine two hot areas in cancer research: gene-editing to create personalized treatments, and engineering T- cells to better target tumours. "It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic." Nature
What will it take for a same-sex couple to be able to produce a biological child by combining their genomes in the same way male-female couples do? Two women or two men - and one baby? The answer is that it's already been done for two male mice, and for humans, technologically speaking, it's already within the realm of possibility. It just needs to be translated.
LG has created a full colour screen that can fold, twist, and stretch by up to 20% of its original size and shape without suffering damage. The Stretchable display’s "revolutionary technology offers next-level versatility for various daily scenarios" the company said in a press release, and is "easily attachable to curved surfaces such as skin, clothing, furniture, automobiles and aircraft." Verge
The information highway is still super
Wonderful interview with Suzanne Simar, the renowned scientist who discovered the wood-wide web and inspired the main character of Richard Power's The Overstory. She speaks about Mother Trees, kin recognition, and how to heal our separation from the living world. "That was earth-shattering, right? That trees aren’t just individuals competing for resources but are actually connected." Emergence
The humble date turns out to be anything but ordinary, and after reading this we promise you'll never look at one the same way again. There are so many forces pulling people apart in the Middle East and North Africa, but the date and its magnificent tree are woven through thousands of years of common history, rising above the dividing lines. The date offers a different view of the region than the one we’re familiar with, and the best place to start its extraordinary story is at the top. Smithsonian
Lisa Kaltenegger is the world’s leading computer modeller of potentially habitable worlds, and the spiritual (we're using that word deliberately) successor to Carl Sagan. Over the next few years, the James Webb Telescope is going to be closely scrutinizing a handful of rocky worlds regarded as the most likely to be home to life. Finding a biosignature will be up to her and a small group of peers attempting to squeeze certainty from a few photons. Quanta
Humankind
Changing Tides
Meet Sivendra Michael, a 32 year old climate activist and single dad from Fiji, who has made it his mission to educate and empower young people around the Pacific to rise up and defend their island homes.
Sivendra grew up on the frontline of climate change. He was barely a year old when the Pacific Island Nations first rallied together in 1991 to ask the UN for help with rising seas and extreme weather. His childhood was marked by floods and cyclones, and he witnessed first-hand the economic and emotional aftermath as his family struggled to keep their small automotive business afloat. His childhood years were a vicious cycle of disaster, recovery, and relocation.
By the time he was a teenager, Sivendra wanted answers. He studied climate change and disaster management at university and was halfway through a Master’s degree in New Zealand when Cyclone Winston hit Fiji in 2016. Fearing for his loved ones, Sivendra rushed home and as he stood in the wreckage of his family home, decided to take matters into his own hands.
That year he created two projects: the Valuing Voices Project, which harnessed social media to raise awareness of the untold climate stories around the Pacific, and the Active Citizen's Project, a leadership program that has trained 10,377 youth across 10 Pacific Island countries to rally their local communities and create their own environmental campaigns.
Driven by his motto – “small changes collectively make a significant impact” –Sivendra has initiated campaigns for alternative energy sources, advocacy programmes, policy change, as well as 4,000 mangrove planting projects.
Three years ago, he paused his advocacy to finish a 'very personal' PhD that filled a gap in climate change research, that often overlooked the Pacific region and its impact on small and medium enterprises. Over this past two weeks, Sivendra has taken his mission to the world stage as a formal negotiator at COP27, to share the stories, struggles and resilience of his island home as they continue their fight for climate justice.
My purpose is to give back to the community that gave me everything. In the Pacific, they say that it takes a community to bring up a child and as their child, I want to be their voice.
Thanks for reading, that's a wrap for this edition. We'll see you next week, with a new charity partner announcement.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the team
