We are very pleased to announce that Future Crunch has merch!
This has been a long time coming. We started working on the designs a year ago, but it turns out making something you think people might actually want to wear is harder than it looks. Fashion huh? Who would have thought.
We also wanted to cause as little harm as possible. Each garment is made from 100% organic cotton, without pesticides or chemical dyes and with water conservation in mind. All the packaging comes from recycled materials (and is recyclable and compostable in turn) and we're offsetting the carbon emissions from shipping through these guys.
On top of that, 10% of profits go to charity. If things go well, that means we can throw in a little extra every time we make a donation. We hope you like the store. Stock is limited, so you might want to get in quick.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
Club of Rome, the most influential neo-Malthusians of the 20th century, have published a follow-up to their seminal 1972 Limits to Growth study, saying their long-feared "population bomb" may never go off. Based on current trends, they're now estimating global population will peak at 8.6 billion, a figure that will no doubt make just as many headlines as past predictions of doom. New Scientist
Deaths from tuberculosis in Africa fell by 26% between 2015 and 2021, saving an estimated half a million lives. “African countries have made remarkable progress against TB. The question is no longer about whether we can end TB, but how fast we must act to reduce the disease burden, save lives and maintain a high momentum towards a TB-free world." WHO
Nigeria has made substantial progress in its fight against AIDS, with annual deaths declining from 264,463 in 2015 to 51,000 in 2022. Most of this is due to expanded access to treatments: the number of patients receiving anti-retroviral therapies has increased from 800,000 in 2017 to over 1.8 million today. Punch
The proportion of teenage girls in New Zealand giving birth has halved in the last 10 years, and child poverty has fallen dramatically, with 77,000 fewer children living in low income households compared to 2018, and eight of nine child poverty measures seeing a statistically significant reduction during the same period. National Tribune
Deaths from terrorism have fallen by over a third since their peak in 2015, with two of the largest decreases occurring in Iraq and Nigeria in the last 12 months. Dividing the world into nine regions, the impact of terrorism fell in seven of them in 2022, and 121 countries experienced no deaths at all, the highest number since 2007. Vision of Humanity
Child mortality rates in Laos fell to a level on par with some OECD countries in 2022, thanks to significant strides in hygiene and health promotion. The country has also recorded a 78.7% reduction in maternal mortality over the last two decades, one of the fastest-falling rates in the world. Loatian Times
For the first time in its history, Canada's population grew by over one million people last year and almost all of that was from immigrants, including over 133,000 Ukrainian refugees. The growth comes as the federal government makes a push to raise its 2025 immigration targets by almost 25%. NYT
Good news from the United States. Oregon just approved $200 million for the state's homeless, Maryland has passed a bill extending Medicaid coverage for transgender people, Washington state has upheld a new tax on the wealthy to fund education, Tennessee is seeing historic reductions in child poverty, and Seattle has become the first US city to outlaw discrimination on the basis of caste.
Substantial majorities of Americans think progress toward inclusion and diversity is on the right track. In a new poll, 86% believe more should be done to promote gender equality, 69% say more should be done to foster acceptance of LGBTQ people, 70% think businesses should promote racial diversity, and 58% are happy with new pronouns.
Bangladesh isn't just ground zero for climate disaster. It's also a hotspot for solutions, where a mix of technology and community have resulted in cyclone-related mortality declining more than 1,000-fold in the past 40 years. I tell my American friends, "You should send your sceptics to Bangladesh! We have gone through the doom and gloom phase. Now it's all about solutions." NPR
Kenya is scaling up its rollout of the Mosquirix malaria vaccine, after a pilot program for 400,000 children was shown to substantially reduce deaths in eight counties. Early modelling estimates that one life is being saved for every 200 children vaccinated. This is big - there are an estimated 3.5 million cases of malaria in Kenya every year. ABC
The only home we've ever known
Participants at the UN Water Conference last week pledged billions of dollars and made over 700 commitments to ensure a water-secure future for everyone. It's welcome news: despite substantial progress in the last two decades, two billion people still lack access to safe drinking water and 40% of the global population are impacted by water scarcity. UN
The commitments at this Conference will propel humanity towards the water-secure future every person on the planet needs.
António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations
The biggest commitment of all was the Freshwater Challenge, the largest-ever global initiative to restore rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Driven by Colombia, the DRC, Ecuador, Gabon, Mexico and Zambia, the project aims to restore 300,000 kilometres of rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands (an area larger than India) by 2030. UNEP
Reintroduction programs are forging ahead in the world’s two most populous countries: 200,000 Chinese sturgeons were recently released back into the Yangtze as part of China’s re-wilding efforts, and India welcomed four cheetah cubs, the first in-country birth since the species was declared extinct there 70 years ago. The mother was relocated from Namibia last September.
The EU is upholding its 2018 neonics ban and cracking down on temporary exemptions for bee-toxic pesticides. It closes an important loophole. In the last four years more than 236 exemptions for banned pesticides were granted in European countries, with neonicotinoids accounting for almost half. Euractiv
The US government has withdrawn a land-swap deal that would allow the construction of a road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, an area originally protected under President Jimmy Carter. The move is good news for geese and other migrating birds that use the wetlands as a migratory stopover. NYT
After a 400-year absence, beavers are coming back to London! Conservation groups have created the UK’s first urban reintroduction site for a breeding pair of Eurasian beavers that will arrive later this year. The project is one of 22 across the city that have been greenlit as part of the Rewild London Fund. Guardian
We are hoping to challenge perceptions, and demonstrate how London, too, can embrace these ecosystem engineers as we strive for a healthier, wilder future in which our capital can become a leader in urban rewilding.
Elliot Newton, Co-founder, Citizen Zoo
The number of privately protected areas in South America has exploded in the past two decades, and these areas now cover around two million hectares. Most are collectively owned by campesino communities or smallholder families, and the real numbers may be higher, as many landowners who do conserve their land aren’t officially registered. Mongabay
This year’s Ramadan will be greener, with mosques around the world banning single-use plastics ahead of breaking fast and some banning plastics all together. Links between Islam and sustainability are nothing new - the Quran instructs Muslims “to be mindful of God’s creation and care for the environment.” WEF
Iraq has announced a plan to plant five million palms and trees to combat high temperatures and water scarcity and to create windbreaks against dust storms. Saudi Arabia has already commenced its plan to plant 10 billion trees on its territory by 2031 as well as 40 billion additional trees in collaboration with other countries. Phys.org
A 20-year project combining public health and conservation has brought mountain gorillas in Uganda back from the brink of extinction. Improvements in community sanitation and hygiene have resulted in fewer gorillas picking up human diseases. In 1997 there were only 650 mountain gorillas in the wild, by 2018 there were 1,063, and conservationists expect another increase at the next census. New Scientist
We realised that to make sure wildlife stays healthy, we have to improve the health of people who interact with it. And to ensure that people stay healthy, you have to make sure they’re not getting diseases by poaching wildlife.
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Wildlife Vet, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
The clean energy transition is now a race to the top. Canada just announced C$80 billion in tax credits for clean technology over the next decade, representing what the country's Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, says is the most significant opportunity for Canadian workers in a generation. “We will not be left behind.” Politico
LG just announced a $5.5-billion battery production complex in Arizona, touted as North America's "single largest investment ever for a stand-alone battery manufacturing facility." That makes over $200 billion that's been invested by private companies in clean energy, EVs and batteries during the Dark Brandon era.
Rooftop solar in China has come out of nowhere in the last two years to become one of the most powerful drivers of decarbonization on the planet. Roughly one of every five panels installed worldwide in 2022 was on top of a Chinese home or business, adding up to 51GW, more than the total renewables installations of any other single country. Insane. Bloomberg
More than a quarter of Sweden’s electricity has come from wind turbines for the last two months, the highest-ever share of wind in the country's grid. The milestone comes after years of investment in renewables, "a push that is paying off," making the country more resilient against droughts and protecting consumers from high costs. Euronews
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying energy crisis turbocharged Europe's heat pump sector in 2022, with sales increasing by 38% over 2021 and doubling since 2019. Several countries announced phaseout dates for fossil fuel heating, and the European Commission is now considering a possible phaseout by 2029. WEF
Heat pumps? Energy nerd god David Roberts has a big thread over here.
This is just one way (out of many) that the falling costs of wind & solar are Changing Everything. It's such a fundamental change that has happened so fast, we're just at the beginning of puzzling through all the implications. New worlds are opening up before us.
EnBW, one of the largest energy supply companies in Germany and Europe, is bringing forward the closure of its last 4.3GW of coal capacity to 2028, seven years earlier than the original date of 2035. "This will accelerate our path towards climate neutrality." Chalk up another win for Mr Putin. Reuters
Good news on clean energy in Brazil. The government is investing $9.5 billion in new transmission lines and infrastructure to boost solar and wind deployments, and Spanish energy giant Iberdrola has unveiled plans to invest over $5.8 billion to support the country's energy transition over the next three years. PV Tech
Sinopec, the world’s largest oil refiner, says it is shifting its output to produce more chemicals and less fuel as the rising popularity of electric vehicles reduces demand. The company, which aims to become carbon neutral by 2050, reported a 6.2% drop in greenhouse gases emissions last year, its first decline in five years. SCMP
The United States has passed the 5% tipping point for electric vehicles. 5.7% of new cars sold in 2022 were fully electric, up from 3.2% in 2021, 1.7% in 2020, and 1.4% in 2019. It took China two years to go from 5% to more than 25% of new car sales being electric. Buckle up. Clean Technica
The average range of an electric vehicle in the United States has reached 291 miles (465 km), four times higher than in 2011, and a third higher than the global average. This is a big deal. Range is by far the most important factor in people's decision to purchase an electric vehicle. Bloomberg
After a brief kerfuffle over e-fuels, the European Union has finalized its 2035 phaseout of fossil fuel engines, meaning that 60 countries around the world now have ICE-vehicle bans in place. That's up from 30 at the end of 2021, and nine in 2018. Amazing what a difference five years makes. Yale 360
Or seven. In 2016, Europe Beyond Coal launched a campaign with the (seemingly impossible) goal to get all the continent's coal plants closed by 2030. Today, with that goal now in sight, they're expanding their campaign to secure a 100% carbon-free power system by 2035. Congratulations, and godspeed Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Indistinguishable from magic
Apparently all dogs have completely unique nose prints, just like human finger prints. How did we not know this? A South Korean startup called Petnow has released an app that uses AI to identify dog nose prints with 99% accuracy. It's available for free in the US, South Korea and Spain and works for dogs and cats (the tech looks at a cat’s whole face). Freethink
“Once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it.” If Andy Weir's line from The Martian is true, then China just reached a milestone in the human habitation of space, announcing that rice seeds have been grown and harvested on its Tiangong space station. It's a big moment in the race between China and the US to return to establish a lunar base on the Moon. Defense One
Nvidia has a new algorithm that speeds up part of its chipmaking process 40-fold. Inverse lithography uses light to print nanometre-scale features, but it was previously limited by computation. Nvidia's new algorithm turns two weeks of work into an overnight job and “will allow fabs to increase throughput, reduce their carbon footprint, and set the foundations for 2-nanometres and beyond.” IEEE Spectrum
While everyone this week was arguing about whether AI should slow down, Epic, the games company, conducted one of the most impressive tech demos we've ever seen, using video taken on an iPhone to generate live capture facial animation in seconds... using AI. Mind-blowing - we've come a long way since the days of Andy Serkis leaping around a green screen in dots. Ars Technica
BMW is creating a full digital twin for its new 400-ha plant in Debrecen, Hungary, which will produce around 150,000 vehicles a year when it opens in 2025. It's the metaverse, but for optimizing industrial processes. In other words, actually useful, and the polar opposite of Mark Zuckerberg’s pointless playground for sad kids without legs. Fast Company
By combing through genomic data of over a million people, scientists have made a major breakthrough in understanding the common genetic underpinnings of addiction. This research delivers on the promise of large-scale genetic sequencing and may help reveal new treatments for multiple substance-use disorders, including for people diagnosed with more than one. NIDA
Mammoth meatball anyone? Australian food scientists have unveiled a giant, glistening meatball made from lab-grown flesh of an extinct woolly mammoth, saying the protein from the past shows the way for the food of the future. Fortunately for everyone it's not ready to be eaten just yet, with safety testing required before modern humans can tuck in. Science Alert
Not exactly sure how this happened, but apparently some Brazilian researchers were pointing a camera that records 40,000 images a second at some lightning rods on a building in a city called São José dos Campos and got this extraordinary footage. It's one thing to learn that this is how lightning works in school, but another altogether to see it in action. NYT
The information highway can still be super
In the year 2000, the Clay Institute of Mathematics selected seven unsolved problems as the most important in mathematics, offering a million dollars for each correct solution. The first verified solution, for the Poincaré conjecture in 2006, shocked the academic world and created one of the most infamous New Yorker cartoons of the past century. None of the remaining problems have been solved, or even credibly attempted, until now. On the 14th February 2023, at the age of 88, American mathematician James Glimm released a solution to a second. Palladium
We love a good political economy trilemma, and Janan Ganesh has got an excellent one in the Financial Times. After decades of free-riding under the US security umbrella, today's mature democracies now have a very real problem. Faced with the goals of maintaining the welfare state, avoiding increased taxation, and spending on stronger defence, they can choose two - but they cannot have all three.
The most influential sci-fi books of the last ten years. "The biggest and most important trend in the science fiction of the 2010s was none of the above, however. Rather, it was the steady increase in traditionally published, critically acclaimed, and awards-recognized speculative fiction from marginalized authors." Not sure we agree with all of these, but it's a good list! Book Riot
Regular listeners of the On Being podcast will be familiar with the work of James Bridle. For everyone else, here they are in conversation with writer and musician Claire L. Evans, on more-than-human intelligence, the weird bridges between the world of computation and everything else, and the reminder that in the end, all artifacts of life are outcomes of evolution in various forms. Grow
Humankind
Erasing the margins
Meet Chu Thanh Ha, a 33-year-old transgender man in Vietnam who has spent the last decade advocating for legal reform to increase the visibility and participation of the transgender community in his country.
Referring to himself as "Ha," which means "river" in Vietnamese, he understood from a young age what it meant to be trapped in the wrong body. Growing up, he dreaded wearing a female uniform to school, and simple activities like using the toilet became a nightmare. He suffered physical and emotional bullying and spent much of his youth feeling “totally left behind and ashamed.”
During college, he joined groups like Oxfam and used advocacy as a way of finding himself and connecting with other like-minded people. After working for three years in different organisations, Ha applied to work in Oxfam’s LGBT department to push for legal reform at a time when Vietnam was “boiling” for changes to transgender laws.
Rather than working against them, Ha realised that policymakers could be his greatest allies, and that a legal framework was the key to advancing his broader mission. In 2015, Vietnam passed landmark gender recognition legislation, which allowed people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery to register under their new gender. Despite the victory, the law failed to protect those in Ha’s community who couldn’t afford or access surgery.
In 2018, Ha established IT'S T TIME to further the civil rights of the 480,000 transgender people in Vietnam. Since then, his organisation has partnered with the Ministry of Health, collecting personal stories as part of community-led monitoring research to help push through the Gender Affirmation Bill, which will enable people to recognise their gender whether they choose to have surgery or not.
Throughout my years working as an activist, I have heard people referring to our community as vulnerable, underrepresented, and marginalized – that we are at the edge of society with minimal legal protection. I want to change that. I want to erase the margins, extend the legal framework, and bring equality to us all.
That's it for this week, thanks for reading. We hope you enjoyed the news, we'll see you next week.
With love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team
Enjoy this newsletter?
Forward to a friend and help us spread the good news.
Leave a comment by clicking on the button below.
