229: Bush Pilot

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Good news you didn't hear about

A massive new study has shown that the Mosquirix vaccine for malaria has cut deaths among young children by 13% and reduced severe cases by 22% during its four-year pilot rollout to two million kids in three countries. Epidemiologist Mary Hamel: 'The results are so remarkable I was surprised I didn’t hear any gasps when it was stated.' Science

Emmanuel Macron has promised that full reproductive rights will be enshrined in the French constitution by next year. The government will submit a draft text to the country's highest court within days. 'In 2024, the right of women to choose will become irreversible.' Guardian

The WHO just released a report on 'a decade of success' in responding to neglected tropical diseases in Africa. This is one of the great public health stories of our time. In 2023, 88 million fewer people in Africa require interventions against NTDs than in 2013. 'The successes of the past decade are built on over 70 years of shared experiences and learnings.'

Last week, Nigeria introduced the human papillomavirus vaccine into its routine immunisation schedule, aiming to reach 7.7 million girls in the largest single round of HPV vaccinations across Africa. Under the new immunisation protocol, all girls aged 9-14 will receive the vaccine, which prevents at least 70% of all cervical cancers. UN

Open defecation is the practise of defecating in fields, forests, bushes, bodies of water, or other open spaces. Eliminating it is one of the top SDG priorities, and humanity is making great progress. Between 2000 and 2022, the number of people practising open defecation globally fell from 1.3 billion to 419 million, a reduction of more than two-thirds.

Thanks to a new law, California will now guarantee time off work following a miscarriage or other reproductive loss, including failed adoption, in-vitro fertilisation, or surrogacy. This new law ensures leave for grieving and recovering would-be parents and was passed with largely bipartisan support. Bloomberg

Tanzania is making incredible progress on electrification. Since 2017 it has laid more than 900,000 new connections, providing over 4.5 million people with access to electricity. Among these are 1,664 healthcare facilities and 5,900 education facilities. Overall access has increased from 7% in 2011 to 37.7% in 2020, one of the fastest access expansion rates in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank

A vast project is underway in seven countries in northern Europe to combat isolation by promoting inclusion. Twenty-five organisations and companies are taking part in the project, with some initiatives aiming to overcome solitude and isolation among young people, and others among senior citizens. Euro News

Despite the widely-held belief that dementia is destined to rise exponentially as global populations age, in the developed world at least, the prospects of avoiding it are much better than they were a generation ago. In Europe and North America, incidence has fallen by 13% per decade over the past 25 years, and that trend is now showing up in other countries too. 'There is reason for hope.' FT

Underreported news: incarceration rates in the US have been declining steadily over the course of this century. From 2000 to 2021, the imprisonment rate fell by 70% for Black women and by 48% for Black men. There's still a long way to go to overcome racial inequality, but this is genuine progress. The 19th

Yes, everything in America is awful, apart from the fact that GDP growth reached 4.9% in the third quarter; the unemployment rate continues to hover near record lows; the prime-age employment rate is near record highs; inflation has come way down and is now very close to being normalised; American workers have gotten substantial raises since 2019 (adjusted for inflation), with particularly strong gains for low-wage workers; and gains from the last three years have eliminated around a quarter of the country's increase in inequality from the last four decades.

Why is everyone so pissed off? Because it's a vibecession, not a recession.

One side effect of the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years is that US workers have a lot more power. A strong job market has allowed unions to stake out more aggressive bargaining positions, and it's working—the United Auto Workers just won a massive victory against the Detroit automakers, hot on the heels of a big win for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters back in August. NYT

Even more good news you didn't hear about

China-US relations are thawing, with Xi calling last week for more stable bilateral ties built on the principles of 'mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation.' The amazing story of how Kyrgyzstan eradicated malaria. A relatively bullish case for Latin America. More people in the United States are getting access to PrEP, a major plank of the initiative to end HIV by 2030. How activists in Kentucky stepped in to deliver on the promise of voting rights restoration. Maine’s violent crime rate was lower in 2022 than it’s been in four decades. Columbus, Ohio just wiped out $335 million of medical debt for 340,000 people. A Hong Kong court ruled that same-sex couples hold equal inheritance rights. In the last two weeks, Pride marches have taken place in Mauritius (to celebrate the recent decriminalisation victory), in Johannesburg (in solidarity with Ugandan and African LGBTQ people), and in Taiwan (176,000 people, the largest march of its kind in Asia).

The only home we've ever known

New Caledonia will protect 10% of its economic exclusive zone to safeguard coral reefs, seamounts, and a deep-sea trench from industrial activities. A decade ago, the 1.3 million km² zone was established as a marine protected area, but there were still exceptions. The new protections will preserve habitats for species including whales, turtles, and seabirds. Mongabay

The Titanho Nijaamu La Libertad Indigenous Reserve in the Colombian Amazon has been expanded by 21,921 hectares, bringing the total area to 24,681 hectares. The reserve’s four Indigenous groups have fought for 25 years to protect the area, which is home to endangered aquatic mammals like the Amazonian manatee and the Pink River and Tucuxi dolphins. Andes-Amazon Fund

The EU will halve pesticide use by 2030, and pesticides deemed ‘hazardous’ will be cut back by two-thirds compared with 2013-2017. The use of pesticides in designated sensitive areas like public parks, schools, and protected sites has also been banned. Le Monde

Milan is planning to ban cars in its city centre from 2024, including the Fashion Quadrilatero, where many of the high-end boutiques are located, to tackle rising pollution levels. The city follows the lead of Stockholm, which announced a similar initiative last month. Euro News

China is ramping up its marine environmental monitoring with a coordinated effort across all levels of government and more penalties for violations, and Honduras has implemented its first national strategy to protect coastal wetland ecosystems, including mangroves, marshes, and seagrass beds.

British Columbia will protect old-growth forests thanks to a $300 million fund for Indigenous Conservation. The money will help conserve critical habitats for endangered species like the spotted owl and southern mountain caribou, while promoting cultural and eco-tourism ventures and non-timber forest product harvesting. Narwhal

Three nurseries in São Paulo are producing around 1.5 million native seedlings each year to green the city with rare and endangered native plants. The seedlings are used to landscape squares and streets, with local schools taking part in a collaborative planting of almost 10,000 trees in underprivileged areas of the city. Mongabay

Around the world, rewilding efforts are focusing on abandoned golf courses. In the United States, course closures have outweighed new openings every year since 2006, creating excellent opportunities for conservationists to repurpose them into landscapes that boost biodiversity. CNN

A 'Global Declaration for River Dolphins' has been signed by 11 Asian and South American countries to save the world’s six surviving species of river dolphins from extinction. The landmark agreement will help eradicate gillnets and reduce pollution in rivers, including the Amazon, Ganges, Indus, Mekong, and Yangtze. Khmer Times

Around a billion birds in the US die each year from flying into windows and glass walls, and now efforts are underway to make cities more bird-friendly. Businesses in 48 cities are taking part in 'lights out' programs to dim lights during spring and fall migrations, and new constructions are incorporating bird-friendly glass. Yale360

Proving that slow and steady wins the race, decades after protection measures were first introduced, the number of sea turtle nests across Florida has increased exponentially. Space Coast has just recorded over 52,500 nests, and the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge has seen a 195% increase in green sea turtles, one of the most threatened species of turtles. ABC

Across the UK, local wildlife restoration projects are boosting the populations of endangered small mammals, invertebrates, and birds; and in France, the successful reintroduction of brown bears to the Central Pyrenees in 1996 has resulted in 76 bears currently roaming the mountain range— the highest number for a century.

Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it

When it comes to carbon emissions and climate change, we are turning the tide, in some cases much quicker than anticipated. The world is still a long way off track on what is needed to stay below 1.5°C, but the clean energy transition is happening. Here's what the latest data from the IEA's World Energy Outlook show:

Other highlights from the WEO:
* Global fossil fuel use will peak two years earlier than expected.
* The outlook for solar capacity in 2050 has risen by 69% since last year(!!).
* 20% more EVs are expected to be on the roads in 2030 than predicted last year.
* Based on current policies, global warming is now expected to reach 2.4°C, down from 2.6°C in 2021 and 3.5°C in 2015.

There have been two big events for energy nerds in the last week. The first was the WEO, and the second was the publication of solar analyst Jenny Chase's now-legendary—and perhaps even more eagerly-anticipated—annual thread. TL;DR: solar is ridiculously cheap and getting cheaper, there's plenty of space, and batteries are going to solve a lot of problems, but we need more transmission and more wind.

The European Commission is doubling down on its efforts to support the offshore wind sector. A new action plan has a target of 111 GW across the EU's five sea basins and outlines a massive increase in both onshore and offshore installed capacity from 204 GW in 2022 to more than 500 GW in 2030. This is getting close to the level of ambition required. Wind Europe

No transition without transmission. The US Department of Energy is loaning $1.3 billion to three projects: the Twin States Clean Energy Link between New England and Quebec, the Cross-Tie Transmission Line between Utah and Nevada, and the Southline Transmission Project between New Mexico and Arizona. This is such good news—now build more. Canary

Coal, oil, and fossil gas peaked in the United States' electricity production in 2007 at 2,979 TWh. Between 2007 and 2022, fossil-fueled generation fell by 14% and is down another 3% in 2023 compared to 2022. In the last decade, solar generation has grown twelvefold, and renewables now provide a quarter of US electricity.

One of the biggest and least-well-known stories in clean energy is the explosive growth of offshore wind projects in the Philippines. In the last five months, the number of offshore contracts awarded to qualified investors grew from 38 to 78, and the pipeline has now reached a staggering 61.6 GW. Clean Technica

Hard to overstate what a tremendous achievement it is that UAW has reached a deal with the Big Three automakers. The deal secures billions in commitments to build new electric vehicles at existing plants, meaning not only are unions now pro-EV, they're going to be a driving force in the transition. This is nonlinear change. WaPo

There's an unusual amount of FUD out there at the moment on electric vehicles (which says a lot about the genuine threat they now pose to established interests). Patrick George explains the reasons for all the hostile media coverage, and Simon Evans has published a handy guide to the top 21 EV myths, which is useful for those arguments at the dinner table.

Here are some of our favourites:

On this last point: if anyone tries to tell you EV sales are plateauing, just point them to recent growth rates in the world's top ten markets. All ten saw double-digit growth in sales during the second quarter of 2023, including China, the US, Germany, and France. Tom Randall

In a landmark achievement that could reshape the renewable energy landscape, a team of Chinese researchers has developed a stable, durable perovskite solar cell with groundbreaking efficiency, unprecedented stability, and an extended service life. The technology could reduce energy costs to a quarter of that of current silicon-based solar cells. SCMP

Hear that? It’s the sound of leaf blower bans. Across the United States, some 11 million leaf blowers roar into action every year, but as batteries get better and restrictions spread, neighbourhoods are getting quieter—and cleaner. 'It’s as though you’re sucking the exhaust out of the tailpipe of a car. That’s sort of what you’re doing if you’re using a leaf blower.' Grist

What you're looking at below is the most visible evidence of an effort by the global shipping industry to mitigate its role in global warming. It's the first container ship from Danish shipping giant Maersk that can burn green methanol. This single ship will produce 100 fewer tons of greenhouse gas per day, an amount equivalent to the emissions of 8,000 cars. NYT

Indistinguishable from magic

A new analysis of billion-year-old sediments has revealed 'a lost world' of a type of early eukaryotes, which lived 800 million to at least 1.6 billion years ago. The discovery fills a glaring gap on the tree of life from a crucial period when the last common ancestor of all of today’s complex life first arose. 'These molecules have been there all along.' Quanta

This one's wild. Apparently, fluorescent anatomy, thought to be a quirk in unusual animals such as platypuses and opossums, has now been found in most living families of mammals. According to a paper published this month, lions, polar bears, scaly-tailed possums, and flying squirrels also fluoresce. So does every mammal species a group of scientists could get their hands on. NYT

Chemists from Columbia University have accidentally invented an unusual new material called Re₆Se₈Cl₂, made of rhenium, selenium, and chlorine, that could make the next generation of computer chips up to a million times faster. Rhenium is super rare, but they've learned enough to go looking for other materials that could do the same thing in much more reasonable quantities. The Verge

Physicists at Max Planck say they can change the orientation of an atom's intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, using electrical fields. The manipulation of these spins is fundamental for quantum computing, where electron spins are used as qubits, and for spintronics, which enhances data processing and storage. The research was 'serendipitous and driven by curiosity.' Phys.org

Scientists in Israel have unveiled a catalog estimating the total mass, number, and distribution of immune cells throughout the human body, and it’s amazing. The average human has approximately 1.8 trillion immune cells in their blood, bones, skin, gut, and other tissues. Also—did you know there are more living cells on Earth than all the grains of sand, or all the stars, in the universe?

Excellent news. Four big drug companies are joining with a historically Black medical school to build a database of genetic information from a half-million people of African ancestry. African genomes are historically underrepresented in scientific and medical research and account for less than 2% of the known genetic information being studied today. Axios

'Clouds, one by one, blossomed in the mountains.' A new type of gene therapy that uses a virus to add DNA to cells in the inner ear has restored hearing for several deaf children in China—the first people ever to have their natural hearing pathway restored. It's China’s first big domestic gene-therapy breakthrough, and the most dramatic restoration of a lost sense yet achieved. MIT

Before the treatment, if you put them in a movie theater with the loudest sound, they wouldn’t hear it. Now they can hear close to normal speech, and one can hear a whisper.
Zheng-Yi Chen, Associate Professor, Mass Eye and Ear

Last week it was robot cars, this week it's flying cars. Chinese company Ehang has received an airworthiness certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China for its two-person drone. It’s the first in the world to get such a certificate, which allows it to fly passenger-carrying autonomous electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. ‘Next year we should start to expand overseas.' CNBC

The information highway is still super

Cory Doctorow reviews Brian Merchant's new history of the Luddites, Blood In the Machine. In its current usage, Luddite is a slur that means technophobe, but that's neither fair nor accurate. So much good stuff in this, from steampunk to 'reverse-centaurs' and 'dark factories.' As Merchant writes: robots aren't coming for your job; bosses are. Luddites are not, and have never been, anti-technology. Rather, they are pro-human and see production as a means to an end: broadly-shared prosperity. Pluralistic

Hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos on what she wishes more people knew about death. 'I don’t want people to say, "This is my favorite memory of her," when I’m gone. Come when I’m dying, and let’s talk about those memories together.' 

Writer Katie Notopoulos on how to fix the internet: if we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms.

When we grow up we want to be... bush pilots? Perhaps freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

In the thousands of years that people have been arguing about whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, one thing has been constant: no one has really had a clue. But not anymore. That’s because we finally know exactly where to look for aliens. Thanks to spectacular advances in science, we’ve identified many stars that have planets in the habitable zone where life can form. We are learning which of those planets are Earth-like enough to be worth pointing our telescopes at. We have giant telescopes equipped with spectrographs that can analyze light from distant stars, and powerful computers to simulate far-flung worlds. If we want to find aliens, we don’t need them to announce their presence to the cosmos. Instead, like detectives on a stakeout, we can just hang out with our doughnuts and cold coffee, watching and waiting. Atlantic

That's a wrap! We'll see you next week, cold coffee and doughnuts in hand.

Big love,

Gus and Amy