236: Algorithmically Incompressible
Good news you didn't hear about
The world's first mass vaccination campaign for children against malaria was launched in Cameroon on Monday. It will distribute 25 million doses to combat the disease, which causes over 600,000 deaths globally per year. 'We are not just witnessing, but actively participating in a transformative chapter in African public health history.' Guardian
Despite persistent efforts by the tobacco industry, humanity is steadily breaking one of its worst habits. A new report from the WHO indicates that 150 countries are reducing tobacco use, around 1 in 5 adults worldwide now consume tobacco compared to 1 in 3 in 2000, and there are 19 million fewer smokers than there were just two years ago.
The American Cancer Society just released its annual report showing that fewer Americans are dying of cancer, part of a decades-long trend that began in the 1990s. Cancer mortality is down 33% in the past three decades, saving an estimated 4.1 million lives, and as many as two-thirds of all cancers can now be treated as chronic conditions or cured outright.
We've said it before, and we'll say it again and again—the HPV vaccine is a bloody miracle. In case anyone needed reminding, a new analysis from Scotland shows that there hasn't been a single case of cervical cancer in women who were vaccinated at 12 or 13 years of age. Exactly what was expected, but nevertheless fantastic news. JNCI
School lunches are Brazil's secret weapon against hunger. At all public schools, children are provided meals for free under a government-run program that feeds more than 40 million students from daycare through high school across 5,570 municipalities, ensuring all children stay nourished and engaged in their education. NPR
The share of India’s population living in multidimensional poverty has fallen to 11.28% in 2022-23 from 29.17% in 2013-14, according to NITI Aayog, the country's apex public policy think tank. Researchers estimate that a total of 248 million people have escaped multidimensional poverty in the last nine years. How is this not front page news around the world?
The world's biggest cities are getting cleaner. Deutsche Welle analysed data on PM2.5 levels for megacities with populations over 10 million. Of the 25 with available data, 21 improved their air pollution levels between 2017 and 2022. 'This is something that's resonating across all regions of the world right now, and it's really exciting.'
In the last few years sub-Saharan Africa has made substantial strides toward digital transformation, with over 160 million people gaining broadband internet access between 2019 and 2022. There's still a long, long way to go—but this is encouraging progress. World Bank
Germany's government just injected some good sense into its immigration debate. On January 18th and 19th it passed two immigration bills. The first, pleasing to conservatives, will make it easier to expel asylum-seekers with dubious cases; the second, more significant, law will make it easier for legitimate immigrants to gain German nationality. Economist
During 2023, violent crime plummeted to its lowest level in the United States since the 1960s, and by the end of the year inflation had been tamed and unemployment was at historic lows. In surveys, most Americans still say crime is rising and the economy is struggling, but they’re wrong. Call it the Great Normalization: the twin crises evaporated, and no one is totally sure why. Atlantic
Even more good news you didn't hear about
South Africa may have finally turned the corner on HIV as prevalence among pregnant women has dropped to its lowest in two decades. Over the last ten years, the six countries of the Greater Mekong have made remarkable progress towards malaria elimination. In the US, 21 states have abolished the practice of court fines for juveniles. Iran's literacy rate reached 97% in 2023, up from less than 50% in the 1970s. Thai lawmakers have taken a big step forward towards improving air quality. Egypt just amended its laws to include more chances to appeal in criminal cases, a 'victory for human rights.' The US government is forgiving another $4.9 billion in student debt for 73,600 borrowers. The Maldives and Sri Lanka have achieved hepatitis B control, meaning consistent vaccination rates over 90%. No, the maternal mortality rate in the United States is not rising; it's actually on par with those of Canada and France. Since 2014, over 5,000 schools in Ethiopia have been equipped with water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. In Kenya, 200,000 people just gained access to clean drinking water. California has enacted a law that makes it easier for out-of-state doctors to get experience in reproductive medicine. How Utah is solving the problem of literacy for third graders.
If it bleeds, it leads
We spend a lot of time here criticising journalists for their obsession with bad news, but it's also worth remembering that we, the audience, are just as much to blame. The folks over at Visual Capitalist analysed the most-searched-for news stories of 2023, and as you can see, the doomscrolling is very real. The other thing this graph makes obvious is that the English-language internet is dominated by the United States, which is why all of us are forced to endure hundreds more stories about school shootings than say, malaria vaccines or the Chinese diaspora in Thailand.
The only home we've ever known
After last year's record fall in the rate of deforestation, Lula has kicked off 2024 vowing to keep up the pressure on environmental criminals devastating Indigenous lands in the Amazon. 'We cannot lose a war to illegal miners, we cannot lose a war to illegal loggers and we cannot lose a war to people who are breaking the law.' Guardian
Plastic bags are the number one contaminant found in Colorado’s rivers and streams—but last year, thanks to the imposition of statewide fees, between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion fewer plastic bags were used, and an even greater reduction is expected this year, as businesses phase out their use too. ABC Denver
Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the US Endangered Species Act. For decades it has protected nature with bipartisan support, rescued hundreds of species of animals and plants from annihilation, transformed the US Fish and Wildlife Service from a wildlife killing service to a wildlife recovery service, and helped birth the global science of restoration ecology. Time
Youth activists in Norway have won a major legal victory, after a court in Oslo found the approvals of three new oil and gas fields invalid and issued an injunction forbidding the state from granting any new permits necessary for construction and production there. 'This is an important victory for current and future generations and the environment.' Greenpeace
One of the most underrated ecological phenomena of our time is the regeneration of abandoned farmlands, thanks to the more efficient land use of modern agriculture. Since the 1990s, the EU has reforested an area the size of Portugal, the United States uses 40% less cropland than in 1960, and globally, an area of farmland half the size of Australia is abandoned every year. Legendes Carto
China reforested or restored 83,300 km2 of land in 2023, thanks to hundreds of ecological restoration, land afforestation, rare tree cultivation, and wetland protection and restoration projects. It's also setting up a national ecological monitoring network across 44 key regions, covering forests, wetlands, grasslands, deserts, oceans, cities, and farmlands.
It's reforestation week! Sri Lanka's cabinet just approved a plan to increase forest cover to 32% by 2032, the Dominican Republic is roping in the military to help with its reforestation plans, in Brazil drones are reforesting the hills around Rio, and the Philippines just passed laws requiring parents to plant two trees for every child—and requiring students to plant two trees when they graduate.
An international effort to protect endangered river dolphins is gathering steam. Known as the "Global Declaration for River Dolphins," it commits 14 of the animals’ range countries to implement specific actions and strengthen regional and national initiatives. So far, nine countries have signed the declaration. China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Peru, and Pakistan are pending. Mongabay
In the UK, the Cornish chough, once extinct in Cornwall, has been re-wilded and has started to move inland in what wildlife experts say is a sign of its 'flourishing' recovery. In the United States, the Eastern monarch butterfly, long thought to be in peril, is not in decline after all, and well-meaning efforts by the public may actually be doing more harm than good.
In an unexpected display of rationality, the French government has listened to the advice of scientists instead of the fishing industry and temporarily banned all fishing in the Bay of Biscay. From Finistere in the extreme west of Brittany to the Spanish border, fishing will cease almost entirely until the 20th of February. France24
According to a new study, humpback whale numbers in Cumberland Bay of the island of South Georgia have nearly recovered to pre-whaling levels, last seen in 1904. The rewilding of South Georgia amounts to 'the single most uplifting environmental story in the world.' Hakai
The earth has music for those who will listen
Canadian beef farmers say they're on track to meet their goal of cutting emissions by a third before 2030. Did you know that the US Department of the Interior directed over $2 billion of investments to restore the nation’s lands and waters last year? Yeah, us neither (it's almost like news organisations didn't bother reporting it). Make America Rake Again. The state of Maryland has planted half a million trees in the last two years, getting it 10% of the way to its 5 million target by 2031. New York is getting in on the tree-planting action, too. What if we told you 2023 was actually a pretty great year for conservation in Texas? ‘The wildlife that has come is phenomenal’—British farmers are holding off floods by planting trees, creating floodplains, and rewilding rivers. The Pacific Coast’s real native oyster is making a comeback, with a little help from some friends. A revolutionary way to feed the world that's actually very old.
Hope is a Verb
We've almost reached the end of Season 2 of our podcast, and it's been a parade of one incredible person after another. Every time the two of us step away from one of these conversations, our tanks feel topped up and our faith in humanity is restored. Our most recent interview was with environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie, a name that will already be familiar to a lot of you.
We spoke to her on the eve of the release of her book, Not The End of the World, when she talked to us about her desire to push back on doomerism, her nervousness about the impending public reaction to her arguments, and her belief that we're the first generation that truly has a chance at achieving both sustainability and human wellbeing. In a season of already extraordinary conversations, this was easily one of our favourites.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy is arguably the biggest and most difficult project in human history, and the speed required to stave off disaster is almost unthinkable. It's taken decades to make the moral case for reducing carbon emissions, to invent the required technologies, get good enough at building them for the economics to make sense, and to align our political systems around this common goal. In that time, emissions have just kept going up, making the whole thing feel impossible and plunging most people into despair. That's what this first graph shows.
However, we've reached a crucial point in the story, the moment when the combination of technological know-how, economic incentives, and political will has become powerful enough to turn things around. There is too much momentum now to stop the transition from happening: renewable energy didn’t just grow last year, it expanded at a pace not seen in years. We are making massive strides in the right direction, and most people have no idea this is happening. That's what this second graph shows. Despair is not a luxury we can afford.
The IEA says that solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear energy will cover all global demand growth for electricity in the next three years. These sources will account for almost half of the world’s electricity generation by 2026, up from 39% in 2023—a hugely consequential change, given that the power sector is the biggest source of emissions in the world.
The most important clean energy story you didn't hear about this week: China is going to spend a colossal $70 billion on grid transmission this year, matching its record spending levels of the last few years as it attempts to connect giant renewable energy bases in remote regions to its eastern megacities. State Grid Corporation of China
Oh, and did you know China built as much new solar capacity in 2023 as the entire world built in 2022?
Vestas, the world's largest supplier of wind turbines, has started making turbines using steel scrap, melted in an electric arc furnace powered by wind energy at the ArcelorMittal steel mill in Belgium. This means that for an entire onshore tower, the overall carbon reduction is at least 52%. The first turbines utilizing this low-emissions steel will be installed off the coast of Poland in 2025.
2024 is going to be a pivotal year for offshore wind in Europe, as governments double down on their efforts to meet their 2030 renewables targets. A new analysis shows that 50 GW of offshore wind will be auctioned this year, which is mind-blowing given that only 33 GW is currently installed. Once again the UK is leading the way here. SP Global
The European Union is drafting its first 2040 climate target to bridge the gap between its goal of cutting net emissions 55% by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050. It looks like its chief decision-making body is set to recommend a reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions of 90% by 2040, a level of decarbonisation that puts us into a very different world. Reuters
Remember, the energy revolution is global. Ireland set a new record for wind power in 2023, in Brazil electric vehicle sales took off in the latter half of last year, in South Africa one of the world's largest hybrid solar and battery projects just got switched on, and 82 offshore wind energy service contracts with total capacity of 63.36 GW have been now been awarded in the Philippines.
Bill McKibben: A few minutes ago the New York Times moved a story saying that the White House has decided to pause permitting for new LNG terminals—if it’s true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a US president has ever done to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
The US Bureau of Land Management just took a major step towards boosting the rollout of utility-scale solar on federal lands across the West. It's opened up 89,000 km2 of land for project applications across 11 states, a move that could result in an extra 100 GW of solar being built in the next 20 years, enough to power tens of millions of homes. EE News
Buckle up, it's battery time. Last year saw a record 42% increase in global battery manufacturing capacity, and now the price war is intensifying, with the world's two largest battery makers, CATL and BYD, pushing costs down further. Meanwhile, Northvolt just secured $5 billion to expand its homegrown gigafactory, the largest-ever green loan in Europe.
Less than ten years after the Volkswagen diesel cheating scandal, electric cars are now outselling diesel cars in Europe, and the end of the line for diesel-powered lorries and buses is now in sight too, following news of a political agreement on CO2 standards for trucks and buses that amounts to a near-complete phase-out of diesel-powered models by 2040. Euronews
Swedish company H2 Green Steel has achieved a 'massive milestone' with $5.17 billion in financing for the world’s first large-scale green steel plant. The company says construction is underway, it's locked down supply contracts and, most importantly, has secured binding customer agreements for 'half of the initial yearly volumes of 2.5 million tonnes of near zero emissions steel.' Canary
Indistinguishable from magic
Japan has become the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon, using a new kind of technology that allowed it to touch down closer to its target landing site than any mission has before. The lander used vision-based navigation technology, which imaged the surface as it flew over the Moon and could locate itself quickly by matching the images with onboard maps. Ars Technica
Google just rolled out AlphaGeometry, which solves complex geometry problems with the same abilities as the world's smartest high-school mathematicians. This is a big deal! Math is really, really hard for AI models; this breakthrough shows that we are edging closer to machines with more human-like reasoning skills. Ars Technica
Aleph Farms has received approval for its cell-cultured beef, making Israel the third country after Singapore and the United States to greenlight cultivated meat, and the first to do so for beef. Apart from the starter cells derived from one cow’s fertilised eggs, there are no other animal components (such as fetal bovine serum) in the cultivation process or final product. Green Queen
Remember graphene? Researchers at Georgia Tech in Atlanta say they've developed the world’s first functioning graphene-based semiconductor. It uses epigraphene, a crystal structure of carbon chemically bonded to silicon carbide that allows transistors to operate at terahertz frequencies, offering speeds 10 times as fast as that of the silicon-based transistors used in current chips. IEEE
The US FDA just cleared a handheld device that uses artificial intelligence to detect skin cancer. The clearance is based on a study which showed that the device had a 96% sensitivity in detecting skin cancers. A negative result through the device had a 97% chance of being benign. Human doctors can't come even close to that. Reuters
So much robot news right now; expect a lot more in 2024. BMW has signed a deal to start employing humanoid robots on its assembly lines; a new robotics system from Stanford enables cheap, off-the-shelf robots to do incredibly complex household tasks; and NASA has just shown off a self-assembling robotic structure that might just be a crucial part of moving off-planet.
'Hey Figure 1, can you make me coffee?' Training time: 10 hours
Dutch researchers are the first to grow conjunctiva organoids. The conjunctiva is the thin tissue covering the whites of the eye and coating the inside of our eyelids. The cells include mucus-producing goblet cells and water-producing keratinocytes, and have already yielded an unexpected discovery, implicating something called a tuft cell in the eyes of people suffering from allergies. Cell Stem Cell
Aissam Dam, an 11-year-old Moroccan boy, was born deaf and had never heard anything. Last year, he became the first person to get gene therapy in the United States for congenital deafness, successfully introducing a child who had always lived in silence into a new world. 'There’s no sound I don’t like. They’re all good.' NYT 🎁
Scientists at George Mason University have devised a new camera system that creates moving representations of how other creatures see colours, such as how a spider perched on a flower might look to a honeybee. The resulting videos give human viewers a rough animal-eye view of nature. 'You actually can look at the world in new and interesting ways.' NYT 🎁
The information highway is still super
Dan Wang's annual letter is out, we've featured it every year since the first edition in 2017. Apparently this is the last one for a while, so soak it in.
It’s easy to forget that the Politburo is entirely made up of old men. Spending time with young people, in Chiang Mai or elsewhere, is a good reminder that the Politburo isn’t representative of the country. The China of the future will not look like the China ruled by old men today. Maybe you’re not convinced that Chinese kids blissed out of their minds on psychedelics will be the sharp tip of the spear for change. I’m not sure I am either. But I suspect that they’ll do good things for the China they’ll one day inherit.
This might be the best set Bedouin have ever put together, and that's saying a lot. A four-and-a-half-hour epic of Middle-Eastern influenced organic house and playa tech, set in Cappadocia, Türkiye. Soundcloud
A podcast conversation between psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik, and the science fiction writer Ted Chiang, about using children’s learning as a model for developing AI systems. It's such a relief to hear people with something to actually say, rather than just regurgitating Silicon Valley talking points. As Chiang says in one of the all-time great observations about thinking machines, "experience is algorithmically incompressible."
Who knew that a story about making knives could be so compelling? Chicago Mag
He put it back in the forge and this time heated it until it was in a yellow rage of photons. Again, he fitted the wrench to the glowing end. And then, using his entire body and the leverage of the long-handled wrench, he began twisting and twisting. The metal shed great gray flakes, and the yellow bar gradually turned orange, looking like a twist of taffy as Sam put all of his effort into the now-helical bar until it would turn no more. It was as if he were doing battle not so much with steel but with fire itself, placing the bright yellow bar in the press and then wringing the light right out of it, for that’s what it was, a blade of bright light that he strangled until it went black.
Who knew that a story about truck driving could be so compelling? Harpers
We know X is supposed to be dead, but where else you can find a list of the greatest-ever academic papers, ones 'that are so brilliantly and so accessibly written and so universal in scope that they transcend disciplines and stand as timeless testaments to both great thinking and great writing.' It's pretty heavily weighted towards physics, economics, and biology, but well worth checking out.
A Youtuber called Ed People travelled around the world asking people to show him their favourite dance moves. We dare you to watch this and stay grumpy.
Thanks for reading, we'll see you next week.
With love,
Gus and Amy