Hi everyone, welcome to the first edition of Fix The News (well not really, but it feels fun to say it). The new logo was designed by Iancu Barbarasa, and I'm really happy with the final result. The F is intended to represent progress bars, and the N hopefully reminds you of some of the plunging declines we've seen in big global problems such as poverty, disease and crime in the last few decades.
Let me know what you think! Also, a reminder that if you're an educator or a mental health professional, all you need to do is hit reply and we'll hook you up with a complimentary premium subscription.
Ok, let's get into it.
Good news for people
The WHO's South-East Asia region, home to two billion people, has a new report out, highlighting an extraordinary list of accomplishments from the last decade. Between 2014 and 2023, the region eliminated neonatal tetanus and saw the highest reduction in maternal mortality in the world, as well as the fastest decline in tobacco use. Two countries eliminated malaria, two eliminated trachoma, three eliminated rubella and measles, four eliminated lymphatic filariasis, four achieved hepatitis B control, and the Maldives and Bangladesh became the first countries in the world to eliminate leprosy and visceral leishmaniasis, respectively.
Greece has become the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children, after Parliament voted 176-76 in favour on the 15th of February. 'The reform makes the lives of our fellow citizens better, without taking away anything from the lives of the many.' BBC
In 2005, Burundi embarked on a mission to ensure that all children, especially girls, had access to quality education. The results have been remarkable: primary school enrolment has increased by 58%, high school enrolment has surged from 32% in 2010 to 40.6% today, and the average number of years of schooling has increased from 6.4 to 7.6 years. World Bank
Mozambique's 2023 Demographic and Health Survey report contains some good news: child mortality is down from 97 to 60 per 1,000 live births since 2011, neonatal mortality has decreased from 30 to 24 per 1,000 live births in the same period, and maternal mortality has improved from 532 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 127 in 2020. WHO
The Biden Administration just announced $5.8 billion in funding that will go out to every state and territory to help fix water infrastructure. The funding will be used to clean drinking water, improve wastewater and sanitation, remove contaminants like forever chemicals, and replace lead pipes. CNN
In a vast wasteland in Inner Mongolia, Chinese scientists have found a way to turn huge swathes of saline-alkaline land into fertile fields. Their simple technique reduces soil salt content by 36% and increases crop yields by 30.5%. Farmers in the Netherlands are also taking on soil salinity, with some amazing results.
Germany has become the ninth country to legalise recreational use of cannabis. Many more countries allow its medical use as a painkiller. The law in Germany now allows for the cultivating of up to three plants for private consumption and owning up to 25 grams of cannabis. It remains illegal for minors, as does consuming it near schools and playgrounds. Reuters
Maybe the reason everyone is confused about the US economy is that very few people alive have experienced one that reverses inequality. Real wages are growing, women's wages are growing faster than men's, young people's wages are growing faster than old people's, and low-income wages are growing faster than high-income wages. Derek Thompson
Remember how US national media provided wall-to-wall coverage of San Francisco's 'doom loop'? Amazingly, none of those same outlets is reporting that property crime is down 31%, and violent crime is down 11%, from January last year. Compared to January 2018-2020, property crime and violent crime are now down by 40% and 24%, respectively. SF.gov
Numerous cities around the world, from the US and Canada to China, France, Belgium, and Australia, are removing unnecessary stretches of concrete and asphalt, allowing nature to take hold in their place. The idea of depaving (also known as desealing) is a simple one—replace as much concrete, asphalt, and other forms of hard landscaping as possible with plants and soil. BBC
More good news you didn't hear about
What you're actually supposed to do with a billion dollars. It looks like Dublin is going to be the next place to ban cars from its city centre. Italy, home of the mafia, is now one of Europe's safest countries. Nepal just passed a law restricting trans fats, following the leads of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Biden administration has now cancelled student debt for nearly 3.9 million people. Connecticut will cancel medical debt for 250,000 residents this year, the first state to provide this type of relief. How Mexico's feminists won their fight for reproductive rights. In a major step forward for the labour movement, Michigan just repealed its anti-union 'right to work' law, the first US state to overturn the law in nearly 60 years. Slovenia has seen cases of cervical cancer drop by almost half over the last 20 years. The hottest trend in American cities? Changing zoning rules to allow more housing. Notre Dame’s new spire unveiled, complete with golden rooster.
Good news for the planet
The European Parliament has adopted a law to restore 20% of EU’s land and sea. Under the law, countries must restore at least 30% of habitats in poor condition by 2030, 60% by 2040, and 90% by 2050. Member states will also have to restore at least 25,000 km of rivers to be free-flowing rivers and ensure there is no net loss in the total national area of urban green space and of urban tree canopy cover.
The Terai Arc Landscape initiative, Nepal’s pioneering landscape-level ecosystem restoration project, has led the restoration of 668 km2 of forest and nearly tripled the population of the endangered Bengal tiger. It's just been honoured as a UN World Restoration Flagship, one of the seven best examples of ecosystem restoration around the world.
The Biden administration, governors of Oregon and Washington, and the leaders of four Columbia River Basin tribes have formally launched a $1 billion plan to help recover depleted salmon populations in what was once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system. AP
This signing ceremony is a historic moment, not just for the tribes, but also for the US government and all Americans in the Pacific Northwest. My heart is big today.
Corinne Sams, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation
Twenty years ago, officials closed around 12,000 km2 of ocean waters off Southern California due to overfishing. Since then, nearly all species have achieved full recovery, and the area has been reopened to non-commercial fishing, with some crucial areas still conserved. 'If you leave Mother Nature alone, things can come back and can be more resilient than even we expect.' Santa Barbara Independent
In 2015, McDonald’s—one of the world’s largest and most iconic fast food chains—agreed to switch 100% of the eggs that it purchases to cage-free in the United States by 2025. The Humane Society just revealed that they reached that goal early, at the end of 2023. This is a big deal—McDonald’s purchases nearly 2 billion eggs each year for its US locations.
French company Carbios says it has commissioned an engineering firm to construct the world’s first biological recycling plant for PET plastic in eastern France. The company’s technology is among the first to offer full circularity for PET, and it claims it will be able to extend its enzymatic approach to many different types of plastic. Recycling Today
During the United State's early colonial history, huge areas of woodland were razed for agriculture and housing, but this trend began to reverse around a century ago. Such large expanses have since been reforested in the eastern United States—enough trees sprouting back to cover an area larger than England—that it has helped stall the effect of global heating. Guardian
The EU has upgraded its laws to combat environmental crime more effectively. The new legislation enables criminal prosecution for environmentally-damaging conduct, standardizes penalties—increasing prison sentences for individuals and setting fixed fines for companies—and expands the list of environmental offences. Member states have two years to adopt it into their national laws. Greens
The EU has agreed to set stricter limits on the toxic particles and dangerous gases that dirty its air. The new rules slash the yearly limits for fine particulates known as PM2.5 from 25 µg/m³ to 10 µg/m³, and for nitrogen dioxide, a gas that hurts the lungs, from 40 µg/m³ to 20 µg/m³. 'This is a major step forward for people’s health. It is a once-in-a-generation chance to improve air quality.' Guardian
England has an ambitious new biodiversity credit scheme that will force new road and housebuilding projects to benefit nature rather than damage it. Developers will need to deliver a Biodiversity Net Gain of 10%, meaning if a woodland is destroyed by a road, another needs to be recreated either on site or elsewhere. Guardian
Music for those who will listen
Belgium becomes the first country in Europe to recognise ecocide as a crime. Environmentalists celebrate the surrender of the last offshore oil permits in British Columbia, a victory decades in the making. Crocodiles are thriving once again in the rivers and wetlands of Costa Rica. Fin whales return to the waters off New York and New Jersey. Earlier this month, as relentless rains pounded Los Angeles, the city’s sponge infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water. Hats off to the people behind Kenya's largest-ever rhino relocation. California just conserved a 27,000-acre parcel of land on its Central Coast, and the Nature Conservancy just bought an 8,000-acre tract at the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers. The EPA will award $4.6 billion to states and cities this year to implement local climate action plans. Say hello to green roads. Utah is about to become the biggest no-kill state in the United States. The population of common cranes, the UK’s tallest bird, is the highest since their reintroduction in 1979. For the first time in a century, the Pilliga Forest, the largest native forest west of the Great Dividing Range in Australia, is crawling with native animals.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
One of the things that seems most striking to me about the climate debate is that there is a large and growing gap between the pessimism of most climate activists and the optimism of people who work on clean energy. If you're looking for a good example of the latter, then I highly recommend this essay by Michael Liebreich, which presents five reasons to be hopeful about the net zero transition. It’s a must-read for anyone working in politics, energy, investment, or business, packed with incredible insight on almost every line. BNEF
Now it is time to present the bull case – the five forces even more powerful than the Five Horsemen which give cause for optimism. Not powerful enough, in all likelihood, to get us to net zero in 2050 and hold the temperature increase to 1.5C, but powerful enough to get us to net zero by 2070 and keep to a Paris-compliant “well below 2C”.
This week in energy nerd world has been all about batteries—specifically, Chinese batteries. A price war means that huge cuts are coming; CATL, the word's largest battery maker, says it will cut battery costs in half in 2024. As Robinson Meyer points out, that means that electric vehicles are about to hit their combustion engine counterparts 'like a wrecking ball.' NYT
It's already happening. Earlier this month, BYD, the world's largest EV maker, dropped this promo for its $15,000 'Corolla Killer,' which is cheaper than most equivalent gasoline-powered cars from brands such as Volkswagen and Toyota. It advertised the price cut with the slogan Bi You Di, which means 'cheaper than gasoline' in Chinese. Legacy automakers simply cannot compete with this. WSJ
Apparently the German government is aiming to introduce a 2060 target for net-negative greenhouse gas emissions. By the end of 2024, the ruling coalition wants to agree on a long-term strategy for negative emissions to help deal with residual emissions that are difficult or impossible to avoid. This is a significant moment—the first country to go beyond net zero in ambition. Clean Energy Wire
Spain, the 15th largest economy in the world, is rapidly cleaning up its power sector: during January 2024, it generated 78% of its electricity from renewables and nuclear. Wind was Spain's top source of electricity, at 26.5%. Regulators are also planning on following the lead of France by banning banning domestic flights that can be replaced by a 2.5-hour train trip.
Barclays, the biggest funder of fossil fuels in Europe between 2016 and 2022, is stopping direct financing of new oil and gas fields and restricting lending more broadly to energy companies that are expanding fossil fuel production. All its corporate clients in the energy sector will also be expected to present transition plans or decarbonisation strategies by January 2025. Reuters
A reminder of how quickly Europe's power sector is now decarbonizing: two thirds of electricity came from carbon-free sources last year. Over the same timeframe, fossil fuel generation fell by a record 19%, with coal down by a staggering 26%, and fossil gas—which has been declining for the past four years—seeing a 15% drop. Wind and solar will very likely overtake coal and gas this year. Canary
Earlier this week, the grid in Texas reached 82.8% carbon-free power, with 71.2% provided by renewables. Both are all-time records. The price of electricity was $0 for around six hours. Texas is also now building more grid batteries than California, the longtime undisputed leader in clean energy storage. I guess this must all be due to state officials' deep-seated concerns about climate change...
BUTDAMINERALZ. Prospectors just discovered 2.34 billion metric tons of rare-earth elements in Wyoming. The lode—estimated to be the richest in the world—has the potential to make the United States the world’s largest processor of the minerals used to make batteries, electric vehicles, computer chips, smartphones, and aircraft engines. WSJ
The EV 'slowdown' continues. Global EV sales in January were up by 69% year-on-year, for a total of more than 1 million. That came from a 29% increase in Europe, a 41% increase in the US, and an almost doubling in China. BYD's chairman says that EV market penetration will exceed 50% there at some point this year.
The US manufacturing and mining boom launched under President Biden is just getting started. The country's key climate laws, passed with virtually no Republican votes, have led to $170 billion in new projects and around 200,000 new industrial jobs. By far the majority of those investments and jobs are heading to Republican-leaning communities. Democracy, huh? WSJ
More reasons to stop doom-scrolling
'Just when you think you got your anti-EV stance sorted out, they come in and they wreck your opinion.' The third-largest pension fund in the United States just announced some big steps on fossil fuel divestment. Rubbish solar! French environmental services provider Veolia will develop more than 40 solar projects on landfill sites. Chinese electric medium- and heavy-duty trucks crossed the 5% rubicon over a year ago and nearly doubled to 9% in December. China's biggest battery makers are joining forces to develop solid-state batteries. Germany’s largest home heating installer says it has stopped providing fossil fuel boilers. We've all seen the wild underestimates of solar growth—but have you seen the wild underestimates of coal's decline in the United States? Ouch. Colombia, South America’s top coal producer, is proposing a ban on new coal exploration and production contracts.
Indistinguishable from magic
A round of applause for the science editors at The Guardian for this headline: Astronomers discover universe’s brightest object – a quasar powered by a black hole that eats a sun a day. The copy isn't bad either: 'It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second.'
China could soon have a train that is as fast as a plane. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation just announced that its new maglev train reached 623 km/h during testing—the fastest speed ever achieved by a superconducting maglev vehicle. Phase two will see the track extended by 60 kilometres, with the goal of getting the train to reach 1,000 km/h. 🤯 SCMP
More than 9,000 metric tons of human-made metal and machinery are orbiting Earth. Now, for the first time, a mission has begun to remove a big piece of that space junk. Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft will inspect a dead Japanese rocket in orbit and then work out how a follow-up mission might be able to pull the dead rocket back into the atmosphere. MIT Tech Review
Inside the quest to build DNA data drives. I first heard of this technology about five years ago and have maintained a pretty keen interest on any new developments. This is probably the best piece I've read on it.
In other cyberpunk news: super-realistic prosthetic eyes can now be made in just 90 minutes with 3D printing, compared with the eight hours it normally takes a skilled technician; drones are now delivering blood in Shanghai; and a team of Earth-based doctors have performed the first-ever remote-controlled surgery in space using a robot on the International Space Station.
Researchers have discovered a potent antibody that can neutralize a key type of neurotoxin produced by four different deadly snake species from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa—a step towards an antivenom that could be used for any of the 200 or so dangerous venomous snakes throughout the world. 'We are wiping out a major subclass of neurotoxins here.' Science
After decades of basic research into how to manipulate RNA, at least three therapies based on RNA editing have now either entered clinical trials or received approval to do so, signalling the growing maturity and acceptance of the field. For me, the most exciting application is this one: editing RNA to restore the efficiency of ‘exhausted’ CAR T cells.
One of the great missteps by the environmental movement in modern times was the moral panic over genetically-modified food. Fortunately, it looks like that is now over in Africa. Since 2022, Kenya, Nigeria, and Malawi have approved CRISPR-edited crops, Uganda and Ethiopia are about to join them, and at least a dozen genetic-editing projects are starting to achieve incredible results.
The information highway is still super
Laurie Penny on nerd fandom.
'Not long ago, an exasperated colleague in my TV writers’ room asked why on earth I was still watching Doctor Who if I was going to come into the office every single week complaining about how disappointing the episode was. I stared at him for a moment, and then I explained. I do not watch Doctor Who because it is the greatest television show ever made. I watch it because it’s my show, the way you support a team because they are your team, and so, by extension, are the rest of the fans. I can despair of the tactics and argue with the line-up but at the end of the day, I also wear the scarf. And the novelty t-shirt’s a way of signalling in public that you love something enough to look stupid for it.'
Ok, I know AI is going to destroy all the jobs and plunge everyone into a hellscape of drudgery and unemployment, lorded over by galactically-rich tech bros. Except what if it's not? What if it could actually fix the middle class, by pushing back against the process started by computerization, extending the relevance, reach, and value of human expertise for a larger set of workers? I know, crazy, right? Except that's precisely the argument of renowned MIT labour economist David Autor. Neoma
Sperm whales are the planet’s largest-brained animals, and their nested social structures are immense. Their larger clans can contain as many as 10,000 animals and likely date back to the Ice Age, with codas (the term for the sperm-whale-equivalent of a word) that are orders of magnitude more ancient than Sanskrit. Now, thanks to AI, they could be the first species we make contact with. What should we say? Atlantic
Alright, that's a wrap from me, thanks for reading, see you next week.
With love,
Gus
