Plus, the Future Circular Collider, no one eats alone, modern cathedrals, and good news on heart disease in America, tolerance in Poland, land restoration in the Dominican Republic and how the WSJ ate humble pie.
Good news for people
France has become the first country to make abortion a constitutional right, after an overwhelming 780-72 vote. The measure has broad support from 80% of the French public and fulfils a promise made by President Macron following the rollback of reproductive rights in America. AP
We're sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you, and no one can decide for you. Today the present must respond to history. To enshrine this right in our constitution is to close the door on the tragedy of the past and its trail of suffering and pain.
Gabriel Attal, Prime Minister, France
Over-the-counter medication is the next battleground for reproductive rights in America. From this month, pharmacies will be allowed to sell mifepristone in a handful of states where abortion is legal, in addition to availability at clinics and hospitals. With more women facing increasing obstacles, the move will facilitate access and make the right to choose easier for more women. BBC
A new paper in Brookings claims that India has eliminated extreme poverty. Based on official consumption expenditure data for 2022-23, the authors say the last decade has seen an unprecedented decline in both urban and rural inequality, and that between 2011-12 and 2022-23, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 12.2% to 2% in 2022-23.
The Indian state of Maharashtra, home to 128 million people, has decreased child mortality rates by 11% in the past four years and infant deaths by 15%. Public health measures, including early pre-natal registration and the establishment of 53 Special Newborn Care Units, have played a significant part in achieving this progress. Times of India
Nigeria has stepped up its cervical cancer prevention. Between October 2023 and January 2024, 44 million girls in 16 states, aged 9 to 14, received their first dose of the HPV vaccine. In five states, 21,851 women underwent visual inspections with acetic acid, a safe and cost-effective alternative to a pap smear. WHO
We commend the government's efforts to introduce the HPV vaccine and set in motion plans to roll out the second phase of immunization to the remaining 21 states.
Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, WHO
The Biden administration just announced a $1.7 billion package to fund 141 projects aimed at ending hunger across the United States by 2030. Private and non-profit organisations and local governments have also made pledges, including a $60 million commitment by tech company About Fresh, to develop data for food prescription research. Newsweek
Also, just gonna go and leave this one here.
In 2022, 80.3 million children across Latin America and the Caribbean received school meals. Most of these children were in South America (63.2 million), followed by Central America (13.3 million) and the Caribbean (3.8 million). At least 19 countries in the region have committed to school meals through policy or law. WFP
A new $115 million program will improve healthcare for about 4.6 million people in 63 districts in Mozambique, especially women, children, and adolescent girls. The program will focus on the upgrade of local health centres and nutrition for young children and tackle both infectious and non-communicable diseases, including cervical cancer. World Bank
After a disappointing high court ruling in India, a consolation victory for LGBTQ+ activists with a new policy that will prohibit the disclosure of a trans person’s gender without their consent. It’s hoped the measure will encourage fair treatment and reduce discrimination in workplaces. Washington Blade
Over the past 44 years, breast cancer deaths in the US have dropped by 58%. Nearly half of the reduction is thanks to earlier detection and more effective treatment. Despite the progress, there is still so much work to be done in making sure these reductions are equally distributed. WaPo
Tobacco use has decreased in Southeast Asia by 24.7% since 2000. Over the past thirty years, social safety nets have become more prevalent in our world, providing a lifeline to hundreds of millions of people. New York City is finally sorting out its trash problem. How Finland halved its suicide rates to become one of the ‘happiest countries in the world.’ One million doses of life-saving vaccines have been administered to children living across Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan. Cancer deaths in Wales have declined 16% in the last two decades. A South Korean gay couple wins a breakthrough case for healthcare rights. Another landmark case in Kenya affirms the right to respectful maternal healthcare. A $452 million project in India will upgrade roads and bridges to connect 1.8 million people living in rural areas of Assam. The FDA just approved two new drugs: one to treat severe food allergies, including milk, eggs, and nuts; and another to target aggressive skin cancer that cannot be surgically removed. Brazil’s food banks are embracing ugly produce to feed millions of kids.
Hope is a Verb
On our most recent episode of the podcast, we spoke to Yasmeen Lari, 'starchitect' turned humanitarian who in the wake of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, vowed to build one million zero-carbon, disaster-resistant homes for displaced families. It's an astounding ambition, and one that she's bringing to life through sheer force of will. Smart, provocative, and with absolutely nothing to lose, she's one of the most formidable people we've ever had on the podcast, and was the perfect way to our second season.
Good news for the planet
Europe's new nature restoration law is a big deal. By 2030 it will legally require the restoration of 20% of land and sea and overall protection of 30%, aim for 30% of EU species and habitats to reach 'a favourable conservation status,' and restore at least 25,000 kilometres of free-flowing rivers. Carbon Brief
The Saksfjed Wilderness is one of the largest and most aspirational rewilding initiatives in Denmark. Since January 2023, a foundation has been working to actively rewild the area into open grassland, with scattered vegetation, open forests, and wetlands, grazed by bovines and wild horses, and now it's been added to the European Rewilding Network.
For the last 15 years, environmentalists and the Penobscot Indian Nation have been restoring the Penobscot River in Maine. As a result, thousands of kilometres of habitat along the river and its tributaries has been re-opened, fish populations have skyrocketed, and alewives could soon be returning to Maine’s Mattamiscontis Lake. Nature Conservancy
When these fish get into the smaller streams and there are hundreds of thousands of them, you can’t miss seeing them. When I first saw them in these numbers, it was a mind-blowing, guttural emotional response.
Dan McCaw, Fisheries Biologist, Penobscot Nation
Thailand just achieved a significant environmental milestone with the first sighting of Siamese crocodile babies in Beung Boraphet, the country's largest freshwater swamp and lake. The return of crocodiles to the area suggests that decades of conservation and restoration efforts are starting to pay off. Pattay Mail
Sarah and Mark Tompkins founded the Samara Karoo Reserve in South Africa in 1997. Since then, they have successfully restored 271 km2 of land, reintroduced the area's first cheetah, black rhino, elephant, and lion in over a century—and kicked off a campaign to create South Africa’s third largest protected area, covering 12,140 km2. Geographical
The Australian saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) was driven to the edge of extinction in the mid-20th century, with an estimated 3,000 individuals left by the 1970s. Now, after decades of protection, they have achieved 'full recovery,' with an estimated 100,000 individual crocodiles in Australia today. Science Direct
When the Florida golden aster (Chyrsopsis floridana) was listed as endangered in 1986, only nine clusters of the yellow daisy-like perennial herb could be found growing in Hillsborough County, Florida. Now, 37 years later, 30 populations have spread across five counties in West Central Florida, and it's just been taken off the endangered list by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
How's this for progressive taxation? The US Fish and Wildlife Service just announced over $1.3 billion of new conservation funding, supported by excise taxes paid in the United States last year on ammunition, firearms, archery and angling equipment, and a fuel and small engine tax. FWS
In the last decade, anti-poaching measures have been put in place in almost 100 global biodiversity sites, and poaching is now falling in 20 of them, affecting species from the desert-adapted elephants of Mali to Sumatran tigers and rhinoceros in Indonesia. In Ethiopia, 90% of illegal wildlife trade cases now end in convictions, and demand for ivory and tiger amulets in Thailand has fallen by 30%. World Bank
Bucking the global trend, Pakistan's mangrove forests saw a three-fold expansion between 1986 and 2020, from 483 km2 to 1,439 km2, according to an analysis of satellite data in 2022. Experts attribute this success to massive mangrove planting and conservation programs, as well as concerted community engagement. Mongabay
The Butterfly Redemption:
Recognizing the need for urgent action, the Oregon Zoo began a captive breeding program for the species in 2003. In 2011, the zoo helped establish the breeding program at Mission Creek as part of The Evergreen State College and Washington State’s Sustainability in Prisons Project. Since then, the work undertaken by these incarcerated women has become one of the last best hopes for the species’ survival. Hakai
Medellín's Green Corridors is arguably the best urban restoration project in the world right now. Since 2016, 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees have been planted in 30 'corridors,' reducing pollution and bringing temperatures down by 2°C in a city of 2.5 million people. Other cities are following suit, including Bogotá, Barranquilla, and São Paulo, the largest city in South America. RTBC
The Biden Administration has announced $195 million in funding to spend on climate projects in US national parks. It will support more than 40 projects, from restoring coastal marsh systems in the Northeastern corner of the United States to promoting native fire management in the Pacific Northwest and developing conservation plans for bison in a dozen parks. National Parks Traveler
Suspend your judgment for five minutes and come dream with us for a bit. What if all the best jobs in 2030 were ones that regenerated the world? What sounds like utopia isn't that far-fetched, because many inspiring people are already doing it—soil doctors, river guardians, seaweed farmers, river restoration engineers, and food waste hackers, among others. Oliver Dauert
More music for those who will listen
In the space of a few weeks, judges in Idaho, Nevada, and Montana just altered the landscape for conserving water in the western United States. The successful rehabilitation of Harpy Eagles in Bolivia is a ray of hope for a species that's lost vast stretches of its historical habitat. Taiwan's FDA just banned animal testing for iron supplements. The US FDA is banning forever chemicals in food packaging like fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, and takeout pizza boxes. How recycled oyster shells are restoring the Alabama coast. Ireland has launched an ambitious new national waste management plan. Efforts are now underway to restore populations of the American marten to forest areas across Pennsylvania. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault just received deposits from 23 seedbanks—with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Zambia depositing for the first time.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
If you've ever wondered why we pay so much attention to China in this section, the IEA's recently-published estimates of global carbon emissions in 2023 should tell you everything you need to know. What you can see here is that reducing emissions to solve climate change isn't really a global problem anymore—it's a China problem, with a bit of America and India thrown in.
The bad news is that last year, global carbon emissions rose by 1.1%. However, if you look past the headline number, there are reasons for optimism. For a start, over 40% of the rise in emissions was accounted for by the absence of hydropower due to droughts. Global capacity additions of wind and solar also increased by 75% in a single year, and most of that new clean energy will be there to meet demand this year.
We're also now seeing an acceleration in decarbonization in advanced economies (the US, Canada, most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand, and a few more), which as a group saw a record decline in emissions in 2023, even as their economies grew. Their emissions are now back down to 1973 levels, and their coal demand is back to what it was around 1900. These countries show us that sustainable economic growth is actually possible.
So what does this all mean? China is currently building six solar plants for every coal plant and using its existing coal plants less often, two in every five new cars sold is electric, and it's unlikely to experience the same drought conditions as last year. That means there's a very good chance we might see China's emissions finally start decreasing in 2024, and if it can get on the downslope, well, then the world finally starts solving climate change.
Utility solar has dethroned coal as the cheapest power source in Asia. According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest analysis of the levelized cost of electricity for the Asia Pacific region, renewable energy costs in Asia last year were 13% cheaper than coal and are expected to be 32% cheaper by 2030.
The EU continues to set records in 2024. In the first two months of this year, coal generation fell by 25%, fossil gas fell by 6.4%, solar increased by 21.8%, and wind increased by 19.2%. That means that last year's record fall in carbon emissions wasn't a one-off. Fossil fuels there are now in structural decline. Stepien Przemek
Nobody believes less in fossil fuels than the fossil fuels industry itself. The oil and gas industry might still be publicly insisting they have a future, but when it comes to actual skin in the game, they're behaving like rats on a sinking ship, investing less in exploration each year and carving up what remains while they still have time. Justin Guay
Big week for climate change monitoring. The first-ever satellite controlled by an environmental nonprofit is now in orbit, where it will be able to make comprehensive measurements of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, along with much of the agricultural sector. Its data will be provided to companies, regulators, and ordinary citizens free of charge. Guardian
The last few weeks have seen a blizzard (or should it be a hurricane?) of good news for offshore wind. The Netherlands just announced a 4 GW tender, Germany launched a 5.5 GW tender, Italian utility BayWa says it has 9 GW of projects in development, and new estimates suggest that 14.6 GW of offshore wind will be approved for construction in the United States this year.
Forget carbon capture and storage—it turns out that the most exciting and promising form of carbon removal tech is grinding up basalt rock and scattering it over agricultural land. The infrastructure is already all there, it produces value outside carbon removal, and the potential scale is enormous. One of the best climate podcasts in the world recently did a deep dive.
The electric vehicle 'slowdown' continues. Stellantis, the third-largest car company in the world, just announced that it's making a profit on electric vehicles, Ford's US EV sales in February surged by 81% year-on-year, and BNEF says that EVs reached 20% of global vehicle sales in the final quarter of last year. See if you can spot the slowdown here.
What's the opposite of doom-scrolling?
In the last decade, the CO2 intensity of global GDP has fallen by 20%. Denmark is soon going to be home to the largest rooftop solar power system in the world. The US smashed its solar records last year, and it's going to do it again this year. Spain has so much solar that electricity costs are almost free. Sodium is in seawater, and it could be the next big thing in batteries. Ukraine is determined to rebuild stronger and greener. Several European countries are already starting to hit some of their sustainable energy targets for 2030. #EnergyTwitter is an island in a dumpster fire (can confirm this is true). BYD just declared war on the oil and gas industries with an EV that costs less than $10,000. For the first time in the United States, a tribe in Arizona is building a solar farm over an irrigation canal. Tipping point: electric and fuel cell trucks have hit 10% of heavy truck sales in China.
Spare a thought for the 'five minutes to fill up your tank' bros.
Indistinguishable from magic
The eRosita X-ray telescope was lofted into space in 2019, and now astronomers have unveiled its first big batch of findings, revealing the locations and sizes of thousands of galaxy clusters, two-thirds of them previously unknown. The results also include observations that bolster the predictions that the 'standard model' makes about dark energy. Scientific American
A company that makes computer chips for artificial intelligence just surpassed the world's largest oil company (effectively, all of Saudi Arabia's oil) as the third most valuable company on the planet. 'Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point'—a timely reminder that it's not your parents' world anymore. Quartz
Chinese researchers have developed a new electrolyte that enables lithium-ion batteries to function in temperatures as low as -80°C; and at MIT, engineers have managed to successfully 3D-print functioning solenoids (electromagnets formed by coils of wire wrapped around magnetic cores), which are a fundamental building block of many electronics.
You've seen a ton of videos of humanoid robots—but this one is different. It's Sanctuary's Phoenix bot, with 'the world's best robot hands,' working totally autonomously at near-human speeds—much faster than Tesla's or Figure's robots—and starting to move in a way that's much faster, more fluid, and more natural-looking than anything else in this space. New Atlas
Evolution can happen fast. Biologists from Princeton studied wolves in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and found that they’re thriving, likely due to reduced human contact and genetic mutations that protect again cancer. The theory is that the wolves are experiencing a kind of rapid natural selection, caused by the equally rapid change in their surrounding environment. Popular Mechanics
An international team led by researchers from Hong Kong has developed a blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s at early stages with an accuracy rate of more than 96%. There have been multiple breakthroughs on this front in recent years; we are soon going to have widely-available blood tests for early detection of the world's most common form of dementia. Caixing Global
Another week, another gene editing breakthrough. This time it's for a rare condition called hereditary angioedema that affects around 160,000 people globally and manifests as painful and unpredictable (and sometimes fatal) swelling attacks. In trials, just one dose of the therapy reduced attacks by 95%. GEN
What happens when you start making solar farms look sexy? The control centre for one of Europe's largest solar farms, made up of 3.2 million solar panels on the plains of Karapinar, Turkey, is shrouded in 7,200 stainless steel panels, topped by a green roof, and organised around a central courtyard planted with endemic plant and tree species, and it looks incredible. Dezeen
The information highway is still super
Kate Wagner, a self-professed socialist, was given high-end access to the world of Formula 1 for a weekend in Texas, and has written an article that's so good it got taken down by its publishers. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has preserved it for all of us. There's some sublime writing here; I think my favourite has to be 'kind of like how the United Arab Emirates, as in the country itself, sheathes its sponsorship of sports in the scabbard of its airline.' She loves the cars and the drivers, and loathes everything else. Road & Track
There were Native Americans before Native Americans. The latest research, backed by multiple findings at different sites, implies that humans arrived in the New World more than 30,000 years ago, long before the ancestors of today's Native Americans were believed to exist. The world we thought we knew in the 1990s turns out not to be anything close to the world that might have been. Palladium
M. R. O’Connor writes about the politics and ethics of science, technology, and conservation, and she's got a great piece in the New Yorker about how she set out to cover fires—and caught the fire bug. 'I never thought that I might be a pyromaniac.' Drip torch in hand, she finds her place as a link in a 'chain of mutual benefit' connecting soil, grass, insects, animals, humans, and sky.
In what feels like a centuries-long plot for world domination, species of ants living in Central and South America have spread across the planet, globalizing their tiny-but-mighty societies alongside our own. Science journalist John Whitfield offers a glimpse into their fascinating world - and shows how it's possible to be both a scourge and a marvel. Aeon
In the past 150 years, the Argentine ant has spread to pretty much everywhere that has hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. A single supercolony, possibly descended from as few as half a dozen queens, now stretches along 6,000 kilometres of coastline in southern Europe. Another runs most of the length of California. The species has arrived in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and even reached Easter Island in the Pacific and St Helena in the Atlantic. Its allegiances span oceans: workers from different continents, across millions of nests containing trillions of individuals, will accept each other as readily as if they had been born in the same nest. Workers of the world united, indeed. But not completely united.
Life aboard a nuclear submarine.
That's all for this edition, thanks for all your patience as we sort out the last remaining gremlins from the name change. We're almost there! See you next week.
With love,
Gus
