Give a damn
In the final week of February, the rescue team at Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone saved the lives of two chimpanzees:Esther, a four-month-old baby rescued from street vendor, and Koba, who was found tied to a rope next to the house of a bushmeat seller. Both chimps are now being looked after by the team at Tacugama, but providing this care is no small feat. It costs USD$2,500 each year, per chimp, to cover essential expenses like medical care, vaccinations, medication, nutrition, and surrogate mother care.
We have donated USD$5,000 for Esther and Koba’s first year of rehabilitation and look forward to sharing their updates with you. The organisation does incredible work, not just inside the sanctuary, but in the surrounding communities where they are actively working to stop deforestation. The origin story of Tacugama is equally inspiring. You can listen to our podcast interview with their founder, Bala, here.
Good news for people
The global effort to eliminate cervical cancer got a huge boost last week after donors pledged nearly $600 million towards fighting the disease. In a joint statement, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, and UNICEF said that the funding will go towards expanding access to vaccination, screening, and treatment worldwide. Reuters
In one of the first initiatives of its kind in the world, pharmacies in Catalonia, Spain, have begun to provide free products for the region's roughly 2.5 million women, girls, and transgender and nonbinary people who menstruate. They will receive one menstrual cup, one pair of underwear for periods, and two packages of cloth pads at local pharmacies free of charge. AP
Cystic fibrosis once guaranteed an early death: a child born in the early 2000s could expect to live until age 35. Then in 2019, Trikafta—a new drug combination that corrects the misshapen protein that causes cystic fibrosis—came along. Today, those who begin treatment in early adolescence can expect to survive to 82—an essentially normal life span. Atlantic
The world has made incredible progress on rubella elimination in the last decade. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of countries including rubella vaccinations in their immunisation schedule increased from 132 to 175, and the percentage of the world’s infants vaccinated increased from 40% to 68%. By 2022, 98 countries had eliminated the disease altogether, up from 84 in 2019. WHO
Nepal has made amazing progress in maternal and neonatal healthcare, thanks to its pioneering Safe Motherhoood Programme. Maternal mortality has declined from 536 per 100,000 live births in 1996 to 151 per 100,000 live births by 2021, and 70% of women now receive postpartum care within the first two days after giving birth. Nepali Times
The US Environmental Protection Agency just announced $2.6 billion for wastewater and stormwater infrastructure improvements and $3.2 billion for improving drinking water systems across the United States, part of a massive federal effort to ensure safer, more reliable water access and quality. #MAGA. Bloomberg
Launched in 2015, the Takaful and Karama Programme ('Solidarity & Dignity' in Arabic) is Egypt’s national social safety net, providing cash transfers to poor households with children under 18, as well as to the elderly poor, orphans, widows, and persons living with disabilities. As of December 2023, the programme had reached around 17 million citizens, 74% of whom are women. World Bank
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, one of the world's most respected economists on the topic of economic growth, has just co-authored a paper showing that not only have global poverty and inequality been falling since the 1990s, but so has within-country inequality. The paper was released about two weeks ago and still hasn't received a single mention by a news organisation. NBER
Uzbekistan has witnessed substantial economic growth over the past two decades, accompanied by a remarkable decline in poverty rates, from 28% in 2000 to 14% in 2022, lifting millions of people out of poverty. The pandemic caused some big setbacks, but now poverty reduction efforts are back on track. UNDP
The share of women in sub-Saharan Africa who own a financial account has more than doubled in the last decade, driven almost entirely by the adoption of mobile money accounts. Financial access gives women greater personal safety and less exposure to theft, more say over how household resources are spent, and greater ability to receive money from friends and family in the event of an emergency.
The EU Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement to ban the entry of products made with forced labour into the European single market. The bans would be enforced on goods made outside the EU by forced labour and on products manufactured in the EU with parts made abroad by forced labour. Reuters
America's shoplifting crisis was completely made up. In 17 of the 24 major cities which report data, shoplifting decreased in the last five years, including San Francisco—which saw a 5% decline in shoplifting between mid-2019 and mid-2023. This is the exact opposite of what all major US media outlets (including The New York Times and The Washington Post) have reported. Brookings
More good news you didn't hear about
One of the world's most effective charities, Evidence Action, just kicked off a programme to provide iron and folic acid supplements to millions of anaemic children in Malawi. More than 250,000 people in Senegal recently gained access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Since the end of its civil war in 2003, Liberia has provided new or improved access to sanitation for 800,000 people in its capital city, Monrovia. It looks like China's dramatic decrease in air pollution in the last decade contributed to reduced suicide rates. This is one of the most impressive lists of results for women's and children's health we've ever seen. The ALS Association recently received $58 million, its largest-ever donation, which will go towards finding improved treatments for Lou Gehrig's disease. World food prices declined for a seventh straight month in February 2024 and are now down to their lowest levels in three years. 'Today, I am so proud to announce that we are taking steps to retire medical debt for up to an estimated 1 million Arizonans. That’s a fresh start, a new chapter and a huge weight taken off the shoulders for every single one of them.'
If it bleeds, it leads
A/B testing is a curse. If you're constantly optimising for headlines that generate more clicks, you end up appealing to people's worst instincts, sacrificing accuracy for sensationalism. All media companies are guilty of this, but some are worse than others. Here's a great example, courtesy of Media Matters (h/t to subscriber Nick Stevens for sending us this):
On the 25th February 2024, CNN published a piece on electric vehicles outlining the reasons that sales in the United States, which are trending upward and reached record levels in 2023, are not as high as analysts once predicted they’d be. The next day, a new headline appeared above the article that radically altered the main takeaway of the story without any new information added.
Here are the two headlines, just a day apart.
To support the new, negative framing, CNN added a line to the piece: 'But the EV market has nevertheless become a major disappointment.' That change recharacterized the main findings—that while some automakers are currently scaling back production, EV sales are 'up 40% from the same quarter a year before' and 'hit a record last year'—to emphasize the disappointment arising from the mismatch of expectations and reality.
The news is supposed to tell us what's happening in the world. It doesn't. It tries as hard as it can to tell us what's going wrong.
Good news for the planet
The US Department of the Interior just announced the establishment of a new 16,187 km2 conservation area in the Everglades in southwest Florida. The area will provide crucial protected wildlife corridors, enhance outdoor recreation access to the public, and bolster climate resilience in southwest Florida. FWS
South Africa is set to transform the Loskop Dam Nature Reserve into a massive 1,000 km2 protected area. The project, a collaboration between the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency and The Aspinall Foundation, is not only expected to become a sanctuary for over 30 endangered wildlife species, including the black rhino, but also to offer economic upliftment to surrounding communities. Discover
In 2014, Australian conservationists completed one of the largest publicly-funded conservation investments in history, successfully clearing Macquarie Island of non-native cats, rats, rabbits, and other animals. Now their work is paying off—a new study has shown that populations of petrels, a group of highly specialised seabirds, are recovering. Conversation
For nine years, the Gomeroi people of New South Wales have been campaigning to put a stop to Santos' A$3.6 billion fossil gas project on their traditional lands. Last Thursday, they won an appeal to halt work, with a federal court ruling that climate change impacts had not been adequately considered. 'To say that I was excited is an understatement. It was an overwhelming feeling of happiness and pride.' ABC
India’s cheetah reintroduction programme just celebrated the birth of five cubs in Kuno National Park. 'This takes the tally of Indian born cubs to 13. This is the fourth cheetah litter on Indian soil' since the beginning of the programme, and the first litter by a South African cheetah in India. This is a really big milestone, especially after the programme's difficult start. Times of India
Another conservation milestone for India, this time in Gujurat, home to the only population of Asiatic lions in the world. The IUCN just recategorized the species from endangered to vulnerable, and there may be even more good news coming, with the state forest department proposing a new 30,000 km2 sanctuary for the apex predator. Times of India
China's National Greening Commission just announced that it increased its greening efforts last year with 39,998 km2 of forest planted, 43,790 km2 of degraded grassland restored, and 19,050 km2 of sandy and stony land treated. The country is notoriously unreliable with big data like this, but even if the numbers are half of that, it's incredibly good news. Xinhua
The EU has agreed on a provisional deal to create a new law to cut packaging waste and ban single-use plastics used for supermarket fruit and vegetables. Negotiators agreed on targets to reduce overall packaging by 5% by 2030 and 15% by 2040, and that all packaging should be recyclable by 2030. Earth.org
According to the latest statistics from the US Department of Agriculture, more than 40% of hens used for eggs in the United States are now cage-free, and 11 states have banned the practice of caging hens. Just 15 years ago, that number was only 3%. While free-range is still the only genuinely humane way to farm chickens, this does represent progress towards that goal. Humane Society
Following the success of the High Line and years of community advocacy, New York is poised for a unprecedented year of urban greening, with the opening of around 60 km of citywide 'greenways.' 'I don’t think there’s been a year like this, from a standpoint of greenways, and so much kind of focus and effort going into greenway planning.' Inside Climate News
The largest tuna fishery in the world, created by the Nauru Agreement (PNA) in 1982, is also the world's most sustainable. 'By imposing a limit, all of a sudden the onus is on the harvesters. They have to manage themselves within the quota that we've imposed. That raises the revenue, it supplements building roads, hospitals, schools, job creation and economic development for the islands.' Euronews
More music for those who will listen
Bald eagles have returned to Toronto, suggesting the city's regreening efforts are working. 'A very special day,' as Darwin's finches are reintroduced to one of the Galapagos Islands. Mexican wolf populations in Arizona and New Mexico increase for the eighth year in a row. In Italy, efforts to build a viable population of Marsican brown bears are underway.The Wyoming toad leaps towards recovery. Nearly 12,140 km2 of grassland ranches in the United States have now been certified by the Audubon Society as bird-friendly. Restoring peatland is easily the cheapest form of carbon sequestration, and Scotland has already restored over 100 km2. Canada just banned strychnine for poisoning, hailed as a major victory by animal protection and environmental groups. Hundreds of baby sea turtles were recently released by conservationists off the coast of Nicaragua.
Quite literally a green shoots story, and maybe one of the best symbols of regeneration you'll ever see.
Solarpunk is a valid belief system
You would scarcely know it from the political noise but the pace of decarbonisation accelerated last year, and has crossed a critical threshold. The International Energy Agency and Rystad forecast that fossil fuel use in electricity generation will decline this year in absolute terms. From there it is a one-way street. [...] Global capex on EVs, fuel-cell vehicles and charging infrastructure rose 36% last year to $US634 billion. Spending on energy storage has risen fivefold in two years. There is now enough investment in the pipeline for solar, batteries and mine production to meet the world’s CO2 target by 2030.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The International Energy Agency says that the world needs to be installing about 650 GW of solar a year by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate change. That sounds like a tall order, except that major manufacturers have already built about 783 GW of annual production capacity, and we might hit the IEA’s 2030 installation target this year. Bloomberg
As a solar analyst, every time I see "if renewables are so cheap why aren't we building more of them?" I tap my head lightly on the wall and go back to updating the database of rapidly rising build numbers. "Why isn't capitalism building all this cheap renewables?" Er, it is? Faster than my team can keep track of?
Jenny Ch
The UK's emissions in 2023 fell to their lowest level since 1879. Emissions are less than half the level they were in 1990, while GDP has grown by 82% in that period. Transport is now the biggest source of emissions, followed by buildings, while the power sector now emits less than farms thanks to minimal coal power, which has fallen to the same level as before the Industrial Revolution. Carbon Brief
Consensus is building around 2035 as the critical date for eliminating fossil fuels from Europe's power system. Ten member states, representing more than 60% of the bloc’s energy sector, have now committed to eliminating fossil fuels by 2035 or sooner. Euronews
A reminder of how quickly things can change: nearly half the electricity in the Netherlands now comes from wind, water, or sunshine, which is triple the level from just four years ago. CBS
A surprise contender for Europe's 'most improved' title in 2023? The continent's perennial bad guy, Poland, which made so much progress in building renewable energy that it's getting close to its 2030 targets—and its coal generation has also gone off a cliff, down to an all-time low of 61%. Ember
In the United States, one of the Inflation Reduction Act’s most potentially transformative programmes is close to being finalized. States are vying for a share of a historic $7 billion in federal funding to help low-income families access clean solar power. This programme is poised to benefit more than 700,000 low-income households across the nation. Canary
The EV 'slowdown' continues. Global electric vehicle sales were up by 61% year-on-year in January, Volvo says that 44% of its sales are now plug-in vehicles, Jaguar just announced that it's ending all production of dinosaur juice vehicles by June 2024, Porsche says it's 'overwhelmed' by orders for its new electric vehicle. If that's a slowdown, imagine what it's going to be like when things speed up?
We're going to need a new section, aren't we? The Slowdown?
Between July 2023 and August 2024, global battery prices are expected to plummet by over 60% (and potentially more) due to a surge in EV adoption and grid expansion in China and the United States. Batteries are the true fossil fuels killer—and most of the world's energy analysts still haven't taken these insane price drops into account in their forecasts. PV Magazine
Batteries aren't just getting cheaper, they're getting better. The era of range anxiety is suddenly over, as electric vehicle options in the US offering 480+ km per charge have quintupled since 2021. Eight years ago, there wasn’t a production EV in the world that could drive as far as the average EV sold today. Now, the 480 km threshold is standard. Bloomberg
What about the other aspects of making a car? Well, learning curves aren't just for batteries. A report from Gartner estimates that EVs will be cheaper to make than ICE cars by 2027, due to their simpler designs and the kinds of improvements in manufacturing processes—most notably, gigacasting—that are possible with EVs. Reuters
'While there are some near term headwinds, I’ve never had as much confidence in the ability to zero out tailpipe emissions from our cars and trucks. Here’s why I’m optimistic: we are witnessing something the auto industry has never seen in its 100+ year history. A proven, viable alternative to the internal combustion engine has arrived—and millions of drivers are already using these vehicles every day across America.' UCSUSA
On a lifecycle basis, EVs are already cleaner than ICE cars by some margin. In the United States and Europe, it now takes less than five years for a battery-electric vehicle to reach the emissions 'break-even' point with internal combustion engine vehicles (in the US it's around two years). Over their full lifespans, EVs emit more than 70% less, and of course, they get cleaner as grids get cleaner. Corey Cantor
Indistinguishable from magic
Scientists have used artificial intelligence to overcome a huge challenge for producing clean energy with nuclear fusion. A team from Princeton University figured out a way to use an AI model to accurately predict plasma instabilities 300 milliseconds before they happen—enough time to make modifications to keep the plasma under control. Freethink
Engineers just constructed the largest 3D-printed building in Europe, a new data centre in Heidelberg, Germany. It measures 600 m2 and doesn't look like any data centre you've ever seen. The challenge of making it visually appealing 'was solved by the architects SSV and Mense Korte by giving the walls a wave design, a design feature that also gave name to the building: the Wave House.' New Atlas
A biotech company hoping to resurrect the woolly mammoth says it's reached an important milestone: the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells for the mammoth's closest living relative: Asian elephants. Scientists can now try to use cloning techniques and gene editing to manipulate the cells to create elephants with key mammoth traits such as heavy coats and extra layers of fat. NPR
If you're a space nerd of a certain vintage, the Voyager Golden Records are arguably one of the greatest acts of symbolism in human history. Now NASA is at it again, this time for a mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa. Made of metal tantalum and measuring 18 cm x 28 cm, the plate contains an illustration of a bottle amid the Jovian system and a microchip stencilled with the names of 2.6 million people. Phys.org
Here's a field of science we've never heard of before: bioastronautics, the study of biological systems in space, centring around making space travel safer for human bodies and minds. 'Space medicine is very much tied to emergency medicine. A lot of the people who first did space medicine then work in the ER, and many continue to this day to do both.' MIT
Waymo is now allowed to operate its self-driving robotaxis on highways in parts of Los Angeles and in the Bay Area following a California regulator’s approval of its expansion plans. This means the company’s cars will now be allowed to drive at up to 100 km/h on local roads and highways in approved areas. The Verge
It took humans 134 years to discover Norn cells. Last summer, computers in California discovered them on their own in just six weeks, after being fed raw data about millions of real cells and their chemical and genetic makeup. When the machines crunched the data, they could classify a cell they had never seen before as one of over 1,000 different types. One of those was the Norn cell. NYT
More than 35 years after it was invented, a therapy that uses immune cells extracted from a person’s own tumour to target cancer is finally hitting the clinic. It's the first tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy to be approved by the US FDA, and the first immune-cell therapy to win approval for treating solid tumours such as melanoma. Nature
British scientists have published a new study showing that bumblebees possess the cognitive capacity for some of the key ingredients of cumulative culture, previously though to be unique to humans. When trained in the lab to open a two-step puzzle box, bumblebees of the species Bombus terrestris could teach the solution to another bee that had never seen the box before. Science Alert
It's still an information superhighway
Ok we're keeping it short and sweet, since this thing is already way over the usual word count.
Dutch electronic music legend Unders has long been a favourite of this newsletter, we've featured quite a few mixes from him, but this one takes it to a whole new level. Reading between the lines, it looks like he had a powerful plant medicine experience at some point in the last year or two, and in response, teamed up with Mexican poet Zohar to record an astonishing five hour medicine music journey. Not even sure how to describe this. Perhaps, simply, a gift? Soundcloud
Vulture went and asked animation nerds for their favourite Miyazaki sequences, and after seeing all their answers you'll have a whole new appreciation for his singular genius. Another vote here for the flyer sequence from Norsica, the Calcifer sequence from Howl's Moving Castle, and the bus stop sequence from Totoro, but to be honest they're all amazing.
That's it for this edition, see you next week. Thanks again for making the donation for Koba and Esther possible.
With love,
Gus
