Good news for people
Global maternal mortality drops by 50% over the past 35 years
Although about 300,000 women still lose their lives to pregnancy-related causes every year, the global community has made significant strides in reducing this number. According to recently published WHO data, maternal mortality has decreased by half since 1985, thanks to improvements in access to care. OWD
Kenya sees biggest upgrade to its vaccine cold chain in years
Kenya's immunization system just received an upgrade—over 2,000 pieces of new cold chain equipment. This will increase vaccine equity across the country. The new equipment includes solar-powered refrigerators, which are being installed by trained technicians to ensure effective vaccine storage and distribution. Gavi
Cancer survival rates continue to increase in Canada
The age-standardized mortality rate has fallen from 200 per 100,000 people in 2014 to an estimated 177 per 100,000 people in 2024, a decline of around 12% in a decade. This decline likely stems from continued efforts across the cancer control spectrum and improvements in prevention, screening, and treatment. CMJ
Deadliest form of heart attack falls by over half in United States
A recent study found that the rate of STEMI heart attacks, caused by a near-total blockage of a coronary artery, has decreased by nearly 50% over the past 15 years. However, there are still disparities in care based on income, with low-income individuals experiencing higher rates of STEMI heart attacks and being more likely to die from them. UPI
Myanmar reaches more children with vaccinations
Despite the pandemic and civil war, Myanmar significantly reduced the number of zero-dose children between 2021 and 2022 with the help of the WHO. Coverage of the pentavalent vaccine, which protects against five serious diseases, increased from 37% to 71% nationwide, reaching an additional 170,000 children. WHO
Air pollution is falling again in China
After progress faltered in 2023, the reintroduction of a pollution action plan has resulted in a decrease of 3.6% in national PM2.5 levels in the first three months of 2024. Independent satellite analysis has also shown a consistent decline in China's nitrogen oxide emissions since 2020, despite increased fossil fuel consumption. Bloomberg
Ten years ago, President Xi Jinping predicted that Beijing would enjoy lasting blue skies. Today, the temporary 'APEC blue' has transformed into the enduring 'Beijing blue' and 'China blue.' China now boasts the fastest air quality improvement worldwide.
Xie Feng, Chinese Ambassador to the United States
Lichtenstein legalizes same-sex marriage
Last week, the Alpine microstate Liechtenstein saw its parliament give final approval to same-sex marriage in a near-unanimous vote of 24-1. The bill will amend marriage law to allow same-sex couples to marry in the country of about 30,000 people nestled between Switzerland and Austria. Politico
Qatar improves access to education for 7 million children across Asia
The Qatar Fund For Development reports that it has achieved this milestone by building new schools, upgrading infrastructure, and supporting out-of-school children in 21 countries, with a particular focus on Nepal, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. The Peninsula
Kazakhstan criminalizes domestic violence
Kazakhstan just passed a law amending penalties for violence against women and children. The law addresses a spectrum of new issues, including domestic violence, sexual violence, bullying, and harassment, applying criminal liability to any intentional infliction of harm on another person, marking a 'victory for human dignity in the region and a monumental advance in human rights.' TCA
Even more good news you didn't hear about
New York just became the first US state to mandate paid time off for people receiving prenatal care, and its rate of gun violence has reached historic lows (crime-ridden hellhole, anyone?). Polio outbreak in Africa officially contained. The WHO just pre-qualified a new dengue vaccine, and it can't arrive soon enough. Malaysia is closing in on universal access to clean water and sanitation. Pope Francis continues to soften his tone on the Catholic Church's stance towards LGBTQ people. Vaccination efforts are making headway in La0 PDR, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Nepal, and Ethiopia. The US Department of Veterans Affairs just set an all-time record for benefits delivered to women veterans. Anaemia among pregnant and lactating women in Mumbai's slums has fallen from 52% to 38%. The real immigration crisis? Not enough immigrants. In the Philippines, around 800,000 fewer families consider themselves poor or hungry compared to a few months ago. Over a million people in rural Brazil are set to gain access to water and sanitation. Multiple countries around the world have hit on the same low-cost, simple solution for poor mental health: human connection.
If it bleeds it leads
It's easy to find accurate data about crime in America. It's nearly impossible to get Americans to believe it. In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite crime rates plummeting for almost all of that period. Last year saw one of the largest falls in the national murder rate in history, alongside historic declines in violent crime and property crime - and yet concern has only grown. Pew
Good news for the planet
The Iberian Lynx is almost free from the risk of extinction
The lynx population in Spain and Portugal has reached 2,000, a milestone that decreases the big cat’s risk of extinction. Twenty years ago, there were less than 100 in the wild, but thanks to targeted efforts by conservationists and communities, the population has steadily increased since 2015. Olive Press
Papua New Guinea passes new laws to protect biodiversity
Papua New Guinea recently passed a Protected Areas Bill, signalling a new era for biodiversity conservation. Fourteen years in the making, with support from the Australian government, the bill paves the way for traditional owners to have greater control and benefit from conservation. DCCEEW
Rewilding in Romania
Rewilding efforts have scaled up in the Southern Carpathians with Retezat and Domogled-Valea Cernei National Parks pledging more than 105,000 hectares of additional land. With free-roaming bison now thriving in the area, Rewilding Romania is working to identify natural corridors between the national parks and planning to reintroduce griffon vultures in 2025. Rewilding Europe
Locals save the Yosemite of South America
In a landmark agreement, a Chilean businessman has agreed to sell his 325,000-acre property to the environmentalists who fought against his development plans. The $63 million sale will preserve some of the most ecologically significant territory in South America, including forests of ancient Alerce trees and the Cochamó Valley, a cathedral of towering granite walls. NYT
The US is ramping up endangered species protection
Protections have been finalised for ten endangered species, including the alligator snapping turtle, the Suwanee snapping turtle, Washington’s Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan, the Peñasco least chipmunk, and six species of Texas mussels. Critical habitats of the Humboldt marten, the Barrens topminnow, the Pearl River map turtle, and a Tennessee fish will also be protected by the end of the year. FWS
Southern white rhinos return to South African wilderness
In a new initiative spearheaded by the NGO African Parks, dozens of southern white rhinos have been reintroduced to the wild across South Africa. This marks the first phase of a larger plan to release 2,000 rhinos into conservancies across the continent. African Parks
India’s forest cover has increased significantly
Over the past 15 years, India has made 'significant advancements in forest conservation' and now ranks third globally in net gain in average annual forest area. The country has also celebrated 50 years of Project Tiger and 30 years of Project Elephant to protect critical habitats; additionally, India has introduced the 'Green Credit Programme' to incentivise tree plantations and the restoration of degraded forest lands.
The secret behind Mexico’s forest success
Over half of Mexico’s forests are managed by Indigenous communities, resulting in greater biodiversity, fewer wildfires, and improved livelihoods. Of the 21,000 communities, 1,600 engage in sustainable logging, which has been 'instrumental in helping people to get out of poverty.' Sophisticated community governance and state policies have also played a role. The Guardian
Historic agreement for Colorado River Indian Tribes in Arizona
This agreement, 40 years in the making, allows the tribe to lease their allocation of Colorado River water to users who are off tribal land, freeing them from federal restrictions. The financial gain will help tribal members build essential infrastructure and update agricultural systems while contributing to water conservation efforts across Arizona. Inside Climate
Good news for Australian wildlife
The Australasian bittern has been detected in Tasmania's central highlands for the first time in 40 years after damage from dams was reversed; in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, an endangered mouse has returned for the first time in half a century; and scientists are attempting to modify the endangered northern quoll’s genes to resist cane toad toxin in order to save it from extinction.
More music for those who will listen
Don't look now, but April was arguably one of the best months for conservation in US history, with massive wins for Alaska’s caribou, conservation of public lands and waterways, and protection of national parks from future oil and gas drilling. In a landmark victory for animal welfare, the UK has banned live animal exports. Oman’s ancient oasis agriculture could hold the key for sustainable land use in a warmer future. A national programme to replant and regenerate mangroves in Sri Lanka is restoring balance and breathing new life into some coastal villages. Another win for Rewilding Europe, as bearded vultures make a comeback in the French Alps. For the first time in a century, majestic sei whales have reappeared in Argentine waters. The US is buzzing with almost a million new bee colonies. Scientists have discovered what could be the first known smooth hammerhead shark nursery in the Galápagos. Some good news for Canada’s narwhal population, helped along by Indigenous conservation. A former industrial site in Bangkok has been transformed into a green urban oasis with 400 different species of trees.
Solarpunk is a valid belief system
Leading economic historian says energy transition is inevitable
Adam Tooze, one of the world's most influential public intellectuals, casts his unsparing, expert eye on the green transition, echoing many of the points we've been making in this newsletter for months. His conclusion? Thanks to China, the transition is now unstoppable, irrespective of what the United States does.
At COP28 in 2023 many countries around the world committed to tripling global renewable electricity capacity by 2030. This has the potential to almost halve power sector emissions by 2030, as coal-fired power generation will be replaced first. Furthermore, it will provide enough new electricity to drive forward the electrification of transport, home and industrial heating. China’s huge surge in renewable energy, above all in solar power, actually puts us on track for the first time to meet these objectives. What we are witnessing is the most rapid take-up of a significant energy technology in history.
The EU improves climate performance: a 1.5°C pathway is close
Thanks to its implementation of the Green Deal, the EU’s emissions are now on a path consistent with scenarios that limit global temperature increase to just above 2°C, a trajectory that's more than a degree better than before the pandemic. Further progress would put the EU on track for 1.5°C. Climate Action Tracker
We're still waiting for that global EV slowdown
Global electric vehicle sales reached 1.1 million in April 2024, growing by 21% compared to April 2023. This brings total global sales to 4.3 million units in the first four months of this year. The Chinese EV market has grown by 30% so far in 2024, in Europe by 8%, and in the USA and Canada by 7%. Clean Technica
Weekly NEV registrations reach 50% for the first time in China
A seminal moment—last week, for the first time in history, sales in the world's largest auto market of vehicles that are fully or predominantly powered by electric energy surpassed sales of automobiles powered by combustion engines. This is years ahead of even the most optimistic analysts' predictions. TP Huang
The United States just passed 5 million solar panel installations
With the first grid-connected solar project installed in 1973, it took over four decades to get to the 1 million mark in 2016. The next 4 million have been installed in the last eight years, with one-quarter coming online in the last 20 months (since the Inflation Reduction Act became law). US mainstream media has almost entirely ignored this story. Electrek
Clean energy is driving a new era in American manufacturing
US companies have announced more than 100,000 jobs in clean energy manufacturing since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, and states in America’s Rust Belt have received about $30 billion in capital investments from the private sector. US mainstream media has almost entirely ignored this story.
Wind power surpasses fossil gas in the United Kingdom
For the first time, the thousands of wind turbines in Britain's countryside and on its coasts have driven wind power to become the country’s biggest source of electricity over the course of a year. In a demonstration of just how rapidly the nation’s energy system is changing, wind power generated 32% of electricity over the past 12 months. Gas power fell to 31%, losing the top spot it has held for 28 years. Times
Ethiopia shows how fast the energy transition can happen
One of the things about EVs reaching price parity with cars powered by combustion engines is that countries who import oil now have an alternative. That's exactly what's happening in Ethiopia—EVs are already 10% of local sales, and the government is making a big push to get them up to 30% within the next two years. Clean Technica
Desalination is getting cheaper thanks to the energy transition
Desalination technology is getting cheaper: it has a learning curve of 20%, and there are nearly 20,000 desalination plants already in existence, with more on the way. As cheap, renewable energy expands and material science improves, it's becoming an increasingly viable option for water-stressed parts of the world. Here's a great deep dive on the subject from Contrary.
Battery storage goes exponential in California
In 2013, California set a mandate to install 1,325 MW of grid energy storage by the end of 2020. During 2020, it crossed 1,000 MW, a little ahead of schedule. In April 2024, battery storage capacity in California crossed 10,000 MW, and, for the first time ever, became the single largest contributor of power on the grid for a short time during an evening peak. Energy Storage News
Battery strikes fear into the hearts of governments and automakers
Sorry, we couldn't resist that headline. CATL's new battery can add 600 kilometres of range in just 10 minutes using a fast charger, and it can power an electric car for up to 1,000 kilometres on a full charge. 'It's like the difference between a propeller-driven airplane lumbering across the Atlantic at 250 mph and a commercial jetliner that travels more than twice as fast.' Clean Technica
What's the opposite of doom-scrolling?
The antidote to doom is doing something, which is why the American Climate Corps is such a good idea. The United States just took its biggest step yet to end coal mining. Solar farms produced over 60% of Germany's electricity for several hours a day last week. The UAE and Oman recently signed a $31 billion deal on a clean energy megaproject. Last month, the Netherlands permanently closed one of Europe's largest fossil gas fields. Poland is accelerating its energy transition. Solar shatters the 1,000°C barrier for industrial heating. A vast, untapped source of lithium has just been found in wastewater in the United States. The world's largest thermal storage facility is being built in Finland. Oakland just became the first city in the United States to have a fully electric school bus fleet (no surprises there). The EU Investment Bank digs geothermal. We hate to say we told you so but... it looks like the hydrogen bubble is finally about to burst. Say hello to Electramar, the first of 12 plug-in hybrid ships, recently christened in Helsinki.
Indistinguishable from magic
First-ever clear image of atoms behaving like a wave captured
First proposed by Louis de Broglie in 1924 and expanded upon by Erwin Schrödinger two years later, wave-particle duality states that all quantum-sized objects, and therefore all matter, exist as both particles and waves at the same time. Now French physicists say they've captured the phenomenon, imaging frozen lithium atoms transforming into quantum waves. arXiv
Researchers find universal features of music across human cultures
A multidisciplinary team of musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists, and musicians just published a study showing that across cultures, songs share common features not found in speech, suggesting that music is not a cultural invention but a common evolutionary heritage. 'There may be something universal to all humans that cannot simply be explained by culture.' NYT
It's time to believe the AI hype
We generally try to avoid most AI 'news' here as there's plenty of it elsewhere on the web. However, we're making an exception for this—it's written by Steven Levy, one of the world's most experienced and respected technology journalists. He says it's time to believe the hype: AI is the biggest thing since the internet, and it may be even more transformational. Wired
A little bit of perspective
This video, created from images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), shows a coronal ejection from the sun three days ago. The height of the plasma wall is comparable to the diameter of our planet. Something to come back to the next time you're worrying about the due date for that report. Curiosity
US army signs deal with supplier of super-dense wearable batteries
It's all very cyberpunk. The US Army will start using ultra-high-density battery vests, giving their soldiers twice as much energy and providing an all-in-one power source for their visual systems and other mission-critical communications equipment, sensors, wearable electronics, and some hardware that most likely only sci-fi writers are thinking about right now. New Atlas
New enzymes could make universal donor blood possible
Danish researchers have discovered gut bacteria enzymes that remove not only A and B antigens from red blood cells but also other components that have historically hampered progress towards universal donor blood. 'Our focus now is to investigate in detail if there are additional obstacles and how we can improve our enzymes to reach the ultimate goal of universal blood production.' Fierce Biotech
AI techniques double the chance of developing successful drugs
The first-ever large scale analysis of clinical pipelines for AI-discovered drugs has shown that they have an 80–90% success rate in Phase I of drug trials, substantially higher than historic averages. If these success rates hold, the probability of a molecule succeeding across all clinical phases would increase from 5-10% to 9-18%, representing almost a doubling of pharmaceutical R&D productivity overall.
Egypt unveils world's largest museum
The long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza is opening later this year. Encompassing 90,000 m2, it takes the top spot from the Louvre and will house more than 100,000 pharaonic artefacts from Ancient Egypt. Good timing—archaeologists just discovered a lost branch of the Nile, which could solve the long-standing mystery of why the pyramids were built where they were in the first place. Dezeen
The information superhighway
We are the inheritors of economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. Our challenge now is to create economies that enable us to thrive, whether or not they grow.
~ Kate Raworth
'Breathing with the Forest' was one of the most memorable experiences at TED last year, and now the incredible Marshmallow Laser Feast look like they've managed to turn it into an online version. The closest you're likely to get to a full psychedelic experience in the forest without actually travelling to the Colombian Amazon. Click on the link, breathe, and thank us later. Emergence
'He makes you suffer. First he takes your legs, then your mind.' Why Rafael Nadal is almost impossible to beat on clay. NYT
Do we use technology, or does it use us? Do our gadgets improve our lives or just make us weak, lazy, and dumb? These are old questions—maybe older than you think. Historian Margaret O' Mara says that we’ve always greeted new technologies with a mixture of fascination and fear. People think: 'Wow, this is going to change everything affirmatively, positively.' And at the same time: ‘It’s scary—this is going to corrupt us or change us in some negative way.' And then something interesting happens: 'We get used to it. The novelty wears off and the new thing becomes a habit.' MIT Tech Review
^ As usual, Randall Munroe says it better.
The best seven minutes of video you will watch this week. The world's greatest coffee geek, James Hoffman, just made a ridiculously ambitious video on what good coffee should taste like—and somehow manages to pull it off. If you've ever done any video work, you'll know how difficult this must have been. We promise that by the end you'll have a better answer to the question. Youtube
That's it for this edition, thanks for reading. We'll see you here, same place same time next week.
With love,
Gus and Amy
