300: Phew, It's A Girl

Hi everyone, Gus here. This is the 300th edition of this newsletter (it's been going since 2016). In case you're curious, here's one of the earliest editions, where we included a dedicated good news section for the first time. I'm less sanguine about social media these days, and a lot more worried about the manatees, but if you squint you can still see the original, animating idea.

Were you around back then? If so, hit reply, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks to everyone who's been along for the ride, old and new subscribers alike. We hope you are still finding this project interesting, useful and eye-opening.

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This week's top stories

Worldwide poverty is falling—even under the new, higher thresholds announced by the World Bank.

Much of this decline is being led by India, which now accounts for more than one in three people globally having escaped extreme poverty over the past decade.  Under the revised $3/day threshold, India’s extreme poverty rate has dropped from 27.1% in 2012 to 5.3% in 2023—that’s nearly 270 million people lifted out of extreme poverty in just over a decade. ToI

Researchers in Melbourne may have cracked one of the biggest obstacles in curing HIV: getting the virus to show itself. A new technique, using mRNA and lipid nanoparticles, induces dormant HIV out of hiding inside immune cells. Further research will be needed to determine whether revealing the virus is enough to allow the body’s immune system to fight it, or whether the technology will need to be combined with other therapies - but it's one of the most promising leads in years. The Guardian

We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was – from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow’.

The global gap between sons and daughters is closing. In 2001, an estimated 1.7 million girls were ‘missing’ from birth registries each year due to sex-selective abortions, mainly in South and East Asia. Today, that number has fallen to around 200,000. Sex ratios at birth have normalised in most of the 12 countries where a preference for sons was strongest—including India and China, where social norms around gender are shifting faster than many predicted. The Economist

In many developing countries, to the extent that people express any preference about the sex of their children, they now seem to want a mix of boys and girls. Bangladeshi women who have not yet had children, for instance, report an almost identical desire for sons and daughters. Among those with one or two children, having a son increases the desire for daughters and having a daughter increases the desire for sons. Researchers have also observed a similar yen for balance in most of sub-Saharan Africa.

In the long run, the shrinking of the preference for boys should return those countries with the most skewed populations to something approaching a normal sex distribution. That means eventual deliverance from a host of social problems associated with a deficit of girls, from increased crime to human-trafficking of foreign brides—although it will take decades for the legacy of past bias to disappear.

Scientists in Japan have created a biodegradable plastic that completely dissolves in seawater within hours. Unlike existing bioplastics, it leaves no microplastics or toxins behind. The innovation could revolutionise marine packaging and fishing gear—two major contributors to ocean waste—and is already being tested for real-world use. Reuters

Speaking of the sea, at this year’s UN Ocean Conference the UK government announced plans to extend its ban on bottom trawling to all 41 marine protected areas in English waters, following encouragement from the likes of David Attenborough and Prince William.

And, Samoa and French Polynesia just made two of the largest ocean conservation commitments in history.

• Samoa has legally adopted a plan that designates 30% of its 120,000 km² ocean territory as fully protected. The nine new MPAs are the first Samoa has created beyond its reefs, and ban activities that could harm marine life or damage marine habitat. Those fishing illegally could face fines of up to $361,400 or imprisonment. Mongabay
• French Polynesia has announced the creation of the world’s largest marine protected area. The MPA will cover the entirety of the country's exclusive economic zone, almost 5 million km², and will restrict extractive practices like deep-sea mining and bottom-trawling. Of that, 1.1 million km² will be designated as a highly or fully protected area, where only traditional coastal fishing, ecotourism, and scientific exploration will be allowed. Time
  
  Guess which legendary wave will be part of French Polynesia's new MPA?

Lab-grown salmon cleared for sale in the United States. Want to eat some tasty salmon, but don’t like the idea of killing fish? Wildtype’s 'cultured' salmon is made in a lab from a few cells, meaning no farmed or wild salmon need die to fill out your sashimi. In May 2025, the FDA approved Wildtype’s salmon for commercial sale, paving the way for the world’s first commercial sales of cell-based seafood. The company says its sushi-grade product will debut in restaurants this year. AgFunder

Italy strengthens animal cruelty laws with harsher penalties
Italy has enacted new legislation imposing stricter penalties for animal cruelty, including fines up to €60,000 and prison terms of up to four years. The law redefines animals as sentient beings with rights, aiming to combat practices like dogfighting and the dissemination of animal abuse content online. World Animal News

“A new Age of Electricity is drawing nearer.” Despite geopolitical uncertainty, the IEA reports energy spending will reach $3.3 trillion this year—$2.2 trillion of which is going into low-carbon solutions, and double what’s being invested in oil, gas and coal. In advanced economies, renewable power to fossil fuel power investment is now almost a rounding error, a 12:1 ratio. In China it is a lower but still very robust 6:1. IEA

For some more context, here’s a really good bird's eye view from two of our favourite energy analysts, Kingsmill Bond and Sam Butler-Sloss:

To make sense of what’s happening in energy today, we need a new lens. We propose a third way: the electrotech revolution. This sees the transition not as swapping dirty fuels for cleaner ones, but as building a fundamentally better and more efficient energy system organized around electricity. This is being realized through the deployment of electrotech—a new wave of electricity-based technologies including solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, smart grids, and digital controls. On the supply side, solar and wind are replacing fossil generation. On the demand side, transport, buildings, and industry are electrifying. And in between, batteries and digital systems tie it all together, enabling real-time coordination, flexibility, and control.

In reading the tea leaves for this new age of electricity, look to China, long the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and designated climate boogeyman, which is now leagues ahead of any other country on wind, solar and batteries. To quote an earlier FTN edition, “China sees investing in clean energy as a key pillar of its efforts to surpass the EU and US technologically…and while this progress may be couched in terms of great power competition, it’s a huge net good for the world as a whole.”

Of course there are grumblers, including Western critics who now say China is producing too much capacity and flooding the market. But clapping back at critics, former head of UN Environment Erik Solheim argues that, rather than a trade problem, this surge in supply is a de facto global climate subsidy, especially for countries in the Global South that can’t afford pricier alternatives (remember Niger's streetside solar panels?)

Meanwhile, Trump may accidentally be accelerating the clean energy transition. The administration's 'energy dominance' agenda, aimed at boosting fossil fuel exports, is having an unexpected effect: making other countries nervous about oil dependency and pushing them faster toward renewables. In trying to stall the energy transition, he may be speeding it up. Bloomberg 🎁

Climate change-induced food insecurity is a real threat — but scientists are figuring out ways to protect against that. Recently, researchers in China discovered a gene in a hardy Indian rice variety that dramatically improves heat tolerance. When they inserted it into common strains and exposed the plants to high temperatures, yields soared by up to 20%. This breakthrough is already being shared with seed banks and researchers across Asia and Africa and the researchers hope to see heat-resilient rice in farmers’ fields within a few years. Washington Post 🎁

For a deeper dive on seed banks, climate change and crop diversity, check out this old Atlas Obscura piece about how smallholder farmers in Ethiopia are breeding cultivars now catalogued for the first time thanks to the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute and its networks of local community seed banks.

From cancer to COVID, mucus (yes, mucus) could transform medicine. Researchers are uncovering the surprising power of mucus to neutralise viruses, block bacteria, and reduce inflammation. Its unique structure helps prevent infections by keeping microbes from sticking to cells. Synthetic versions are already being developed for treating cancer, healing wounds, and protecting against viruses. New Scientist 🗄️

A new neural network trained on real telescope data has recreated images of black holes, including M87 and Sagittarius A* Phys.org

Good news on the fight against big tobacco: Effective 1st July, France will ban smoking in all outdoor places frequented by children (beaches, parks, public gardens, outside schools, bus stops, sports venues), Spain is moving forward with plans to ban smoking and vaping in bar and restaurant terraces, and in Thailand, the smoking rate has dropped from 32% in 1991 to 16% in 2024.

Colombia reports 33% decrease in deforestation in early 2025. The decline is attributed to improved community coordination and stricter enforcement against environmental crimes. AP

In Yorkshire, England, a re-wilding initiative has planted 300,000 native trees, restoring 'ghost woodlands' lost to extensive grazing. The project, a collaboration between farmers, the Woodland Trust, and ecologists, has led to increased biodiversity, including a rise in breeding bird species. Funded through government agri-environment payments, it demonstrates the potential for farming and conservation to coexist. Guardian

And finally, crime in the United States has plummeted. So why don’t Americans feel safe? In city after city, violent crime has declined so much that the murder rate in the United States in 2025 may drop to the lowest level since records began in 1960. If those were the good ol' days, then so are these. NYT

Everyone's obviously obsessing about Los Angeles right now, but for what it's worth, here are this year's murder rates in big US cities as of May 2025.