No 150: Primordial Compound Eye
This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mindblowing science, and the best bits of the internet (not necessarily in that order). One third of your subscription fee goes to charity.
Good news you probably didn't hear about
In an unexpected public health victory, Haiti has successfully controlled the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded in a single country, while simultaneously improving maternal and child healthcare. There have been no confirmed cases of cholera since January 2019, and the quality of maternal and child health has improved significantly in the last decade thanks dto a program that pays local clinics when they meet predetermined targets. World Bank
According to the World Air Quality report, 84% of countries experienced better air quality in 2020 compared to 2019, due to the decline in industry and transport during COVID lockdowns. The report collected data from 106 countries, with Singapore, China, and Thailand recording the greatest reductions. CNN
"The connection between Covid-19 and air pollution has shone new light on the latter, especially as many locations have observed visibly cleaner air - revealing that air quality improvements are possible with urgent, collective action."
Following the lead of Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam, the UK's second largest city, Birmingham, is set to transform into a super-sized, low-traffic neighbourhood with a new plan to divert car traffic out of the city and introduce zero-emissions cross-city buses, cycle ways and pedestrian lanes. Guardian
The European Parliament has voted in support of banning biometric mass surveillance, stating that individuals should only be monitored if they have been suspected of a crime. The landmark resolution would put an end to the automated recognition of people in public spaces through biometrics, and also prohibit predictive policing which increases the risk of discrimination. Pro Privacy
100 of the world’s biggest companies will now pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and be accountable to the countries they operate in, thanks to the first global revamp of corporate tax rules in over a decade. 136 countries have signed the new agreement, which will raise an additional $150 billion per year that will go to citizens, rather than line the pockets of CEOs. Politico
This will make our international tax system fairer and work better. It’s a major victory for effective and balanced multilateralism. It’s a far-reaching agreement which ensures our international tax system is fit for purpose in a digitalised and globalised world economy.
~ Mathias Cormann, Secretary-General, OECD
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
Big announcements from climate laggards this week. Russia has committed to carbon neutrality by 2060, Turkey has finally ratified the Paris Agreement, and the UAE has become the first petro-state to commit to net zero by 2050. Critics say these pledges aren't enough, but they're missing the point. They're not promises. They're ratchets - once announced, they only increase in ambition.
Global energy storage is growing so quickly and at such a large scale it’s difficult to grasp the significance. 12.4 GW of capacity, mostly batteries, is on track to be installed in 2021, up from 4.9 GW in 2020, which was already a record. To put that into perspective, the world installed 1 GW of new capacity in 2016. Five years later, we're doing that every month. Inside Climate News
This is nuts. China has begun construction on the largest and most ambitious clean energy project of all time, 100GW of wind and solar in its western desert. That’s more than the entire existing wind and solar capacity of India, and will be able to generate four times as much power as the Three Gorges Dam. Bloomberg
The Biden administration has begun a process to identify, demarcate and start leasing federal waters for offshore wind installations across the entire US coastline - Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine, the coasts of the mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina and South Carolina, California and Oregon. The first leases will be ready by 2025. NYT
Life comes at you fast when you're a car manufacturer these days. Cars powered by combustion engines now make up less than 10% of sales in Norway, and forecasts suggest the country's last sale of a new petrol or diesel car will come in April 2022, three years ahead of what was already the world's most ambitious target. Like we said: ratchets. Drive
New York's city council just passed a bill requiring all of the city’s 885 diesel school buses to be converted to fully electric models by 2035. This is in line with the city's recent decision to allow only zero-emission passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to be sold from 2035. We Go Electric
Two dozen countries have joined a US and EU-led effort to slash methane emissions by 30% by 2030, giving a new 'Global Methane Pledge' momentum ahead of COP26. Nigeria, Japan and Pakistan are among the new signatories to the agreement, which will have a significant impact on reducing global warming. Reuters
In a first for an Indian financial institution, the Federal Bank will not finance any new thermal coal mines or the expansion of existing mines, and has also ruled out support for new coal projects or the expansion of existing ones. This is a big deal: the first major domino in a country where the divestment movement is only just getting started. Mercom
Another week, another Ivy League university ditching fossil fuels. They're falling thick and fast now. This time it's Dartmouth which says that new fossil fuel investments will no longer be allowed in its endowment, and existing holdings will be allowed to expire once their contracts end.
The only home we've ever known
The United Nations has formally recognised ‘a clean and sustainable environment’ as a basic human right. The resolution comes after 40 years of campaigning from grass-roots groups and environmental agencies and aims to encourage countries to build "synergies between the protection of human rights and the protection of the environment.”
Overfishing in US waters has essentially ended. As of 2017, 85% of US fish stocks were no longer overfished, the highest number since record keeping began, and active overfishing had been eliminated in 91% of stocks. It's not just good news for the planet, but for fishing communities too. “We’re catching bigger fish and getting more bang for our buck." Reasons to be Cheerful
Refugees in Cameroon have planted 360,000 trees around the Minawao Refugee Camp, transforming 100 hectares of desert into thriving forest and vegetation. The ecological and humanitarian win is part of a unique program aimed to restore the area, after the arrival of 70,000 refugees accelerated desertification. When they go home, ‘they will leave behind a greener and more developed village." UNHCR.
France will ban plastic packaging for over 30 fruits and vegetables from January 2022. The measure will save more than one billion tonnes of plastic packaging per year and is part of the government’s program to phase out single use plastic on all produce by 2026. Reuters
Winemakers in California are using barn owls and other birds of prey as a cost-effective and pesticide-free alternative to eliminate pests. 80% of Californian vineyards, who used to rely on toxic chemicals to protect vines (which impacted other local wildlife) now have barn owl nest boxes. Bay Nature
The population of the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla has doubled, with current numbers of 6,800 up from 3,800 in 2016. The good news is attributed to conservation in the Oku Community Forests in the Congo, where the population has remained stable thanks to habitat conservation and local community engagement. Mongabay
Consumption of wildlife has dropped by almost 30% across China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and the USA due to shifting cultural tastes and concerns about COVID-19. Governments are also stepping in, with China banning the consumption of wild animals last year and Vietnam also introducing restrictions. Globe Scan
China has pledged US$230 million to support conservation in developing countries, and will create several new national parks of its own, covering 230,000 km2 and protecting nearly 30% of the country’s key terrestrial wildlife species, including pandas, tigers and leopards. Conservation
The unprecedented global biodiversity crisis is finally being understood and appreciated as the twin counterpart to the climate crisis, which is increasingly affecting all life on Earth. We cannot solve one of these challenges without also solving the other.
~ M. Sanjayan, CEO, Conservation International
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature
The compound eye is one of evolution's most successful inventions and apparently, one of its oldest too. An international research team just found a 390 million year old trilobyte fossil with a 200 lens eye. The researchers also identified a local neural network which directly processed information from the eye and carried via optic nerve to the brain. H.R. Giger was obviously channeling something OLD.
Inspired by the inner layers of mollusk shells, scientists from Montreal have developed a new material that's three times stronger than normal glass, and five times more fracture-resistant. By replicating the architecture of nacre (mother of pearl) with layers of glass flakes and acrylic, they produced an exceptionally strong, opaque material that's easy and cheap to manufacture. Sci Tech
Researchers at Oxford have created a potent new chemotherapy drug from a parisitic fungus used for centuries by Chinese medicine. The drug is up to 40 times more effective at killing cancer cells than Cordycepin, one of the bioactive ingredients in Cordyceps, a Himalayan fungi that parasitizes insects. ZME Science
Have you heard of AirCarbon? It's a carbon-negative material made from marine organisms that digest methane, and store the energy in the form of polyhydroxybutyrate, or PHB. When you melt that down, it can be made into leather, spun into fibers, or molded into sunglasses. Oh, and you can already buy a ton of products made from it. Wired
There's science that changes the world, and then there's science that makes it a nicer place to live in. Our last story belongs in the second category. A group of researchers from Portugal invited participants either singly, in pairs or as a group of six to consume two glasses of Quinta da Lapa Reserva Syrah 2018, “a silky full-bodied red wine," in a Lisbon wine bar. The effects were as follows:
The information superhighway is still awesome
As the dream of owning a house moves beyond their reach, people in their twenties are seeing the rat race for what it is far earlier than any previous generation. Rainesford Stauffer describes how closely the sensation of being 'ahead' or 'behind' or 'on track' during life's most formative years is tethered to capitalism. "We aren’t meant to get ahead. The goal is to keep us running." Catapult
Mariana Mazzucato argues that the Washington Consensus is dead, and has a great name for a possible successor - the Cornwall Consensus, which replaces redistribution with pre-distribution, and moves from reactively fixing market failures to proactively shaping and making the kinds of markets we need to nurture a green, global economy. Project Syndicate
Fraser McDonald says the current enthusiasm for re-wilding in Scotland shows that ecology lies outside the structures of democracy. As land ownership changes, and social status accrues to people who prefer beavers and Scots pines to deer and grouse moors, it obscures the long history of human involvement in the landscape. "Land can be owned; places are more complicated." LRB
Say hello to neuroaesthetics, an emerging interior design trend that reframes the built environment as a way to help people flourish. It's an old idea (just ask Brunelleschi) rebranded for modern times, that suggests architecture and design elements can elicit specific cognitive and emotional responses. For mental health institutions in particular, it's a gamechanger. Neo Life
"Doesn’t activism make you feel good? he asked.
"Of course," I said, "but that’s not why I do it. If I only want to feel good, I can just masturbate. But I want to accomplish something in the real world."
Why?
"Because I’m in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don’t determine whether or not you make the effort. You don’t simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn’t cause me to protect those I love, it’s not love." Orion
Humankind
The Hero of Kurdistan
Meet Hoshyar Ali, a 58 year old amputee from Kurdistan who has cleared more than 750,000 landmines in 104 villages along the Iran-Iraq border, despite having lost both legs.
Hoshyar’s hometown is Halabja, the site of Saddam Hussein’s deadly chemical bombing campaign that killed 5,000 people including Hoshyar’s parents in 1988. Growing up, Hoshyar was an athletic kid “I was really good at football, they called me ‘the rocket’” but when his 9 year-old brother was killed by a landmine, his life changed forever. In 1986 Hoshyar joined the Peshmerga, the Kurdish branch of the Iraqi Armed Forces, and stated deactivating mines from the Iran-Iraq war. His daring feats gained him public attention.
In 1989 Hoshyar lost his right leg to an Italian landmine, and then his left leg to another mine in 1994. Neither accident slowed him down.When the United Nations established a safe zone for the Kurds in 1991, people returned to their villages but risked hitting landmines if they farmed their lands. Recalling stories of Hoshyar from his Peshmerga days, locals started reaching out for help. "I gave anyone my phone number who asked for it.”
Hoshyar's work has restored the livelihoods of rural communities who can safely farm their land again. He's a local hero, with schools and villages named after him as well as a police station and a mosque.
Hoshyar’s mission however has cost him dearly- as well as losing both legs, he’s lost his eldest son, another brother and two cousins to landmine work. Driving around in an SUV with a red flag on his antenna, Hoshyar prefers to work independently to avoid safety protocols. Without protective clothing or technology, he has pulled over a million pieces of explosive armament out of the ground with his bare hands and is determined to keep going until all Northern Iraq is de-mined and safe.
"Every time I defuse a mine I feel like I have saved a life. I think about everyone I saved-not only the people, but also the animals. As long as I still have my hands, I will not stop this work. Not even for a moment."
Thats a wrap, thanks for reading, we'll see you next week.
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team
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