327: Bike angels. Sea silk. Initihuasi Seed Bank. US education. Rewilding The Alps.
All hail the undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal.
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This week’s top stories
Across the Global South, efforts to eliminate neglected tropical diseases are becoming more effective and reaching more people. Since 2011, more than 31 billion tablets and vials have been distributed world wide, including almost 1.5 billion in 2025 alone. The number of people requiring treatments fell by 92 million in 2024 compared with 2023, and coverage rose from 57.9% to 62.9%. Faster approvals, digital tracking, and expanded pre-qualification are reducing stock-outs and waste, signalling a shift from emergency logistics to durable supply. WHO
The world is becoming more equal. Contrary to popular belief, global consumption patterns are converging. New data covering 194 economies show that the ratio between spending by the world’s richest 10% and poorest 50% has more than halved since 2000. Back then, the rich spent about 40 times more than the poor; today the figure is closer to 18. Over the same period, the richest 1% have seen their share of consumption shrink. Economist 🗄️
Armenia is building a universal health care system. Mandatory health insurance started on 1st January 2026, rolling out over three years, with a single national benefits package. The state will fully cover minors, senior citizens and several vulnerable groups, with the first phase aiming to reach 1.6 million people. The government says it expects the share of people skipping healthcare for cost reasons to drop by around 30%. OC Media
Clean-energy industries drove more than one-third of China’s economic growth in 2025 and over 90% of new investment, according to Carbon Brief. The clean sector is now responsible for 11.4% of GDP, led by EVs, batteries and solar. Without clean energy, China would have missed its growth targets, underscoring the sector’s increasingly central economic role.
China’s emissions really do look like they’ve peaked. China’s CO₂ emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months, with what looks like a 0.3% decline in 2025. Clean power met all electricity-demand growth as solar, wind and nuclear rose, pushing coal generation down 1.9%. Chemicals emissions are now the outlier, up by 12%. If this is China’s peak (still to be officially confirmed) it’s the climate story of the century. Carbon Brief
Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana lead US education rebound. Three southern states once synonymous with weak schools now lead the country in post-pandemic learning recovery. Mississippi ranks ninth nationally in fourth-grade reading and first after demographic adjustment, while Alabama leads math recovery and has the lowest chronic absenteeism. Tighter accountability, early reading mandates and relentless attendance tracking are driving gains despite limited public funding. NYT 🎁
Colombia titles 5,214.9 km² of Amazon land to Indigenous groups
Colombia has formally titled a huge swathe of land in the Amazon to Indigenous communities, securing territory for 12,792 families across five frontier departments. The move coincides with a broader shift: early data show Amazon deforestation fell 25% last year, suggesting that land rights, community governance and enforcement are beginning to bend the deforestation curve. ColombiaOne
France launches its largest ever rewilding project in the Dauphiné Alps. Launched late last year, the project builds on decades of natural species return, aiming to restore herbivores, predators and river systems across mostly forested land, pairing biodiversity recovery with local economic activity and climate resilience in one of Europe’s fastest-warming mountain regions. Mongabay
African countries are cutting cervical cancer by meeting women where they are. Zambia has screened over 1.5 million women since 2006 by task-shifting to nurses, embedding services in clinics and mobilising traditional leaders. Burkina Faso has paired free screening with mobile clinics, reaching nearly two million women. In Zimbabwe, bicycle-riding community health workers are now a keystone of care, immunising millions of girls in rural districts.
A major new piece of research finds that combining solar panels with farming could boost global crop output by enough to feed more than two billion people a year. This is revolutionary news because it means any suitable piece of cropland can now be modified to produce more food, more power, more income, more biodiversity and fewer emissions, all in a single step. The report drily notes that potential added agricultural income could exceed $1 trillion.
The Undisputed Champion of Coal has overseen more retirements of coal plants than any other president in US history. A new analysis shows 57GW retired across Trump’s two terms, versus 48GW under Obama and 41GW under Biden. Ageing plants and cheaper fossil gas and renewables have driven this trend, with wind and solar now generating more electricity in the United States than coal.
Hospitals are cutting climate pollution by dropping a common anaesthetic. Medical institutions across Europe, North America and Australasia are phasing out desflurane, a widely used anaesthetic with 2,530 times the warming impact of CO₂. The shift to alternatives has already cut anaesthetic-related emissions by nearly 30% over a decade, with no loss of clinical quality and significant cost savings. Regulators now see operating rooms as a fast, low-cost climate win. Bloomberg 🎁
AI reads brain MRIs in seconds and flags emergencies. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed an AI system that can analyse scans in seconds, identifying neurological conditions with up to 97.5% accuracy while also triaging urgency. Tested on over 30,000 MRI scans, the model flags strokes and haemorrhages for immediate attention, offering a potential fix for radiology backlogs and delayed diagnoses as MRI demand outpaces specialist capacity. Science Daily
You’ve heard of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - did you know Chile has one too?
In the Atacama Desert, one of the world’s driest regions, the Initihuasi Seed Bank is freezing thousands of native plant species to safeguard them against climate change, extinction and disaster. Stored at –20°C in earthquake-proof vaults, the collection now underpins species recovery, supports rewilding pilots, and acts as a genetic backstop for a country where 46% of plant species exist nowhere else on Earth. OPB
And finally, a legendary golden fabric once worn only by emperors has made an astonishing comeback. Sea silk’s beauty is legendary: often referred to as the "golden fibre of the sea," it was among the most treasured materials of ancient Rome, possessing a golden sheen that never fades. Historically reserved for Emperors and Popes, it’s produced in southern Europe from byssus threads produced by Pinna nobilis, a large Mediterranean clam. Today, these clams are endangered and harvesting their beards is strictly controlled, and it was feared the art of sea silk weaving would die with the bivalves’ last surviving seamstress.
But behold! Halfway across the world, fish farmers in Korea cultivate a common clam called Atrina pectinata. Late last year, researchers made the first true sea silk from its beard threads: now they’ve discovered why the colour lasts for so long. The team found that sea silk’s iridescence is created by a spherical protein structure known as photonin. These proteins form layered arrangements that reflect light in a way similar to soap bubbles or butterfly wings. Because the colour comes from structure rather than pigment, it remains stable for thousands of years. Science Daily
Women in Mesopotamia used the exceptionally light fabric to embroider clothes for their kings some 5,000 years ago. It was harvested to make robes for King Solomon, bracelets for Nefertiti, and holy vestments for priests, popes and pharaohs. It’s referenced on the Rosetta Stone, mentioned 45 times in the Old Testament and thought to be the material that God commanded Moses to drape on the altar in the Tabernacle.
For paid subscribers this week:
Namibia fast-tracks lifesaving postpartum care to national policy in record time.
Indonesia’s clean-cooking revolution improves health for tens of millions.
A rare Bermuda snail returns from the brink after an improbable recovery.
Indigenous guardians start mapping one of Southeast Asia’s least-studied forests.
Finland’s coal exit leaves a striking signature on air pollution in Helsinki.
China launches sea trials of a fully battery-powered 10,000-tonne cargo ship.
Volcanic clues in polar ice rewrite the origins of Europe’s deadliest pandemic.
Record-breaking organ transplants and a world-first procedure push the frontier of modern surgery.
Hi everyone, Gus here. Some friends of mine have a book coming out that I want to tell you about.
It’s called Full Stack Human and it’s written by the team at Future Crunch. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll know that name. Their founder, Tane Hunter and I, spent years working together on the same core problem: the gap between what the data actually shows and what most people believe about the world.
Now he’s co-authored a book with another friend, Dara Simkin, that goes deep on a question I think about a lot: why is it so hard to maintain a clear picture of reality when the information environment is actively working against you? And more importantly, what can you actually build, cognitively, to hold onto accurate perception under pressure?
Their answer is a five-layer system. Serious play, for learning when conditions keep shifting. Strategic hope, meaning the combination of agency and visible pathways that’s distinct from wishful thinking. Intelligent optimism, which is basically what we do here, but formalised into something you can practice deliberately. Radical curiosity, which keeps you from getting trapped by false certainty. And embedded adaptability, which is the capacity to get stronger from disruption rather than just surviving it.
What I like about their framework is that the layers aren’t independent. They feed each other. Play creates the conditions for hope. Hope depends on seeing accurately. Seeing accurately makes you more curious. Curiosity makes you more adaptive. Adaptability gives you room to play again. The whole thing compounds over time.
Their research is backed by over 500 peer-reviewed sources and has been tested in hundreds of organisations dealing with real complexity. This isn’t a self-help book with a gratitude journal at the back. It’s a serious attempt to turn the kind of thinking you get from reading Fix The News into something permanent and structural.
I’ll be honest about my bias. They’re my friends, and I’ve been writing about this stuff for years, so I’m predisposed to like the main premise - that intelligent optimism is a trainable skill and not a personality quirk. More importantly though, I just trust the work behind it. The Future Crunch team has been rigorous about this for as long as I’ve known them.
The book comes out February 25, 2026. If you want to pre-order check out www.fullstackhumanbook.com
