This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mind-blowing science, and the best bits of the internet (not necessarily in that order). One third of your subscription fee goes to charity.
Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it
The Keystone XL pipeline has been officially terminated, cementing one of the biggest environmental victories of all time. Activists managed to delay the $9 billion, 830,000 barrel per day, Alberta oil sands 'dirty climate bomb' for 12 years, and in the process, give birth to much of the modern climate movement. Take a moment to appreciate this, it's really sweet. Even the most idealistic frontline warriors didn't expect it to end this well.
It's amazing how quickly industrialists seem to develop a conscience when there's a threat to their bottom line. This time, it's Italian automotive giant Fiat that suddenly cares about the fate of the planet, saying it will be an all electric brand by 2030. "This is our greatest project." Indeed. Engadget
The United States has the world's second largest fleet of coal plants, and 80% of them are now either more expensive to continue operating compared to building new wind or solar, or are set to retire in the next four years. If you think the last four years were bad for US coal, the next four are going to make them feel like a cakewalk. Meanwhile, Romania, one of Europe's last remaining coal holdouts, says it will close all of its coal mines by 2032, introduce ecotaxes, discourage the registration of cars older than 15 years and boost scrapping schemes for polluting vehicles, and Canada says it will no longer approve thermal-coal mining projects. C'mon Straya.
Over half a million people in Senegal just gained access to clean electricity after two solar PV plants were switched on, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a massive $100 million off-grid solar project has been approved to bring power to three northern cities that currently have no connection to the grid. In Spain, renewables produced half of the country's electricity for the first time ever last month, reaching 50.7% of supply, and in Texas, four months after Republicans falsely blamed clean energy for the failure of the electric grid, investors have decided just what the state needs: more clean power. 15GW, the equivalent of Finland's entire electrical capacity, is now under construction or in advanced development, more than double three years ago. Bloomberg
Good news you probably didn't hear about
There's been a new update on progress towards SDG7: the number of people without access to electricity has declined from 1.2 billion to 759 million in the past decade, the number connected to mini grids more than doubled during the same time period, and access to clean cooking solutions has grown by 1% annually.
The US government will make $1 billion in grants available to narrow the digital divide, expanding broadband access for Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. Only half of households on tribal lands currently subscribe to a home internet service. The Verge
Your regular reminder that social attitudes can and do change, sometimes in the space of a single generation. Support for same-sex marriage in the United States is now at an all time high of 70%, up from 60% in 2015 when it was legalized, and from 27% in 1996, when Gallup first started asking the question. Hopefully we're also at the beginning of a similar shift in India, with news that Tamil Nadu has become the first Indian state to ban conversion 'therapy’ after an unprecedented and progressive judgment by the Madras High Court last week.
A decades-long effort to infuse mosquitoes with a virus-blocking microbe has culminated in a trial in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that achieved a 77% reduction in cases and an 86% reduction in people needing hospital care. Not only was the science behind this world class, it's also one of the best examples we've ever seen of community engagement. They had to convince 90% of the community before releasing the mosquitoes, requiring years of meetings, letting people in to see the labs, using Whatsapp for engagement, and employing over 10,000 local volunteers to place the mosquito eggs in people’s backyards. Development specialists take note: this is how to help, not through patronage, but through partnership.
The global effort to eradicate polio just received a major boost with the release of $5 billion in new funding from The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership by national governments and health groups. Most of it will be spent on vaccinations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries in the world where outbreaks of wild polio still occur. NYT
CORRECTION
In The Crunch No. 137, we wrote the following: Thanks to alternative penalties for non-violent crimes, the number of people incarcerated in the United States in 2020 plummeted by 1.7 million from 2019 (AP). This was a mistake. The accompanying article reports that "the percentage of U.S. residents who are in prison has dropped by 17%" and that the number of incarcerated individuals dropped to 1.7 million from 2019 to 2020. A significant drop, to be sure, but since there were 2.3 million incarcerated people in 2019, a 1.7 million drop would virtually erase the US prison system.
Thank you so much to eagle-eyed subscriber, Mike Gillis, for spotting our mistake.
Life finds a way
A coalition of more than 40 groups, ranging from local NGOs to governments to international organizations, has mobilized $43 million for efforts to restore degraded habitats in the Galápagos Islands. The initiative aims to reintroduce 13 extinct species, and help increase the population of 54 threatened species.
Indonesia is home to 7.9 million acres of mangroves, more than any other country. In 2020, the government announced a plan to replant an additional 1.5 million acres by 2024. In the background however, an unsung army of ordinary Indonesians has been toiling for decades to restore these habitats. South Korea also has some big tree planting plans, saying it will plant three billion new trees over the next 30 years after joining the WEF's One Trillion Trees initiative.
A revolutionary new conservation program in southern Ecuador, funded by a small fee on municipality water, has achieved spectacular success, re-wilding 1,500 ha and putting an additional 337,000 ha under conservation. It represents a simple, yet effective model that can be replicated across the world.. In other good news from South America, Chile has passed new legislation, based on recommendations from environmental groups presented back in 2019, that will reduce the country’s plastic waste by more than 23,000 tons per year.
The total value of meat products sold in Germany fell by 4% in 2020 compared to 2019. By contrast, sales of plant-based alternatives skyrocketed by 39%, suggesting there has been a permanent shift in tastes, especially from younger consumers. Furry friends will also be pleased to hear that Israel has become the first country to completely ban the sale of all fur products, including imports and exports. Expect this to be the first in a long list over the next few years.
The critically endangered Polish wolf has recovered to an estimated population of 3,000, a massive leap from the mere 60 in existence in the early 1970s. It's always the same story with these endangered species recoveries: decades of unseen, thankless work from scientists, conservationists and activists. That's also what's happened in Bulgaria, which now has a stable population of around 80 griffon vultures, more than 40 years after the birds were declared extinct in the Balkan nation. There are now at least 23 mating pairs, who have been breeding in the wild since 2016.
Indistinguishable from magic
The Metaverse just got another step closer, with an early access release of Unreal Engine 5, which makes the boundary between the digital and real worlds much blurrier. There's no point in explaining this, you have to see it. Here's the video announcement, and then check out this real time rendering of a simulated rockfall on the Nordic Coast. WTAF.
Lithium is going to be an essential element in our efforts to stop the world from burning, but its extraction comes with heavy environmental costs. Good news then, from researchers in Saudi Arabia, who have figured out a cost effective way to extract high purity lithium from seawater, which contains 5,000 times more lithium than land.
Scientists have come up with a blood test called an ExoSCOPE that tells them within 24 hours whether or not targeted cancer therapy is having an effect on tumor growth. Such a quick turnaround means that the treatment can be quickly adapted or rethought. Science Alert
Biologists from Cambridge have rewritten the genetic code of a synthetic bacterium that altered not only its DNA but also the cellular machinery that turns genes into biochemical products. This created a new organism that grows like E. coli but with additional properties. Knowledge of how to manipulate and edit DNA is well established, but until now it has not been possible to alter the 3 billion year old code through which DNA instructs cells to form the chains of amino acids that make up the working molecules of life. That is no longer the case. "This is potentially a revolution in biology." Science Daily
Humanity has achieved a new milestone in our efforts to harness the power of the stars. Last week the Chinese Academy of Sciences' fusion machine created a writhing loop of plasma that reached 120 million degrees Celsius, eight times the temperature of the core of the Sun, and then clung onto it for 101 seconds. Crazy.
The information superhighway is still awesome
This is one of the simplest, yet most useful reframes we've ever seen. Instead of thinking about sleep as a chore, think about it as an opportunity. Atlantic columnist and general wise old dude, Arthur C Brooks, already has us sleeping better. Do yourself a favour and read this. Thank us later.
Not one, not two, but THREE incredible pieces of sports journalism for you this week. Alex Perry has an extraordinary story about one man's quest to expose the murky underworld of international swimming (we promise you will never look at the Olympics in the same way again), then Sam Anderson almost converts us into basketball fans with a masterpiece on (possibly) the greatest basketball team of all time and finally, William Ralston offers up an unexpectedly fascinating deep dive on how the UK became the Silicon Valley of turf.
China is not a monolithic society, but instead one that is fracturing in complex and challenging ways. Beneath the facade of triumphalist nationalism lies a potent set of rifts around gender, ethnicity, urbanism and inequality that are getting very ugly. We've been waiting for someone to put this into words for years; props to Elizabeth Economy (talk about a name being a destiny) for nailing it. Foreign Affairs
On a related theme, unless you've been hiding under a rock you're probably aware that the lab-leak theory for COVID-19 is very much back on the table. This article from Vanity Fair does the most even-handed job at explaining why. Occam's Razor seems useful here - the simplest answer is that the origin is natural - but it also seems impossibly unlucky that one of only two coronaviruses research labs in the world sat 280 meters from the wet market where it all supposedly started.
Our belief that complex human societies arose 10,000 years ago is a truth so widely accepted we never question it. Time to think again, following the discovery of an 11,500 year old settlement in Turkey. You can read more about Göbekli Tepe itself in Archeology, and there's also a great essay by Samo Burja in Palladium on what it all means.
We have no reason to assume complex societies can only be found after the last ice age. Rather, they may have been with us for a very long time—perhaps from our very beginning. The environment of evolutionary adaptation for Homo sapiens as we now know ourselves wasn’t the wild savannah; rather, it was complex society all along.
Humankind
Meet Lisa Carne, an American marine biologist who has helped save the world’s second largest coral reef through a radical restoration project launched ten years ago.
Growing up in California, Lisa always had an affinity for the ocean. In 1994, after graduating with a biology degree, Lisa travelled to Southern Belize and started working as a volunteer research assistant at the Smithsonian field station in Placencia, where she witnessed the impact that climate change and rising sea temperatures were having on ocean habitats.
In 2001 Hurricane Iris devasted Belize, turning the magnificent coral reef into 'a wasteland.' Instead of waiting for a large organization to come up with the solution, Lisa devised her own radical plan. After noticing living pieces of Elkhorn coral that had broken from the reef but were still alive, Lisa questioned if it was possible to restore the reefs by transplanting coral?
Lisa worked tirelessly for years, trying to convince people that her transplanting experiment was viable. In 2006 she finally received a research grant to create a natural laboratory and coral nursery. Local fishermen and tour guides were the first to notice the reforested reefs and offered to help with the planting. In 2013 she registered a community-based NGO called Fragments of Hope to continue the restoration work and developed a coral restoration training course, which has certified over 70 Belizeans to date and helps supplement local people’s income with restoration jobs.
In 2014 she was named an Ocean Hero by Oceana Belize and in 2017, Fragments of Hope received the Lighthouse Activity Award from the UN Secretariat for Climate Change. What started as a very personal labour of love is now considered the Caribbean’s most successful reef restoration project, and today conservationists around the world follow Lisa’s lead.
When we first started maybe one or two people were doing reef restoration. But nowadays, everybody's doing it. I joke that it's like yoga now.
That's it for this edition, thanks for reading. You might have noticed that we're starting to group some stories together, the plan is to gradually do this across the entire newsletter to make the tone a bit more conversational. We hope this makes it easier to read.
We'll see you next week!
Much love,
Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team
