A new dengue vaccine that cuts the risk of fever by 61% and hospitalisation by 84% is on the cusp of being approved by the European Medicines Agency. Big news. Global dengue cases have almost doubled over the last three decades, and the only other vaccine we've tried wasn't safe. This new one is.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/new-vaccine-protect-people-eu-worldwide-against-dengue
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The arrival of two vaccines for malaria portends a sea change for humanity's efforts to fight one of our greatest scourges. The first, Mosquirix, was approved by the WHO last year and will begin distribution in 2023. A more powerful vaccine with up to 80% efficacy, developed by a team at Oxford, is also just a year or two away.
Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Of course you do. Well, the FDA recently approved a new drug for Lou Gehrig's disease that was partially funded by those proceeds, and the ALS Association says the remaining funds are supporting funding 130 research projects in 12 different countries, as well as 40 potential treatments in development.
Slovenia's parliament has passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt after a constitutional court ruling earlier this year made it the first country in Eastern Europe to do so. "With these changes, we are recognising the rights of same-sex couples that they should have had for a long time."
Earlier this month, the US federal government took a big step in repairing the harms of the War on Drugs, by pardoning thousands of people with federal offenses for marijuana possession, and initiating a review of its classification. The move lifts a burden on the roughly 6,500 people whose employment and housing chances are harmed by their past convictions.
Japan will change an archaic 19th-century law whereby a child born to a woman within 300 days of divorce is considered to be that of her former husband, even if she has remarried. The revised legislation will also end a ban on pregnant women remarrying within 100 days of divorce.
The past quarter century has witnessed an unprecedented decline in US child poverty. In 1993, more than one in four children lived in families living below the poverty threshold. 26 years later, that number has fallen to roughly one in 10. The magnitude of this decline - 59% - is unequalled in the history of poverty reduction efforts in the United States.
https://www.childtrends.org/publications/lessons-from-a-historic-decline-in-child-poverty
Fewer teenage girls as a proportion of the global population are giving birth today than at any point in human history. Global adolescent birth rates have decreased from 64.5 births per 1,000 women at the beginning of the 21st century, to 42.5 births per 1,000 women in 2021. Every single region of the world has seen declines during this period.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-pregnancy
In September, India's Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision, giving the country's 73 million single women the right to choose. It's a human rights victory on a monumental scale - the first time a legal question about abortion in India has been approached from a women's perspective, and setting an example that could echo far beyond the sub-continent.
The Mexican state of Quintana Roo has voted to decriminalise abortion, becoming the latest state in the country to ease restrictions, and joining the 'green wave' of reproductive rights victories across Latin America.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/26/mexicos-quintana-roo-state-decriminalises-abortion
Did you know Sri Lanka has a network of more than 7,000 midwives? They're the backbone of the country's public health system, bringing health and education to every front door, vaccinating 99.1% of the country's children, and helping maintain one of the lowest maternal and child mortality rates in Asia.
Oman has become the first country in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region to successfully eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. It's thanks to investments in primary health care, a high quality network of laboratories across the country, and a new electronic health system. Next milestone? Elimination of mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B.
Pakistan has reduced malaria cases by approximately 45% since 2015, thanks to the provision of free-of-cost treatment and related facilities in the public and private health sectors, and nationwide efforts to distribute bed nets. The number of estimated cases fell from 992,605 in 2015 to 542,960 in 2020
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/pakistan-almost-halves-malaria-cases-five-years
The number of homicides in Scotland in 2021 reached their lowest point since records began in 1976. This is in line with a significant downward trend in other categories - overall crime has fallen by a total of 43% since 2007. "There are thousands fewer victims in Scotland than there were 15 years ago."
Basic income works. Pilot programs launched across the US and the rest of the world in the last few years have repeatedly shown that it pulls people out of poverty, improves health outcomes, and makes it easier for people to find jobs and take care of their children. The economic evidence is overwhelming. The political battle however, is only just beginning.
“The most astonishing and heartening coral rebirth the world has ever seen." In 2015/16, the strongest El Niño on record moved across the coral reefs of the Pacific Line Islands, killing half of them. Six years on the reefs are thriving, with more than 43 million colonies per square kilometre. Nature will recover if we let it.
The Republic of Congo will establish its first three marine reserves in the Atlantic. The reserves will cover 12% of the West African country’s ocean zone and protect breeding grounds used by humpback whales and leatherback turtles. The reserves will also cover areas inhabited by whale sharks, the world’s largest fish.
The endangered Galápagos Penguin has recorded its best breeding season on record. In 2010, conservationists began chiselling small holes out of lava for the birds after original nesting sites were taken over by feral predators. 12 years later, a quarter of the population are juveniles - a significant milestone for a species numbering less than 5,000 birds.
A rewilding project spanning 8,500 km² of Spain's Iberian highlands is reintroducing black vultures, lynx, and wild horses. A herd of tauros – cattle bred to fulfil the ecological role of ancient aurochs – has already been released along with 11 semi-wild horses. It's the tenth project from Rewilding Europe, and the first one in Spain.
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A record-breaking 92 Saimaa ringed seal pups were born in the Saimaa Lake region of Finland this year, thanks to fishing restrictions introduced in the last few years. The population of the highly endangered species has increased by of 5.6% every year between 2015-20 due to reduced deaths from fish traps and nets.
Switzerland has reversed the decline of endangered amphibians in the Aargau region. In 1999 the canton decided a mass conservation effort was needed to combat the loss of frogs, newts and toads. Authorities, non-profits, landowners and volunteers worked for 20 years to build 422 ponds - resulting in an increase in almost every pond-breeding amphibian species.
New legislation in the EU will require USB-C to be the single charger standard for all new smartphones, tablets, and cameras from late 2024. The makers of laptops will have until early 2026. The move is expected to cut over a thousand tons of electronic waste every year.
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-eu-lawmakers-impose-charger-smartphones.html
We might be slowly getting a handle on the food waste problem. In London, grocers have stopped putting expiry dates on fresh produce, in California and France supermarkets are now giving away unsold food, and South Korea’s tough-love approach is working: between 2010 and 2019 food waste in the country declined from 3,400 tons to 2,800 tons per day.
A community-led initiative to expand the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve in Scotland has "achieved the impossible," securing enough funding to more than double the size of the reserve, which was created last year, to over 10,000 acres. “This is about a grassroots fightback against the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis, and helping to create a better future."
US air quality is improving. Since 1990, fine particulate matter pollution has declined by 41% and concentrations of O3, a precursor to smog, have declined by 22%. The result? 370,000 avoided premature deaths, 189,000 fewer hospital admissions for cardiac and respiratory illnesses, 147 million fewer acute respiratory symptoms, and 8.3 million fewer lost school days... every year.
Kenya is planning on growing five billion trees in five years and an additional ten billion by 2032, with the hope of restoring 10.6 million hectares of degraded lands. The government plans to immediately recruit an additional 2,700 forest rangers and 600 forest officers to support the program.
Six years ago, the US government created the world’s largest fully protected ocean reserve, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii. Now scientists have found that the vast reserve, which spans 1.5 million km2, is helping restore fish populations. Nearby catches of yellowfin tuna rose by 54% between 2016 and 2019, and bigeye tuna by 12%.
Norway is planning to create ten new national parks along its western edge. Four of them will be brand new, while six will see currently designated conservation areas upgraded into full-blown national parks. It’s part of an effort to protect 30% of Norwegian land by 2030.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/norway-plans-to-designate-10-new-national-parks
The first commercial crop of the methane-busting seaweed Asparagopsis has been harvested off the coast of Western Australia. When added to cattle feed, a daily dose of 20 grams per animal can reduce methane output by up to 95%. While still in its infancy, the asparagopsis industry is forecast to be worth $100 million by 2025.
Chile’s Atacama Desert, renowned for its clear skies and spectacular desert blooms, is set to be made into a national park. Earlier this month, Chilean president Gabriel Boric announced plans to protect the area from development and fund research into its ecosystems.
California has completed the cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater in Mission Valley, the site of one of the state's biggest ever toxic fuel spills in the 1980s. Over $70 million gas been spent on the clean-up since 2005, removing almost a million kilograms of petroleum contamination.
"By launching a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has done more than almost any other single human being to speed up the end of the fossil fuel era."
Who said it? The above quote actually comes from the inaugural Green 28 List by Politico, their annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s green agenda. Top of their list? Mr Putin.
https://www.politico.eu/list/green-28-class-of-2023-the-ranking/vladimir-putin/
Meanwhile, Europe's decarbonisation continues to speed up. The bloc as a whole is now aiming to reach 82% clean energy by 2030, and a handful of nations - Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark - are aiming even higher, looking to reach 100% clean power by the end of this decade.
In 2019, science journalist David Wallace Wells wrote a best-selling book called The Uninhabitable Earth. Three years later, he's in the New York Times with a piece entitled: "Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View." It's well worth a read. Things can (and do) change.
Amidst the justifiably scary talk of climate crisis, it's worth remembering tipping points aren’t just for desertification, ice sheets and coral bleaching. The same gradually-then-all-at-once dynamic also applies to decarbonization. 87 countries have now crossed the 5% tipping point for clean energy, and 19 countries have done it for electric vehicles (Canada, Australia and Spain are next).
The ambition for solar and wind in China continues to balloon. Early this year, analysts tallied up plans for 600 GW of additions in 2021-25, but have now had to revise that upwards to 870 GW. That equates to China adding a US-sized, instead of a German-sized amount of clean energy, every year. At this pace, China will hit peak emissions by 2025.
https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1577899095167057920
The city of Chaozhou in China is building a wind farm in the Taiwan Strait so large it will be able to power 13 million homes, or more than all the power plants in Norway combined. Construction on the 43.3 GW offshore wind farm (can't even believe we're writing that number) will begin before 2025.
US households are installing record numbers of solar panels on their rooftops, loosening ties to the power grid and the utilities that run it. About 5.3 GW will be installed this year, the most ever, and roughly equivalent to all the country's rooftop capacity in 2015.
@corlin we are installing solar this month!
@catzmeow @corlin if you don't mind me asking, how big are you going, what's the rough cost and are you financing it?
I've been looking doing solar at my house but to reduce my bill from our lovely corrupt power company (shout out central Maine power) I'd end up having to finance a system for 10-15 years at roughly the same cost of my current power bill, which doesn't result in much upfront savings and I don't know what 'life' will be like in 10-15 years