Could an AI bot be your psychotherapist? Guterres on peace, is WWIII unimaginable? Boomers selling homes, new Covid guidance, Yellowstone in winter
February 19, 2024 - The Nett Report
Every other week, the award-winning Nett Report provides readers with thoughtful perspectives helpful to navigating life in a changing world. Past issues can be found here (recent) and here (past three years).
Health
“The AI wave rivals the internet, and it rivals cloud computing, and it rivals mobile, and it really benefits from all of those, and I don’t think it’s hype. I promise you it will exceed our expectations in years to come. It is transformative.” - Roelof Botha, Senior Steward (CEO), Sequoia Capital, from CEO Daily, February 8, 2024.
What if an AI bot could be your psychotherapist?
A thoughtful article in the January/February 2024 issue of Psychotherapy Networker tells the story of a mental health worker who starts wondering how artificial intelligence tools could help to better address mental health issues. The story goes through his understanding of AI and includes examples of how it works. Ultimately, he decided to hire developers to build an AI portal that could directly serve patients. Find out his conclusions and draw your own about the power of AI in general and as a tool to address mental health.
New Covid updates change past guidance
Two new studies have provided new information about how to be most effectively immunized from Covid and when to go back out in public. The first, reported in Science Alert on February 9, 2024, comes from the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU. Researchers there found that getting the second Covid booster in a different arm than the first boosts antibody levels. According to a February 13, 2024, story in the Washington Post, guidance for isolation is also changing. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) plans to recommend that people who test positive for the coronavirus use clinical symptoms to determine when to end isolation. Under the new approach, people would no longer need to stay home if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medication and their symptoms are mild and improving.
Political Divide
“For millions of people caught up in conflict around the world, life is a deadly, daily, hungry hell. Record numbers are fleeing their homes in search of safety. They are crying out for peace. We must hear them, and act. Peace is more than a noble vision. Peace is a rallying cry. It is a call to action.” – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in a recent briefing before the UN General Assembly.
Are we unable to imagine defeat? Is World War III unimaginable?
In a recent opinion posted in Bloomberg on February 10, 2024, Niall Ferguson from Stanford University asks if World War III is unimaginable. Ferguson points out two U.S. defeats, Afghanistan and Vietnam, and wonders how we would react under these three scenarios:
The Ukrainian army is overrun by its Russian adversaries.
Iran successfully builds a nuclear weapon and unleashes its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to rain missiles down on Israel.
Taiwan is blockaded by the People’s Liberation Army.
Ferguson writes that “it is very difficult indeed to make the following argument stick: If the US allows Ukraine, Israel and/or Taiwan to be overrun by their adversaries, there will be dire consequences for Americans, too. And by “dire consequences,” I mean something considerably worse than another 9/11.” He recalls the fall of Kabul, and finds it “hard to dismiss the idea that we might acquiesce quite insouciantly in all three cases.” He says Americans have trouble imagining a scenario where the impacts of any of the above events will affect them, but he makes the case that they could.
Future of Work / The Economy
“‘Greenwashing’ and ‘purpose-washing’ are out of fashion—because the public relations downside may be as great as the upside. And diversity efforts have been dialed back from the fevered pitch of 2020. But the underlying forces driving business to pay more attention to social impact have not gone away. In a world where human capital is more valuable than physical capital, businesses must inevitably become more human.” - Alan Murray, CEO, Fortune Media, in the February 8, 2024, CEO Daily.
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.” — John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), courtesy of Jonathan Tiemann’s February 7, 2024, newsletter, Medium of Exchange.
Boomers predicted to start selling homes to downsize and cash out
According to a February 18, 2024, article in yahoo!finance, a prominent investment researcher, Meredith Whitney, is confident that” older homeowners will start listing their homes, opening up opportunities for hopeful young buyers across America.” She says the cost-of-living crisis and higher consumer prices “could lead some homeowners to cash in on their equity by selling and moving into smaller homes to enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle.” She cites an AARP study that estimates “51% of people over the age of 50 are planning to downsize to smaller homes — ushering in over 30 million units into the housing market.”
Climate Change
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle
“If we want to avoid total climate catastrophe, we’ll need the world’s storytellers — ad agencies and their clients, Hollywood film and TV producers, writers and artists of all kinds — to start doing their part to make clean energy a priority. There’s almost certainly no way to get to 100% clean energy by 2035 —a target endorsed by many scientists and activists — without more stories that help people see it’s possible.” - Boiling Point newsletter, February 13, 2024.
Six examples of good news about climate change
Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe, in the February 6, 2024, issue of her newsletter Talking Climate, provides six examples of positive change that is already underway:
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, nearly half of the city’s heavy vehicles — including garbage trucks and sweet sweepers — are now fueled by vegetable oil rather than gasoline or diesel. The city hopes to convert all its vehicles to sustainable fuels by 2031.
In Nigeria, the new president, Bola Tinubu, announced in his inaugural address he was phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. The subsidies amounted to nearly $500 million a month.
Texas set a new record with 36% of the energy on its grid being generated by solar. That’s in addition to the third that’s already coming from wind.
In Hawai’i, 33% of people already have rooftop solar panels, 15% of new cars sold are electric, and the state just replaced its last coal-fired power plant with a giant 185 MW battery that can release the same amount of electricity as the coal plant, but much faster.
In China, it’s estimated that carbon emissions peaked in 2023 and are now on the decline, thanks to a record renewable energy installation.
This past year alone, China installed more new solar energy than the U.S. has in its entire history.
China builds more coal plants but might burn less coal
Hannah Ritchie, in the February 13, 2024, issue of her newsletter Sustainability by Numbers, reports that China is continuing to build more coal plants, even as it is charging ahead with solar development. Even though it is building more coal plants, they are running fewer hours, and those numbers will continue to drop, according to Ritchie.
NOAA atmospheric river fact sheet
With all the talk on the news about atmospheric rivers, having a handy fact sheet to understand the phenomena seems useful. NOAA has done just that. It was first published last year, but it simply and effectively provides the needed background.
The Nett Light-Side
“In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” - Coco Chanel, French fashion designer and businesswoman.
Yellowstone in winter, video set to music
The beauty of Yellowstone National Park in winter is captured by a video set to music in this My Modern Met story from February 8, 2024.
Girl helps jock with homework, pays her back years later
A popular high school athlete who protected a girl with cerebral palsy from bullies in return for help with his homework returned the favor decades later with an offer to buy her a house. A feel-good read in boredpanda on February 15, 2024.
About Carl Nettleton
Carl Nettleton is an award-winning writer, speaker, thought partner, facilitator, and subject-matter expert regarding water, climate, sustainability, the ocean, and binational U.S.-Mexico border affairs. Nettleton Strategies, the consultancy he founded in 2007, is a trusted source of analysis and advice on issues at the forefront of public policy, business, and the environment. He helps people and organizations to think strategically about their options for change. He is also the founder of OpenOceans Global, a nonprofit addressing ocean plastic in a new way.