Russian Ukraine strategy, geoengineering, Olympics celebrated with citrus, CEOs optimistic, household electricity use, global well-being
April 1, 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 four years).
Apologies. The March 18, 2024, issue of The Nett Report, misspelled “California” in the headline. It was corrected in the online version.
Climate Change
Geoengineering to address climate subject to limited regulations
A series of articles published recently address the concept of geoengineering, defined by Wikipedia as “an umbrella term for both carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification, when applied at a planetary scale.” One of those technologies is injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight away from the planet, also known as solar radiation modification.
Limited regulations. According to Tatiana Schlossberg in her March 31, 2024, News from a Changing Planet, newsletter, regulations are very limited. “Currently, a U.S. company or citizen with plans to inject aerosols into the atmosphere is only required to fill out a one-page form with the Commerce Department 10 days before they do so,” she writes.
Direct air capture. Another form of geoengineering is direct air capture, where huge vacuums suck in air and strip out the carbon dioxide which is then buried deep in the earth. According to a March 31, 2024, article in the New York Times, “Although the direct air capture market is still in its infancy, it already has vociferous detractors in academia, activist circles and beyond.”
CO2 from the ocean. A newer set of technologies would extract CO2 from the ocean. A March 26, 2024, article in Science, profiled a Los Angeles–based startup, which uses “a system of pipes, pumps, and containers that ingests seawater and sucks out CO2, which can be used to make plastics and fuels or buried. The decarbonated seawater is returned to the ocean, where it absorbs more CO2 from the atmosphere, in a small strike against the inexorable rise of the greenhouse gas.”
Heating and cooling dominate U.S. household electricity use
The Energy Information Administration Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) estimates how U.S. households use electricity. The chart above shows average use for each technology listed. It doesn’t mean everyone has all of those technologies. As reported by Hannah Ritchie on March 19, 2024, in her Sustainability by Numbers newsletter, heating, cooling, and humidity (including air conditioners, fans, space and water heating, dehumidifiers and refrigeration) “completely dominate electricity use.”
Political Divide
“Up to 16% of children under five in northern Gaza are now malnourished, compared with less than 1% before the conflict began. Children are dying from the combined effects of malnutrition and disease, and lack of adequate water and sanitation. The future of an entire generation is in serious peril.” - Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization
Russian strategy to win in Ukraine relies on disinformation
On March 29, 2024, in her Letters from an American newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson reports on an essay by the nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War that claims “Russia’s only strategy for success in Ukraine is to win the disinformation war in which it is engaged.” The essay points out that “the countries allied behind Ukraine dwarf Russia, with relative gross domestic products of $63 trillion and $1.9 trillion, respectively, while those countries allied with Russia are not mobilizing to help Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West, they write, if the West mobilizes its resources … This means that the strategy that matters most for the Kremlin is not the military strategy, but rather the spread of disinformation that causes the West to back away and allow Russia to win. That disinformation operation echoes the Russian practice of getting a population to believe in a false reality so that voters will cast their ballots for the party of oligarchs.”
Future of Work / The Economy
CEOs are optimistic because of expectations for Fed rate cuts
Fortune magazine annually surveys CEOs from the Fortune 500, Fortune Global 500, and other select executives about how they feel about the future of the world’s economy. As reported in Fortune on March 19, 20204, CEO’s are more optimistic about the future than in previous surveys. The article shared these results:
27% - are bullish about the future of the global economy over the next 12 months. That’s a full 20 percentage points higher since the last survey when just 7% felt positive.
24% - are pessimistic, a sharp improvement over 47% previously. What’s more, no one answered they were “very pessimistic” this time.
22% - couldn’t possibly be any more positive about the outlook for their own company, just over twice as many as before.
76% - expect interest rates to ease by the end of September. Yet only 28% anticipate a move in the second quarter already—despite financial markets pricing in a likely first cut in June.
56% - said their companies are using generative AI to make their companies more efficient, up from 39% in the previous survey.
Projected U.S. population growth rates and immigration levels
It’s not a secret that population growth drives the economy, but what would it mean to the economy if the population didn’t grow? The Morning newsletter reported on an analysis of census data collected by demographer William Frey. Most rich countries, including the U.S., have fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies for every woman. That leaves immigration to make up the difference. This thoughtful piece analyzes four immigration scenarios and projects when population growth would flatten out for each scenario.
Health
U.S. older folks are happy, the young less so, in global happiness ranking
A March 20, 2024, NPR report on The Gallup World Poll, which gauges well-being, has found the U.S. dropped to 23rd from 15th while Finland topped the poll. “Researchers point to factors including high levels of social support and healthy life expectancy, to explain the top perch of several Scandinavian countries.” In the U.S., people aged 60 and above reported high levels of well-being compared to younger people and are in the top ten globally for their age group.“ However, the report finds there's a dramatic decrease in the self-reported well-being of people aged 30 and below. "People are hearing that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and the young especially are feeling more threatened by it," says John Helliwell, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and a co-author of the study. “He says many younger people may feel the weight of climate change, social inequities, and political polarization which can all be amplified on social media.”
More young people are getting cancer
The young aren’t just unhappy, they are more cancer prone than in the past. The recent news that Kate Middleton (Catherine, Princess of Wales) had contracted cancer is part of a growth in early-onset cancer rates over the past three decades. According to a March 22, 2024, article in Vox, “Much of the increase is attributable to colon and rectal cancers: In 2019, there were about 5.7 cases of colorectal cancer among 100,000 people ages 14 to 49. That’s up 63 percent since 1990, when there were approximately only 3.5 cases per 100,000 people. Breast, cervical, and skin cancers are still the most likely cancers to develop in adults under 50.”
New obesity drugs could also boost GDP
According to a March 7, 2024, report from Goldman Sachs, “The latest crop of weight-loss drugs, called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), could markedly improve health … Clinical studies have shown GLP-1 drugs can lead to a 15-20% decline in weight among treated individuals, a benefit that can be sustained for at least four years with continued treatment … That could mean a 0.4% boost to US GDP in the team’s baseline scenario, or more than 1% if the drugs’ uptake comes in at the high end.” The boost in GDP would come because there would be more healthy people as a result of the obesity drugs, lessening insurance costs and improving productivity.
The Nett Light-Side
“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” - Mae Jamison, American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut.
France gets ready for the Summer Olympics with fruit
Leave it to the French to celebrate the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics Games in Paris by using 140 tons of fruit to create incredible floats during the town of Menton’s Citrus Festival. According to Nice News on February 25, 2024, the organizers have to be very quick “to ensure that the fruit remains in the best possible condition during the two-week festival.”
Light-painted animal animations fascinate
Lichtfaktor Crew, a group in Cologne, Germany, has used light painting to transform the night-time city “into a creative playground in which nature makes a magical comeback … watch as animated birds, jellyfish, flowers and insects, a chameleon, and other animals explore the night.” You can see the video on The Kids Should See This website. Really cool stuff!
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.