Climate Projects in Limbo

⚡ Clean energy resilience

🧬 CRISPR setbacks

🍎 Food safety disruptions

🧠 What AI is doing to our brains

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By dropping a key climate policy tool called the “social cost of carbon” (how governments put a price tag on climate impacts), the costs of climate change are being flipped back onto you and I (ProPublica)

🌎 Data centers and AI still represent a relatively small portion of global electricity demand growth — China alone accounts for over half of 2024’s increase, using as much power for manufacturing solar, batteries, and EVs as Italy’s total annual consumption (MIT Technology Review)

Although most Americans believe in climate change, and half saying they’ve been directly impacted by it, it still isn’t at the top of the list of concerns for voters (Floodlight)

2024 saw unprecedented growth for clean energy, and despite an uncertain future due to threats of IRA rollbacks, there is hope for resilience in the industry, especially because 66% of clean energy projects have been built in Republican-voting counties (Distilled)

🌏 Despite mentions of pulling out of the Paris Agreement and its continued reliance on coal and gas, Indonesia is backing solar and hydro to meet its power needs (Bloomberg)

A man carrying a rare genetic mutation that typically causes early-onset Alzheimer’s is showing unprecedented resilience, giving researchers hope that this rare case could lead to new therapeutic approaches (WashU Medicine)

Apple has launched a new longitudinal health study in partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital to investigate connections between various health metrics and potentially leading to the development of new health features (STAT)

Government resources about Long COVID accommodations and disability rights have been removed from federal websites (The Sick Times)

The flu is surging all over the US (Washington Post), forcing school closures in states like Mississippi (Mississippi Free Press)

Despite the FDA approving CRISPR gene editing to treat sickle-cell, the CRISPR industry is on rocky ground(STAT)

Nevada is suspending its cage-free standards in an effort to increase egg supply and decrease egg prices (Vox)

Hundreds of employees at the FDA have been fired, including positions funded by industry user fees rather than taxpayers, impacting teams reviewing medical devices, food safety, tobacco products, and more (The New York Times)

🌍 Last year’s extreme drought in the Amazon exposed the lack of access to clean water for drinking and sanitation in Indigenous lands (Mongabay)

The recently gutted Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net) is credited with saving millions of lives by predict food crises and making food aid distribution more efficient (WIRED)

🌍 Extreme weather events destroyed crops worldwide last year, highlighting the vulnerability of global food production to climate change (Carbon Brief)

🌍 France has pledged a gigawatt of nuclear energy to power AI (Engadget)

A new study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon has found that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI, we rely less on critical thinking, resulting in deteriorating cognitive faculties (404 Media)

Five universities are collaborating to collect biological samples from volunteers and analyze them using AI in an effort to understand how the trillions of viruses that inhabit us impact our health (The New York Times)

Google is planning on using machine learning to estimate a users’ age and provide them with “age-appropriate experiences” (The Verge)

Despite numerous reports of sexual assault, dating apps are not doing enough to keep predators off their platforms (The Markup)

🌍 Donate to the Lead Exposure Elimination Project so that ideally 0 kids are exposed to dangerous levels of lead (we’re currently at one in three worldwide, so).

🌎 Volunteer with a psychedelic clinical trial to advance research in mental health treatments.

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