News to be happy about

January 1, 2023 9:52 AM

10 Ways the World Got Better In 2022
posted by NotLost (31 comments total)

Wendover Productions did a similar list of 22 Problems Solved in 2022 a few days ago.
posted by IAmDrWorm at 10:17 AM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't care what the FDA says, there is no way I am eating labmade meat.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 10:59 AM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Washington Post just published something similar: 15 reasons you should be hopeful for 2023.
(archive link)
posted by Rash at 11:45 AM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would eat labmeat. And I would use labkidney if I needed one.

I love nature and animals. And I likely won't stop eating either of them because of labfood. But I can certainly curtail with chickenish tacos.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 12:16 PM on January 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

If you don't like this kind of positive news article, maybe give this post a miss.

I'm thrilled by a lot of this- it's the payoff for a lot of environmental conservation work and the malaria vaccine is a game changer.
posted by Braeburn at 12:55 PM on January 1, 2023 [20 favorites]

...how come "no"? Like, in what sense?
posted by BlunderingArtist at 1:29 PM on January 1, 2023

> No.

Yeah, how dare people be hopeful about anything ever! Let’s all be depressed about everything all the time.

Sheesh, some people.
posted by dorothy hawk at 1:33 PM on January 1, 2023 [11 favorites]

I've read several pieces lately about resurgence of animal species we thought were headed for extinction, and it's gone a long way toward making me hopeful that we can fix the damage we've done to the planet.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:39 PM on January 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

There's a lot of good news in this article - vaccines and space telescopes are awesome - but I'm a little dubious about the first item they have being unalloyed good news. Their thesis is that less land is being used for agriculture, leaving more for wildlife - great! But the way this is happening is that more food animals are being fed crops, instead of being pastured - maybe not so great! and that we need to increase crop yields in order to feed more people with crop-fed animals. The way crop yields have been increased over the past century is through using more fertilizers and pesticides and GMO seeds, and monoculture farming that destroys the soil. It's not sustainable and leads to damaging the ecosystem further, rather than repairing it.
posted by Daily Alice at 1:52 PM on January 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

Thanks for posting these, NotLost and Rash. I appreciate it very much.
posted by humbug at 2:06 PM on January 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah! I forgot about the malaria vaccine!

#1 is depressing to me because the way it's framed I interpret it to mean we have been increasing factory farms.

My favorite is: "In 1989, there were 892,055 cases of Guinea worm disease, a dreadful and debilitating waterborne parasitic infection historically endemic to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In 2022 there were just 15 cases globally—a decline of 99.998%."

🎉
posted by aniola at 5:03 PM on January 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

I read these in an aggressively confident, 1950's newsreel announcer's voice.
posted by mmrtnt at 6:09 PM on January 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

GWD is horrific (or more specifically the only treatment for it); that eradication is within our grasp is awesome. I hadn't realized we were so close.
posted by Mitheral at 6:29 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Holy shit, I cannot wait to eat lab-grown meat. I haven't eaten meat in 30 years and as I type this I am actively salivating at the thought of putting some grilled lab chicken in my mouth. All the flavor with none of the human and animal suffering that characterizes chicken processing plants? Sign me UP.
posted by jesourie at 6:45 PM on January 1, 2023 [17 favorites]

Thank you for this, it’s lovely to see a lot of hopeful stories pulled together. One key takeaway I got is that these are all the works of large international communities over many years, the opposite of the single hero in one moment. Good things come from many hands over a long time.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:14 PM on January 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

Came in to say what Daily Alice said - besides that the main way we're increasing crop yields is with petrochemical fertilizer so when the oil runs out this too will end.
posted by subdee at 8:56 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I absolutely will be first in line for lab-grown meat. I'd love to see the real thing turn into the luxury item that it ought to be.

I wonder if we'll see 3D printed steaks in my lifetime.
posted by rouftop at 11:58 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wonder if we'll see 3D printed steaks in my lifetime.

I’d be interested to hear how the plan to grow tuna in a lab is going. It sounds like a great idea. The company mentioned still exists.
posted by rongorongo at 3:15 AM on January 2, 2023

After 2022 we do need some good news. Thanks, NotLost!
posted by Harald74 at 4:01 AM on January 2, 2023

the main way we're increasing crop yields is with petrochemical fertilizer so when the oil runs out this too will end

The mainstay of all these fertilizers is nitrogen fixed in the form of ammonia via the Haber process, whose feedstocks are nitrogen (readily available, 79% of air is nitrogen) and hydrogen. It's the hydrogen that's currently almost all derived from fossil fuels via steam reforming of methane because that's currently the cheapest way to make it.

But in a world where renewable electricity generation is overbuilt to the extent that will surely be required to make grid supply reliable, instantaneous electricity production will frequently exceed instantaneous electricity demand, requiring that the excess production is either sold insanely cheaply or run to waste. The more overbuild there is, the more often this will happen, and the cheaper it will become to pour intermittent "waste" electricity into relatively energy-inefficient end uses like electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The Haber process requires that the hydrogen it uses is pressurized to at least 200 atmospheres. Hydrogen can be stored at those kinds of pressures without needing outrageously large tanks. So an industrial plant optimized for hydrogen provided via very cheap, intermittent electricity would need more space for hydrogen storage than one optimized for hydrogen provided via steam reforming of piped-in methane. On the flip side, it wouldn't need to consume any fossil fuels, only air and water. And it would make substantial quantities of oxygen as well.
posted by flabdablet at 5:59 AM on January 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Refusing to eat lab grown meat strikes me as similar to being against GMOs for the sole reason of it being "frankenfood."

Lab grown meat would be safer to eat than the antibiotic-filled, disease carrying, suffering meat we eat now. And one big meat growing factory sounds way better for the environment too. I am all for it, can't wait to try. What a world!

And hooray for good news on malaria, and wild animals coming back, and all the rest. We could use more good news on MeFi, clearly.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:23 AM on January 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

Hydrogen electrolyzers are also getting much more efficient.
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 AM on January 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting this NotLost. (And also IAmDoctorWorm and Rash!).
The quote of the year for me was that "the media's job is to make you worried about problems you can't do anything about", so these articles are a welcome antidote to the worryscrolling we get every other day of the year.
posted by storybored at 8:50 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I will almost certainly not be eating lab-grown meat because I cannot stand the taste and smell of meat. But I hope lots of other people will be eating it as the current state of animal agriculture is unsustainable.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:20 AM on January 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

Having just come from Amarillo where the overwhelming smell in the air is cow shit from beef operations, I would happily switch to lab meat even if I didn't care about the suffering of non-human animals. Animal processing is a blight all round.
posted by emjaybee at 10:13 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Interesting to think about how reducing the demand for natural beef as a food product will have shocks on other parts of the system. Like leather as used in car interiors and furniture is pretty cheap and available because it is essentially a by product of meat production. The half a billion tonnes of gelatin used every year is almost entirely sourced from beef and pork hides and bones.
posted by Mitheral at 10:25 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

If we can grow meat, why not leather, gelatin, and so on?
posted by emjaybee at 10:41 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gelatin, I don't know. But we do have imitation leather so I'd doubt growing would be helpful? I'd love an artificial pleather tree though, could be quite gorgeous!
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:06 PM on January 2, 2023

Wool and furs are quite useful, though, and synthetics are not quite up to scratch yet.
posted by Harald74 at 1:37 PM on January 2, 2023

But we do have imitation leather so I'd doubt growing would be helpful? I'd love an artificial pleather tree though, could be quite gorgeous!

Pleather is made from plastics tho, and it doesn't breathe, which is bad for skin = fungal infections; eczema; psoriasis.

Also pleather decomposes into microplastics.

I've been vegetarian for 33 years, but I will always recommend people buy leather over pleather/imitation leather.

Pleather/imitation leather is bad for humans and bad for the environment.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:44 PM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

This isn't really news to be happy about so let's re-rail...!
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:31 PM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]