Preparing for 2019
27th December 2018 – Brian’s Musings – Preparing for 2019
Now, the economist, Branco Milanovich, once commented that he had read all the main economic forecasts of the late twentieth century and found them all wrong. Looking at some of the numbers in this newsletter, I have a suspicion that they are significantly different from forecasts made five years ago or even just twelve months ago. Are solar and wind power being installed faster and at lower cost than predicted? Are fertility rates dropping faster than expected? Are there more electric cars on the roads? Maybe you have an old forecast filed away that you can dig out to check?
People Change:
A global study of mortality in 195 countries from 1990 to 2017, reported in the Lancet, shows that half of deaths can be attributed to just four factors: high blood pressure, smoking, high blood glucose and high BMI.
The Sackler family and their Purdue Pharma are being widely sued and face possible criminal action for their role in supplying opioid painkillers to the American public. (Opioids are America’s largest cause of deaths of young adults).
Japan has the highest proportion of people aged 65 and over in the world, followed by Italy, Portugal and Germany.
The average total fertility rate worldwide has dropped to 2.4 children per woman. In nearly fifty per cent of countries the rate is below 2.0. Western Europe, is the region with the lowest rate of 1.6 children per women, while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of 4.6, with Niger above 7.0. Researchers have calculated that having one fewer child reduces a parent’s carbon footprint by 58 tonnes of CO2 per year.
The Japanese government predicts that only 921,000 babies will have been born by the end of 2018, 25,000 fewer than 2017 and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1899. The current birth rate stands at 1.43, well below the 2.07 required to keep the population stable. The number of deaths is forecast to be the highest since the Second World War leading to a population decline of nearly half a million. Twenty per cent of the population is aged seventy or more, including nearly seventy thousand, nearly all of them women, aged more than one hundred.
The total fertility rate for the United States, which has remained below replacement level of 2.1 since 2008, dropped to 1.76 in early 2018. The US birth rate is now below the most recently reported rates for France and Russia.
Increasing Inequality
By the third quarter of 2018, American household debt totalled US$ 13.5 trillion, with nearly 80% of American adults living from pay cheque to pay cheque.
The United Nations’ rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has highlighted research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showing fourteen million British residents live in poverty, including 1.5 million who are destitute. Child poverty could rise by as much as 7% to nearly 40% of children by 2022.
Incidentally, research in Japan has found that one of the reasons young couples are not having children is because of economic uncertainty now that there are no jobs for life, guaranteed pensions and affordable housing. I wonder whether young couples in other countries are facing the same dilemma?
Migration
In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, researchers have calculated that up to 87 million, or one in eighty, people migrate in every five year period. More than a quarter of those changing countries are moving back to their native country.
Pollution
Research commissioned by the European Public Health Alliance calculated that vehicular air pollution causes more than € 70 billion in health damage in the EU each year, seventy five per cent the result of diesel fumes with 65 per cent of the cost being attributable to NOx and 32 per cent to PM2.5. Taxpayer funded health services bore most of the costs. The report concluded that ambitious action by 2030, including two-thirds of new cars being electric or plug-in hybrid and a ban on all pre-2014 vehicles, would cut health costs by 80%.
New Delhi, already one of the most polluted cities on the globe, recorded record degraded air quality this week.
Low Cost Renewable Energy
Globally, 157 GW of renewable energy was installed in 2017, more than twice as much as the 70 GW of fossil fuel capacity that was installed. The number of people employed in renewable energy in 2017 was 10.3 million, up 5.7% on 2016. From 2000 to 2016, the number of people without electricity fell from 1.7 billion to 1.1 billion.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance developing countries installed 114 GW of wind and solar in 2017 compared to the 63 GW installed in developed countries. Developing countries also installed 72 GW of coal and gas capacity. Unsubsidised solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest source of new bulk power in all major economies except Japan as a result of falling technology costs. In India, best-in-class solar and wind plants are now half the cost of new coal plants. Onshore wind is now as cheap as $27/MWh in India and Texas, without subsidy. The global energy storage market will reach 942 GW by 2040 as a result of an investment of some US$ 620 billion. Prices are forecast to fall 52% by 2030.
The California Air Resources Board has ruled that by 2020 all new homes in the state must be at least partially solar powered. South Africa’s 100 MW Kathu Solar Park, which includes a molten salt storage system, has started production.
China has signed an agreement with Argentina to build a US$ 8 billion nuclear power plant there.
An alliance of 23 countries including the UK, Italy, Canada, and France was launched at the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December, 2017, committing to phase out coal use by 2030 or earlier. Hungary also plans to phase out coal by 2030 in favour of renewables. The French government has announced plans to close all coal plants by 2022 and fourteen nuclear plants by 2035; solar capacity is to be increased from 8.5 GW to 45 GW, while wind capacity will be trebled.
The Energy Information Administration predicts that America’s 2018 coal consumption will be 44% below the 2007 peak and at the lowest level since 1979. One of the biggest American utilities, PacifiCorp, has concluded that most of its 22 coal-fired generation units are no longer economically competitive. Indiana announced plans to phase out coal fired generation over the next ten years.
Global employment in fossil-fuel extractive industries increased by 8% between 2016, and 2017, reversing the strong decline seen since 2011.
BBOXX is starting to roll out an Internet service integrated into its PAYG electrical power offering in some African countries.
Mass Data Mining and Storage
Over 200 car manufacturers are sending real-time location information and dozens of other data points from electric vehicles in China to surveillance centres backed by the country's government.
Hackers accessed the data, including passport and credit card details, of 500 million Marriott Hotel group customers. China has been accused of this, as well as downloading the personal details of thousands American navy personnel. What seems to be forgotten in all this self-righteous Sino-finger-pointing is that just a couple of years ago journalists uncovered that the CIA had recorded every cell phone communication in Bermuda – and where else?
Google is integrating medical AI subsidiary Deepmind, which worked with the United Kingdom’s health service to build an extensive database of patient information, into its main operations contrary to promises previously made to keep Deepmind health data separate from its commercial databases.
Automation Based Unemployment
With American unemployment at record lows, it’s hard to believe that that swathes of jobs are going to be lost to technology – and soon. What we are already seeing is the significant move to gig economies where jobs are temporary and life is precarious.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, the global average in 2017 was 85 manufacturing robots per 10,000 workers, a 15% increase from the previous year. South Korea leads with 710 robots per 10,000 workers, followed by Singapore with 658 and Germany with 322.
Google’s DeepMind subsidiary has developed an AI program, AlphaFold which can predict the 3D shapes of proteins
An app has been launched which can determine if one suffers from anaemia just by looking at an image of a fingernail.
Autonomous Electric Vehicles
By end 2017 more than 2 million electric vehicles were on the road, with global per-capita electricity consumption for road transport increasing by 13% from 2013 to 2015. China is responsible for more than 40% of electric cars sold globally.
California has more than half a million electric cars, half the American total, with November 2018 sales 164% higher than November 2017. New California Air Resources Board regulations required that, by 2029, all new public buses must be zero-emission vehicles.
GM announced plans to close five North American automobile manufacturing plants in order to fund its new focus on producing electric vehicles.
The EU has funded the development of a hydrogen fuel cell powered bus, while both China and Japan are developing public transport vehicles using hydrogen fuel cells. China plans to have one million of these on the roads by 2030. In London and Aberdeen in the United Kingdom, buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells are being trialled while the California Energy Commission has approved an US$ 8 million grant for a new high capacity hydrogen fuelling station at the Port of Long Beach to service zero emission fuel cell trucks. The platinum mining industry is optimistic that the use of platinum in these vehicles will partially offset the reduced use of platinum in catalytic converters. In contrast to electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells require the inconvenience of hydrogen deliveries to service stations as with gasoline and diesel.
Madrid is the latest city to ban petrol vehicles registered before 2000 and diesel ones registered before 2006 from the city centre as part of cutting nitrogen dioxide levels by 23% in 2020.
Waymo launched its first autonomous taxi service in Arizona. Volvo is going to use autonomous trucks to transport stone five kilometres from a mine in Norway. Postmates in partnership with Walmart and Ford, Starship Technologies, Alibaba and Kroger are all trialling automated delivery vehicles. Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is planning to launch a drone delivery service in Helsinki, though I have doubts this service is going to fly after the hullabaloo of drones overflying Gatwick airport last week. The world’s first fully autonomous passenger ferry was launched in Finland.
Climate Change
Because there is so much new data on climate, I have left climate change till last.
The Polish COP24 talks in December 2018 nearly broke down over the refusal by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait to endorse the IPCC’s October 2018 report, which concluded that the world would need to dramatically cut emissions to prevent temperatures from rising 1.5 ˚C, potentially as early as 2030. After two weeks of animated discussions, representatives of nearly 200 nations agreed to a common set of rules for tracking climate emissions and policies.
In its Provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018 report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts that 2018 will be the fourth hottest year on record, exceeded only by 2017, 2016 and 2015. The WMO also reported that the main greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change have all reached record levels: levels of CO2 rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017; levels of methane are now 3.5 times higher than pre-industrial times; and nitrous oxide is now at more than double pre-industrial levels. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are on track to rise nearly 3% in 2018, up from 1.6% in 2017 and after five years of declines. Emissions from China, the United States, and India rose by 4.7%, 2.5%, and 6.3%, respectively.
The UN Environment: Emissions Gap Report 2018 lists Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the USA as the G20 countries not fulfilling their obligations to reduce emissions.
According to the WMO, the oceans absorb more than 90% of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases and 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, making them warmer and more acidic. For each 3-month period until September 2018, ocean heat content was the highest or second highest on record. Global Mean Sea Level from January to July 2018 was around 2 to 3 mm higher than the same period in 2017. Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average throughout 2018 with record-low levels in the first two months of the year while Antarctic sea-ice extent was also well below average throughout 2018.
The number of tropical cyclones was above average in all four Northern Hemisphere basins, with 70 reported by 20 November 2018, compared to the long-term average of 53. Two of the strongest tropical cyclones ever were Mangkhut, which impacted the Philippines, Hong Kong SAR and China, and Yutu, which brought devastation in the Mariana Islands. Gita, in the South Pacific, was the most intense and most expensive cyclone to ever hit Tonga.
Researchers have found that, relative to pre-industrial conditions, climate change so far has enhanced the average and extreme rainfall of hurricanes Katrina, Irma and Maria, but did not change tropical cyclone wind-speed intensity.
British Columbia in Canada broke its record for the most area burned in a fire season for the second successive year. Californian forest fires in late 2018 are estimated to have cost insurers up to US$ 13 billion.
A paper in Nature recorded that the Antarctic ice sheet has lost more than 2,500 billion tonnes of ice in the past 25 years and nearly half of that has happened since 2012. An international team of polar scientists found that melting in Antarctica has jumped sharply from an average of 76 billion tonnes per year prior to 2012, to around 219 billion tonnes each year between 2012 and 2017.
Another paper in Nature describes how researchers used a 350 year continuous analysis of glacier melting in Greenland to determine that since 1998 the rate of melting has been as much as five times as high as pre-industrial rates, and that the rate of melting is increasing.
The American Government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment collated data from across the nation to predict the likely impact of climate change likely to cost the economy billions of dollars a year by 2100.
The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown recorded that vulnerability to extremes of heat has steadily risen since 1990 in every region of the world, with 157 million more people exposed to heatwave events in 2017 compared with 2000. Some 153 billion hours of labour were lost in 2017 because of heat and 712 extreme weather events resulted in US$326 billion in economic losses, almost triple the total losses of 2016. About 99% of the losses in low-income countries was uninsured. In 2016, global vectorial capacity for the transmission of the dengue fever virus was the highest on record and the highlands of sub-Saharan Africa saw a 27·6% rise in the vectorial capacity for the transmission of malaria compared to the 1950 baseline. People in more than 90% of cities breathe polluted air that is toxic to their cardiovascular and respiratory health.
Finally, one person who will definitely not be reading this newsletter is Japan’s cybersecurity minister who, amazingly enough, has never used a computer in his life. Clearly, he has never been hacked or spoofed and thinks phishing attacks have something to do with the tuna in sushi!
Now, the economist, Branco Milanovich, once commented that he had read all the main economic forecasts of the late twentieth century and found them all wrong. Looking at some of the numbers in this newsletter, I have a suspicion that they are significantly different from forecasts made five years ago or even just twelve months ago. Are solar and wind power being installed faster and at lower cost than predicted? Are fertility rates dropping faster than expected? Are there more electric cars on the roads? Maybe you have an old forecast filed away that you can dig out to check?
People Change:
A global study of mortality in 195 countries from 1990 to 2017, reported in the Lancet, shows that half of deaths can be attributed to just four factors: high blood pressure, smoking, high blood glucose and high BMI.
The Sackler family and their Purdue Pharma are being widely sued and face possible criminal action for their role in supplying opioid painkillers to the American public. (Opioids are America’s largest cause of deaths of young adults).
Japan has the highest proportion of people aged 65 and over in the world, followed by Italy, Portugal and Germany.
The average total fertility rate worldwide has dropped to 2.4 children per woman. In nearly fifty per cent of countries the rate is below 2.0. Western Europe, is the region with the lowest rate of 1.6 children per women, while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of 4.6, with Niger above 7.0. Researchers have calculated that having one fewer child reduces a parent’s carbon footprint by 58 tonnes of CO2 per year.
The Japanese government predicts that only 921,000 babies will have been born by the end of 2018, 25,000 fewer than 2017 and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1899. The current birth rate stands at 1.43, well below the 2.07 required to keep the population stable. The number of deaths is forecast to be the highest since the Second World War leading to a population decline of nearly half a million. Twenty per cent of the population is aged seventy or more, including nearly seventy thousand, nearly all of them women, aged more than one hundred.
The total fertility rate for the United States, which has remained below replacement level of 2.1 since 2008, dropped to 1.76 in early 2018. The US birth rate is now below the most recently reported rates for France and Russia.
Increasing Inequality
By the third quarter of 2018, American household debt totalled US$ 13.5 trillion, with nearly 80% of American adults living from pay cheque to pay cheque.
The United Nations’ rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has highlighted research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showing fourteen million British residents live in poverty, including 1.5 million who are destitute. Child poverty could rise by as much as 7% to nearly 40% of children by 2022.
Incidentally, research in Japan has found that one of the reasons young couples are not having children is because of economic uncertainty now that there are no jobs for life, guaranteed pensions and affordable housing. I wonder whether young couples in other countries are facing the same dilemma?
Migration
In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, researchers have calculated that up to 87 million, or one in eighty, people migrate in every five year period. More than a quarter of those changing countries are moving back to their native country.
Pollution
Research commissioned by the European Public Health Alliance calculated that vehicular air pollution causes more than € 70 billion in health damage in the EU each year, seventy five per cent the result of diesel fumes with 65 per cent of the cost being attributable to NOx and 32 per cent to PM2.5. Taxpayer funded health services bore most of the costs. The report concluded that ambitious action by 2030, including two-thirds of new cars being electric or plug-in hybrid and a ban on all pre-2014 vehicles, would cut health costs by 80%.
New Delhi, already one of the most polluted cities on the globe, recorded record degraded air quality this week.
Low Cost Renewable Energy
Globally, 157 GW of renewable energy was installed in 2017, more than twice as much as the 70 GW of fossil fuel capacity that was installed. The number of people employed in renewable energy in 2017 was 10.3 million, up 5.7% on 2016. From 2000 to 2016, the number of people without electricity fell from 1.7 billion to 1.1 billion.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance developing countries installed 114 GW of wind and solar in 2017 compared to the 63 GW installed in developed countries. Developing countries also installed 72 GW of coal and gas capacity. Unsubsidised solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest source of new bulk power in all major economies except Japan as a result of falling technology costs. In India, best-in-class solar and wind plants are now half the cost of new coal plants. Onshore wind is now as cheap as $27/MWh in India and Texas, without subsidy. The global energy storage market will reach 942 GW by 2040 as a result of an investment of some US$ 620 billion. Prices are forecast to fall 52% by 2030.
The California Air Resources Board has ruled that by 2020 all new homes in the state must be at least partially solar powered. South Africa’s 100 MW Kathu Solar Park, which includes a molten salt storage system, has started production.
China has signed an agreement with Argentina to build a US$ 8 billion nuclear power plant there.
An alliance of 23 countries including the UK, Italy, Canada, and France was launched at the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December, 2017, committing to phase out coal use by 2030 or earlier. Hungary also plans to phase out coal by 2030 in favour of renewables. The French government has announced plans to close all coal plants by 2022 and fourteen nuclear plants by 2035; solar capacity is to be increased from 8.5 GW to 45 GW, while wind capacity will be trebled.
The Energy Information Administration predicts that America’s 2018 coal consumption will be 44% below the 2007 peak and at the lowest level since 1979. One of the biggest American utilities, PacifiCorp, has concluded that most of its 22 coal-fired generation units are no longer economically competitive. Indiana announced plans to phase out coal fired generation over the next ten years.
Global employment in fossil-fuel extractive industries increased by 8% between 2016, and 2017, reversing the strong decline seen since 2011.
BBOXX is starting to roll out an Internet service integrated into its PAYG electrical power offering in some African countries.
Mass Data Mining and Storage
Over 200 car manufacturers are sending real-time location information and dozens of other data points from electric vehicles in China to surveillance centres backed by the country's government.
Hackers accessed the data, including passport and credit card details, of 500 million Marriott Hotel group customers. China has been accused of this, as well as downloading the personal details of thousands American navy personnel. What seems to be forgotten in all this self-righteous Sino-finger-pointing is that just a couple of years ago journalists uncovered that the CIA had recorded every cell phone communication in Bermuda – and where else?
Google is integrating medical AI subsidiary Deepmind, which worked with the United Kingdom’s health service to build an extensive database of patient information, into its main operations contrary to promises previously made to keep Deepmind health data separate from its commercial databases.
Automation Based Unemployment
With American unemployment at record lows, it’s hard to believe that that swathes of jobs are going to be lost to technology – and soon. What we are already seeing is the significant move to gig economies where jobs are temporary and life is precarious.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, the global average in 2017 was 85 manufacturing robots per 10,000 workers, a 15% increase from the previous year. South Korea leads with 710 robots per 10,000 workers, followed by Singapore with 658 and Germany with 322.
Google’s DeepMind subsidiary has developed an AI program, AlphaFold which can predict the 3D shapes of proteins
An app has been launched which can determine if one suffers from anaemia just by looking at an image of a fingernail.
Autonomous Electric Vehicles
By end 2017 more than 2 million electric vehicles were on the road, with global per-capita electricity consumption for road transport increasing by 13% from 2013 to 2015. China is responsible for more than 40% of electric cars sold globally.
California has more than half a million electric cars, half the American total, with November 2018 sales 164% higher than November 2017. New California Air Resources Board regulations required that, by 2029, all new public buses must be zero-emission vehicles.
GM announced plans to close five North American automobile manufacturing plants in order to fund its new focus on producing electric vehicles.
The EU has funded the development of a hydrogen fuel cell powered bus, while both China and Japan are developing public transport vehicles using hydrogen fuel cells. China plans to have one million of these on the roads by 2030. In London and Aberdeen in the United Kingdom, buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells are being trialled while the California Energy Commission has approved an US$ 8 million grant for a new high capacity hydrogen fuelling station at the Port of Long Beach to service zero emission fuel cell trucks. The platinum mining industry is optimistic that the use of platinum in these vehicles will partially offset the reduced use of platinum in catalytic converters. In contrast to electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells require the inconvenience of hydrogen deliveries to service stations as with gasoline and diesel.
Madrid is the latest city to ban petrol vehicles registered before 2000 and diesel ones registered before 2006 from the city centre as part of cutting nitrogen dioxide levels by 23% in 2020.
Waymo launched its first autonomous taxi service in Arizona. Volvo is going to use autonomous trucks to transport stone five kilometres from a mine in Norway. Postmates in partnership with Walmart and Ford, Starship Technologies, Alibaba and Kroger are all trialling automated delivery vehicles. Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is planning to launch a drone delivery service in Helsinki, though I have doubts this service is going to fly after the hullabaloo of drones overflying Gatwick airport last week. The world’s first fully autonomous passenger ferry was launched in Finland.
Climate Change
Because there is so much new data on climate, I have left climate change till last.
The Polish COP24 talks in December 2018 nearly broke down over the refusal by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait to endorse the IPCC’s October 2018 report, which concluded that the world would need to dramatically cut emissions to prevent temperatures from rising 1.5 ˚C, potentially as early as 2030. After two weeks of animated discussions, representatives of nearly 200 nations agreed to a common set of rules for tracking climate emissions and policies.
In its Provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018 report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts that 2018 will be the fourth hottest year on record, exceeded only by 2017, 2016 and 2015. The WMO also reported that the main greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change have all reached record levels: levels of CO2 rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017; levels of methane are now 3.5 times higher than pre-industrial times; and nitrous oxide is now at more than double pre-industrial levels. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are on track to rise nearly 3% in 2018, up from 1.6% in 2017 and after five years of declines. Emissions from China, the United States, and India rose by 4.7%, 2.5%, and 6.3%, respectively.
The UN Environment: Emissions Gap Report 2018 lists Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the USA as the G20 countries not fulfilling their obligations to reduce emissions.
According to the WMO, the oceans absorb more than 90% of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases and 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, making them warmer and more acidic. For each 3-month period until September 2018, ocean heat content was the highest or second highest on record. Global Mean Sea Level from January to July 2018 was around 2 to 3 mm higher than the same period in 2017. Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average throughout 2018 with record-low levels in the first two months of the year while Antarctic sea-ice extent was also well below average throughout 2018.
The number of tropical cyclones was above average in all four Northern Hemisphere basins, with 70 reported by 20 November 2018, compared to the long-term average of 53. Two of the strongest tropical cyclones ever were Mangkhut, which impacted the Philippines, Hong Kong SAR and China, and Yutu, which brought devastation in the Mariana Islands. Gita, in the South Pacific, was the most intense and most expensive cyclone to ever hit Tonga.
Researchers have found that, relative to pre-industrial conditions, climate change so far has enhanced the average and extreme rainfall of hurricanes Katrina, Irma and Maria, but did not change tropical cyclone wind-speed intensity.
British Columbia in Canada broke its record for the most area burned in a fire season for the second successive year. Californian forest fires in late 2018 are estimated to have cost insurers up to US$ 13 billion.
A paper in Nature recorded that the Antarctic ice sheet has lost more than 2,500 billion tonnes of ice in the past 25 years and nearly half of that has happened since 2012. An international team of polar scientists found that melting in Antarctica has jumped sharply from an average of 76 billion tonnes per year prior to 2012, to around 219 billion tonnes each year between 2012 and 2017.
Another paper in Nature describes how researchers used a 350 year continuous analysis of glacier melting in Greenland to determine that since 1998 the rate of melting has been as much as five times as high as pre-industrial rates, and that the rate of melting is increasing.
The American Government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment collated data from across the nation to predict the likely impact of climate change likely to cost the economy billions of dollars a year by 2100.
The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown recorded that vulnerability to extremes of heat has steadily risen since 1990 in every region of the world, with 157 million more people exposed to heatwave events in 2017 compared with 2000. Some 153 billion hours of labour were lost in 2017 because of heat and 712 extreme weather events resulted in US$326 billion in economic losses, almost triple the total losses of 2016. About 99% of the losses in low-income countries was uninsured. In 2016, global vectorial capacity for the transmission of the dengue fever virus was the highest on record and the highlands of sub-Saharan Africa saw a 27·6% rise in the vectorial capacity for the transmission of malaria compared to the 1950 baseline. People in more than 90% of cities breathe polluted air that is toxic to their cardiovascular and respiratory health.
Finally, one person who will definitely not be reading this newsletter is Japan’s cybersecurity minister who, amazingly enough, has never used a computer in his life. Clearly, he has never been hacked or spoofed and thinks phishing attacks have something to do with the tuna in sushi!
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