Hey readers,
Tuesday’s midterm elections — plus a major earthquake in the world of effective altruism funding — should be a reminder that the future can always throw you curveballs. A little on that, plus problems in drug trials, the struggle over climate reparations, the messy politics of meat, and more.—Kelsey Piper
FTX will probably be sold at a steep discount. What we know and some forecasts on what will happen next (EA Forum)
This week saw some massively surprising news in the US that will probably have durable effects on our country’s politics. Unrelatedly, we held midterm elections. The more surprising news to me than any of the Senate or House results was the still-ongoing turmoil at FTX, the crypto exchange founded and run by effective altruism and Democratic Party mega-donor Sam Bankman-Fried. (Disclosure: Future Perfect received a grant from Bankman-Fried's Building a Stronger Future foundation in 2022.)
The above post, as well as this piece by Bloomberg’s Matt Levine, do a good job of explaining what we know about what, technically, happened to the exchange, which was targeted by its crypto competitor Binance. On Friday morning the FTX Group companies announced they would undergo voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. But the takeaway right now is that Bankman-Fried’s net worth, valued by Bloomberg at $15.6 billion before Tuesday, dropped down to roughly $1 billion earlier this week and now is likely even lower, per them (note that these are rough estimates, and only SBF knows what he’s really worth). If that number holds and the situation is not much worse than it seems, he’s still very rich.
Beyond the investors and account holders who may be hurt by its collapse, this is an absolutely epochal development for the multitude of effective altruism-related charities he had been financing in areas like pandemic preparedness, as well as the mostly Democratic campaigns he’s backed. Those behind FTX's Future Fund — which supported causes ranging from pandemic preparedness to AI safety — all resigned late Thursday night, citing fears that FTX "may have engaged in deception or dishonesty." There was a plausible version of 2024 where SBF was Joe Biden’s biggest source of outside financial support. Unless something drastic changes, that future has evaporated. —
Dylan Matthews
This is biology’s century. We’re not ready for it. (Stat News)
From Crispr to CAR-T therapy to the magic of mRNA vaccines, the innovations in biology keep coming. But as this excellent piece by Stat’s Matthew Herper shows, with a few exceptions, that hasn’t translated to life-changing treatments that can help large numbers of people. The bottleneck isn’t in the science itself, but in the large-scale clinical trials needed to determine effectiveness and safety of drugs that treat mass populations. They’ve become more and more expensive, which has led pharma companies to instead focus on drugs for smaller populations that require smaller trials, but which can be priced through the roof. Herper’s story is a reminder that innovation isn’t just about scientific brilliance, but also institutional framing.
—Bryan Walsh
Here’s where the US is testing a new response to rising seas (New York Times)
Climate change disproportionately impacts people of color and Indigenous peoples. We’re seeing that fact unfold in real time in the coastal areas where some tribes live. This piece from the Times explores the Department of the Interior’s new program that will decide which communities will be able to do managed retreat, which involves the government purchasing homes that are likely to disappear in the coming years because of climate change, so people can move somewhere safer.
There’s a problem for affected Indigenous people: not all tribes are federally recognized. When it comes down to the brutal act of decision-making at the federal level, whether or not a nation is federally recognized will likely play a key role. The questions those decisions raise will have ramifications for the interpretation of Indigenous rights for years to come. —Izzie Ramirez
Biden’s message on climate might not be the one the world wants (New York Times)
Climate reparations are the hot topic at the ongoing COP27 climate summit in Egypt. Poor countries want high-emitting rich countries to pay for “loss and damage” — climate impacts that can’t be avoided through mitigation and adaptation. That could include anything from the loss of a coastal town to the loss of a particular species. Loss and damage is a key climate justice demand, which makes intuitive moral sense: It seems only fair that rich countries should have to pay for the havoc their emissions are wreaking on others. Yet it’s a tough idea to nail down legally, and in countries like the US, it may be a non-starter. To me, the most interesting quote in this piece came from former President Bill Clinton’s onetime climate adviser Paul Bledsoe, who argued that the US is congenitally incapable of reparations. “Having not made them to Native Americans or African Americans, there is little to no chance they will be seriously considered regarding climate impacts to foreign nations.” —Sigal Samuel
He’s an Outspoken Defender of Meat. Industry Funds His Research, Files Show. (New York Times)
A pair of bombshell stories by the New York Times and Unearthed detail how a prominent research center worked with the meat industry to sow doubt about animal agriculture’s climate impact. The center’s head, UC Davis professor Frank Mitloehner, proudly bucks the scientific consensus that rich countries need to greatly reduce meat consumption, describing it as part of a “radical anti-meat agenda.” The new investigation found not just that Mitloehner’s Clear Center gets virtually all its funding from the industry, but also that its advisory board, according to a 2018 memo, would give “input and advice regarding communications priorities of the industry.”
The investigation has generated a flood of debate over research ethics. Mitloehner has maintained that his funders have no control over his findings, and that working with the meat industry is essential to making it more sustainable. But his funding sources, as Sentient Media’s Jenny Splitter (who reported on him last year) put it, were never really the issue. It’s that the Clear Center is “mostly — or maybe entirely — a communications project.” Mitloehner’s justifications might be more credible if his work didn’t, for example, muddy the waters on methane’s severe warming impact. In his own words, his agenda is “not to shrink the livestock sector,” a goal that’s incompatible with climate reality at a time when the window to act is shrinking. —Marina Bolotnikova
Leaving some farmland fallow benefits the air we breathe (Civil Eats)
A recent study found that simply leaving low-quality farmland fallow is a cost-effective way to save lives. Farms generate a lot of fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5, when ammonia in fertilizer breaks down and when farm machinery kicks up dust. (As Future Perfect’s Dylan Matthews has reported, chronic exposure to PM2.5 can cause a number of severe health issues, including different cancers, respiratory diseases, and cognitive decline.)
Using data from the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to stop farming and leave their land fallow, researchers found that areas with more acreage left fallow under the CRP had lower levels of PM2.5 and fewer premature deaths. For example, in 2008, CRP paid farmers to leave 35 million acres fallow, and the authors estimate that resulted in 1,300 fewer deaths than if all that land had been farmed. Wildlife habitats, soil, and water quality also improved.
It’s a fascinating study. It also lays bare one of the many tensions in agriculture: How can we feed more people, on less land, with minimal harm to public health and wildlife? —Kenny Torrella
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