Good morning! Today: the economic "degrowth" movement is back, government are using the pandemic as cover to crack down on internet freedom, and we need to act now to hit our 2050 climate goals. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. | Capitalism is in crisis. To save it, we need to rethink economic growth.
Unavoidable: Even before the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting collapse of much of the world’s economy, a crisis in capitalism was plainly evident. Unfettered free markets had pushed inequality of income and wealth to extremely high levels in the United States. Slow productivity growth in many rich countries had stunted financial opportunities for a generation. And then came the pandemic, with millions losing their jobs. Big questions: It’s no wonder many in the US and Europe have begun questioning the underpinnings of capitalism—particularly its devotion to free markets and its faith in the power of economic growth to create prosperity and solve our problems. The antipathy to growth is not new; the term “degrowth” was coined in the early 1970s. But these days, worries over climate change, as well as rising inequality, are prompting its reemergence as a movement. Even some economists outside the degrowth camp, while not entirely rejecting the importance of growth, are questioning our blind devotion to it. One obvious factor shaking their faith is that growth has been lousy for decades. And though the US is the world’s largest economy as measured by GDP, it is doing poorly on indicators such as environmental performance and access to quality education and health care. Read the full story. —David Rotman
| | Governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to restrict internet freedom The news: Global internet freedom has declined for the 10th year in a row as governments use the coronavirus pandemic as cover to restrict people’s rights, according to a report by think tank Freedom House. Its researchers assessed 65 countries, accounting for 87% of internet users worldwide, from June 2019 to May 2020. The pandemic effect: In at least 20 countries, the pandemic was cited as a reason to introduce sweeping new restrictions on speech and arrest online critics. In 28, governments blocked websites or forced outlets, users, or platforms to censor information in order to suppress critical reporting, unfavorable health statistics or other content related to the coronavirus. In at least 45 of the countries studied, people were arrested as a result of their online posts about covid-19. Many countries are also conducting increasingly sweeping surveillance of their populations, with contact tracing or quarantine compliance apps particularly ripe for abuse in places like Bahrain, India, and Russia. In China, the authorities used high- and low-tech tools to not just manage the outbreak of the coronavirus, but also to stop people from sharing information and challenge the official narrative. Read the full story. | We need to act now if we’re going to hit our 2050 climate goals Climate scientists have found that any scenario that prevents the planet from shooting past 1.5 ˚C of warming requires effectively eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. What that would entail: In its annual report released on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has taken a detailed look at how we could get there. In just the next decade the world would need to slash global carbon emissions by 45% from 2010 levels, increase the share of renewables like wind, solar, and geothermal power in worldwide electricity generation from 27% to 60%, and nearly quintuple annual additions of solar power, among other measures. Anything else? The IEA’s net-zero scenario also entails major changes in personal behavior, including replacing all flights of an hour or less with low-emissions options (like hydrogen trains or buses), and sticking to walking or biking for any trips under 3 kilometers (1.9 miles). Read the full story. —James Temple | | The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Aiming for herd immunity is “unethical”, says the WHO director-general He sharply rebuked the approach as infections start to rapidly rise around the world. ( WP $) + US regulators paused Eli Lilly’s antibody treatment trial. ( Reuters) + UK prime minister Boris Johnson ignored scientists’ advice to lockdown again. ( NYT $) 2 Google really doesn’t like its employees talking about antitrust If you don’t mention competition law it might… magically disappear? ( NYT $) 3 Facebook has finally said it will ban anti-vaccination adverts It feels like the company has suddenly woken up in the last week. ( CNBC) + Facebook cannot fix itself. ( New Yorker $) 4 May 31 was the saddest day of 2020, according to our online posts 😥 It faced some seriously strong competition. ( NYT $) + Teens are doing surprisingly okay. ( The Atlantic) 5 How QAnon gained a foothold in the UK The majority of people this reporter spoke to said they first came across it on Facebook. ( BBC) + YouTube’s CEO won’t commit to banning QAnon. ( CNN) + Despite bans, there’s still a load of QAnon merch on Etsy and Amazon. ( Glossy) 6 Why the “homework gap” is key to America’s digital divide Children are being left behind—but it doesn’t have to be this way, says FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenwocel. ( TR) 7 Virginia’s voter registration site went down on the last day to register An accidentally-severed fiber-optic cable was blamed. ( NPR) + A lawsuit seeks to extend the deadline. ( WP $) 8 A NASA astronaut has taken off on a Russian rocket for the last time 🚀 Goodbye Soyuz, hello SpaceX. ( Axios) + Seven countries have signed up to NASA rules for exploring the moon. ( Ars Technica) + Jeff Bezos’s space company conducted yet more tests of its New Shepard rocket. ( The Verge) 9 Apple is changing how we charge iPhones And would you have guessed it, the result is that people have to buy more Apple products. ( Quartz) + Here’s all the other stuff Apple unveiled yesterday. ( The Verge) 10 We need the equivalent of public parks for the internet 🏞️ They let very different people gather, see each other, and co-exist in the same space. ( Wired $) + Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. ( TR) | | “We don’t have a misinformation problem. We have a trust problem.” —Anthropologist Heidi Larson tells the New York Times that hesitancy to take vaccines often arises from a reflexive, emotional mistrust of drug companies and governments. | | | | | |
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