| | | | | | | Presented By General Motors | | | | Axios What's Next | | By Bryan Walsh, Erica Pandey and Joann Muller ·Jul 01, 2021 | | Today it's international travel restrictions, VR without the glasses and why you should never try to recycle your bowling ball. "What was next" trivia: On this day in 1941, the first one of these aired on television. 📺 - Credit to reader Roman Hlutkowsky for being the first to note that a meteor hit Tunguska in Siberia in 1908.
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Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,297 words ... 5 minutes. | | | | | | 1 big thing: The ongoing era of border restrictions |  | | | Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios | | | | Even as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes in the U.S., international travel remains highly restricted — and looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future, writes Bryan Walsh. The big picture: The ease of international travel has always depended on wealth and the kind of passport you own, but the geopolitical fracturing accelerated by the pandemic seems likely to make borders less permeable for all of us. By the numbers: Globally, international arrivals plunged by 73% in 2020 from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, causing estimated losses of $2.4 trillion in tourism and related sectors, according to a report released yesterday by the United Nations. - "The outlook for this year doesn't look much better," Ralf Peters of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development told reporters at a news conference.
- International tourism today is basically "at the level of the 1980s," said Zoritsa Urosevic, Geneva representative of the U.N. World Tourism Organization.
Between the lines: Nowhere is the difficult new reality of international travel clearer than along the longest undefended land border in the world: the 49th parallel that separates the U.S. and Canada, a border that was crossed by some 15 million Americans annually before the pandemic. - In mid-June, citing the spread of more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2, Canada extended pandemic-long restrictions on nonessential travel to the country until at least July 21.
- At the once-bustling land crossing at Niagara Falls in New York, just 1.7 million Americans entered Canada by personal vehicle in 2020, compared to 10.5 million in 2019.
- Elsewhere in the world, countries like Australia, China and New Zealand remain almost entirely cut off to arrivals.
The other side: While the movement of people across borders has been heavily restricted, the movement of goods largely continued, with global trade falling just 5.6% in 2020. Context: Before COVID-19, most health experts and the World Health Organization were largely opposed to instituting border restrictions during a pandemic, viewing them as both discriminatory and potentially counter-productive because they could drive spread underground. - But it wasn't long after SARS-CoV-2 began spreading globally that countries began shutting or restricting borders in an effort to slow down the pandemic.
- Evidence shows that travel restrictions were somewhat effective in slowing the spread of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic, though that lessened as the pandemic dragged on.
The bottom line: The economic deglobalization that some — including me — predicted early in the pandemic never materialized as goods kept moving, but we're still a long way from the free movement of people. Read the entire story. |     | | | | | | 2. The future of ID is in your eyes |  | | | Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios | | | | Your form of identification to get onto flights and into live events could be your own body, writes Erica Pandey. Driving the news: That's what CLEAR, the biometric security company that went public yesterday, is betting. Why it matters: Technology has advanced to the point in which we can pay for lunch by walking out of the store or send money to anyone, anywhere in seconds. But some things are stuck in the past — for example, it's a huge pain to leave IDs or health insurance cards at home — and that's what CLEAR is trying to change. - "This is about using your eyes as your driver's license or your boarding pass," Caryn Seidman-Becker, CEO of CLEAR, tells Axios from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "We shouldn't be giving people plastic cards with numbers to go get health care."
The big picture: CLEAR charges a $179 per year subscription to securely store biometric data that confirms your identity. Before the pandemic, it was mainly a tool for frequent flyers to skip airport lines, but CLEAR found a new lane during the pandemic. - The company added a feature called Health Pass that worked with health data aggregators to access and store COVID test results or vaccination status so users could display that information to get into venues or to travel.
- The pandemic became a turning point. CLEAR's revenue jumped 20% to $231 million in 2020, CNBC reports, even as air travel cratered.
But, but, but: A digital identity company like CLEAR raises privacy concerns too. "We're in this new era of biodata collection," says Amy Webb of the Future Today Institute, an era that has been accelerated and normalized by the pandemic. - CLEAR has a strict privacy policy, Seidman-Becker says: "We will not sell or rent your data."
| | | | | | | | 3. Illuminarium promises "VR without the glasses" |  | | | Illuminarium's WILD Safari show. Credit: Illuminarium Experiences | | | | A new, high-tech consumer entertainment experience opening today in Atlanta promises to transport users to exotic destinations with the aid of immersive video, touch feedback and more, writes Bryan. Why it matters: Illuminarium — which is set to expand to other cities in coming months and years — is a bet that consumers are ready to come back for in-person entertainment, and that the latest in visual technology can come close to replicating some of the experience of traveling to some of the world's most remote locations. What's happening: Visitors who come to Atlanta's Illuminarium will enter a 7,500-square-foot space ringed by screens as high as 22 feet, where they'll be enveloped in video and sound recorded on location for the center's first show, WILD Safari. - Throughout the 50-minute show, says Illuminarium Experiences founder Alan Greenberg, "you are going to see it as if you are there, hear it as if you are there, feel in your bones through the haptic system in the floor, even smell it in the air."
- A lidar system can track the movement of audience members throughout the show, "allowing us to track people throughout their journey but also permitting them to affect the content as the content plays out," says Brian Allen, executive vice president of technology and content at Illuminarium.
This is VR without the glasses. — Alan Greenberg, Illuminarium Experiences Read the rest. | | | | | | | | A message from General Motors | | An EV for everyone | | |  | | | | General Motors is adding 30 new electric vehicles and producing the revolutionary Ultium Platform. The background: This is made possible by a $35 billion investment in EVs and AVs through 2025 to make the all-electric future accessible for everyone. | | | | | | 4. The baking Northwest portends the world's cooling needs |  | | | Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios | | | | Record-breaking Pacific Northwest heat offers a window into the global need for more air conditioning as climate change makes heat waves more extreme, Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman write. Driving the news: The recent extremes — which saw Portland, Oregon, hit a staggering 116 degrees and the obliteration of many other all-time records — caused a run on air-conditioning units in Seattle, Portland, British Columbia, Canada, and other areas. The big picture: The regional sales are small compared to the surge of global cooling equipment needed in the years ahead, in industrialized countries but especially the developing world. - That's driven by higher standards of living that enable more people to buy amenities widely available in richer nations.
- But it's also a matter of life or death as some regions see heat and humidity extremes that will teeter on the edge of what humans can survive.
Yes, but: Inefficient air conditioners use a lot of energy. Especially in places where electricity doesn't come from clean sources, it'll be a challenge to deal with the heat caused by global warming without adding even more greenhouse gas emissions. Read the rest. | | | | | | | | 5. 1 trash thing: Gutter balls |  | | | The unrecyclables. Photo: Michael Edwards | | | | Bowling balls are utterly unrecyclable — which doesn't prevent 1,200 of them a year from ending up in the country's largest recycling plant, according to a fascinating story in New York magazine, writes Bryan. Why it matters: The piece demonstrates the "harsh realities of recycling," which is rarely as easy to do as many consumers believe and which has been undercut by changing economic policy. How it works: Because bowling balls are made of thermoset plastic, they are virtually impossible to melt down and reshape like recyclable plastics. The balls also contain too many different materials to be economically recyclable. Between the lines: Even recycling easier materials like water bottles or cans is getting harder, especially after China — long a major buyer of U.S. recovered materials — in 2019 banned the import of 24 types of waste, including plastics. The bottom line: The only gutter a bowling ball belongs in is in a bowling lane. | | | | | | | | A message from General Motors | | An EV for everyone | | | | | | | | General Motors is adding 30 new electric vehicles and producing the revolutionary Ultium Platform. The background: This is made possible by a $35 billion investment in EVs and AVs through 2025 to make the all-electric future accessible for everyone. | | |  | | It'll help you deliver employee communications more effectively. | | | | | | Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here.
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