Quote of the Day: “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.” – Luther Burbank
Photo: by krystina rogers – public domain, cropped
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
This college student has been going above and beyond the call of duty to protect people who are deaf or hard of hearing from risking exposure to COVID-19.
Since the world has been struggling to cope with N95 face mask shortages, 21-year-old Ashley Lawrence has been troubled by how the face masks might prevent people with hearing disabilities from communicating.
Because American Sign Language (ASL) speakers rely heavily on lip-reading for grammar, face masks could obscure up to half of a person’s message.
Lawrence, who studies education for the deaf and hard of hearing at Eastern Kentucky University, has been conducting her schooling at home due to the novel coronavirus outbreaks—so she resolved to use her free time in quarantine to make face masks for sign language speakers.
LOOK: Mystery Mom Has Been Leaving Out Free Bagged Lunches ‘Made With Love’ for Anyone Who May Need Them
With the help of her mother, Lawrence began sewing face masks with plastic windows over the wearer’s mouth so that ASL speakers could still use lip-reading for communication.
Over the course of the last few weeks, Lawrence has been shipping the masks to dozens of hospitals and deaf individuals for free. She launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for shipping, handling, and materials, but she deactivated the crowdfunding page after she reached her goal of $3,300 in just two days.
Although Lawrence had originally recruited a team of volunteers to make the masks for deaf people in her home community of Woodford County, Kentucky, the determined college student is now working to launch an official Facebook page and website for her newly-dubbed DHH Mask Project as a means of meeting demand for the masks.
Furthermore, Lawrence plans on posting a YouTube DIY instructional video for making the masks by the end of this week. Until then, people can request a set of free masks from Lawrence by emailing her at [email protected].
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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Since people around the world are being urged to stay home and practice social distancing amidst the novel coronavirus outbreaks, more and more people have been searching for sources of entertainment in quarantine.
If you have already read our suggestions for keeping yourself busy during self-isolation (such as checking out these zoo and aquarium livestreams, touring more than 2,500 of the world’s museums, or tackling this list of productive at-home activities), then here is another online resource for your enjoyment.
This “With Google” website and app have made it extraordinarily easy to learn Morse code—and some users have claimed they have picked up the skill in as little as 15 minutes.
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For the last eleven years, With Google has featured thousands of digital experiments and online projects for the world to enjoy, a number of which are now being added to a Coping With COVID-19 collection—including the Morse Code app.
The app uses visual cues to associate each letter with its respective sound and code—and it’s totally free to use.
So if you don’t feel like committing the necessary time and effort to learning a foreign language, then maybe Morse code might be the next best thing.
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Trillions of dollars are set to be invested in combatting the climate crisis and conserving Earth’s ecosystems thanks to a man named Larry Fink.
Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company responsible for the fate of trillions of dollars of other people’s capital.
It is perhaps unsurprising that, as climate change is making many of the world’s markets even more uncertain than usual, Fink has written letters to all the CEOs of companies he invests in informing them that climate change will now become the central tenant of his investment strategy.
“Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” Fink wrote in his letter. “Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity—a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect.”
“But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”
This warning was bold in the original, and as reported by NPR, BlackRock is not only adjusting their management strategies, but also the relationship with the companies they invest in.
This means that before making investment decisions, BlackRock will require companies to disclose any climate-related risks for their future, as well as plans for how they would operate under limits or constraints that could arise from Paris Agreement targets to keep warming under 2 degrees Celsius.
BlackRock will also dump shares from companies in its portfolios who manage 25% of their wealth from coal production or utilization, which already costs in many places 50-100% more to maintain and manufacture than renewables.
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The 67-year-old billionaire also said that throwing BlackRock’s weight around as the world’s largest money management company is not beyond the pale, stating that: “We will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.”
More and more, financial planners and investment companies are moving away from anything that stinks of CO2. This shift in market forces will be a much more powerful catalyst for change than the activism that, to give credit where credit is due, made these shifts possible—and it’s high time too.
The recent meeting of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change left many activists entirely unsatisfied, and many countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, are still pouring money into coal and natural gas-fired plants. Governments have much less interest in a changing climate than, for instance, insurance companies might. Larry Fink knows this, and is pushing a lot of money into goading governments and companies to rethink the future—taking devastating floods and fires, and uncertainty, into the lexicon of their decision-making.
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Bill Gates has just announced that he and his foundation are accelerating the COVID-19 response effort by building factories for all seven of the most promising vaccines currently in development—even though only one or two of them will likely be produced.
Gates discussed the initiative during his at-home interview with The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah this week.
“Because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort,” Gates said. “Our early money can accelerate things.”
Despite how building factories for all seven vaccines in development will likely waste billions of dollars in construction costs, Gates says that having facilities ready for any one of the treatments will likely end up saving thousands of lives in the long run.
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“Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying, ‘OK, which vaccine works?’ and then building the factory,” he said.
In an op-ed that was published in The Washington Post last week, Gates added: “To bring the disease to an end, we’ll need a safe and effective vaccine. If we do everything right, we could have one in less than 18 months—about the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed.
“We can start now by building the facilities where these vaccines will be made. Because many of the top candidates are made using unique equipment, we’ll have to build facilities for each of them, knowing that some won’t get used. Private companies can’t take that kind of risk, but the federal government can. It’s a great sign that the administration made deals this week with at least two companies to prepare for vaccine manufacturing. I hope more deals will follow.
MORE: Reports Find Social Restrictions Are Working to Curb New COVID-19 Cases From Italy to Seattle
“In 2015, I urged world leaders in a TED talk to prepare for a pandemic the same way they prepare for war—by running simulations to find the cracks in the system. As we’ve seen this year, we have a long way to go,” wrote Gates. “But I still believe that if we make the right decisions now, informed by science, data and the experience of medical professionals, we can save lives and get the country back to work.”
This is not the first initiative that The Gates Foundation has taken to combat the novel coronavirus; in early March, the foundation pledged $100 million towards identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments for the virus.
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
(WATCH the interview below) – Feature photo by Bill Gates
“We can save months, and every month counts.” @BillGates and Trevor discuss combating coronavirus tonight at 11/10c pic.twitter.com/fYijnZa6tF
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 3, 2020
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Citizens and news outlets around the world are praising Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar for re-registering as a doctor with the national health service in order to offer an extra hand in fighting the novel coronavirus outbreaks.
Prior to going into politics and being removed from the medical register in 2013, Varadkar reportedly spent seven years working as a junior doctor at St. James’s Hospital and Connolly Hospital in Dublin.
Trained as a general practitioner, Varadkar rejoined the medical register in March so he could offer up his services to the country’s Health Service Executive once a week.
According to Irish broadcaster RTE, part of the prime minister’s work will involve conducting phone assessments in order to free up the work load of hospital front line workers.
“Many of his family and friends are working in the health service. He wanted to help out even in a small way,” said a government spokesperson.
Euronews goes on to say that Varadkar may be the first European Union leader to personally offer his assistance to medical workers fighting the COVID-19 outbreaks.
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
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Quote of the Day: “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
Photo: by Anton Darius – public domain, cropped
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The British Academy of Sound Therapy (BAST) has been studying the beneficial effects of listening to music for therapeutic purposes for years.
The new research by BAST, the Music as Medicine project, has tried to identify exactly what kind of music stimulates positive neural responses and how long one must listen before these responses begin to activate.
“Most people hear or actively listen to music every day and as humans we tend to change our playlists based on our mood,” explained the neuroscientists at BAST.
“Music psychologists have proven time and time again, that music can have an effect on our health. So with that in mind, wouldn’t it be great if we could prescribe music to help with certain mood states?”
That’s exactly what they’ve succeeded in doing with Music as Medicine, and some of the results are truly stunning.
RELATED: Great Things to Do at Home While Quarantined: Let’s Be Pandemic-Positive
In a pre-trial survey of the 7,581 people involved in the project, 89% of the participants said that music was essential to their health and or well-being.
13 minutes was found to be the optimum listening time in the case of music to relax. This kind of music was characterized with a slow tempo, simple melodies and no lyrics, like Weightless, by Marconi Union.
That song from this Manchester-based music trio was found to reduce symptoms of anxiety by up to 65%.
“Our test subjects reported positive benefits including decreased muscle tension, negative thoughts disappearing, feeling peaceful and contented and being able to sleep better,” exclaimed the study.
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That’s because 79% had reduced muscle tension, 84% had less negative thoughts, and 82% had a better nights sleep or felt restful & contented.
For those, like the GNN founder, who prefer dancing to get their cardio benefits, even less music is scientifically found to bring greater power into your legs and happiness into your mind.
After listening to driving rhythm and fast tempo music with happy lyrical content for just 9 minutes, 89% of participants had improved energy levels, 65% laughed more and/or felt happier, 82% felt able to take on anything or felt more in control of their lives.
Because sadness is very personal, people selected unsurprisingly music with lyrics they connected with. Like listening for relaxation, 13 minutes were found to be enough for optimal benefit.
“Listening to music for sadness caused our listeners to feel a sense of relief, be less overwhelmed, feel more stable and less likely to be triggered by things that reminded them of the issue,” they said.
MORE: Americans Who Drink This Much Water a Day Are More Likely to Report Feeling ‘Very Happy’
87% felt more emotionally stable, 84% felt less overwhelmed, a record 91% felt relief & release, while 84% said they came out the other side of their sadness.
While this research may seem like a cool bonus to doing what most of us love to do—listen to music—it’s actually leading to potential therapeutic interventions like this study that used the same tune as Music for Medicine “Weightless” to calm pre-operational anxiety attacks.
The study found that listening to Marconi Union’s track reduced symptoms of anxiety in patients waiting to undergo surgery.
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While Andrew Cuomo marshals New York’s defense against the coronavirus, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has been working to equip metropolitan areas like Boston with the supplies needed for an effective COVID-19 response.
Baker asked the NFL New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft to use the Super Bowl team’s Boeing 757 to fetch more than a million N95 masks from China—and a second shipment of 500,000 more will be arriving next week.
Perhaps even more inspirational is that, in addition to Massachusetts benefitting, 300,000 masks were also picked up for delivery to New York.
(Such a feat might have been unbelievable if it were a Boston Red Socks plane instead of one belonging to the Patriots—when the NY Yankees are such fierce Boston baseball rivals.)
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As of this writing, Massachusetts has logged 11,000 cases of COVID in the state.
Gov. Baker described the endeavor in a tweet as “no days off,” and remarked that the masks would go to frontline health care workers.
For his part, Kraft said that getting the supplies on the plane and back to the states was “probably the most challenging operation our organization and team ever had to do,” according to CNN Thursday night.
Tonight's arrival of a major shipment of N95 masks on the @Patriots' plane was a significant step in our work to get front-line workers the equipment they need.
— Charlie Baker (@MassGovernor) April 3, 2020
And its an example of how collaboration and partnership can lead to real solutions during these challenging times. pic.twitter.com/THwofdrTlt
“There was a lot of red tape, but a lot of people cooperated,” he said. “We had three governors. We had a counsel from China, our crew who flew probably more hours than they should have, but they knew how important it was. And, you know, it’s just — it’s like doing your job and never taking time off when something’s really important.”
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For the 1.1 million public school students in New York City, life was upended when all classes were closed down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Now, in a never-before-attempted project, children with parents in the medical field have got a place to go during the day, while their parents go to work on the frontlines of the contagion.
The largest school state system in the United States set up “regional enrichment centers” where the 8,000 public school kids can do their school work at spaced-apart desks, eat three hot meals a day, and learn how to protect themselves from COVID-19.
The centers are not only taking in kids of hospital workers, the enrichment centers are helping children whose parents work in essential services, like utility departments, postal services, and grocery stores.
“We’ve never done something like this before,” Miranda Barbot, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, told The New York Times. “We’ve made these centers available to thousands of families who need them.”
“They’re there for essential workers,” said NY City mayor Bill de Blasio. “So, here’s what it comes down to—so long as the essential worker, if they’ve got a better arrangement, that’s fine. We just need to support them to make sure they can show up and doing the lifesaving work they’re doing.”
In another move to support any of the city’s out-of-school students, the Department of Education is working with Apple to garner 300,000 iPads to lend out to students who don’t have access to an internet-enabled device for remote schooling which was slated to run from March 23rd to April 20th.
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Parents who want to take advantage of the iPad borrowing service need only fill out a remote learning device application form on the NYC DOE website.
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
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On October 27, 2019, Bert terHart sailed out of Victoria, BC, Canada on his 40′ ocean faring sailboat. His goal? To circumnavigate the globe non-stop, and without the aid of any electronic navigational devices. He hopes to become the first North American to ever complete this type of journey using only a sextant, almanac, pen, paper, and logbook for navigation.
Coincidentally, Bert already has become, literally, the safest person on the planet, bobbing about at sea on a voyage planned long before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
At the time of this writing, April 1, Bert was nearing Australia, two-thirds of the way through his journey. Many battles have been waged and won aboard the Seaburban, including violent weather, emergency repairs, extreme temperatures from roasting to freezing, and moldy food.
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Born on the flat prairie of southern Saskatchewan, Bert was raised as far away from any ocean as you can imagine. His Dutch ancestry, however, is rich in sailing tradition, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all professional sailors. Jan ter Hart trained his four children in the fine art of sailing during windy summer days on Boundary Dam Lake, a man-made reservoir near Estevan, Saskatchewan, the family’s hometown.
While at sea, he has garnered a following of over 2000+ people watching his journey, day by day, including many Canadian schoolchildren all asking, “Where is Mr. ter Hart now?”
The journey was to have lasted six months, but delays due to extreme weather, requiring sailing many kilometers off course to avoid hurricanes and extreme winds, has stretched the journey to eight months.
During his trip he has been cataloguing information on climate change, which he will pass on to oceanographic scientific research companies—all while maintaining the most rigorous “social distancing” of anyone on Earth.
To be successful as the first North American to achieve this goal, there can be no stopping to disembark at any port. Nine months worth of food, water and supplies had to be brought on board. Including, yes, toilet paper.
The only other passenger on this voyage is Mr. Salty, a stuffed seal, who finds himself in all kinds of trouble aboard ship, and continuously demands higher pay for fewer chores.
Bert’s goal is not so much to be the first to complete a journey of this kind, which will end in San Francisco, but to inspire young people to take hold of their craziest dreams and fashion them into reality.
When asked what advice he would give those of us on land who are dealing with the coronavirus, terHart told GNN, “Self isolation is an opportunity to learn more about oneself. It is rare that we have the time to really examine what it is that we we want to become, and hope to leave behind as a legacy.”
He continued, “These are fundamental questions and need good answers. Our normal lives generally preclude the time necessary to really examine them in detail. This, for some, might very well be that time.”
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Quote of the Day: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
Photo: by Eddi Aguirre – public domain, cropped
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
For several weeks, Jimmy Fallon has been broadcasting from his house, producing the Tonight Show At Home Edition, and has been using his 50 million Twitter followers to provide much needed comedy relief during their COVID-19 self-isolation.
Last week, GNN brought you the hilarious results of Fallon’s brilliant fans describing their quarantine in six words—phrases guaranteed to make you laugh like this one, ‘Day one, ate all the snacks.’
Yesterday, he returned to his ‘Hashtags’ segment asking fans to tweet new movie titles, for sequels made in a quarantine.
@RiepTide1999 kicked off the fun, placing a quarantine on the Johnny Depp film: Edward Washinghands.
@KelownaSteve got straight to the punchline of #QuarantineAMovie, proposing: Don’t Stand By Me.
Here are our favorites:
Honey, I Flunked The Kids
A Star is Bored
Do Little
Avengers: Infinity Conference Calls
Good Will Hunting for Toilet Paper
Gloves, Actually
The Devil Wears Sweatpants
Stay At Home Along
Ferris Bueller’s Year Off
My Best Friend’s Wedding Got Canceled… And perhaps, the best one, by @TinaGibala:
50 Shades of Grey Roots (LOL!)
And, after posting this story to Facebook, we were howling over some of the quarantine film sequels that our own GNN fans came up with. Check out these gems:
Lili Wells – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Toilet Paper
Rivka Haza– Forrest Grump
Colleen Griffin – No One on a Plane
and, Fear and Loathing in Quarantine
Shawna Gonsuron– Frozen – In Place
and, When Harry Met Sally: From A Distance
CHECK OUT: Jimmy Fallon Asks Twitter to Describe Their Quarantine in Six Words—and the Results Are Hilarious
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When Americans started realizing that restaurants and bars were going to be among the worst hit businesses, they started advocating on social media that people buy gift cards from their favorite establishments to keep them in business.
The other folks that need extra compassion are the nurses and doctors working overtime. One creative restaurant in California put the two groups together and offered to deliver via a catering service to the stressed health care workers at Stanford Hospital.
And their business of kindness is booming so much that they were able to rehire restaurant workers for the new take-out service.
In New Jersey, 16-year-old Drew and 13-year-old Heather Paglia picked up the idea and created a GoFundMe campaign in order to help small businesses—and health care heroes—by purchasing food and gift cards to deliver food to people impacted the most.
One local hospital, CentraState, asked for gift cards so they can pass them on to patients being released from the hospital to provide food for them, to make sure they stay home.
Since launching the crowdfunding page, the siblings have managed to raise more than $2,250—although they hope to garner many more donations in order to reach their $20,000 goal.
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Completely circumnavigating the problem of supply shortages of things like hand sanitizer, Akara Robotics, founded at Trinity College, Ireland, has developed a robot that emits ultraviolet irradiated light to kill viruses, bacteria, and other harmful germs from hospital floors and other surfaces.
Sweetly named Robot Violet, it is clinically proven to kill viruses—and can sanitize an entire hospital room in half the time it would take to do the same task using conventional “deep cleaning” approaches.
CHECK OUT: Researchers Have Found a Way to Sterilize and Reuse Face Masks During Pandemic
The long tubular light looks like one you might see in a warehouse or factory, but it floats around the room as if a Jedi lightsaber were mounted on a Roomba vacuum cleaner.
Violet’s powers come from UVC rays shot at very short wavelengths. These breakdown the DNA in microbes and stop them from being able to replicate and can arrest the spread of germs, ideally including COVID-19, though they are still awaiting test results for the now-infamous virus to see if the robot can officially be relied upon to remove it.
Many surfaces, especially those on various hospital equipment, need to be washed by hand. Inventor Connor McGinn says his robot would greatly enhance this cleaning process, allowing hospitals that are swamped with patients to clean rooms and equipment without any human being present.
“This system could reduce dependency on the use of chemical-based solutions, which may be effective but requires rooms to be vacated for several hours during sterilization, making them impractical for many parts of the hospital,” McGinn said on Twitter.
While UV rays are damaging to humans, so they cannot be used to sterilize hands or other areas of skin, an onboard AI system automatically shuts off Violet’s light if it detects that someone has moved in front of it.
The petite startup of only 7 people, hope to produce 50 units in the coming weeks—with their first robot possibly ready for duty by Easter.
Here's an early demo of our robot, Violet. It uses UVC light, a clinically proven technology for killing viruses, bacteria and harmful germs. The robot has a range of safety features that allow it to be deployed in high-traffic areas where existing cleaning approaches fall short pic.twitter.com/ianDebIrbv
— Akara Robotics (@Akara_Robotics) March 17, 2020
If estimations about the upcoming COVID-19 curve are accurate, hospitals will need all the innovations like this—and this efficient new respirator invented by James Dyson—to help “flatten the curve” and prevent the spread of COVID-19 within hospital settings.
“We are very happy with the progress we are making,” McGinn told the Irish Times.
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
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This story written by Megan Hall is one of the many heartwarming stories that have been submitted by our devoted readers; if you would like to write your own good news article, click here.
The first surge of rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic has receded and left necessary social distancing, self-isolation, and quarantine in its wake, with no definite end date in sight. Millions are now facing the effects of loneliness, cabin fever, life in too-close quarters, and asking how they can still find community when told to stay apart.
One neighborhood is responding in a creative and uplifting way: an interactive game of “I Spy” in which people of any age can participate.
Emily Nelson, a resident of the Sunnymede neighborhood in South Bend, Indiana, created this game for St. Patrick’s Day using the neighborhood association’s Facebook group.
LOOK: Mystery Mom Has Been Leaving Out Free Bagged Lunches ‘Made With Love’ for Anyone Who May Need Them
She asked residents to tape paper shamrocks to their front windows or draw them in chalk on their driveways—anything that would be visible to kids walking by on the sidewalk—for a shamrock scavenger hunt. Neighborhood kids could tally up how many they spied and post to the Facebook group.
The neighborhood response was tremendous, so Nelson drew up a calendar through mid-April with other themed days, including Disney characters, Mario, hearts for health workers, dinosaurs, and a bunny hunt. To make the outings even more fun, Nelson encouraged the walkers to embrace the themes by dressing in costume.
For any neighbors who didn’t have themed objects, decorations, or chalk to use, another neighborhood resident put together packets of coloring sheets that she could drop off in mail slots as requested.
Participation has been high. According to Nelson, she and her family saw more than 28 Disney characters posted around the neighborhood on the most recent day, March 21st, including princess dolls and a King Louie from Junglebook.
Even the mailman, according to one resident, took notice and asked about the sudden appearance of Disney items in windows.
LOOK: Isolated Art Lovers Are Recreating Masterpieces Using Everyday Objects—and the Results Are Amazing
Kids are not the only ones who have been excited; neighbor Carolyn Evans wrote to Nelson on the Facebook page, saying “We had a blast looking for characters today! What a fun thing for all of us to do! THANK YOU for putting this in motion and THANK YOU to all of our neighbors who are participating!”
Visiting on front porches, chatting on sidewalks, and playing impromptu football games in the nearby school’s baseball field are some of the usual ways this neighborhood stays close. Now thanks to Nelson’s “I Spy” hunts, grateful community members are a little closer to finding new ways to stay in touch.
This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
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Quote of the Day: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou (born on this day)
Photo: by Kirschner Amao – public domain
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
As millions of adult employees around the world start working from home during the COVID-19 shutdowns, this devoted dad took an adorable video of his average social distancing day on the job—and the resulting footage is pretty darn sweet.
(WATCH the video below)
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“I cannot think of another time in the last million years when our species has been united against a common enemy,” said David Sinclair, Harvard Medical School genetics professor, in an interview with Peter Diamandis.
We are all stuck at home. We can either stay huddled in fear or use this as an activation moment.
Instead of watching an endless stream of great TV, a team from the OpenExO ecosystem is spending their time engaging with thought leaders from around the world to problem-solve for a better future.
“If we don’t transform now, our leaders will take us back to where we were and unprepared for the next global pandemic—not to mention climate change” and other pressing problems, says Kent Langley, Co-founder of the ExO Foundation, which is launching the ExO World Summit, April 14-16.
Guided by Paul Romer’s reminder that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, 147 partners who are committed to the greater good with the aim of harnessing emerging technologies will converge online to develop ideas for transforming our global institutions.
Silicon Valley strategist and entrepreneur, Salim Ismail, author of the bestselling book Exponential Organizations, came up with the idea for the ExO World Summit. “Let’s convene our global leadership and reinvent it,” he asserted. “I don’t think of this as an opportunity—I think it’s an obligation.”
And, true to the group’s altruistic goals, all the proceeds from the event will go towards funding the programs that are developed.
ExO World will feature speakers like Peter Diamandis, Jason Silva, United Nations President Maria Fernanda, Former Mexico President Vicente Fox, Dr. Daniel Kraft, Andres Roemer, X-Prize CEO Anousheh Ansari, Steven Kotler, Salim Ismail, and more.
With a capacity of 100,000 attendees, the digital conference will feature an entirely virtual main stage, expo booths, networking zone, individual session/panel rooms, digital entertainment, and contributions from celebrities and heads of state. After each main session, breakout sessions will host dynamic conversations in many languages and topics, and a digital goodie bag will be presented to each attendee.
Instead of halting progress, let’s harness our #technology and have the conversations that launch our #future. Be a part of the global community and join us at #ExOWorld April 14-16th. Get tickets at: https://t.co/tj3kdewuju pic.twitter.com/OVwFgMBlhA
— Singularity University (@singularityu) March 30, 2020
Teaming up with Singularity University and the 4000 members of OpenExO, are partners like the X Prize Foundation, Abundance360, Vortex, HighVibe, Rokk3r, Fastrack Institute and others.
Before Covid-19, events like this would usually cost thousands of dollars per person. The price for ExO World Transformation Summit has been set at below $200 to allow many more voices to the conversation. (And, all proceeds from the event will go towards initiatives that arise within it.)
GNN co-owner Anthony Samadani has secured a special rate for a limited number of tickets just for our viewers who want access to the entire three days of keynotes, sessions, and networking—and the opportunity to generate your own good news.
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Contrary to the image of greedy fossil fuel billionaires lobbying politicians for favors, it is now the free market, not world governments, that are doing the most to advance the use of clean renewable energy.
In the most basic sense, it is no longer a lucrative business path to invest in carbon emission-heavy sources. Today, investing in coal projects is more expensive—across all world energy markets—than renewables. In as little as 10 years, it will be cheaper to build renewables than to run coal power resources, much less build new ones.
How much more expensive? Right now, the report estimates that the cost of operating and investing in coal—not in Europe, but in the U.S., India, and China—is about 50% more expensive than renewables. By 2030, that number doubles to 100% assuming market forces remain constant rather than intensify, which they are likely to do.
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“The market is driving the low-carbon energy transition, but governments aren’t listening,” writes Matt Gray, co-head of power and utilities for Carbon Tracker, and co-author of a new global economic report about coal investments entitled “How to Waste Half a Trillion Dollars.”
“Renewables are outcompeting coal around the world and proposed coal investments risk becoming stranded assets which could lock in high-cost coal power for decades.”
Indeed, the number of countries in which it is cheaper in invest and operate renewable energy assets could make someone optimistic about the future since most underdeveloped Asian energy markets, as well as the three biggest coal consumers on earth, would all save money switching to renewables, according to this helpful infographic from the report.
However, many of these countries still have nationally-planned coal power projects either in early investment stages, or already in production.
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As repeatedly demonstrated by the national debt of the US government, a stranded asset is manageable for most nations, but insufferable for a private firm that is unable to borrow more dollars every year than they invest.
It is an economic term for an asset—like a coal plant—which will cease to generate returns even before the end of its economic life. These carbon-heavy facilities not only have a slow rate of return and open the door for market competition from renewables, they also are becoming more expensive to invest in, build, and operate, than they are to make returns for those investors.
That is partially why free market economic forces are working where many governments are failing; it costs a lot of money to build electricity-generating resources, and since banks and financial institutions are the largest funders of energy projects, they simply aren’t willing to finance coal power projects, choosing instead to invest in solar and wind resources.
The government of Vietnam is currently considering backing away from 15 gigawatts of proposed coal power as financial constraints make it a harder to build new plants, which it wants to do in order to increase economic development.
The proposed projects would allocate 50% of energy production to coal-fired plants, but an end to the deal would see it drop to 37%, with others like hydroelectric and gas remaining stable, and renewable energy swooping in to cheaply meet the demand and fill the gap in supply.
Much of the nation’s energy projects are funded by investors in other coal-fired East Asian nations like Japan and South Korea, as well as powerhouse lender Singapore. After a recent aligning of principles with EU nations to restrict coal financing, however, many coal projects in Vietnam will be left stagnating with the government’s only options being to either finish the projects with taxpayer money or listen to market forces and move into cleaner energy production.
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On the other hand, private sector giants like Sir Christopher Hohn, who is the billionaire hedge fund manager and co-founder of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), threatened to sue British banks Barclays, Standard Chartered, and HSBC over the financing of new coal projects.
“Coal is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally and the risks of its continued use in the power sector are not being adequately addressed by regulators and the financial system,” he said in a statement on the CIFF website.
A high price of carbon and significant investment in renewable energy has created a very unfriendly market for coal in the EU, while “How to Waste Half a Trillion Dollars” finds that today, even big coal consumers like China, India, and the U.S. are on the right path and “not far behind” the EU in terms of renewable energy investments.
“The report finds that market forces will drive coal power out of existence in deregulated markets, where renewable energy developers will take advantage of the growing price gap,” reads the report summary on Carbon Tracker’s website. Across the world, 6,700 coal plants produce 2,045 gigawatts of energy, and another 1,000 or so accounting for another 500gw are in early stages of production or investment.
As the cost of investment, production, and operation of coal plants continues to increase as market forces push investors further and further towards renewables, hundreds of billions of dollars in energy markets the world over will become available at a lower cost, and coal could become twice as expensive, and begin to rapidly vanish—even in large coal-consuming countries like China and India, within just 20 years.
A report from Reuters found that coal power generation fell worldwide by 3% in 2019, while wind and solar power contributed 270 more terawatts, or an additional 15%, to grids. The research went on to illustrate how this growth would be needed every year for 15 years in order to meet the Paris Agreement targets. The power generation would have to continue to fall from 3% to 11% to prevent 1.5 degrees celsius of warming—the rough estimate of wiggle room needed to avoid the worst effects of global climate change.
Money talks—and if coal production will rise from from 50% to 100% in the U.S., India, and 60% to 100% in China, in just ten years, it means that far from unlimited growth targets being met for investors, coal barons will have to cope with a 5% yearly rise in capital requirements, as well as any future blows coal might be forced to absorb such as carbon taxes, coal embargoes, and other brutish legislative measures.
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