Doomslayer: Progress Roundup
Agricultural resilience, the fruits of Indian economic growth, a real-world housing policy experiment, and more.
Economics & Development
Over the past few years, Minnesota’s Twin Cities have run a real-world housing experiment. St. Paul instituted strict rent control that froze development and eventually forced the city to roll back the policy. Minneapolis loosened zoning instead, unleashing a surge of new apartments and keeping rent growth below both St. Paul’s and the national average.
Recent research from Vanguard finds that AI does not yet seem to be having a strong effect on employment in the United States. According to their analysis, both wage and job growth were faster in AI-exposed industries than in the economy as a whole between mid-2023 and mid-2025.
Thanks to sustained economic growth, household spending in India is moving from basic needs to more sophisticated goods. As a result of that growth, an increasing share of Indian households can afford durable consumer goods like cars, refrigerators, TVs, and mobile phones.
Energy & Environment
India’s Parliament has passed a new law allowing private companies to build and operate nuclear reactors in the country, ending decades of tight state control over the industry.
Thanks to decades of improving water quality, otters are making a comeback in the UK, turning up in rivers all over the country and even wandering into urban waterways and backyard ponds.
Polar bears may be adapting to a warmer Arctic faster than expected. New research from the University of East Anglia found that polar bears in southeastern Greenland show shifts in gene activity linked to heat stress, metabolism, and ageing as temperatures rise, hinting at early genetic responses to climate change.
A new report from the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, a UK-based think tank, finds that global economic growth is becoming increasingly decoupled from carbon emissions:
Between 2015 and 2023, countries representing more than 46% of global GDP absolutely decoupled — growing their economies while cutting CO2 emissions in absolute terms. That share is up from just over 38% in the pre-Paris period.
Food & Hunger:
Despite a severe drought, farmers in Canada are achieving record crop yields thanks to improved agricultural technology like zero-till farming, better drainage, slow-release fertilizers, hardier cultivars, and more precise sensors and machines, suggesting that predictions from climate scientists that crop yields will decline this century are overly pessimistic.
Health & Demographics
Brazil has cut mother-to-child HIV transmission to under 2 percent, meeting the WHO’s threshold for “elimination.”
Taiwan has nearly achieved the WHO’s elimination targets for hepatitis C, with diagnosis and treatment rates of roughly 90 percent.
Doctors Without Borders has administered the first full course of the R21 malaria vaccine in Ethiopia, vaccinating 2,100 children in a refugee camp. The organization reports that the camp hospital saw 50 percent fewer malaria deaths in the period after the campaign, which also included other malaria prevention methods.
Science & Technology
Researchers from Nokia Bell Labs have figured out how to use seafloor telecom cables as earthquake detectors, using the existing fiber-optic network to record real seismic events. While the system isn’t yet used for routine monitoring or early warning, the proof-of-concept shows that today’s global cable network could double as a dense, low-cost sensor array for offshore earthquakes and tsunamis.
Waymo’s robotaxis are known for being safe but excessively timid, often driving far more slowly and cautiously than humans. However, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal, Waymo is now pushing its vehicles to be more assertive on the road.
Walmart drone delivery has already begun in Atlanta and is coming to Orlando in early 2026.
The Canadian drought resilience data is genuinely surprising and challenges some widespread assumptions. Zero-till and precision agriculture have been around for a while, but seeing them actualy deliver record yields under drought conditions suggests we've hit a tipping point in adaptive capacity. Reminds me of following similar tech adoption curves in sub-Saharan Africa where the lag between availabilty and meaningful impact can span decades. The question is whether this scales globally or if it's moreabout Canada's specific combination of capital access and infrastructure.