The Progress Report: Expect the Unexpected

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Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, and I am joined, as always, by Emma Varvaloucas, the executive director of The Progress Network, and this is our progress report, our weekly adjunct to our longer What Could Go Right? interview based conversation, and this is where we, or rather I should say Emma, scours the world for news that you may not have noticed.

Now, it is certainly true that there’s a lot that’s going on that is dystopic and disturbing, but there’s a lot that’s going on that points to a better future that tends to be overwhelmed by the more chaotic outrage news that is the news. And so we’ve tried with this quick and dirty Weekly Progress Report to highlight some stories that The Progress Network has paid attention to, has looked for.

I think the reality is, if you want to find good news, there’s ample good news to find, but you have to look for it. It doesn’t find you in quite the same way the bad news does. So that’s what we try to do every week, is just highlight some things that are going on in the world that are positive. Often they’re positive just because they’re solving problems that human beings have created.

not just generically positive, but nonetheless pointing to our collective capacity to deal with bad shit in a constructive way. So Emma, what have you for us this week?

Emma Varvaloucus: Yeah, I definitely have a human solving problems that other humans have created one, but I think it’s a good one. I, you know, one of the things I love about this job is that when I write the newsletter, I tend to go down these like very random rabbit holes of like, I This is like so outside my general sphere of awareness.

I had no idea what was going on. And this is one of them this

Zachary Karabell: week. That was in the original job description, by the way. Must be willing to go down random rabbit holes. That’s one of the, that’s one of the bullet points. It’s like, it’s a weird LinkedIn thing. I don’t know what it attracted. Lots of veterinarians and former zoo professionals and you.

Weirdly enough, so.

Emma Varvaloucus: And speaking of zoo professionals, this is about the circus, actually. So, in late July, actually, Taiwan just updated their rules about performances with wild captive animals. Like, so in non, you know, legislative jargony speak, like tigers and elephants and so on. And they’ve made their rules around animal shows generally very restrictive.

Like they need to have educational value. They’re trying to cut down on like parks where you can like go and feed tigers and things like that. So anyway, that put me down into a long rabbit hole of like whatever happened to Circuses with wild animals. I, you know, as a kid went to the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

I think maybe a lot of people don’t know they shut down in 2017. They are back as of 2023 with only human performers. So I guess it’s kind of like a Cirque du Soleil type thing. But, you know, really in the last 15 years or so, there have been all kinds of laws passed all around the world that ban wild animals in shows.

I can’t actually find which was the first country to pull the trigger, shall we say, but Bolivia is widely given credit as the first to ban all animals, not just wild animals, but all animals in circuses in 2009. The first one in Europe was Greece in 2012, and since then there’s just kind of been like a, you know, domino trend around the world of countries.

Banning wild animals in shows or generally like the general use of wild animals. A lot of those are in Europe and yeah, it’s been a whole sea change actually. So it’s, you know, it’s definitely not everywhere. It’s 34 countries in Europe. There are some definite exceptions. For instance, Italy, which had a lion escape from its circus last year.

There’s a great video online of an Italian filming a lion saying, Mama Mia. so that was fun. and in the U. S. it’s, it’s, it’s patchwork, right? So, there’s 10 states that ban, wild animals in circuses. Maryland just banned it in March. May of this year. And then there’s a bunch of like cities and towns and different localities.

But anyway, that’s the story of the disappearing, circus over the past 15 years.

Zachary Karabell: That’s kind of wild. I suppose the only downside to that story is, no more movies like Dumbo. the upside is, it’s funny, like most kids grow up and there’s a golly gee, well, like wow factor about seeing animals at the circus, or at least there was.

And then I went to a circus in Cyprus very randomly. I was like stuck on Cyprus for a few days in in the late 80s and there was this just completely woe be gone regional circus near Limassol and the animals just seemed so like abused and defeated. I’m not trying to anthropomorphize. It’s just like, it was so viscerally clear that the conditions were awful.

And like, I’m sure the conditions of the actual circus performers weren’t great either, but. I don’t think anyone was whipping them or, you know, depriving them of food in order to get them to behave. I mean, maybe they were, but we actually do have laws against that too. So it was kind of this feeling of, wow, this is not, this is not a fun experience for Dumbo.

And I also wonder about zoos going forward in that, I suppose the positive rationale for zoos, because a lot of people work at zoos, right, are, you know, they’re, they’re vets, they’re research scientists, they’re trying to preserve endangered species. So there’s a whole aspect of zoos that’s sort of compensatory for humans having eliminated wildlife.

and I know, I mean, a lot of zoos really try to create a habitat that is, you know, Passable. Right. which may work for grazing animals or certain types, but it’s clear when you see predatory animals in the zoo that they’re just like walking around going like, I don’t get out of here. How ?

Emma Varvaloucus: Yeah. Yeah.

Which, how

Zachary Karabell: do I get out of here? so I wonder if that will pre it, something about zoos going forward, but I guess we’ll should do a show about animal rights. That’s a whole, that’s a whole area that we haven’t really looked at.

Emma Varvaloucus: We haven’t touched much. Yeah. I, so I do mention the zoos in, in the newsletter because, I think it’s a good question about like, I think it’s way down the road, but I think you’re right that it might be coming way down the road.

There’s actually only one country in the entire world that has closed its zoos. Do you want to make a guess?

Zachary Karabell: I mean, I, I, I, I’m pretty sure that if, if Bolivia was the first country to, outlaw circus animals, which would not have been on my top 10 guesses, by the way, just for the record, you know, if you’d asked me like top 10, I wouldn’t have, I don’t think Bolivia would have shown up there.

So, first country to, outlaw zoos is likely to be incorrect as well, but let’s just, let’s just, randomly pick a country that might’ve outlawed zoos because of. some concern about, safety and rights, New Zealand.

Emma Varvaloucus: Not bad. I, you know, this one’s going to make sense when I say it, but hard to think of off the top of your head.

It’s Costa Rica.

Zachary Karabell: Right. Which led the charge on eco.

Emma Varvaloucus: Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: All things eco.

Emma Varvaloucus: Yeah, definitely tracks. So anyway, that’s the story about, circuses and wild animal rights and animal rights in general. So let’s move away from that. And let’s talk quickly about China and,

Zachary Karabell: or as, as the Donald would say, China, China, China.

Emma Varvaloucus: Yes, or that. I’m going to leave you to the Trump impressions. So yeah, I wanted to highlight the dramatic reduction in air pollution in China because I was there, I was there relatively recently, but I was also there probably 20 years ago, and I remember it being awful. So I’m heralding on behalf of the, you know, Chinese citizenry, a 41 percent reduction of air pollution since 2013.

And a US based researcher, lest you think that this is like manipulated Chinese data, have found that the average Chinese citizen can expect to live two years longer now with their better cleaner air.

Zachary Karabell: And of course, not just Chinese production of solar panels, which has become a political football for both the EU and the United States in terms of cheap Chinese solar panels undercutting more domestic manufacturing, but it is also true that China has, at least the Chinese government and the Communist Party have made a huge push toward conversion to solar.

Yes, they’ve also been building coal plants. I mean, they’ve basically used whatever energy source is. cheap and available to fuel this massive industrial build out that has begun to plateau, if not slow, but was unabated from the early 90s until the, well, till COVID ish. So, I think people don’t realize that one of the areas of real concord between the United States, the EU, China, the rest of the world is this push toward more renewable, Less carbon intensive energy sources.

You know, there was an old joke of, you could like pick any country, pick the. English, 1850s, pick, you know, Europe, 1950s, China, 2000, riding in a train, looking at the window and seeing nothing but an impenetrable haze of industrial pollution and, you know, young man turns to older man and says, what do you see out the window?

And old man says, you know, I see pollution and air and the young man says, I see progress or it could be either one. But the point is until people see pollution, not as a sort of a, an acceptable by product Modernization, and see it instead as a destructive by product of modernization, you don’t get change.

But it’s also true that the one thing that the Chinese Communist Party has been unable to do is to convince people to deal with incredibly unhealthy air. Like, that’s like, a serious no go. You can, you can repress, you can Tell people what they can say and what they can’t, but you can’t tell them they have to breathe air that’s gonna kill them.

And that’s been a real sensitive area where people have actually been able to express genuine Hey, this isn’t acceptable, where the party has had to respond. So you’ve had China really moving toward more sustainable energy sources. really quickly with the same efficiency that they build all these high speed rail and buildings.

So, certainly worth paying attention to.

Emma Varvaloucus: When their emissions are going to peak, their target is 2030. I can tell you off the top of my head. And there are questions whether they might reach that quicker, but anyway, they haven’t reached their peak yet. but we shall see. So, last but not least, I’ve been trying to stay away generally from the gun conversation on the podcast only because it’s so.

Polarizing. so trying to It’s

Zachary Karabell: a loaded conversation.

Emma Varvaloucus: It is. I hope people also caught earlier when you said that the conversation about the wild animals is wild. Yeah. I try to stay away from this unless it’s a, it’s a measure that’s like broadly supported by the American public. and this is certainly one of them.

So Oregon’s ban on ghost guns just came into effect. It had been challenged, in court and a federal judge decided that, no, it’s going to go through. so, ghost guns, of course, are the un serialized, primarily parts of guns that can get sold as like, you know, do it yourself kits at home. that seems to be a win, and I also learned, recently through a story by The Trace, which is just a gun focused newsroom, or I should say really gun controlled, it’s not like a gun rights newsroom, I didn’t know this, the country’s biggest ghost gun manufacturer, which is called Polymer 80, has actually shut down. there was, the owner said there had been two lawsuits aimed at the company per month for the last however many months. they just couldn’t handle it. anymore, because so many of their guns were turning up at, crime scenes.

So there were lawsuits from families, cities, they had to pay some millions in damages to various cities. they say that they’re going to be back, so the closure might be temporary, but for now, yeah, they’re out of business.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah. I mean, the one thing one can say about guns in the United States is there appears to be more consensus about moderate measures to control guns than the political debate over gun control would suggest.

you know, if you took away the partisan hysteria of like, they’re coming for our guns or, you know, we’re locked and loaded and armed to the teeth and we’re on the brink of civil war, like if you removed all the hysteria around it, there does seem to be a wide range of consensus. Finding that consensus in a political process that privileges.

Extremes and hyperbole is really tough and obviously gun control and gun laws in general in the United States over the past 30 40 years have been one area where broad based consensus has utterly failed. to penetrate the political climate. So, I mean, I guess we’ll

Emma Varvaloucus: see.

Zachary Karabell: It’s probably going to be state by state for quite a while.

Emma Varvaloucus: Yeah. No, it’s definitely, expect the unexpected sometimes with how quickly, things change. I wanted to say about that. What did I want to say about that? Oh, I wanted to say that, as you said, despite the, you know, the rhetoric and the hysteria on a national level about guns, like I was looking at, local Oregon.

Oregonian? Oregonian? Oregonian? anyway, I was looking at local newspapers from Oregon and they were definitely comments, you know, from people who were gun owners and anti this new ban. However, there also were an equal number of comments specifically from gun owners that were very much so in support.

So, as you say, like when you dig underneath the, the layer there, there’s, a lot more support for, for common sense measures, you know, from gun owners as well.

Zachary Karabell: I think that’s a wrap for our week. We will be back with you as always next week with some more of the same. Well, So more of the same and a lot that is different.

Thank you, Emma, for boiling the ocean for the stories that you should be paying attention to. And more! And read our weekly newsletter, conveniently called What Could Go Right? Which you can subscribe to@theprogressnetwork.org. It will show up in your email box magically and for free, but you have to sign up for it.

And thanks also to the team at The Podglomerate and our Progress Network team for facilitating these conversations.

Emma Varvaloucus: A hundred percent. Thanks to you, Zachary, and thanks to, everybody listening as per usual, so we’re not talking to thin air here. We appreciate you being here.