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Still Chugging Along

Volcanoes are erupting in The Philippines, but on-fire Australia received some welcome rain. The Iran war cries have been called off and The Donald’s military powers are about to be hamstrung by the Senate. Meanwhile, his impeachment trial is starting, and we’re all on Twitter for a front-row seat.

The Progress Report: Good Decreases

Featuring Zachary Karabell & Emma Varvaloucas

In this episode of the Progress Report, Zachary and Emma discuss positive news stories that highlight progress in various areas. They explore the recent stabilization of obesity rates in the US, the decline in fentanyl overdose deaths, conservation efforts for Florida manatees, and the global increase in marine protected areas as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Prefer to read? Check out the Audio Transcript

 Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined as always by my co host Emma Varvaloucas, the executive director of The Progress Network. And this is our weekly progress report, where we look at the news that you may have missed in the midst of all the news that you didn’t, and most of the news that you didn’t miss was bad news.

News of things going really, really wrong, from politics to massive storms, all of which are indeed going wrong and deserve attention. But in the midst of all the attention that we’re giving the news that is bad, there is also some news that is good. And it tends to get drowned out and lost in the fray.

are swept away and gale force, hurricane force winds, you name it. It is hard to notice what’s going right in a world where it is true, much is going wrong. But every week we scour the planet for news of things that are going right. At least good or pointing in the right direction, because we believe firmly at The Progress Network, and those of you who have been listening to this podcast know that as well, that we owe it to ourselves to have some balance, to pay attention not just to everything that is a problem, but to everything that is a solution.

not just all that’s going wrong, but all that is going right. So that is why we do this. That is why we do this every week. And we presume for many of you, that is why you listen. And if you are new to this podcast, this is our short, quick and fast review of some good stories. We also do a longer hour long interview with someone who we think is compelling, interesting, dynamic, you name it.

That is the scoop. And with that, we will turn it over to the maestro maestro of all that is Newsworthy, all that is going right in the world, Emma Varvaloucas.

Emma Varvaloucas: Going in the right direction, one, the obesity rate among U. S. adults has stopped climbing for the first time since 2000. So between 2000 and a little bit before 2020, it’s hard to tell on this graph, it looks like a 2018. The obesity rate amongst U. S. adults rose almost 15 percent to It looks between 42 and 43 percent, which is a stunningly high obesity rate.

The rate started to go down for the first time, it looks like around 2018. The other stunning thing about this is that experts are guessing that the big, the big difference, shall we say, has dropped back down to 40 percent, so it’s dropped maybe two or three percentage points in the last few years. Is what?

Ozempic, which is wild, especially because it’s not even like available at the mass level. There’s a lot of insurers that don’t cover it still and things like that. So, um, very curious to see if this trend downwards continues. It is not all good news. Obviously that’s a pretty high obesity rate. Um, the severe obesity rate in the US, which is around 10 percent is still climbing, but still it’s like, okay, this is the first, uh, Changing of the direction of the trend we have seen since literally, uh, over two decades ago.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah. I mean, the, the massive increase in, uh, it’s true that Wegovy and Ozempic are still not mass market drugs, but they have been, the adoption of them amongst people who can use them has been really rapid and quite dramatic. Obviously, it’s not just weight loss per se, because it’s also reduced rates of diabetes, insulin usage, I think is also plateaued if you look at sort of use of artificial insulin drugs, um, and a whole other set of attendant health benefits from blood pressure to, uh, heart disease.

I mean, I will say there is also some awareness increasingly that the way in which we tend BMI, which is the way in which obesity rates tend to be determined, body mass index, that too is coming under some question. It’s a very, very old ratio, more than a hundred years old, and many doctors have started questioning whether or not that is the best sort of marker of a weight condition that is problematic.

I mean, we’ve known for years that it doesn’t include athletes, it doesn’t include certain types of body types. It also inadequately captures the sort of the skinny fat issue, which there’s a term for it, but it actually is medically just as much of a problem, you know, having kind of subcutaneous fat that doesn’t really show up on a BMI index.

There’s both a drop in obesity because of these weight loss drugs, which has massive positive long term effects, plus a reconsidering of what, what we’re measuring it. And all of these things are kind of in the mix.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, if anyone’s wondering, by the way, um, the obesity rate, they’re measuring it as a BMI of 30.

So do with that what you will. Um, but just so you know, that’s what they’re, that’s what they’re counting it as.

Zachary Karabell: All right. So from ozempic to what’s our next thing?

Emma Varvaloucas: Fentanyl.

Zachary Karabell: From ozempic to fentanyl. We’re

Emma Varvaloucas: just having things you

Zachary Karabell: can put in your body today.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes. Yes. Okay. So I just wanted to do a quick follow up because we talked a few weeks back about the overdose death rate in the US starting to drop finally from opioids and synthetic opioids.

And NPR had this really interesting follow up article where they’re talking about how they think, and there’s an argument about this, we don’t know this for sure, but one theory that’s being floated about the very significant Drops in overdose deaths might have to do with the fact that they’re now cutting fentanyl with an industrial chemical known as B-T-M-P-S.

Um, that is toxic to humans, but what it does is significantly water down the fentanyl. So there are a lot of people who are not getting that, you know. insanely high dose that can be fatal because this chemical is being mixed in, they think, by the Mexican cartels because they’re trying to get eyes off of them.

So, uh, some people are hailing this as a big win for U. S. based policy, both in China and in Mexico. Again, we don’t really know for sure if this is exactly what’s happening, but that’s what they think is happening. happening that they are purposely watering it down in Mexico because they are trying to kill less people so that the U.

  1. will back off of them a little bit.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it was never a particularly good business model to kill your consumers. I mean, that’s, it’s, you presumably, you want repeat customers. You don’t want, you don’t want one time customers as a business model. If you just look neutrally. The other thing is, like, we’ve talked about this, uh, I think we did this with our conversation with Maya Solovitz, who’s I’ve been a long time drug policy person that even with all of this, I mean, fentanyl is a legal prescribed opioid for pain management, just like Oxycontin was.

So I mean, I think part of the challenge is if we over demonize these drugs, I mean, look, fentanyl deaths from illegal, badly produced or badly dosed fentanyl is an unequivocal harm to society, full stop. And I don’t want anyone to like misconstrue. that reality. But it is also true that if you overdo it with, these drugs are just dangerous and lethal, and remove a valid pain management medication that if used properly, which it sort of had been for decades, uh, is unbelievably helpful to many people suffering from chronic pain.

You, you do, you know, have the risk of creating another societal issue. while solving one. And it’s just like, that’s something to think about when we think about drug policy. We’ve tended in this country, oscillate between really extreme blacks and whites without recognizing that a lot of these things exist in shades of gray.

And we certainly don’t want to get to the point where the, the very word fentanyl becomes so anathema that the legitimate use for, I don’t know if it’s tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it’s probably millions of people becomes impossible.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that they are. Maya might have more to say about this.

I haven’t heard about any policy where they’re like cutting off fentanyl as a pain medication. Like everything I’ve seen coming out of the U. S. has been very focused on the naloxone being available over the counter, a lot of pressure into China about the chemicals that eventually become fentanyl. uh, pressure are on the Mexican cartels, they’re doing a lot of seizures on the border, things like that.

So I haven’t really seen that discussion be a big part of it or even a small part of it. Is that what’s going on?

Zachary Karabell: I think it’s more that some doctors have gotten increased scrutiny for the scripts they’re writing and are concerned that they, you know, they’re gonna have to justify in a very antagonistic situation.

They’re prescribing of them, so there’s definitely some evidence of, you know, lower prescription rates just because doctors are making a rational calculus that they don’t want the scrutiny.

Emma Varvaloucas: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So it’s more that

Zachary Karabell: issue. Anyway. Yeah. It is, it’s more, the general, the general point is more, you know, we have not ever had a particularly balanced way of dealing with the harms that come with ODing, right?

And there’s a knee jerk reaction of, let us just try to eliminate the substance. Often at a supply side level, not at a demand side level, which is historically over the past 40, 50 years, particularly with the war on drugs, supply side attacks on drugs, you know, we’re going to eliminate supply, have tended to fail, right, as opposed to demand side where you deal with more wired people.

You know, why are people ODing in the first place? We’ve been less willing to look at the demand side and much more willing to criminalize the supply side.

Emma Varvaloucas: There’s so much that goes into that that goes beyond what things are, what people are really willing to talk about when it comes to policy, right?

Like there’s a kind of a limit to what government can accomplish. So anyway, on that note, fentanyl

Zachary Karabell: use is going down and it’s becoming less lethal and less lethal for illegal fentanyl is quite important. That, that’s definitely true.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes, and they also say the supply is drying up. People are having a hard time finding it.

So, we’ll keep you posted on that because I’d say, to me, it’s a very important and interesting development. But, all right, I thought since, well, we’re recording this before Friday when everyone is hearing this, so we are right now waiting for Hurricane Milton to hit Florida. And I’m sure by the time everyone’s hearing this, Florida will have really gone through it.

Um, so I wanted to do a Just a small good news piece for Florida, um, has nothing to do with hurricanes or anything like that. I don’t have anything, any silver linings at the moment, um, other than going on hurricane talk and seeing the lovely mutual aid people are offering one another. Um, so this little small piece of Florida and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about something global after that is that they have given the Florida manatees Nearly 2 million acres of revised protected habitat.

So they have been trying to do this for I believe 14 years. Yes. They had petitioned to revise the critical habitat for Florida manatees 14 years ago and no action had occurred until now. So they have given them 2 million acres, as I said. Um, they say that animals with federally protected critical habitat are more than twice as likely to move toward recovery.

Uh, the manatees had been dying off before this, so Save the Manatee Club are literally saving the manatees, which is my little good news piece for Florida this

Zachary Karabell: week. Just to be clear, it was humans petitioning on behalf of the manatees, it wasn’t the manatees themselves petitioning. Yeah,

Emma Varvaloucas: I had a, um, a vague pronoun use there, a vague, apologies for that.

This is coming from the Save the Manatee Club and also the Center for Biological Diversity.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah. So.

Emma Varvaloucas: two advocacy groups.

Zachary Karabell: So I wanted to tie that in. I’m sure, however, this is one of those stories that is unequivocally good, but it’s also true that there is a, uh, a portion of society that, that hearing these Save the Manatee and Acreage stories will roll their eyes in like, do, do we not have better things to do than save the manatees?

Um, and that’s part of the problem of the kind of polarization of our debates today, which is that very act of doing so and creating an organization dedicated to it. earns the scorn of another portion of the population. So

Emma Varvaloucas: there you go. Yes. And I had kind of anticipated this, this blowback, um, because it does, it definitely can come across as like, Ooh, save the manatees, um, peace signs, you know?

And so I did want to add a global component, which is that, um, the UN just met, what was this, a week ago, two weeks ago at this point. Uh, it was a great time to check in on the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals that the UN has set for 2030. So this is, I think, 17 different goals on a range of kind of big picture issues.

They have set these very ambitious goals for things like HIV and AIDS, for access to, uh, clean water, for women’s rights, like all these things across the board. Um, and one of our Progress Network members, John MacArthur. He and a few other colleagues had kind of done this like midterm assessment, right, of where we are with these SDGs.

We’re not going to do a completely full assessment of that right now. It’s kind of a mixed bag depending on what you’re talking about, but one in particular that is going really, really well is the um, marine protected areas. So that’s basically exactly what it sounds like. Places in the water that are protected um, for their biodiversity now.

They have, they are on course to nearly quadruple by 2030 relative to 2015. Um, so it’s basically like there were almost none when they started and now there are almost four times as many. Um, it’s not quite going to reach the target they set for 2030, but the 23 targets were set very ambitiously from the beginning.

So, um, let’s see, we have less than 20 million acres of square kilometers of marine protected areas in 2015. And the trajectory right now is going to be just under 60. So doing good on that front.

Zachary Karabell: I would urge people to go look up the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They’re interesting to look at, um, most of them thoroughly, both reasonable and intuitively, a good idea.

And they are not, as opposed to some of the other goals that have been set, you know, they don’t require unreasonable economic sacrifice. Some of them, obviously, arguably do. Uh, and people like Bjorn Lomborg, who’s the bete noire of sustainable development as an economic model, have challenged whether or not.

Meeting some of these goals actually makes sense, meaning whether the trade offs make sense. We can debate that at another time. It’s worth checking out online. Just look up UN Sustainable Development Goals and you’ll see the list of them in John MacArthur’s work in 17 Rooms, which is his. Right? It’s 17.

Did I get the number right? Yeah.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yep. 17. Yeah, we had a whole conversation with him. I remember we were like, why 17? It’s so random. Why 17? But

Zachary Karabell: it’s stuck in my mind. 

Emma Varvaloucas: There you go.

Zachary Karabell: So check those out. If you’ve got time and a computer, we’re sure that you’ve got one. Everybody’s has to balance the other and we will be back with you with our longer form interview.

We’ll be back with you next week with some more news. To those of you in Florida who are listening to this, we hope that you have a great day. navigated what appears to be one of the most intense storm seasons on record. And this is one of those like thoughts and prayers moments that is totally genuine.

So thank you all for listening. Thank you for the Podglomerate for producing and the group at The Progress Network for finding these stories and Emma, as always, for co hosting.

Emma Varvaloucas: And thanks everybody for listening. And thanks, Zachary, to you too.

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