💡 Renewable electricity overtook coal as the world's largest power source in 2025
Solar and wind accounted for 99% of the growth in global electricity demand during 2025. Solar energy grew by 636 TWh – more electricity than all LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz can produce. For the first time, coal power accounts for less than a third of the world's electricity generation.
💡 Warp News #321
🌳 Rainforest wildlife returns to abandoned farmland. 💉 New vaccine reduced Lyme disease cases by 70 percent. 📈 Access to basic commodities has increased by more than 500 percent since 1980.
🗳️ Democracy strengthened or did not deteriorate in three quarters of the world's countries during 2025
Nearly three quarters of the world's countries received higher or unchanged scores in the 2025 democracy index. Latin America and the Caribbean broke a nine-year decline and improved their results. The global index rose by 0.02 points, one of the largest increases since 2012.
🏗️ The tech builder taking on the construction industry's hundred-year problem
For a long time, the construction industry has become less productive each year. We get less housing for our money. Jonas Jonsson and his company ByggVesta are now setting out to solve that problem.
🚧 The world's first geothermal plant with 10 to 100 times higher output per well is now being built
Project Obsidian will be the world's first geothermal power plant to extract energy from rock at 300 to 500 degrees Celsius. The millimeter wave drilling technique allows drilling to reach depths and temperatures that conventional drills cannot handle.
🌳 Rainforest wildlife returns to abandoned farmland within 30 years
A study from Ecuador shows that biodiversity in tropical rainforest recovers to more than 90 percent of its original level within three decades. Three-quarters of the animal and plant species typical of untouched primary forest return to abandoned agricultural land during the same period.
📈 Simon Abundance Index 2026: Access to basic commodities has increased by more than 500 percent since 1980
The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) measures the relationship between population and resource abundance. It rose from 100 in 1980 to 636.4 in 2025, an increase of 536.4 percent. While the world's population grew by 85 percent, personal resource abundance increased by 244 percent.
🧫 Bacteria swim using a tiny electric motor that spins several hundred times per second
Researchers have now mapped every part of the flagellar motor that bacteria use to swim, after more than 50 years of research. The motor spins several hundred revolutions per second and is powered by protons streaming into the cell at more than 2,000 per second.
💉 New vaccine reduced Lyme disease cases by 70 percent in clinical trial
Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva report that their Lyme disease vaccine LB6V reduced the number of disease cases by around 70 percent compared with placebo. It would become the first approved Lyme disease vaccine for humans in nearly three decades.
💡 Warp News #320
🪱 Hookworm vaccine reduces infection. 🤰 Maternal mortality declining. 🦾 Startups that learned to use AI correctly generated 1.9 times higher revenue.
🧬 From 13% to 88%: This many survive pancreatic cancer thanks to new vaccine
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. Fewer than 13 percent of those diagnosed survive more than five years. But after receiving a new mRNA vaccine, nearly 90 percent are still alive six years later.
🍿 Amaze, amaze, amaze: Will Hollywood understand now?
Dear Hollywood, tell us stories about the best in us. About human ingenuity, about those who dream, who build, who refuse to accept that tomorrow must be worse than today. Tell us the kind of stories that make us shout, like Rocky: Amaze, amaze, amaze!
😶🌫️ The risk of developing dementia at any given age has dropped sharply
The share of older people with dementia at any given age has fallen by two-thirds over 40 years. An 85-year-old in 2024 has one-third the risk of having dementia compared to an 85-year-old in 1984.
🪱 Hookworm vaccine reduces infection in trial – could help millions with anemia
Hookworm infects more than 100 million people and is a major cause of iron-deficiency anemia, particularly in children and pregnant women. A phase 2 trial shows that a vaccine candidate substantially reduces the intensity of infection.
📉 Overdose deaths in the US have dropped 35 percent from the 2023 peak
The number of overdose deaths in the US is estimated to have fallen by 35 percent from the peak year of 2023 to 2025. The purity of seized fentanyl powder was cut in half between August 2023 and the end of 2024. A coordinated counter-narcotics strategy has choked off the supply of fentanyl.
📚 Top Reads
We're honored to present these top reads from world-class writers, who contribute to Warp News because they believe in our mission of spreading fact-based optimism all over the world.
🆙 Warp Levels - an idea to level up humanity
Humanity is doing the high jump without a bar. We have no goal. With Warp Levels, we determine what the next level for humanity should contain, so we can level up and make progress faster.
📚 Kevin Kelly: Focus on the biggest opportunities, not the biggest problems
We talk about some of the 450 advice in his new book, but also about his new project: Protopia - the hundred-year desirable future. And Kevin Kelly give advice for how Warp News should grow faster: "Wrap it around people and their dreams."
💡 A new mindset for humanity can impact billions of people now and in the future
If we succeed in giving humanity more optimism about the future, it will not only affect those living now but also all generations and billions of people who will live in the future.
💰 Wall Street legend: “Pessimists sound smart – optimists make money”
Jim O'Shaughnessy is a legendary investor on Wall Street. He shares what he thinks is the biggest opportunity for the future and explains how the world is going through a great reshuffle.
🔋 Northvolt and the benefit of understanding the future
The story of Peter Carlsson and Northvolt teaches us two lessons: You need to understand the future to see all the possibilities, and you must be a fact-based optimist to grab them.
💡 David Deutsch: Optimism, Pessimism and Cynicism
With so much progress in the world, how can pessimism still be widespread? It is because of cynicism, denying that “so-called-progress” is progress, argues David Deutsch, professor at Oxford University and one of the world's leading intellectuals on optimism.
