The Question
Do animals dream?
Talking Points
- Sri Lanka recreates history with Wickremesinghe
- Droupadi Murmu creates history as India's president
- China fines Didi historic $1.2bn for data breaches
- Australia reports galling environmental destruction
- Tories choose between Truss and Sunak
- Vingegaard stitches up the Tour de France
- Ukraine purges its security apparatus
- Caster Semenya hits the track again
- A judge fast-tracks Musk's trial-of-the-century
- Tesla sells most of its Bitcoin, and gets sued in Germany
Deep Dive
The idyllic summer on the Mediterranean is a thing of the past. Across the Iberian Peninsula forest fires frustrated the best efforts of firefighters. London melted under the oppression. Records tumbled everywhere.
The heat
On Tuesday, Britain’s temperature record was smashed before lunchtime. Instruments at Heathrow measured 40.2°C, a full degree-and-a-half higher than the previous record. The pace at which records like this are dropping around the world is almost beyond the province of adequate description. The summers are going to get hotter , and hotter, and hotter. And in the face of this new reality, Britain may well require all the riches of Croesus to avoid thousands upon thousands of heat-related deaths in the coming years. The country is wholly unsuited for these kinds of temperatures. Just this week, train tracks warped and roads melted under the beating sun. Two airports suspended flights after defects were found on runways . The 135-year-old Hammersmith Bridge had to be wrapped in foil to stop it expanding and cracking. Homes insulated for long, cold winters, became ovens.
The climate is making a mockery of our efforts to understand it. Two years ago, a climate study concluded that there was a one-in-100 chance of temperatures breaching 40°C in Britain due to global heating. Now it’s clear those models were far too conservative. US climate scientist Michael Mann (no relation) said, “this is because of processes that are not well-captured in the models but are playing out in the real world — eg, the impact of warming on the behaviour of the summer jet stream that gives us many of the extreme heatwaves, floods, droughts, and wildfires we’re seeing. It suggests that models, if anything, are underestimating the potential for future increases in various types of extreme events.”
The smoke
For now, the heatwave has broken, and Europe is emerging from the shade. In Brittany, on the Atlantic coast, the temperature record was broken by 4°C . The mercury also approached 40°C in parts of Belgium. Further south, the Iberian and Mediterranean states are used to hot summers — but here it is the frequency and severity of fires that is troubling. Two enormous fires in France, at Landiras and La Teste-de-Buch, have tied up 2,000 firefighters in punishing conditions. Portugal hit 47°C this week — at least 1,000 deaths have been recorded in the heatwave so far. Fire crews there have battled a handful of blazes for nearly two weeks without a break. Thousands of people in local communities have volunteered to bolster the ranks of exhausted firefighters. Three times more land has burnt in the first half of this year than last. Spain, which is down 25% on rainfall since October, was a tinderbox that ignited. 30 fires across the country have required a huge deployment of military personnel. It must be stressed again: it’s only getting hotter . These are temperatures that demand radical action to prevent future deaths. But even as street sweepers drop dead in the heat, Europe remains a picture of disunity on energy policy. Even if the Paris Agreement (and its subsequent reaffirmations and adjustments) is followed to the letter we will blow past 1.5°C warming. Likely more, as trigger points are met and unvirtuous cycles triggered. The geopolitics isn’t getting any easier either. As a future without Russian gas draws closer, the European Union is lurching sideways on commitments to reduce fossil-fuel use. Having grown fat on the teat of Urals gas, much of Western Europe is in a bind. The coming energy shortfall in the northern winter will necessitate the restart of coal plants. This is radical action — just in the wrong direction.
Worldlywise
Turkey delights and destroys
We've recently seen all three faces of Turkey's foreign policy. On Thursday afternoon, the office of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered the good news: Russia and Ukraine had agreed in principle to reopen the Black Sea ports . It was the result of two months of intense negotiations shepherded along by the United Nations and Turkey. The closure of those bulk carrier terminals at the onset of the war has smashed the global wheat trade and sent the price of bread soaring across the Middle East and Africa. Now, several million tonnes will be loaded onto ships to navigate the cordon of Moscow's Black Sea fleet. And so we see Ankara the honest broker, on its best behaviour.
It's a far cry from the wheelin' and dealin' Ankara we saw just a few weeks ago, during NATO's Nordic accession talks. Never one to see a concession go unextracted, Erdogan had seized the moment to batter NATO with a slew of hastily-erected grievances. Now, Erdogan and Vladimir Putin have been in Tehran for trilateral talks with Iran's Ebrahim Raisi. It's been a chummy affair in front of the cameras, but Erdogan was really there to seek the blessings of the two most powerful actors in Syria for his planned offensive in Rojava. The presence of Iranian and Russian troops in Tel Rifaat and Manbij has held up the score-settling . So Ankara has had to content itself with coordinating ISIS breakouts from Kurdish prison camps and occasionally flying close-air support for militants.
And finally, the fist. Turkey has managed to infuriate neighbouring Iraq (and several allies) by shelling the Iraqi Kurdish mountain resort town of Zakho .
The serotonin theory of depression
For the vast majority of human history, depression has been viewed as some critical personal flaw or incurable spiritual malaise. The symptoms have remained a constant: those living with it are sapped of energy, appetite, libido, and at worst, their will to live. Then, in the 1960s, neuroscience furnished the world with a new schema for understanding depression — major depressive disorder (MDD). According to the new theory, brain transmitters - particularly serotonin (5-HT) - were the scaffold on which emotional regulation was built. Depression was the direct result of a deficit in serotonin. The answer to one of our species most persistent ailments was simple: more serotonin.
That gave rise to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), more commonly known as antidepressants - a class of miracle drugs that have been prescribed with great gusto around the world. And why not. After all, peak medical bodies everywhere consider serotonin imbalance a primary cause of depression. Today, one-in-six adults in England is on antidepressants. They are everywhere. We could spend hours on the big bucks involved, and the cultural-pharmacological settings that have made them ubiquitous. But that's for another day because right now it seems there's an even more pressing question: do they actually work?
A team led by Joanna Moncrieff, Professor of Psychiatry at University College, London, says: probably not. The first major review into prior studies has found that there is "no clear evidence" that depression is linked to low or imbalanced serotonin levels. Instead, the study concludes that the simplistic explanation, pedalled for decades by those selling SSRIs, has obfuscated the genetic, environmental, and neurobiological factors involved. But don't take our word for it, here's Moncrieff herself . "Thousands of people suffer from side-effects of antidepressants, including the severe withdrawal effects that can occur when people try to stop them, yet prescription rates continue to rise. We believe this situation has been driven partly by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is high time to inform the public that this belief is not grounded in science".
The Best Of Times
One-tonne revegetation aides
Bison are roaming free in the Kentish forests for the first time in several thousand years. Three exceptional beasts were released into Blean Woods by the Kentish Wildlife Trust this week. The trust is relying on the creatures, with their prodigious heft and appetite, to trample, bump, and chew these commercially-useful-but-environmentally-degraded pine forests back to natural woodland.
The world's best restaurant is in a football stadium
Copenhagen's Geranium has taken the gong this year. We didn't pass our tertiary class in argumentative logic but we're fairly certain this also means the world's best football can be found in restaurants.
The Worst Of Times
The (Top) Italian Job
On Wednesday night, a vote of confidence was called in the Italian senate. It challenged wayward members of Italy's unity government to come together in a show of cooperation with Prime Minister Mario Draghi . But Movimento 5 Stelle, Forza Italia, and Lega Nord didn't show. With that lack of support confirmed, the Euro-friendly technocrat had no choice but to resign as PM. Snap elections will be held in September and at this moment Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy is in pole position. If you couldn't tell from the name, the party has its roots in the neo-fascist movement.
Where The Crawdads Sing
There's a whiff of crime about the novel written by Delia Owens, and it's not just in the title. The romance-murder-mystery, which has recently been adapted to film, cannot shake off the fact that the author is wanted for questioning in Zambia over a decades-old murder. At the time, Owens was running an elephant conservation project. Her husband Mark led aggressive, armed anti-poaching patrols to protect the reserve. The film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and has been described as "spoon-fed melodrama", "gator-bait", and "a glossy, Instagram-buffet of cinematic faux-feminism".
Highlights
The Image
A silverback Grauer's gorilla in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kahuzi-Biega national park. The habitat of this extraordinary species is being diminished by the charcoal fuel trade. Image supplied as part of Ed Ram's photo essay for The Guardian .
The Quote
"Hasta la vista, baby."
– In his final speech to the House of Commons, outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson borrowed Schwarzenegger's sign off from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. It was typical cheerful Boris. To the roll of wives, lovers, and children he's left in his wake — we can now add a nation.
The Numbers
17-minute flights
- There's nothing more 2017 than dunking on the Kardashians so we'll keep this brief. Kylie Jenner was in the news again this week. The 'self-made billionaire' (lol) took her Gulfstream for a little hop from one side of LA to the other . Sure, the traffic there sucks. But it was still only a 40 minute drive. What did she do with the 23 minutes saved?
376 cops
- The most recent report into the catastrophic police failures during the Uvalde school shooting was released early in the week . It found that there were 376 armed police on the scene busying themselves with not stopping the massacre. There's an Australian aphorism suitable for the occasion, but sadly unsuitable for publishing in a family newsletter. So we'll leave it at this: useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
The Headlines
"We won't invest in pornography or weapons, Vatican finance chiefs vow" — Irish Independent . How on earth are they just getting to this now?
"Quarterback known as 'AR-15' changes nickname, citing mass shootings" — The New York Times. As above.
The Special Mention
World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen checks out. The reigning five-time winner is simply "not motivated" to defend his title this year. There are few qualities more commendable (and, in the fantasy world of professional sport, rarer) than knowing when the party is over.
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek probes postmortem sperm retrieval
- Foreign Policy refuses to pay the mortgage
- The Walrus is concerned about Canada's southern neighbour
The Answer...
So, do animals dream? A growing body of evidence is shifting the theory of dreams away from 'mechanistic replay' and towards the je ne sais quoi of subjective consciousness. The unwelcome corollary to which is the presence of nightmares. How many of the 72 billion land animals slaughtered for meat each year have a fitful final night?
