1 big thing: The energy debate over "green colonialism" in Africa

Illustration of a vintage black and white photograph of an African landscape with a flag featuring the recycle symbol

2. The oceans are the next frontier for carbon removal

3. The metaverse medical student

Illustration of a doctor wearing a virtual reality headset.

4. Exploding demand for lab space

Illustration of a neon sign in the shape of a beaker, with the words no vacancy over it. 

5. Worthy of your time

6. 1 automation thing: The AI illustrator

Welcome to Axios Future, and specifically Santa Clara, California, where I'm getting my qubits on at the Q2B quantum computing conference. 

If you haven't subscribed, can I interest you in a free holiday gift?

Send feedback, tips and AI-generated heavy metal album covers (see item No. 6) to bryan.walsh@axios.com.

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,689 words or about 6 minutes.

Future

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deepBlue

Axios Future

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1 big thing: The benefits and risks of new tech will decide the future

Illustration of  a typed colon, end parenthesis and colon, resembling a smiling and frowning face.

2. Immigration is the one easy trick to boost U.S. population

Illustration of the American flag with a stripe as a red carpet with a portable rope barrier beside it

3. The ongoing U.S. failure on rapid COVID tests

Illustration of a test tube surrounded by metal barriers. 

4. Your kid has a new robot best friend

6. 1 (last) sci-fi thing: "The Matrix Resurrections"

Welcome to Axios Future, where we've reached the end.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey over the past two years, and thank you especially to my editor Alison Snyder for her calm guidance and willingness to put up with my puns.

What's next: That would be the Axios What's Next newsletter, which Future subscribers will start getting in the new year.

You can follow my own personal and professional future on Twitter.

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,796 words or 7 minutes.

1 big thing: The global decline of democracy

Illustration of an arm going in a downward trend line casting a ballot 

2. A better work life awaits "Out of Office"

3. Losing our religion

4. Killing the "uncanny valley" in the metaverse

6. 1 sci-fi thing: Ending "The Expanse"

Welcome to Axios Future, where we're not done quite yet.

Today's third-to-last edition looks at democratic backsliding, a better way to remote work, and the best sci-fi show you should be watching (and reading).

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,560 words or about 6 minutes.

1 big thing: The case for creating more of everything

Illustration of a pattern of upward-pointing arrows.

2. The decline of standardized tests

3. Cybersecurity became everyone's problem in 2021

Illustration of a skull and crossbones with the crossbones as cursors. 

4. Amazon Pharmacy leaders demoted

6. 1 sci-fi thing: Watching the end times with "Station Eleven"

Welcome to Axios Future, where I'll pronounce Omicron any way it wants, provided it stays far away.

Today's second-to-last edition features wonky economic takes, why you may not need that SAT prep book, and a show you must watch.

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,734 words or 6½ minutes.

1 big thing: Quantum computing nears a quantum leap

Illustration of a computer floating in the center of an atom.

2. Running the international quantum race

3. Charting an ethical path for quantum computing

Illustration of a loading screen on a computer with an electron breaking through the side of the screen

4. An AI can inspire intimacy (with a little human help)

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6. 1 good thing: The return of "the Big Oyster"

Welcome to Axios Future, where I have some news: I'll be leaving Axios at the end of the year. 

For the last few editions, I'm going to look at the major emerging trends shaping the coming decades. 

As an Axios Future subscriber, you'll start to receive Axios What's Next in the new year, a daily newsletter that explores the future of how we work, play and get around. I think you'll enjoy it!

Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,780 words or about 7 minutes.

National

The waters around the remote inhabited island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic are set to become the world's fourth-largest marine sanctuary.

The big picture: Currently less than 3% of the world's ocean area is fully protected from human activity, compared to 13% of the world's much smaller land mass. With the oceans coming under increasing pressure from fishing, pollution and climate change, expanding true marine sanctuaries is more important than ever.

By the numbers: The four-island archipelago of Tristan da Cunha is a British territory that is more than 2,000 miles east of South America and a week-long boat trip from South Africa.

The new marine sanctuary, which was announced on Friday, will encompass 265,437 square miles, making it almost three times larger than the entire United Kingdom.

How it works: 90% of the waters around the island chain will become a full "no-take" sanctuary, meaning that fishing, mining, and any other kind of extractive activity will be banned.

The sanctuary will be part of the U.K. government's larger Blue Belt Programme, which already protects some 2.7 million square miles of marine ecosystems around British territory across the globe. 

What they're saying: "This is a place that has a unique ecosystem that is found nowhere else," marine conservationist Enric Sala told National Geographic magazine.

The bottom line: It wasn't that long ago that even environmentalists thought the oceans were far too vast to be affected by human activity, but we now know that's not the case. If we want the oceans and all they support to thrive in the future, we need to protect them in the present.

Editor's note: A reference to a PNAS paper on how expanding marine protected areas might improve future fishing catches was deleted, after the paper was retracted.

A vast new ocean sanctuary

Over 260,000 sq. miles will be protected from human activity.

Penguins on Gough Island in the South Atlantic

Northern rockhopper penguins on Gough Island in the Tristan da Cunha chain. Photo: Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Environment

Science

The waters around the remote inhabited island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic are set to become the world&#x27;s fourth-largest marine sanctuary.The big picture: Currently <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="less than 3%" data-vars-click-url="https://mpatlas.org/zones/" data-vars-content-id="0b2efe1d-4231-4a6f-bc2f-19d21ee297af" data-vars-headline="A vast new ocean sanctuary" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://mpatlas.org/zones/" target="_blank">less than 3%</a> of the world&#x27;s ocean area is fully protected from human activity, compared to 13% of the world&#x27;s much smaller land mass. With the oceans coming under increasing pressure from fishing, pollution and climate change, expanding true marine sanctuaries is more important than ever.

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

The lightning-quick spread of the Omicron variant has finally made clear the value of cheap and accessible rapid at-home COVID tests.

Why it matters: Omicron moves fast, and rapid tests that can prove infectiousness instantly, rather than PCR lab tests that can take days to get results, can help to stem the spread.

But new U.S. policies to provide more tests for free are likely too little, too late to make a meaningful dent in this wave.

Driving the news: Yesterday, President Biden announced his administration would purchase 500 million rapid tests this winter and make them available for Americans to order for free, with the first shipment arriving in January.

The White House will also establish new testing sites and invoke the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more diagnostics. 

The big picture: While more tests will help — as will providing them free of charge — the U.S. is still hamstrung by months of neglecting the importance of rapid tests and by the FDA's sluggish moves to approve more of them. 

"Rapid tests are one of the most powerful tools that have not really been utilized in a powerful way in this pandemic," Michael Mina, a former Harvard epidemiologist who is now the chief science officer of the home testing company eMed, said in a press event yesterday.

But making at-home tests free won't help much if supplies remain scarce, and 500 million won't go far if Americans are expected to use tests whenever they gather for the foreseeable future.

The bottom line: Rapid tests aren't a panacea — they'll miss some cases, and countries like the U.K. and Germany that have rolled them out in far larger numbers haven't fully escaped Omicron.

But they sure would be nice to have now. 

The ongoing U.S. failure on rapid COVID tests

White House moves to increase the supply of rapid tests will help, but it's still too little.

Coronavirus testing

Coronavirus

The lightning-quick spread of the Omicron variant has finally made clear the value of cheap and accessible rapid at-home COVID tests.Why it matters: Omicron moves fast, and rapid tests that can prove infectiousness instantly, rather than PCR lab tests that can take days to get results, can help to stem the spread.

The U.S. faces a range of health care flashpoints — unaffordable drugs, opioids, vaping — as we debate whether to adopt universal care. For now, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, but Republicans want to issue it a final death blow.

Health

The U.S. population grew just 0.1% in the year leading up to July 1, the lowest rate since the nation's founding — and a major cause is sharply decreased immigration.

Why it matters: Sluggish population growth is putting the U.S. on a pace to be an older, less productive and less dynamic country in the future.

Reversing declining fertility rates is challenging, but the U.S. could keep the population growing by increasing immigration — if it wants.

By the numbers: According to new data released yesterday by the Census Bureau, the U.S. population increased by just 392,665 people between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021.

For the first time ever, the increase from net international migration — the difference between the number of people who moved to the U.S. versus those who left — was a bigger contributor to population growth than a natural increase from the number of excess births over deaths.

Between the lines: The pandemic played a major role in nearly flat population growth, directly killing 475,000 people during the July to July year, indirectly contributing to more mortality by hindering access to medical care, and discouraging people from having children. 

“We knew [COVID-19] has had a lot of economic impact, a lot of social impact; this shows it has had a big demographic impact that is going to last us for several years,” William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post. 

The big picture: The pandemic won't last forever, but the general decline in fertility rates in the U.S. is a long-running trend, one mirrored around the world, that seems unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

But immigration is something the government can control, and it's been a major advantage for the U.S., fueling innovation and business formation. 

Surveys indicate tens of millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean alone would move to the U.S. if they could.

The catch: Even as immigration added more to population growth than natural increase, the number of people moving to the U.S. has fallen drastically in recent years, dropping from over 1 million in 2016 to just 247,000 in July 2020 to July 2021.

The bottom line: If the U.S. wants to add workers and dynamism in the future, letting in more of the people who desperately want to live here could help.

Immigration is the one easy trick to boost U.S. population growth

Americans aren't having more babies, but we can let in more immigrants — if we want.

Population

Immigration

The U.S. population <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="grew just 0.1%" data-vars-click-url="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-population-estimates.html" data-vars-content-id="4835b0cc-1407-448e-a7f3-138c35139043" data-vars-headline="Immigration is the one easy trick to boost U.S. population growth" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-population-estimates.html" target="_blank">grew just 0.1%</a> in the year leading up to July 1, the lowest rate since the nation&#x27;s founding — and a major cause is sharply decreased immigration.Why it matters: Sluggish population growth is putting the U.S. on a pace to be an older, less productive and less dynamic country in the future.

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

The future we will live in will largely be a function of balancing the benefits that new technology brings with the risks and downsides it inevitably causes.

Why it matters: The pandemic has demonstrated both the value of accelerated technology and the penalty when it's held back by red tape and regulation — lessons that would be smart to take for a future that demands innovation.

But every innovation has its dark side, and it will be up to us to manage that minefield.

The big picture: In my first item for my first Axios Future newsletter nearly two years ago, I wrote, "if we properly harness threatening technologies and mature as a species, we could not only survive the 21st century, but thrive in it."

I still believe that, and the experience of the pandemic has only deepened that conviction.

While we now obsess over the waning efficacy of our vaccines against the new Omicron variant, we shouldn't forget the scientific marvel they represent. At the start of the pandemic, an optimistic timeline for developing a new vaccine was four years, but we had the first mRNA shots in arms in barely a year. 

Between the lines: If anything, I've come to believe that from pandemics to climate change to human development, what we need, in the words of economic policy analyst James Pethokoukis, is innovation "faster, please!" 

Innovation — of both products and ideas — is primarily what has raised much of humanity from the grinding poverty and stasis that was our baseline state for most of human history.

To fight climate change, to extend prosperity and energy to the billions who still lack it, we need to focus aggressively on accelerating innovation and dismantling the political obstacles that stand in its way.

In other words, we need more of everything — and we need it now.

Yes, but: If I've come to better appreciate the benefits of faster innovation, I haven't forgotten the dangers it presents, both in the social disruption it can cause and in the possibility that new technology might be used — purposefully or accidentally — for malign purposes.

We still don't know if the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from the accidental lab leak of an engineered pathogen, as some scientists allege — but we do know that new biology tools will make it increasingly easy to create dangerous bugs.

Artificial intelligence is primed to take off and could be a vital contributor to productivity growth in the future — but its current uses already carry the threat of intrusive surveillance and forced unemployment, and as it matures, it could lead to dangerous autonomous weapons or worse.

Geoengineering might represent our last-ditch option to avert catastrophic climate change, but at the price of fiddling with an impossibly complex natural system.

The other side: It can be easy to see people who are against building more housing or constructing new renewable power projects or expanding genetically modified foods as enemies of progress, but there's a cost to accelerated innovation that goes beyond the risks of misuse.

Human beings often have a vested interest in the way things are, and innovations that might improve us in the aggregate — like denser housing in cities — can still make some worse off at the individual level.

The continual struggle to get tens of millions of Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 demonstrates the limits of even the best technofixes if they aren't accompanied by social policy that addresses those fears.

My thought bubble: To me, that would require reclaiming the idea of progress itself as a good thing, a concept that has fallen out of favor in recent decades as the environmental, economic and social side effects of technology have become harder to ignore.

But progress is a race we can't stop running, both because many haven't yet had the chance to enter the competition and because we still need to outrun the threats to come.

The benefits and risks of new tech will decide the future

We need progress, both to make a better future and handle the problems that progress brings

Information technology

Automation and AI

The future we will live in will largely be a function of balancing the benefits that new technology brings with the risks and downsides it inevitably causes.Why it matters: The pandemic has demonstrated both the value of accelerated technology and the penalty when it&#x27;s held back by red tape and regulation — lessons that would be smart to take for a future that demands innovation.

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

Markets

Axios Markets

The Build Back Better bill might be dead, but it isn't buried. The progressive agenda remains, and substantial parts of it will reappear in Congress in the new year.

If those parts are focused in such a way as to minimize costs, they're likely to feature fewer subsidies and more of an emphasis on increasing the supply of crucial services.

Why it matters: From housing to child care to energy and education, the U.S. is beset by rising costs for the goods and services needed most — and part of the reason is there isn’t enough to go around. Economists and other experts worry that subsidizing those costs could make things worse.

Between the lines: Instead of reducing the rising costs of essential services like child care, the now-dead BBB bill would have mandated higher wages and greater credentials for workers, and then offset higher costs with hefty subsidies. 

In a November column in the New York Times, Samuel Hammond, Daniel Takash and Steven Teles of the center-right Niskanen Center said that wouldn't "reduce rising prices so much as mask them."

"If we try to deal with the problem of expensive health care, child care, and higher education by throwing more money at it," the economist Noah Smith wrote earlier this year, "the result will be that although consumers will pay less, society as a whole will pay more."

The big picture: If the socialism of BBB was ultimately defeated, Plan B might be what's come to be called "supply-side progressivism."

That agenda still involves spending money, just not quite as much of it. Aspects of the Build Back Better plan call for boosting research and infrastructure investment to make energy and transportation cheaper overall.

The bottom line: Next year's GDP would have been higher with BBB. But cash injections rarely improve productivity. 

Go deeper: The case for creating more of everything

The alternative to BBB: Supply-side progressivism

The U.S. is beset by rising costs for the goods and services needed most.

Illustration of quarter with a pause icon cut-out

Biden administration

The Build Back Better bill might be dead, but it isn&#x27;t buried. The progressive agenda remains, and substantial parts of it will reappear in Congress in the new year.<ul><li>If those parts are focused in such a way as to minimize costs, they&#x27;re likely to feature fewer subsidies and more of an emphasis on increasing the supply of crucial services.</li></ul>

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Bryan Walsh

Stories

A vast new ocean sanctuary

The ongoing U.S. failure on rapid COVID tests

Immigration is the one easy trick to boost U.S. population growth

The benefits and risks of new tech will decide the future

The alternative to BBB: Supply-side progressivism

Newsletter editions

Axios Future: Why progress matters

Axios Future: Build back more

Axios Future: Democracy in reverse

Axios Future: Quantum supremacy ⚛️

Axios Future: Green colonialism 🛢