They found a Darth Vader fish

Happy almost-weekend, fam!

I spent the full day yesterday running around the city, filming my first-ever long form video where I followed an awesome local hero and helped them with their project. It went super well and I can't wait to show you!

Later next month, this newsletter is going to have a refresh to make it bigger and better, and it's gonna be really amazing.

But before that, I'm off on vacation!

I'll be fully offline for about 2 weeks on an African safari with my family, so next week's newsletter will be the last until later in the month.

I'll remind you next week and will miss you all, but I won't be away for long!

This week we're covering an international collaboration called Operation Green Shield, a local hero named "Dolphin Man", a new fished named after Darth Vader, food-as-medicine emerging in NYC, and much more...

Monday, July 21 (watch)

🛡️ Operation Green Shield just took place across the Amazon in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru with 350 coordinated raids to stop illegal mining, logging, and wildlife trafficking, recovering $64 million of assets thanks to satellites and cooperation between the nations (Steven Grattan|AP/Euronews)

🍄 A new mushroom diaper was invented to combat the waste from 300,000 plastic diapers thrown out every minute, thanks to a plastic-eating fungi which biodegrades the diaper in the landfill within a year to help combat plastic pollution (Meghan Cook|GoodGoodGood & Elizabeth Segran|Fast Company)

🌊 The Emscher River in Germany has transformed from the dirtiest river in Europe into a thriving waterway full of life, thanks to a €5.5 million project cleaning the river which was contaminated by factory waste and sewage, with the water now so clear you can sometimes see to the bottom (Ajit Niranjan|The Guardian)

🐦 Community win: zhadowpupets set up bird feeders to support a few local families of finches.

"Dolphin Man" is helping dolphins become legal people (watch)

🐬 A director known as “Dolphin Man” is sailing around, cutting fishing lines off dolphins, and getting them to be legally considered people.

Jeongjoon Lee is a Korean filmmaker with several documentaries about Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, where about 120 live near South Korea’s Jeju island formed 2 million years ago by an underwater volcanic eruption.

Still filled with lava tube caves, the UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site is also home to a pod of these bottlenose dolphins that are threatened by human boats, fishing gear, and pollution.

So groups and activists like Dolphin Man got a marine protected area set up, but are aiming to really protect the dolphins by recognizing them as legal persons, with rights and protections to survival, able to take those who threaten the creatures to court.

And to convince people they deserve it, they’ve made a personalized "fin book" with each dolphin’s name next to their dorsal fin, hoping for that for the first time, South Korea designates an animal as a legal person, following the footsteps of many others giving status to everything from a mountain in New Zealand, whales in the Pacific Ocean, and a river in Canada.

So is this crazy, or do these dolphins deserve to be people?

Wednesday, July 23 (watch)

🐟 A new fish named after Darth Vader was just discovered in volcanic fjord coral reefs by Papua New Guinea, with researchers naming it Eviota vader since it’s the darkest of any known dwarfgoby fish with yellow eyes which likely plays an important role in healthy reef ecosystems (Kristine Sabillo|Mongabay)

🥗 Hospitals in New York City are prescribing a box of fresh produce for six months in a “food as medicine” program to help treat chronic health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, with data showing promise in helping people adopt healthier lifestyles (Apolline Lamy|Healthbeat New York)

🔋 A new United Nations report says the world has reached a positive tipping point for renewable energy sources that are unquestionably cheaper than fossil fuels even though subsidies are 9 times lower, saying countries clinging to fossil fuels are sabotaging their economies and making the wrong choice (Seth Borenstein|AP)

🐝 Community win: sufferville put out wooden cylinder bee homes for carpenter bees to safely lay eggs and has seen about seven hatch so far.

The biggest-ever celebration of the sun!* (watch)

*This was a paid collaboration just for social media. I only collaborate on ideas I truly believe in, and am including it here to provide more interesting content that you may like :)

🌞 The sun hits us every moment with 10,000 times more energy than the world uses, and for the first time in history, we now have a way to capture more of it than ever.

Three men named Daryl, Calvin, and Gerald were at Bell Laboratories in 1954, trying to make a usable panel that converts the sun’s energy into electricity by improving the efficiency of the first solar cell from 70 years earlier, when they succeeded by swapping in silicon.

The New York Times said it was the beginning of a new era realizing, “one of mankind’s most cherished dreams — the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.”

And it’s looking like they were right.

Solar panels used to be just for things like the International Space Station and calculators, but now they're everywhere from my bedroom window to 1 in 5 homes in Pakistan.  

Solar is massively outperforming expectations as the fastest growing energy source for 20 years in a row, and the tech is improving so much that just covering existing roofs would generate two-thirds of the world’s electricity without needing any more land...

The only thing standing in the way of complete solar prosperity is convincing decision-makers to stop delaying the inevitable, so people are coming together in the biggest-ever celebration of the sun on September 21, called Sun Day.

Events all over the nation will show off what’s been built, realize the possibilities ahead, and demand the necessary laws and investments to create this better future we’re on the cusp of.

So sign up for an event near you, and I’ll see you on Sun Day!

What else is going right?

🧑‍⚖️ Ignoring climate change is now illegal, per the highest court in the world!

💡 Renewables are now helping areas avoid blackouts.

🍇 This vineyard is fully powered by the wind.

🩹 Concrete that can heal itself.

This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. Over 1 million people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and Bluesky. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by emailing jacob@jacobsimonsays.com. See you next week for more :)