Welcome back, Shit Giver.

This is Important, Not Important, the newsletter that pairs curated, vital science news with Action Steps to fight for a better future — for everyone.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

There is no justice without equity, no equity without justice

My friend Franklin Leonard had a tweet a few years back that reads "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. (It's not.)". While we're nowhere near equality, it's really important for white folks to understand that their everyday life doesn't have to be fancy to be privileged. Clean air shouldn't, intuitively make one think "I've got it made", but you do.

Our system of racial inequality is so comprehensive and so unscalable that many of us don't even see it, because it's all we've ever known. This naivety, often wading in negligence, is not an excuse.

From The Guardian in London:

"A coroner has made...history by ruling that air pollution was a cause of the death of a nine-year-old girl.

Philip Barlow, the inner south London coroner, said Ella Kissi-Debrah’s death in February 2013 was caused by acute respiratory failure, severe asthma and air pollution exposure.
He said she was exposed to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (PM) pollution in excess of World Health Organization guidelines, the principal source of which were traffic emissions.

The coroner said the failure to reduce pollution levels to legal limits possibly contributed to her death, as did the failure to provide her mother with information about the potential for air pollution to exacerbate asthma."

Black people have been fighting, unsuccessfully, to breathe for decades. In the meantime, white people get better and faster help after wildfires, in the most progressive state in the richest country in the world, despite Brown kids inhaling more of the smoke. Oil companies have lied to you, used PR firms to lie to you some more, and been hiding money while millions of Americans can't afford food. COVID is killing Black and Brown people at rates more than double whites, because of pre-existing conditions from air pollution. But the system is a global one. Carbon emissions of the richest 1% more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity. We need to build a radically new system, and there can be no justice without equity, and no equity without justice.

⚡️ Take Action: Massively wealthy white men and their ancestors are behind the bulk of this fight. And they're bankrolling the vital fight for Georgia's two Senate seats, too.

Volunteer and donate with Vote Save America to help us get those seats and pass ground-breaking climate, clean air, and clean water legislation.

COVID

"Speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue." - Edward R. Murrow

To be fully transparent, I genuinely don't know how to fix society's misinformation problem. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, I have talked to hundreds of smart people about all of the pieces, from technology to availability to ethics and legalities, and I just don't know what the way forward is. Mark Zuckerberg is the most powerful person on the planet and has zero checks on his power.

More to come, I hope, because, from The New York Times:

"Facebook confirmed that it has in the past few days rolled back a change that lifted news from authoritative outlets over hyperpartisan sources after November’s election, signaling a return to normalcy for the social network.

The change involved boosting the weight that Facebook’s news feed algorithm assigned to an internal publisher quality score known as “news ecosystem quality,” or N.E.Q. It was implemented several days after the election as part of Facebook’s emergency “break glass” plan to combat misinformation during the critical postelection period, while votes were still being counted."

Really great timing seeing as only 50% of Americans get the flu shot, and we're trying to vaccinate the entire population of the planet as quickly as possible, using a vaccine type we've never used before for a virus we've never had before.

Twitter, for their part, said this week that they'll label misleading COVID info. We'll see how that goes.

⚡️ Take Action: word of mouth is the single most effective marketing around. So it's on you. Well, yes, it's on all of us to spread reputable vaccine information, but for those of you with significant social followings: this is your moment to shine. Remember: Elvis (!) took the polio vaccine on the Ed Sullivan show to prove it was safe! What a hero. Sure, yes, he died on the toilet, but it was 20 years later and who among us hasn't come close?

ANYWAYS: the point is: our community can lead on this. Check out resources to create your own videos from the American Influencer Council here, put it out there, amplify it, and let's get this shit under control.

Medicine

Moderation in everything, especially for C. diff

Antibiotics are one of those incredible innovations, not unlike the combustion engine or chemotherapy or the internet, that made the 20th century so markedly different from everything that came before it.

This newsletter is basically one FUNNY STORY after another about all of those but specifically this time about antibiotics. From The Washington Post:

"A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases in January found that 1 in 4 children given antibiotics in U.S. children’s hospitals are prescribed the drugs inappropriately — the wrong types, or for too long, or when they’re not necessary.

Jason Newland, a pediatrics professor at Washington University in St. Louis who co-wrote the study, said that is probably an underestimate because the research involved 32 children’s hospitals already working together on proper antibiotic use. Newland said the nation’s 250-plus children’s hospitals need to do better.

[...] Superbug infections can be extremely difficult — and sometimes impossible — to treat. Doctors often must turn to strong medicines with side effects or give drugs intravenously.

“It’s getting more and more worrisome,”said (Shannon Ross, an associate professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham). “We have had patients we have not been able to treat because we’ve had no antibiotics available” that could kill the germs."

Obviously we still need antibiotics, like we still need chemo and the web. Not so much with the fossil fuels. Regardless.

⚡️ Take Action: bookmark this CDC page on when and when not to use antibiotics.

Food & Water

We stan Jose Andres again

I keep coming back to Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen for three reasons:

1. Scalable disaster relief is only going get more essential as we confront the climate crisis
2. They've been incredibly effective
3. Theirs is a great model to show how one person can pivot their skillset and platform to reach millions, but also enable massive local participation

From The Huffington Post, with glee:

"In Washington, D.C., he delivered a truckload of thousands of N95 masks—extras from Yokohama—to local hospitals. From Corona, Queens, he implored members of Congress to do something about the long lines of people waiting for food. He lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill for disaster funding and did a town hall with Joe Biden about food insecurity.

During the few times he was actually at home in Bethesda, Maryland, he made recipe videos to inspire fatigued home cooks. Andrés prepped migas, a classic Spanish dish made from stale bread. He made his mother’s lentil stew. And in a frenzied five minutes, 33 seconds—the length of the song “My Shot” from the musical “Hamilton”—he made a dish of fried rice, all while singing (badly), dancing (barefoot and enthusiastically), and selling, Crazy Eddie-style, the virtues of fresh vegetables and herbs. (The video was viewed more than 620,000 times on Twitter.)"

⚡️ Take Action: we've talked about finding your own way into systemic impact in Do Better Better essays. Until then, lots of folks are going hungry and it's almost Christmas. Support World Central Kitchen here, and Feeding America foodbanks here.

Quick Hits

• The EU agreed to slash emissions to 55% of 1990 levels by 2030. Ante up!
• Follow up: Michael Bloomberg writes that business climate reporting standards should become mandatory in the US
• Venice's fancy new seawalls are already struggling
• These guys say carbon pricing has no future in America. So why did Canada just double down
• It's time to talk about fume events on planes
• Lithium is (for now) a fundamental part of battery tech. Here's an ETF you can buy that'll invest in the whole chain.
• The Galactic Federation interviewed Earth for membership. It didn't go well (I have watched this 40000 times).

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being a part of the most impactful community on in the internet.