Welcome back, Shit Givers.

In brief: Air pollution and infertility. A drastic life expectancy gap. A big test for higher education. And AI rethinks pesticides.

But first: a devastating swath of the polar vortex crushed middle America this week, including Texas. While discussion abounds about how to rebuild their relatively isolated power grid, we need to help the millions who are suffering today.

Do what you do, Shit Givers. Choose from among a number of immediately impactful Action Steps right here.

As always: You can read this issue on the website, or you can listen to it on the podcast.

This Week

On a DVD player in my basement in the year 2000 AD, subbing in for about 180 AD, Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, said “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

What it asks is, essentially, how do you want to be remembered?

This fun line from the script of Gladiator is now tattooed on LeBron James’s arm, and is also, on one hand, a helpful maxim for conducting one’s self, especially during, say, a pandemic, amid a climate crisis, during a devastating, freak winter storm.

Don’t: fly business to Cancun if you’re one of two elected senators from the state suffering terribly from said winter storm. Don’t tell your followers to storm the Capitol. Don’t spend a lifetime spouting racist, climate-denying bullshit on conservative talk radio.

History will not look on you fondly.

On the other hand, the real Marcus Aurelius (not the one strangled by son Joaquin Phoenix) said “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” Marcus didn’t give a shit about eternity.

In fact, he openly mused about how ridiculously long eternity actually is (the longest), and how tiny we are all, inside of it, and so proclaimed that focusing on what you can control, and then deciding what to do, right now, in this moment, is the best way to live.

The best way, in fact, to Do Better Better.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

Breathe in the future

Understand this: In 2019, author and now-Boston Globe Editorial Page Editor Bina Venkataraman joined our podcast for a conversation about optimism and “how to be a better ancestor”.

While we only briefly touched on air pollution, the mental framework of taking action now to build a better future for those yet to come has stuck with me, and especially this week.

From The Guardian:

Exposure to air pollution significantly increases the risk of infertility, according to the first study to examine the danger to the general population.

The analysis of 18,000 couples in China found that those living with moderately higher levels of small-particle pollution had a 20% greater risk of infertility, defined as not becoming pregnant within a year of trying.

The study design did not enable the scientists to determine how air pollution might damage fertility, but pollution particles are known to cause inflammation in the body, which could damage egg and sperm production, the scientists said.

Another recent study of 600 women attending a US infertility clinic found that increased exposure to air pollution was associated with a lower number of maturing eggs in the ovaries.

What it means: Eliminating major sources of air pollution is the single most effective 80/20 move we can take to immediately improve health outcomes at home and around the world.

From childhood asthma to the many of the same pre-existing conditions that increase COVID mortality, clean air is a human right.

We’ve got a long way to go, but how have we made direct progress against the major air pollution culprits?

• Industrial: Steel and aluminum manufacturers are finally inching away from coal
• Power: Biden’s tossing Obama’s Clean Power Plan -- because he’s aiming even higher.
• Transportation: The automobile industry is ditching tailpipes for batteries -- and spending billions to build better ones. Jaguar and Land Rover are the latest to go all-electric.

⚡️ Action Step: Volunteer locally and/or donate to Moms Clean Air Force, a community of over 1,000,000 moms and dads united against air pollution. Find your chapter here.

COVID

Failure to launch

Understand this: Life expectancy in the US fell by a full year in 2020, the largest drop since WWII (Black life expectancy fell 2.7 years -- demolishing 20 years of gains). The gap between white and Black Americans is now a full six years.

But it didn’t have to be this way. If US life expectancy was the same as other G7 countries, we could have avoided 40% of the 470,000 deaths to-date.

What it means: Elections matter. Trump mattered. But our infectious disease and public health infrastructures were a disaster long before 45 took office. We were short 120,000+ nurses pre-COVID. Our just-in-time supply chain failed. Air pollution and unavailable and unaffordable healthy food are cutting lives short.

⚡️ Action Step: It was Splendid and the Vile two-baths-a-day protagonist Winston Churchill who claimed we should never let a good crisis go to waste. While we build new infectious disease preparedness efforts, let’s make good with millions of Americans who are still suffering through this thing.

Increased trust in vaccines is great, but people need to eat. Use 5Calls.org to demand your senators hold COVID relief town halls with you and your neighbors this week. Put ‘em on the record.

Education

Blow down the doors

Understand this: College isn't for everyone, but if you're in the market, higher education in America isn’t exactly cheap, or equitable.

But a new experiment might further challenge that bullshit.

From The New York Times:

The Equity Lab enrolled more than 300 11th and 12th graders from high-poverty high schools in 11 cities across the country in a Harvard course, “Poetry in America: The City From Whitman to Hip-Hop,” taught by a renowned professor, Elisa New.

The high schoolers met the same rigorous standards of the course created for Harvard’s admitted students — they listened to lectures, took quizzes and completed essays, and they were graded by the same standards.

Of the students who completed the course in fall 2019 — 92 percent of whom were students of color, 84 percent of whom qualified for free lunch — 89 percent passed, earning four credits from Harvard Extension School that are widely accepted by other colleges.

The experiment has given the high-profile gatekeepers of opportunity a gut check.

What it means: Solving the existential, systemic problems of today and tomorrow requires a massively diverse set of new perspectives, and lowering the barriers to university are a big step in the right direction.

⚡️ Action Step: Help send more talented students of color and low-income students to school by supporting the National Education Equity Lab’s work.

Among the students enrolled is Latisha Jones, 17, of Flint, Michigan: She lived through the city’s lead water crisis.

“The fact that I can do this, a girl from Flint, the place with the dirty water, it really makes me feel empowered,” she said.

Let’s go.

Food & Water & AI!

What the hell is a “sustainable pesticide”?

Understand this: Drawdown lists plant-based diets as one of the top five ways to fight the climate crisis (and improve health outcomes).

But industrial farming and pesticides have destroyed our soil. And plants, unfortunately, grow in soil.

From Bloomberg Green:

AI is among new methods emerging as environmental and health concerns spur a quest for sustainable alternatives to traditional pesticides used by farmers. Demand also is being supported by regulatory pressures and lawsuits, most notably Bayer AG’s $11 billion settlement deal over claims its long-used glyphosate herbicide causes cancer.

What it means: We need to grow more food, we need to grow healthy, affordable food as we switch to plant-based diets, we need to do it with fewer pesticides, and we need to do it all while using even less land.

If AI can help without, you know, poisoning more people, I’ll take it.

⚡️ Action Step: Perspective is everything. Follow some (or all!) of the 2020 picks for “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” and let’s curate a more inclusive vision of the future of AI, food, and more.