Welcome back, Shit Givers.

In brief: Biden’s climate disclosures; Johnson & Johnson on pause; odds of being infected post-vaccination; bio-tech’s next decade; the EU draws up AI rules, and just in time

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This Week

“Should I jump?”

Every single one of us has stood on the cusp of some giant leap. Into a lake. Into a job. Into a relationship. Into an investment.

In that crucial moment, we throw all of the information we have against our ancient lizard brain, the same one that protected us from tigers, but struggles like hell with correlation vs causation, and basically fails entirely when it comes to probabilistic thinking.

For example, even when we know the odds, some of us (cough cough) sweat (visibly) about our 747 nose-diving into a barn when we’re significantly more likely to die in a car wreck.

Knowing the full story, knowing real, overwhelming odds gives most of us the perspective we need to make rational decisions. To weigh benefits vs risks.

Sometimes those odds are available, and occasionally, very clear, and we choose correctly: the mRNA vaccines are superb, and while the technology is new-ish and long-term efficacy is essentially being tested live, on all of us, millions of recipients with statistically few side effects, and a very small number of infections (more on that below) post-vaccination means the overwhelmingly rational choice is to get that shot, yesterday.

Should the FDA and CDC have paused Johnson & Johnson shots to study a very small number of blood clot issues in a very specific demographic?

I don’t know.

On the one hand, I’d say “It’s a pandemic. Just don’t give them to that demographic, more people are going to die by pausing it for a week, let’s go”.

While on the other, I’d sure like everybody to have as much confidence in these vaccines as I can.

We know now that we bring biases and emotions into every decision. That we are prone to thinking fast, but also capable of thinking slow. Both are useful.

One will make you jump into that lake, because it’s “rad”.

The other will remind you that you have children to feed, goddamnit, and you have no idea what and how many boulders lie beneath the surface.

One will make you say “well, we’re fucked, let’s geoengineer the skies”. The other will remind you we have absolutely no idea what that will do, but Snowpiercer didn’t make it feel appealing, so let’s study it, but mostly try to reduce emissions to nothing.

My job is to think slow, for you: to gather as much reputable information as I can, and then help communicate the broader picture and new odds of safety as soon as those are available.

Communication is everything. Learn the entire story. Get context. Judge the risk. Take Action. Make the leap.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

Bring me receipts

Tired: voluntary climate-risk disclosures
Wired: mandatory, internationally standardized climate-risk disclosures
Electric: regulations to require real-world actions on shitty disclosure results

What it means: It’s only a matter of time before the EU and UK regulate climate-risk disclosures in businesses, portfolios, etc.

And the US isn’t far behind, as Biden’s about to sign an executive order to combat risks in every corner of the government.

What matters after all that is how new regulations are enforced.

In the meantime, disclosures might come whether companies like them or not.

From Bloomberg Green:

“Efforts to identify and attribute global emissions will get a boost from satellites to be launched by a consortium including Carbon Mapper, the State of California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planet Labs Inc.

Data collected by the satellites will pinpoint and measure sources of methane and carbon dioxide, as well as more than two dozen other environmental indicators, the group said in a statement on Thursday. The first two satellites are set to launch in 2023, with more to be added two years later.

While green house gas observations from space can be affected by cloud cover, precipitation and varying light intensity, the ability to attribute leaks to individual polluters is getting closer as more satellites that offer greater precision and more frequent coverage are launched.”

⚡️ Action Step: None of it matterrrrrs unless we restore voting rights and end gerrymandering in the US, right meow. Any bill passed to fight the climate crisis will be walked right back by a party addicted to power, profits, and white supremacy.

Join up with the Pod Save America crew on 4/20 to text your reps to support HR 1.

COVID

“Never tell me the odds” (I’m kidding, it’s just a great quote, the whole point of today’s email is to tell you the odds)

Understand this: Of the 66 million Americans that have completed a full course of vaccinations, just .009 have become infected.

Go deeper:

• Just 5800 cases of “breakthrough” infections, out of 66 million
• 40% of infections were in folks over 60
• 29% of cases (so about 1700) were asymptomatic
• Most of the rest were mild
• Just 7% (about 406) of those infected were hospitalized
• And only 74 have died (1%)

What it means: 74 deaths is, of course, a brutal loss for 74 families, but no COVID vaccine provides for 100% protection.

How could someone become infected after being vaccinated?

Folks with compromised immune systems may not be able to marshal the same response as others, or a frontline worker (or, particularly, a medical worker) might be exposed to an unusual high viral load, and become overwhelmed.

Nevertheless -- these cases remain exceedingly rare.

⚡️ Action Step: Get your shots, wait two weeks, do the math and wear a mask when it makes sense to protect yourself and others.

Medicine & Bio-tech

The next frontier is inside your bag of flesh

Understand this: Between climate and COVID, biotech flies fairly under the radar, save for the mRNA vaccines that are saving billions of lives.

We’ve come a long way. But the next 25 years could seem like science fiction -- which could be terrifying, or great, if the sector’s a hell of a lot more inclusive than the last 25.

From Nature:

"Today, sequencing a human genome takes just ~$100 and a few hours—compared with the decades of effort and billions of dollars spent on the first three-gigabase genome.

This means the DNA of an increasingly representative and diverse slice of the world’s population will be sequenced: a million or so human genomes have been sequenced to date and 60 million genomes are projected by 2025, with another 100 million just in China by the decade’s end.

In tandem, smart devices and wearables will make mass phenotyping a reality. In the new era of human and holobiont real-world research, wearables and in-home sensors will provide longitudinal data, enabling detailed parsing of hitherto ill-defined states related to nutrition, health and disease. Crucially, it may also provide direction on how and when to intervene."

And that’s just the start.

⚡️ Action Step: Harnessing world changing technology for good requires having people in office who understand it.

Pod guest Amanda Litman runs Run for Something -- they support candidates 40 and under from the municipal level up to state offices, and their recent endorsements were 56% women, 27% LGBTQIA+, 57% BIPOC, and 77% from low-income backgrounds.

You can support them right here, or even better, run for something yourself!

Food & Water

Feed the people

Understand this: COVID relief is coming, but for many children in the US, hunger remains. I cannot describe how quickly this turns me into the Hulk.

From Politico:

“Congress first created the $2 billion-a-month program called Pandemic-EBT, or P-EBT, last spring during the early days of the pandemic when schools were shuttered to give households a debit card to buy groceries. Lawmakers extended it for the whole school year in September as families continued to grapple with school disruption.

The slow rollout shows the pitfalls of standing up new bureaucratic channels during an emergency. It also could be exacerbating alarmingly high rates of child hunger. One in six households with children is reporting they do not have enough to eat, a rate much higher than even in the depths of the Great Recession.”

What it means: Multiple studies have shown that food insecurity and hunger in toddlerhood (and earlier) predict lower cognitive and social-emotional skills in kindergarten.

That’s not a causal link, folks, but for the richest country in the world, it’s completely inexcusable nonetheless.

⚡️ Action Step: Setup a monthly donation of any amount to Feeding America, and then email us a screenshot of the receipt. We’ll match all donations up to $5000 before Sunday night.

AI

Stay in your sandbox

Understand this: AI ethics are all the rage.

Well, there’s a fair amount of rage around AI ethics -- whether it’s Google firing the female, BIPOC-identifying members of their AI ethics team, or US police departments using shitty face tracking.

What it means: AI development needs to be paired with regulations for behavior that’s unethical.

The EU is making progress, following up a 2020 white paper with potential penalties of 4% of global annual turnover for offenders.

⚡️ Action Step: Get a broader perspective by reading Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford.

The Round Up

Google Earth’s new time-lapse climate change view is incredible.

Tucker Carlson has the top Facebook post on the planet right now, and it’s about how the vaccines don’t work, and we’re just gonna let that fly, because what’s another half a million dead from disinformation?

France banned domestic flights shorter than 2.5 hours, and is offering cash money for e-bikes in exchange for ditching your car

A lot of carbon offsets are bullshit. But some (like crushed rocks) might not be.

Related: Facebook’s still a climate misinformation cesspool.

The battery revolution is finally here. Here’s why. Will QuantumScape take the cake?

The US can get to 100% electric vehicles by 2035, and among many other benefits, it’ll save (checks notes) $2.7 trillion and 150,000 lives

There used to be 2.5 billion T.rex. BILLION. T.REX.

Pod Guests - In The News

Kelp god Bren Smith added smart monitoring to his east coast underwater ocean farm

Drs. Dawn Wright and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson may both be contenders to be the next NOAA directors

Molly Peterson takes a look at how California will[try to fix their long-standing nursing home disaster

Hana Kajimura says Allbirds will only use wool from regenerative sources by 2025

Fred Guttenberg has paired up with Brady to prevent gun violence