Welcome back, Shit Givers.

In brief: Brazil burns; 99% unvaccinated; Black health outcomes; Building resilient water systems

Quick note: yesterday, President Biden and a bipartisan group of Senators "struck a deal" on a middling infrastructure deal. Climate reactions were swift and uncompromising: if this is the deal, we're fucked. But Biden later revealed he'd only sign the infrastructure deal if it's paired with a reconciliation package.

It's confusing, there's a lot up in the air: check out Dr. Jesse Jenkins quick Twitter thread summary of what happened, and what we're still fighting for.

This Week

The path is becoming more clear every day.

If we’re going to turn back the clock on the climate crisis, the practical options available to us are, on the surface, intuitively understandable, if practically (and politically), at times, much more complex to implement.

Let's focus for a moment on the top-level:

At every opportunity, we should say yes, to more and more affordable (if not free) public transportation.

Yes to walkable cities, yes to bikes and e-bikes, yes to 3D ocean farming, yes to a clean electricity standard, massive battery farms and silvopasture and legumes, yes to all the onshore and offshore wind we can produce.

Yes to distributed solar, connected grids, reduced food waste, plant-based diets, less toxic A/C, tropical reforestation, induction stoves, better insulation, and cleaner cement and steel.

On the other hand, it's time to say no. No, to deforestation.

To give a hard pass to more roads, more gas automobile models, more drilling, more pipelines, and the like.

All of these are more difficult in implementation, but if we're going to rally the public, this menu of opportunities should be easy to grasp.

Some questions are less clear: the precious metals required to reboot a cleaner transportation sector are more geopolitically-constrained than oil ever was. So should we dig around the ocean for more, when the ocean’s already absorbed so much?

I don’t know. Black and white answers are often the most dangerous.

But I do know it’s more important than ever that we operate not only with speed, but with ethics and equity top of mind.

We started Important Jobs to connect job seekers and employers across the frontlines of the future, from clean energy tech to maternal health and food waste reduction.

But you don’t have to be an engineer, a CFO, or a nurse to contribute to transformational change: there’s never been a better time to ask questions, to build provocative art that interrogates assumptions and moves the masses.

To say “Yes, and” to the easy answers, above, but to use your “and” to explore and demand implementation that benefits everyone.

You're here because you want to help. You said: "What can I do?"

And I ask: "What CAN you do?"

Dig deeper, and you, too, can Do Better Better.

Let’s go.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

It’s Bolsonaro all the way down

Understand this: Depending on your perspective, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s either been wildly successful, or a terrifying failure.

Either way you look at it, he’s lived up to expectations. A former Army officer, unabashed fanboy of Brazil’s dictatorship days, and who was stabbed on the campaign trail, Bolsonaro swore in 2018 he’d never accept a loss in the country’s election.

He didn’t lose, and three years later, he’s not only mismanaged COVID to 500,000 Brazilian deaths and a negligent 11% vaccination rate, but is holding the Amazon for ransom.

Not that the world hasn’t tried.

From Emily Atkin at HEATED:

“Bolsonaro refused to make any agreement with the Biden administration to end his own legal assault on the Amazon. And his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, told the Wall Street Journal that it wouldn’t happen unless the U.S. gave Brazil at least $1 billion. “We think that $1 billion … is a very reasonable amount that can be mobilized up front,” he said.

Salles told the Journal that Brazil needs the money because it can’t save the rainforest without it. The country, he said, needs help to increase enforcement of environmental laws against illegal deforesters, and to support new programs to “provide alternatives to poor farmers who slash and burn to raise crops and cattle.”

But that’s very hard to believe, given the Bolsonaro administration’s record of implementing policies that actively weaken environmental enforcement and encourage slash and burning in the Amazon. The recent alarming acceleration in Amazon deforestation is a “direct result” of Bolsonaro’s policies, according to Amnesty International. Also, literally the day after the interview, Bolsonaro approved a 24 percent cut to Brazil’s environment budget.”

What it means: Despite all evidence that we all share the single inhabitable planet for light-years in any direction, humans have an impossibly poor understanding of the practical ramifications of living in an ecosystem.

The American West isn’t the only part of the world prepped to burn, releasing incredibly toxic soot and thousands of years of stored carbon -- the Amazon is parched and Bolsonaro’s deforestation efforts have left an invaluable ecosystem fragmented and ripe for terrifying fires.

⚡️ Action Step: The Amazon isn’t only in Brazil.

Conservation International’s investment fund, CI Ventures, provides financing to environmental businesses on the ground, in and around the Amazon in Colombia, including protecting crucial mangroves. Support their efforts right here.

COVID

The 99%

Understand this: The “Delta” COVID-19 variant is, probably, about 40% more transmissible than “Alpha” (the artist formerly known as B.1.1.7).

We have some ideas as to why it’s more infectious, but no solid answers yet. But we do know all of these mutations are relatively predictable -- mutating is what viruses do.

The difference with SARS-CoV-2 is it’s killed millions over the past year, and hospitalized millions more.

And yet, despite vaccination rates for adults in Global North countries nearing 70%, inequitable vaccine distribution -- called “apartheid” by some -- has left 99% of people in poor countries unvaccinated.

COVAX has failed -- so far.

What it means: Let’s jaunt back to our discussion about the obligations and ramifications of living in an ecosystem.

Viruses don’t care where you live or whether you’ve got money. A virus needs a host, and the more hosts we leave available to them, the more people get sick and die, of course, but also the more opportunities for viruses to mutate, and as is clear, now, become more transmissible.

The G7 came and left with a thematic failure: the failure to address systemic threats like COVID. They pledged to provide a billion doses to middle and low-income countries, which, counting on my fingers, doesn’t get the job done -- countries who, this week, reported running entirely out of vaccines.

If global vaccination rates continue at pace, the world will eventually be covered -- in 57 years.

⚡️ Action Step: Many of the billions who remain unvaccinated live in Africa under the global poverty line.

GiveDirectly has raised almost $130 million for their Africa Response (and quite a bit from our community already).

There’s no more proven way to empower people to help themselves than to just send them the damn cash. Do it.

Medicine & Biotech

44,000 patients can’t be wrong

Understand this: A new JAMA study examines the outcomes of 44,0000 Medicare beneficiaries across 1200 hospitals and 41 states (and D.C., cough cough) hospitalized from COVID.

The conclusion?

If Black patients had been treated in the same hospitals as white patients, mortality rates would have been 10% lower.

From the study’s co-authors:

“It’s not that some hospitals give worse care to Black patients compared with White patients; it’s that some hospitals have worse outcomes for both Black and White patients. And Black patients disproportionately go to the hospitals where the outcomes are worse for all.”

What it means: Compared to other analyses of Black health outcomes in America, 10% is devastating, but pretty low!

Colorectal cancer rates (RIP Black Panther) are 20% higher in Black Americans, but death rates are almost 40% higher.

Black Americans remain twice as likely as whites to die from COVID-19.

In Episode #106 of our podcast, we talked to Rep. Lauren Underwood about Black maternal health deaths, where Black moms are 3-4x more likely than white moms to die from birth-related complications.

And in Episode #103, we talked to Drs. Errol Bush and Hasina Maredia of Johns Hopkins about Black heart transplant outcomes, where Black young adults are twice as likely to die in the year after surgery.

All together now: the system isn’t broken, it was designed this way.

⚡️ Action Step: Check out the community health events at BLKHLTH, where they’re creating space for education and action around racism in Black health.

Get some threads, spread the message

INI gear on sale -- this week only

Just for subscribers: You may already know we have awesome stickers, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and hoodies in our store.

But do you know we split 25% of all profits among a group of high-impact orgs?

Great! Now you do. And for the rest of the week, everything in the store is 30% off.

Rock a tee, spread the message, save the world. Get through.

Food & Water

Fire defeats water should be regulated to D&D

Understand this: Wildfires don’t just torch homes and lungs. They ruin our water supply, too. And the effects could last for decades (and this might not even be the big one).

From The New York Times:

“About two-thirds of drinking water in the United States originates in forests. And when wildfires affect watersheds, cities can face a different kind of impact, long after the flames are out.

In Colorado’s Front Range, erosion from fire-damaged slopes during the summer rains could turn the flow of the Poudre and its tributaries dark with sediment, dissolved nutrients and heavy metals, as well as debris. This could clog intake pipes, reduce the capacity of reservoirs, cause algal blooms and cloud and contaminate the water, sharply raising maintenance and treatment costs. In the worst case, the water would be untreatable, forcing the cities to use alternate supplies for a time.”

What it means: The work to protect water supplies will last for years, decades even. Best practices are transferrable -- if expensive -- among cities, reservoirs, forests, and rivers.

⚡️ Action Step: If you live in or near Colorado, check out the work of Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, a pre-cursor to the (hopefully) Climate Conservation Corps.

If you don’t live nearby, check them out anyways, and consider a training course you can take back to your own locality.

The Round Up

“The water is coming” in the Florida Keys

Why “care” needs to be at the heart of the new economy

If net-zero is bullshit, are there any good net-zero targets? Here’s one 10 step evaluation.

It’s not just California’s forests under threat: desert plants are down 40% from heat. Related -- it was 118 in the Arctic this week. So.

E-bikes are all the rage and I’m here for it. Now let’s see some direct subsidies for them.

Europe’s leading the way on green steel

Massachusetts judge refuses to stop Exxon lawsuit, he typed gleefully

How we can build better air conditioners (we’re gonna need them)

How to survive a tornado

Half of China’s overseas coal projects have been canned

America’s finally got some centralized medical data. Where do we go next?

Important Jobs

Every week, we share Featured roles from Important Jobs right here in the newsletter.

Hiring and want to get your open role in front of our community? Submit a Featured role here.

• AL/ML Data Scientist, GiveDirectly (Remote)
• Country Director, US, GiveDirectly (New York, Remote)
• US Senior Program Manager, Give Directly (New York, Remote)
• Product Manager, Apeel Sciences (Santa Barbara)
• People Operations Specialist, Apeel Sciences (Valencia)
• Lead UI Designer, Canoo (California)
• Web Designer, Canoo (California)
• Content Creator, Ecovative (New York)
• Chief Engineer, Climeworks (Zurich)
• Senior Software Engineer, Zero Grocery (Remote)
• Technical Project Manager, Notpla (London)
• Senior Product Designer, Culdesac (San Francisco)
• Full-Stack Software Developer, Joro (San Francisco)

Browse 75+ open roles, or add your own at ImportantJobs.com.

Important Pod Guests - In The News

Dr. Tipirneni thinks Arizona’s governor is “incredibly short sighted”. Here’s why.

Gregg Renfrew is ready to grow safe cosmetics brand BeautyCounter with a $1 billion valuation. Way to go, Gregg!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for giving a shit.

-- Quinn

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