Welcome back, Shit Givers.

Last week, 71% of you took an Action Step. The most popular was donating to Feeding America. Have an Action Step to recommend? Send it to questions@importantnotimportant.com, and we’ll put it through our vetting process!

This week: 50% isn’t good enough; Facebook fossil fuel ads; How to get shots to Africa; Oysters!; Why has AI failed to help during COVID?

Do Better Better

When the world’s on fire, 50% isn’t good enough.

US President Joe Biden’s new executive order calling for 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric isn’t good enough.

It’s not good enough in reality, it’s not good enough to send a signal to the rest of the world, it’s a capitulation to politics and industry in the face of a warming world increasingly touched by disaster.

Tailpipe rules are (inexplicably) and probably our most robust climate policy to date (despite Trump's rollbacks), but in examining Biden’s order (which is relatively weaker than Obama's, a decade ago), it’s worth once again asking what you can control, and what you can't, and taking a step back to assess the broader landscape.

With a tiny infrastructure bill and “everything else” reconciliation bill still very much up for debate, Biden's capitulation to politics may actually be a necessary evil to actually get to the broader policies and, most importantly, outcomes, we need.

Let’s look under the hood, shall we?

After years of lobbying for delays (hang in there, Toyota!), the “green vortex” momentum and recent cap ex commitments from carmakers means, executive order or not, electrification is a one-way highway for most automobiles.

EV sales are cumulatively, actually, way ahead of projections.

Stricter and sooner regulations -- and influencers -- in a host of other countries mean the US’s 50% goal is still sad, but they provide global context -- a necessary consideration where the entire manufacturing world is struggling to rethink and reignite supply chains.

Car companies are actually doing what most net-zero corporate pledges are not -- transparently and robustly investing -- if not betting it all -- on decarbonization.

So it’s helpful to look around and examine what you can control, to find your company or org’s place in all of this (if not necessarily the automobile sector) -- where have fundamentals changed, where is there momentum that might otherwise be clouded?

Perhaps in mRNA, telehealth, mental health, or residential electrification?

Alternatively, where are the most significant obstacles? And who are the gatekeepers? And what’s keeping them in those roles?

If we need to overwhelm systems to build progress, the current comprehensive attack on oil and gas is a good model (not unlike the mostly successful one against cigarettes).

Big lawsuits and board upsets are adding up, and smaller wins like a more unified charging system are making buyers more comfortable with range anxiety, and will make building charging infrastructure more streamlined.

Fossil fuel advertising (greenwashing) is next on the chopping block, subsidies are more exposed than ever, and EV sales, again, are way ahead of pace.

Cities worldwide are banning cars and improving walkability -- if less than hoped during a blissfully car-free lockdown.

And just this week, corporate climate reparations have been proposed (if a long shot), and one day we’ll finally go after the industry’s last refuge: single-use plastics.

It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.

It feels like half the world’s on fire, the Amazon’s on its last legs, and the AMOC may be pretty pretty unstable, at best.

But we can slow the tide, by taking the system apart, piece by piece: if combustion cars have 10x the parts that electric cars do, it’s a helpful if lazy metaphor to understand there are any number of creative and impactful ways to Do Better Better, and participate in the decarbonization and rebuilding of our transportation infrastructure.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

Facebook is keeping the fossil fuel industry alive

Understand this: Online advertising rules aren’t fair game (surprising no one).

From The Guardian:

“Facebook failed to enforce its own rules to curb an oil and gas industry misinformation campaign over the climate crisis during last year’s presidential election, according to a new analysis released on Thursday.

The report found that 25 oil and gas industry organisations spent at least $9.5m to place more than 25,000 ads on Facebook’s US platforms last year, which were viewed more than 431m times. Exxon alone spent $5m.

“The industry is using a range of messaging tactics that are far more nuanced than outright statements of climate denial. Some of the most significant tactics found included tying the use of oil and gas to maintaining a high quality of life, promoting fossil gas as green, and publicizing the voluntary actions taken by the industry on climate change,” the report said.

However: Anti-fossil fuel ads aren’t having it quite so easy.

While Facebook and Google remain the advertising industry’s largest players, and Facebook has allowed ads that, you know, benefit the public good, other platforms haven’t:

From HEATED:

“(An) Exxon ad was rejected by Gas Station TV, which airs television programming at more than 18,000 gas stations nationwide and reaches more than 75 million unique viewers per month.

[...] Kriger was far more surprised by the snub from Clear Channel Outdoors, one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies that reaches more than 100 million people monthly.

[...] Clear Channel considered the phrase “Putting profits over people” too opinionated, according to notes a Climate Power media buyer took from the phone call. “We aren’t comfortable running that.”

⚡️ Action Step: Clean Creatives is bringing together leading agencies, their employees, and clients to address the ad and PR industry’s work with fossil fuels. Continuing to work for fossil fuel companies poses risks to brands that prioritize sustainability, and their agencies.

Run or work for an agency? Sign the pledge.

COVID

How to stop hoarding shots

Understand this: In light of the WHO’s call to prohibit booster vaccines in wealthy countries, some context is required.

Vaccine providers have argued that their current regimen sees degraded efficacy over time -- down to 84% after six months, and thus, in light of Delta and other variants to come, boosters should be required, and soon.

Let’s focus, instead, on the more important number: at six months, the current two-shot regimen’s efficacy against severe disease was still 97%.

That’s good enough for me.

We know that every unvaccinated human provides not just more opportunities for sickness and potentially death, but also an opportunity for the virus to mutate again.

And if vaccinated people are still almost completely protected against severe disease, we should be doing two things simultaneously, at all costs:

1. Use every shot available in the US to vaccinate as many eligible people as possible, as quickly as we can
2. Send every potentially available extra shot to COVAX-related countries

The recipe to alleviate hoarding and massive waste by the Global North includes:

1. Messaging
2. Incentives
3. Mandates

Messaging

• The CDC needs a radically clearer messaging policy on vaccines and masks to rebuild credibility, and build trust in workers on the frontlines
• To follow that with extended efforts to reach young people where they are -- TikTok

Incentives

• Cash - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/cash-shots-studies-suggest-payouts-improve-vaccination-rates
• Paid time off - https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/29/1030276/best-vaccine-incentive-hesitancy-time-off-work/

Mandates

• They’re legal. Let’s go.

Some good news: shots are on the rise again in the US. We’re just not doing enough.

⚡️ Action Step: Help fight disinformation among Black and Latinx groups in your area by exploring and sharing The Conversation, a video-heavy campaign led by pediatrician and public health advocate Dr. Rhea Boyd. Share the materials on Facebook!

Medicine & Biotech

US careworkers are suffering and unpaid, just when we need them the most

Understand this: Have you ever cared for an aging grandparent or parent?

You’re not alone. From Vox:

“An estimated 47.9 million adults in the United States — a staggering 19.3 percent — provide informal care to an adult with physical or mental health needs.

This unpaid work, which includes everything from trips to the doctor to feeding, bathing, and toileting, has been valued at $470 billion per year, equivalent to three-quarters of the entire budget of Medicaid.

Even in the best of times, the vast majority of this work is invisible and undersupported, leaving millions of caregivers struggling in silence. The Covid-19 pandemic pushed many caregivers into crisis.

And the work isn’t equal:

“Caregivers who didn’t have the option to stop working outside the home often carried with them additional levels of anxiety. Many, disproportionately people of color, were already in jobs that put them on the front lines of the pandemic, such as in the service sector. People of color are also more likely to be in caregiving roles in the first place.

Add to that the fact that many communities of color were hit the hardest by the coronavirus.”

⚡️ Action Step: The Credit for Caring Act of 2021 isn’t perfect, but it’s a start. Use Common Cause to quickly call your reps and insist they support it.

Job of the Week

Develop (desperately needed) ground-breaking policy for electrifying America

Policy Lead, Evergreen Action

Our friends at Evergreen Action -- the shop behind every piece of significant climate legislation on Joe Manchin’s desk/boat -- seeks a full-time Policy Lead to support the development of bold, detailed policies to decarbonize our economy and transition to 100% clean energy.

Apply right here.

Food & Water

Oysters: Not just delicious

Understand this: Yesterday was National Oyster Day, so we’re celebrating one of our favorite salt-water bivalve mollusks.

Oysters are not only a magnificent treat, but, through 3D ocean farming and artificial reefs, a fantastic source of protein, and one hell of a way to clean our waters (even in Florida! I know!) and maybe even protect our shorelines from sea level rise.

The New Yorker’s recent piece on the Billion Oyster Project is a fantastic examination of a Herculean effort to rebuild and protect vital ecosystems we once took for granted -- and how the project can be a model for efforts up and down the coast.

⚡️ Action Step: Help build oyster reefs, provide marine education, support shell collection, and eat some seriously tasty oysters by donating or volunteering as a student, educator, or corporate partner with the Billion Oyster Project in New York.

The Human-Machine Interface

COVID was a huge opportunity for AI. It didn’t measure up.

Understand this: COVID has, to date, produced what can best be described as oodles of data, from diagnosis to triage to wastewater.

But to date, nothing’s really worked.

From MIT Technology Review:

“In June, the Turing Institute, the UK’s national center for data science and AI, put out a report summing up discussions at a series of workshops it held in late 2020. The clear consensus was that AI tools had made little, if any, impact in the fight against covid.”

Meanwhile: another major study “looked at 415 published tools and...concluded that none were fit for clinical use.”

But the root causes shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s even looked at a medical record in, oh, the last century.

“Many of the problems that were uncovered are linked to the poor quality of the data that researchers used to develop their tools. Information about covid patients, including medical scans, was collected and shared in the middle of a global pandemic, often by the doctors struggling to treat those patients. Researchers wanted to help quickly, and these were the only public data sets available. But this meant that many tools were built using mislabeled data or data from unknown sources.”

⚡️ Action Step: The pandemic isn’t over, and neither is the work. Get involved with our friends at Global.health as they try to build a trusted, open-source, real-time resource for infectious disease data (Get the down-low from two of our favorite pod guests, Dr. Sam Scarpino and Robel Kassa).

The Round Up

More on oysters: here’s a great rundown on the history of Black oyster culture

Here’s pictures of California farmworkers tending fields in 114 degree heat.

How we did COVAX wrong -- including a million wasted vaccines in the US

Here’s a reputable guide to operating in a Delta world.

We’ve started mapping COVID complications to pre-existing conditions

What comes next for the human genome?

Congress to FDA on ALS drugs: must go faster.

All it took was a pandemic, but now we can find viruses faster and easier

Can the Apple Watch help you recover from a heart attack?

Are we in the post-antibiotic era already? Hope not!

Sanofi paid big time for mRNA tech

US government climate scientists have lost more important players than the Chicago Cubs

Fire update:

• In Europe: Wildfires have reached a Turkish power plant. Here’s video, and Sardinia and Greece burn
• In California, utilities are pleading with consumers to conserve power; consumers are buying air purifiers as farms (and soon, many homes) are too risky to insure
• Read about the “wildfire protection gap”
• An incredible examination of how a prescribed burn actually works

Drought update:

• Over the last 10 years, populations have increased 10% in the driest parts of America.
• In California (again, I know), water regulators have imposed historic restrictions on farmers, and dozens of communities are at risk of running out of water with Lake Powell and Lake Mead at historically low levels (and the Great Salt Lake in Utah too, sure, why not)

Flood update

• New satellite measurements claim up to 290 million people worldwide are at flood risk
• China is, as usually, more concerned with controlling the message than the flooding
• Will their subway floods be a message for other cities?

Just 5 power plants (all coal) create 73% of the energy sector’s emissions

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 for free here.

• Product Designer, LeanTaaS (Remote)
• Software Engineer, Hardware Systems, Kairos Aerospace (Mountain View)
• Senior Software Engineer, Eleanor Health (Remote)
• Scientist, Cell-Free Applications, LanzaTech (Illinois)
• Controller, C16 Biosciences (New York)
• Policy Lead), Evergreen Action (Remote)

Browse 40 open roles, or list your own for free at ImportantJobs.com.

Important Pod Guests - In The News

Mark Magana met with the president and VP

Rhiana Gunn Wright talked to Crooked about the Green New Heal

Rep. Sean Casten has...(sigh)...look, he’s just trying to get some power lines built, OK? And sometimes you have to quote Fergie to do it.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for giving a shit. Have a great weekend.

-- Quinn

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