Welcome back, Shit Givers.

This is where I would usually (insert funny line here) but late last night 6/9ths of the Supreme Court -- with zero arguments -- decided to put millions of Americans on the street, in the middle of a pandemic, with the west on fire and at least one hurricane barreling towards the Gulf Coast -- and now I’m furious. More below.

Last week’s most popular Action Step was supporting the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act.

Have an Action Step to recommend? Send it to questions@importantnotimportant.com, and we’ll put it through our vetting process!

This week: Wind NIMBY’s; More nurses, stat; Diabetes on the rise; Evictions; Cybersecurity commitments

Brought to you by the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

It’s almost September (what), which means it’s also almost Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

And whether you’re a casual walker, avid cyclist, or running enthusiast, you can make a difference for kids with cancer next month during The 9th Annual Million Mile.

Join Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and participants of all ages as they try to log as many miles as possible and raise money to help kids with cancer through ground-breaking research and family support.

The goal? Collectively move millions of miles from September 1-30. Anyone can participate, it’s free, it’s awesome.

Invite your friends, family, and those remote co-workers you’ve never actually seen in person to join you and help fight childhood cancer, one mile at a time!

Here’s the deal: join co-executive director Jay Scott’s team with me. For every Shit Giver that actually logs more total miles than me after September 30th, I’ll donate $500. I dare you.

Register at MillionMile.org.

Do Better Better

Context is everything.

Sometimes, you sit on the toilet, scroll Twitter for a bit, turn around, and it looks like you dropped a can of red paint in there -- your mind races, you plan out what’s quite obviously the last day of your life, and then, suddenly, you remember you made a beet salad for dinner last night.

Whew.

When a news outlet, friend, company, or colleague hands you a piece of data, it’s always helpful to take a step back and start asking questions like “What else? Where’s the rest? But why?”

Today, you can and should apply those questions to news covering:

• The US’s progress as the world’s “arsenal of vaccines”. How many vaccines are actually needed?
• YouTube and Facebook removing millions of accounts laden with misinformation. How many haven’t they removed?
• Corporate zero pledges that depend on protecting forests. What if those forests burn down?
• EV battery explosions. How many gas powered cars catch fire every year?

...among others.

Look, I got a few thousand emails about last year’s Do Better Better column on employing first principles, so I know I’m preaching to a crowd of Shit Givers here, but more than ever it’s essential to build a comprehensive grasp of the issues affecting everyone today, if only so you can be a trusted conduit to those around you.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

NIMBYs

Understand this: No one’s saying offshore wind or solar’s perfect. Every project has its issues, from land use to real local environmental concerns.

But in the grand scheme of “Are they significantly less dangerous than gas or coal?”, they’re pretty great.

But as increasingly severe weather pounds coasts, forests, and streets worldwide, that pesky line from the Declaration of Independence about liberty keeps coming around, and besides anti-maskers/vaxxers, nobody uses it better than NIMBY’s.

From Gizmodo:

“On Wednesday, a group of citizens claiming they’re worried about the safety of an endangered whale filed a lawsuit against the Vineyard Wind project, an offshore wind farm that’s slated to become the first large-scale offshore project in the U.S. The suit highlights some of the challenges that could continue to face the project—and the disparate groups joining together to fight against renewable energy.”

Context: you know what’s really killing whales? Climate change. The ocean’s a pot of boiling, acidic pasta water (see: the Gulf), so whales are chasing food into new and dangerous waters.

And the single best way to alleviate those issues is to decarbonize the power sector ASAP.

America’s west coast is even further behind. California, basically Top Gun for NIMBYs, features zero offshore wind, and the Terminator is pushing for floating offshore turbines, but there are serious infrastructure and supply chain issues still to be worked out.

The clock’s ticking: Biden’s climate plans are iffy at best (his Interior Department has approved 2000+ new drilling permits on federal land), and California’s grid will spend the next three months (at least) on fire, and they’re adding or restarting gas plants to try and prevent almost inevitable blackouts.

Meanwhile, an entire industry of green steel is waiting to get to work.

Action Step: Take 30 seconds to call your Congresspeople and insist they support a big, bold climate bill. It’s now or never.

COVID

We weren’t ready

Understand this: If you’re reading this, you’re probably vaccinated (if you’re not, please god, email me right now and let’s talk this out) or under 12 (Hi! Be safe! Sorry about the F-bombs!).

And if you’re vaccinated, you’re probably still feeling pretty good about being protected against severe illness and hospitalization from COVID.

But -- again, context -- you know you can get sick or hurt from something other than COVID, right? Like a pre-existing condition, or something new?

In which case, it’s helpful to remember that ICU beds in many parts of America are once again in very short supply.

But it’s not just about the beds.

By some accounts, America was short 120,000 nurses before COVID. And now?

“According to hospital executives and nursing administrators in several states, the struggle to find enough workers to care for people sick with covid-19 has emerged as a critical problem as other daunting shortages, widespread early in the pandemic, have eased. Once-scarce supplies of protective gear, ventilators and coronavirus tests are now plentiful, hospital officials consistently say.”

The vaccines work. But this virus -- with 5 billion humans still unvaccinated -- will continue to spread, and continue to mutate.

Delta’s unique -- it spreads like (sigh) wildfire, but that trait (like 2003 SARS’s 10% fatality rate) actually makes for a finite timeline: eventually everyone will either be exposed to the virus, or vaccinated.

So the next mutation may be optimized for evasiveness over transmission.

We’re going to be living with it for a very long time. But it’s 2021, and what our scientists have accomplished in a year and a half is -- to be very fucking clear -- probably the most impressive human achievement, full stop.

We can keep building on those advances, for this virus, and the next ones.

In the meantime? Let’s vaccinate as many people as we can.

Action Step: This week’s vaccine numbers have been decent, but we’re still leaving a lot of folks unprotected.

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

Diabetes screenings on the rise

This isn’t surprising: Overweight adults should be screened for Type 2 diabetes starting at age 35, a task force recommended this week.

More Americans than ever before (one in seven) has some form of diabetes. It’s easy to chalk Type 2 up to a lack of exercise and being overweight.

But, context -- if one in four adults 18-44 have pre-diabetes, why aren’t we catching it, or course correcting? And why are some people more likely to be diagnosed than others?

It’s the system: It’s about access, and affordability.

Black, Brown, and Indigenous Americans over-index on diabetes in part because they are less likely to have access to affordable and healthy food (two separate but related problems), because they’re over-stressed and hotter (in urban cities, temperatures can be 10 degrees hotter, and life expectancies for minorities can be up to 10 years less than their white counterparts just down the block).

And those people aren’t catching it early they suffer from less access to corporate-sponsored health care, they’re less likely to be able to afford coverage on the open market, and are less likely to be included in clinical trials.

Action Step: Help feed Americans with a donation or by volunteering with Feeding America.

If you’d like to find out more about diabetes programs and clinical trials, check out the highly-rated Sansum Diabetes Research Institute’s website.

Job of the Week

Sales Specialist, DroneSeed

Are you an experienced sales pro in the Washington state area, or interested in moving there (it’s beautiful, you’re welcome)?

Help landowners across the West recover from catastrophic wildfires by restoring their forests as quickly as possible. Work across DroneSeed’s business verticals to help draw on the right resources at the right time.

Apply today.

The Human-Machine Interface

It’s a feature, not a bug

Understand this: Our infrastructure was already in tatters, and now it’s all hooked up the internet.

The answer? Cybersecurity!

From The Verge:

“Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft promised to help bolster US cybersecurity after a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday. The pledges vary by company but range from spending billions on cyber infrastructure to offering supply-chain aid and education.

Wednesday’s high-profile meeting with tech CEOs comes on the heels of major cyberattacks against US government agencies and energy infrastructure like the Colonial Pipeline.

“The reality is, most of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden said at Wednesday’s meeting.”

What it means: The federal government’s biggest need? Bodies.

From CNBC:

“The American Rescue Plan passed in March allocated $200 million toward tech hiring, notes Dan Schiappa, chief product officer at cybersecurity firm Sophos. “Approximately one in three cybersecurity roles in the public sector are still unfilled,” he says. “That’s about 33,000 jobs and with a CISA vetting process that can take up to a year for new hires, there’s no time to waste.”

Action Step: Use Common Cause to call your reps and insist the “International Cybercrime Prevention Act” be added to the upcoming infrastructure package.

From My Notebook

What’s the future of water wars?

Ikea will now sell you...solar power?

Housing has long been a huge part of California’s emissions problem. But is CA on the way to passing the most significant (and yet still gentle) housing legislation in forever?

Why the hell do Costa Ricans live so long, anyways?

We have the tools. We can rebuild (buildings.

Another wildfire-predicting startup wants to help the reinsurance market

How one hospital found more people to vaccinate

(deep breath) Meet the TikTok star who hunts wildfires from a mountain top

Here’s five things we were very wrong about the brain

Madagascar’s on the brink of climate change-induced famine

Moderna gang submitted their papers for FDA approval. And now we wait.

Coming to a San Diego home near you: Pure Water!

Pandemic seemingly in the rear view mirror, the UK’s wasting food at 2019 rates

China would like to shut down (checks notes) 40,000 hydropower plants, because Mao’s dams and climate change have drained the rivers

Meet the newly elected Black women driving a more equitable agriculture policy

Related: is it time to break up big ag? Probably!

Biden is almost $100 million towards childhood mental health

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.

• Cofounder, Counterfactual Ventures (Remote)
• 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)

Browse 60+ open roles, or list your own for free at ImportantJobs.com.

Important Pod Guests - In The News

Dr. Errol Bush on the frustrating lack of Black patients getting heart transplants

Dr. Kim Cobb on coral reefs and the future of the climate fight

Rick Nahmias on how to provide food for thousands of food-insecure families across SoCal

Young person and immigration pro Jessica Cisneros is running for the House of Representatives again!

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

-- Quinn