Welcome back, Shit Givers.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by my favorite playlist: Jams Supercut.

Last week’s most popular Action Step was How to Turn Off Facebook Tracking.

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

Programming note: I’ll be off next week for the first time since the pandemic kicked off a thousand years ago, really. It’s needed, and I thank you from the bottom of my exhausted heart for your understanding.

This Week: Solar’s wilding out; $65 billion for the next pandemic; Better, cheaper, more inclusive clinical trials; Protecting farmworkers; Biden’s AI board

Brought to you by the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

We’re inexplicably almost halfway through September, and also Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

So whether you’re a casual walker, avid cyclist, or running enthusiast, or you’re broken inside and out like me, you can still make a difference for kids with cancer right meow during The 9th Annual Million Mile.

Join Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and participants of all ages as we 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 until the end of the month. Anyone can participate, it’s free, it’s awesome, I’m crushing it.

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: you can still join co-executive director Jay Scott’s team with me. For every single Shit Giver that actually logs more total miles than me after September 30th, I’ll donate $500. Good luck!

It’s not too late. Get started today at MillionMile.org!

Do Better Better

Incentives can go a long way.

Whether it’s bribing your children to please, please, just put their shoes on, we’re already like 20 minutes late, I mean they’re Crocs, it only takes 3 seconds, you just slip them on, no, you don’t need socks, yes, I know you have a leg cramp, no it’s not fatal--

Or! It’s continuing to reap the dividends from an empire in coal, or profiting off the popularity of pretty much unregulated ESG finance -- all despite increasingly devastating evidence that air pollution and disasters are affecting more lives, more crops, and more ecosystems than ever.

Incentives -- to drive new behaviors or continue business as usual, primal and capital alike -- drive everything. Understanding how they got there, why they got there, and why they work -- or don't -- is a fundamental application of Doing Better Better.

Tweeting angrily at Joe Manchin might feel good in the moment, but it’s not super effective (you’ve never seen it as an INI Action Step), and more importantly, fails to examine the systemic issue that is Joe Manchin’s steadfast refusal to support a Clean Electricity Performance Program.

Namely, that he’s profited, and wildly, from the coal business, and would like to continue doing so.

And taking a further step back, he’s allowed to do so, because our political system by design enables elected officials to do so, a really just outrageously absurd conflict of interest any way you look at it.

But we’re not going to rewrite, for example, campaign finance before these folks vote whether or not to prevent a true climate calamity, so examining the motivations behind their decision making is required.

You can do this with your own actions, too, with how you spend your time and your money, what your company makes and doesn’t make, and the customers you serve. It’s not unlike asking what you’re exposed to, except with less flooding.

How have you traditionally made your profits? What’s your company’s North Star metric? How do measure a successful day, or your philanthropic effectiveness?

What drives you? You’re a Shit Giver, so you’re already six hundred levels of enlightenment above Joe Manchin.

But why?

Look forward to the next year (well, maybe to the one after that), to the next decade, sure, that feels right and ask: how can you build some exciting, sustainable incentives to Do Better Better?

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Climate Change & Clean Energy

Solar will not be ignored

Understand this: As 200+ medical and health journals across the globe collectively declare a 1.5° C rise in temps the “greatest threat to global public health”, one of the biggest levers to keep us in the neighborhood of 1.5°-2.5° is ready for primetime.

From E&E News:

“An aggressive Biden administration blueprint released yesterday aims to give solar an unprecedented role in reaching a carbon-free grid, but its feasibility may hinge on local and state action, Congress and trade policy shifts, according to researchers.

The Department of Energy analysis said getting to a carbon-free grid by 2035 would require solar to contribute 37 to 42 percent of all power, making it the largest carbon-free electricity resource.”

You want to know what would help? Besides way less delay tactics from big oil?

A Clean Electricity Performance Program! Like the one the Energy & Commerce committee just proposed! For more, read pod guest and undefeated Dr. Leah Stokes.

The momentum around solar, wind, and batteries is real:

• US House democrats are pushing for an end to fossil fuel subsidies
• California’s nascent energy storage fleet is impacting energy markets as hoped
• Toyota’s spending $9 billion on EV battery plants
• BMW ordered $24 billion in batteries
• In Europe, EV’s are over 10% of sales in 16 countries, and over 20% in 7 countries
• Sure, Australia’s still committed to coal, but FWIW, OPEC is urging members to lean towards renewables

⚡️ Action Step: It’s (still) crunch time! Calling your reps to demand they vote for a big, bold climate bill is going to be our #1 until this thing is over with. And our friends at Fossil Free Media have built a tool that makes it dead simple.

COVID

And another one

Understand this: Like the fun adage “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today, do it now now now”, we’re still mid-pandemic, but it’s never too early to apply lessons we’ve learned so far and begin looking forward to the next one.

For one, we can commit to improving ventilation, everywhere, and reducing not only COVID, but also colds and the flu.

But we can go further. From STAT:

“The Biden administration on Friday unveiled a sweeping new biosecurity plan, outlining a $65 billion proposal to remake the nation’s pandemic preparedness infrastructure in the wake of Covid-19.

The immense funding boost would target programs aimed at developing and manufacturing vaccines, treatments, and tests more quickly. It would also provide new money for laboratory capacity, viral detection mechanisms, and early warning systems.”

And now some updates from this pandemic:

• Your risk of a breakthrough infection is probably about 1 in 5000 per day
• Biden mandates vaccines or weekly testing for millions of workers, and will double fines for asshole travelers who violate mask requirements on flights
• 5 billion people remain unvaccinated across the globe and yet Covax has had to cut its 2021 forecast for available doses, we’re doing this wrong
• 13 Miami-Dade school employees have died of COVID -- since mid-August
• The Economist estimates the true, most inclusive death toll so far to be over 15 million ($)
• One long-term COVID risk? Kidney issues
• No, your vaccine immunity is probably not on the wane

⚡️ Action Step: For more perspective on what comes next for infectious disease preparedness, check out our conversations with Dr. Nahid Bhadelia and Dr. Sam Scarpino & Robel Kassa .

Medicine & Biotech

Close your rings (and fuel cancer research at the same time)

Understand this: Clinical trials are, traditionally, expensive as hell, difficult to stand up, and limited in demographic scope, as they often require travel to fancy research hospitals, and thus time off from work and/or family.

Wearable devices, research platforms like Apple’s ResearchKit, and machine learning could make some trials much more inclusive and engaging, faster, far less costly, and more qualitatively useful, too.

And it’s a huge market, with some estimates pegging growth at almost 6% a year to near $12 billion in just a few years.

In one example, a preliminary report showed ML was able to measure user-submitted videos of facial expressions to remotely diagnose for Parkinson’s disease -- with 96% accuracy.

As always: the values we bring to the table will dictate not only the experiments but the outcomes. Smart, reputable wearable devices aren’t cheap, and outside of relatively closed ecosystems, awareness around new trials needs wider support.

⚡️ Action Step: Join institutions like Johns Hopkins and Stanford and get your research out of the lab -- at scale. Check out ResearchKit here.

Job of the Week

Mental health support for university students

Director of Marketing, Mantra Health

Are you an ambitious. seasoned B2B marketer? Help bring (much-needed) digital mental health support to college students across the country at early-stage Mantra Health.

Apply today!

Food & Water

Something went right in Florida?

You might remember: A few weeks ago, I asked you to urge your members of Congress to support the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act, ensuring essential protections from extreme heat for workers.

There’s some semi-related good news: The Coalition of Immokalee Farmworkers, through its ground-breaking and much-lauded Fair Food Program, has gained enforceable (!) standards to keep workers safe during periods of high heat, including:

• Mandatory breaks every two hours
• Monitoring of symptoms
• Education and training

What it means: Progress! (What’s this feeling I’m feeling?)

⚡️ Action Step: Read the original letter to the Department of Labor outlining the Valdivia Act, and then take 30 seconds to fill out the Union of Concerned Scientists form urging your reps to support it, ensuring essential protections from extreme heat for workers.

The Human-Machine Interface

Committing to a committee

Understand this: Biden’s getting an AI advisory committee, and just in time.

From Engadget:

“The Commerce Department, National AI Initiative Office and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are forming a National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC) to advise the President and federal officials on AI-related issues.

NAIAC will provide guidance on several AI concerns, including “competitiveness,” employment, scientific progress, the viability of national strategy and future initiative revisions. The committee will also address ethical issues ranging from workforce equity to accountability and algorithmic bias.”

What’s next: This is a vital group, and it sounds like nominations are being pooled from a “broad and interdisciplinary pool including academics, companies, non-profits and federal labs.”

So. We’ll see. I’ll keep an eye on the contenders and report back.

⚡️ Action Step: Submit worthy, inclusive nominations at the Federal Register.

From My Notebook

The startup bringing mental health care to Medicaid participants

The Illumina-Grail reunification deal is an on-going source of fascination to me

Adaptation and resilience

• At Wednesday, LA’s Board of Supervisors will vote either for or against the motion to end all oil and gas drilling in LA County. Almost 600k humans live within a 1/4 mile of an ACTIVE oil/gas well. That’s garbage. Join the phone bank to end it.

From pod fave Amy Westervelt: Big Oil’s wokewashing is climate denialism in a new skin. Rep. Ro Khanna has had enough.

LA could become the first major school district to mandate vaccines

Trove - a clothing resale platform supporting Patagonia, Lululemon and more - raised $77.5 million to expand operations

mRNA is coming for cancer tumors. It worked in mice, and while still very, very, very, very early, human trials are next

Why is Utah’s air pollution so bad?

Besides, you know, plants, will we ever get a concise, complete answer on what we should eat?

Ida’s waters may have been turned back by NOLA’s seawalls, but recovery elsewhere on the Gulf Coast is on-going. Here’s some pics.

Related: a decade after Sandy, Ida punished New York. Here’s two takes on why New York is very difficult to protect

Bitcoin’s got a lot of shit for using so much power. Actual receipts are coming in, and it’s not pretty.

European food markets are feeling the heat (after the warmest summer on record)

I say this with as much tact as I can: Costco chickens are an absolute fucking nightmare

Rural public education is in shambles. This may be at least one of the root causes of many of our issues

A new, v1, adorable mini-CRISPR system could be a Swiss knife in gene editing for cancer and genetic disease

World’s first crewless, zero emissions cargo ship will set sail in Norway

The incredible expansion in government aid prevented a food crisis last year. What’s 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 for free here.

• Senior Manager of Operations, GiveDirectly
• Research Associate, GiveDirectly
• Sales Specialist, DroneSeed
• Cofounder, Counterfactual Ventures

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

Important Pod Guests - In The News

Nina Lakhani on why Tyson Foods is in a bad way

Dr. Leah Stokes (when is Leah NOT in the newsletter) on the CPPP

Mark Magana is the Latino Captain Planet

Dr. Katharine Wilkinson on the (many) links between the climate crisis and mental health

Dr. Indra Joshi would like to improve brain surgery, thanks

Jessica Cisneros is back for another run at the House and we’re here for it

Serge Dedina is trying to keep his city afloat

Dr. Kate Marvel on the future of drought in the southwest

And finally, Sarafina Nance is back from fake Mars -- and her children’s book is here!

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

-- Quinn