Welcome back, Shit Givers.

I wrote this instead of finally watching Squid Game, so you’re welcome.

Last week’s most popular Action Step was Call4Climate!

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

This Week: How to reduce methane; America’s out of diapers; COVID questions; A new day against malaria; Food systems examined; How you’re tracked

Do Better Better

Let’s talk about entitlement.

If you’ve had Congressional discourse plugged into your veins the past few weeks like I have, you probably noticed a discussion, mostly borne out in the press, between Senators Manchin and Sanders.

Manchin, referring to his vision of America, and how that vision could most effectively be implemented through the reconciliation bill, said “I don’t believe that we should turn our society into an entitlement society. I think we should still be a compassionate, rewarding society.”

This may surprise you, but I don’t believe we’re in danger of turning our society into an entitlement society.

In fact, I’m fairly sure 400 years of institutional racism; a climate crisis touching every part of our society, geography, and economy; and the first of probably a few pandemics to come in our lifetimes, have each illustrated that our decisions (they were decisions) to underfund or ignore foundational systems to protect the populace, or, conversely, to design systems that proactively put Americans in danger, are a hallmark of a society whose rewards are, at best, um, unevenly distributed.

It’s evident in our prisons, in our wealth gap, in our health gaps, in home ownership, wages, food deserts, urban heat, prenatal and maternal healthcare, and more.

And if the rewards for succeeding in America are unevenly distributed, so is the risk.

Or, as my therapist implores every single week: “Your load and your limit cannot sustainably be the same thing.”

I wrote in January:

“A safety net provides a margin of protection against the fluctuations of everyday life, the highs and the lows. It allows for room for error. It helps you endure. And designed purposefully, it lets you succeed.”

As always, it’s essential to ask not only “Why is X this way?” But also, “Does it have to be this way?”

It doesn’t. And that’s why we’re all still fighting to Do Better Better.

Fighting for systems that will not only improve baselines, and every day lives, but which can also withstand and adapt to our rapidly changing world.

Climate Change & Clean Energy

A quick fix? What the--

Understand this: In just a few short years, we have made tremendous progress is not only identifying methane as an incredibly powerful contributor to global warming (concentrations are 2.5x higher than in the pre-industrial era), but also in how to track it (kind of), and how to eliminate leaks.

From our friend Akshat Rathi and Hayley Warren at Bloomberg:

“Research by the United Nations found that as much as 80% of measures to curb leaks from oil and gas operations can be implemented at no cost, and many may even result in savings. Virtually all methane leaks from the coal sector could be painlessly eliminated.

Most of rest comes from agriculture and waste, and it seems like we could capture much of that, too.

And just in time: the odds of staying below 1.5° warming are, well, less than ideal, but eliminating most major methane sources could buy us some serious time.

And it’s time we need. Otherwise-climate friendly locales like Maine or Oregon aren’t so safe any longer, and more obvious problem areas like California are facing up to already underreported heat deaths.

The good news: it seems as though drastic decarbonization could slow warming much quicker than we thought. But it’s up to us to get it done.

⚡️ Action Step: New here? One of the most effective levers you can pull is to vote, and in lieu of an election, calling your reps can make a measurable difference.

Take two minutes to use Call4Climate and insist they hold the line in these final negotiations.

COVID

The latest

A brief round-up on COVID news this week:

• I can’t imagine you missed it, but we’re nearly there: Pfizer asked the F.D.A. to authorize its vaccine for kids aged 5-11. Barring any setbacks, expect shots to roll out in early November.
• 120,000 American children lost a caregiver to COVID, and Native American, Black, and Hispanic children led the way
• Merck’s new COVID antiviral sounds great, but if it costs $20 to make, why is it projected to sell for $712? (Especially when the government awarded $35 million in grants to the institute that eventually developed it)
• Johnson & Johnson has also asked for their booster shot to be approved
• Most African countries missed targets to vaccinate 10% of their populations (because of shortfalls in deliveries from COVAX, because wealthy countries have failed to step up)
• At least one long-term symptom seen in 37% of COVID patients
• A man was caught stealing diapers for his children, as COVID decimated supply chains and drove up prices on diapers. It reignited the question: Why do 1 in 3 families struggle with diaper needs in the richest country in the history of the world?

⚡️ Action Step: Two items: Use Common Cause to call your reps and demand they support the End Diaper Need Act, which would funnel grant money to social services that support low-income families and adults with disabilities.

And then contribute to a diaper bank near you.

Medicine & Biotech

What a day

Understand this: Malaria, by way of Anopheles mosquitoes, has killed humans for ten thousand years.

To date, our best weapons have been insecticide bed nets and whatever drugs the disease wasn’t resistant to. And still, a half million people a year, and 250,000+ children under the age of 5 (and mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa), die every year.

But there’s fucking fantastic news:

“A new vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, rouses a child’s immune system to thwart Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of five malaria pathogens and the most prevalent in Africa.

The vaccine, called Mosquirix, is not just a first for malaria — it is the first developed for any parasitic disease. Parasites are much more complex than viruses or bacteria, and the quest for a malaria vaccine has been underway for a hundred years.”

It’s not perfect (but no vaccines are, ahem): clinical trials revealed an efficacy of 50% against severe malaria in year one, dropping big time after that.

And countries involved face a litany of other issues, like devastating poverty. But as always, these are complex systems: if malaria slows economic growth in Africa by up to 1.3% a year, anything that prevents severe disease and death will be a safety net (see what I did there) to the entire endeavor.

⚡️ Action Step: W.H.O. approvals and any subsequent rollouts will take time. Contribute to Against Malaria, maybe the single most effective NGO on the planet, where just $5 buys a bed net for two.

Job of the Week

Investigate COVID

Research Assistant, Boston Medical Center

Data nerd? Want to have an immediate impact on COVID?

Join our hero Dr. Nahid Bhadelia and crew as they recruit and enroll study participants in a study at Boston Medical collecting samples from acute and recovered COVID-19 patients.

Found out more and apply here.

Food & Water

Food systems in play

Understand this: One of the helpful questions I pose most to folks seeking guidance on the present and future is “What are you exposed to?”.

And further: “What are the adjustment costs of your exposures?”

Enter: Your food.

From FoodDive:

“Major food players including Nestlé, Campbell Soup, Nissin Foods, Ajinomoto and Kerry Group ranked among 50 large companies that are “highly exposed” to the physical effects of climate change relative to other businesses in the sectors and regions, according to the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).”

Among many others, coffee prices are only beginning to go up.

There’s much we can do. Denmark has set binding emission targets for their agriculture industry (and set aside $600 million for farmers during the rocky transition).

But systemic change requires acknowledging that incumbent interests will capitalize on a lack of rigid standards, and that tangibles like soil and local climates can be vastly different from one another across the globe.

One potential answer: an outcome-based approach. Basically, call it whatever you want (, but if there aren’t measurable regenerative effects (rainwater infiltration, carbon capture, storage capacity, nutrient cycling), it doesn’t count.

⚡️ Action Step: Help define, implement, and scale regenerative agriculture -- and protect our food systems along the way -- by checking out the Climate Farmers resources and Pioneer Program.

The Human-Machine Interface

Triangulating you

You’re being followed: Last year (this year? Who can know, friends) I hosted a conversation with Dr. Carissa Veliz at Oxford University, who helped all of us better understand all of the many, many ways corporations were tracking our every move.

But it’s worse than we thought. From The Markup:

“An estimated $12 billion market, the location data industry has many players: collectors, aggregators, marketplaces, and location intelligence firms, all of which boast about the scale and precision of the data that they’ve amassed.

Location firm Near describes itself as “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Mobilewalla boasts “40+ Countries, 1.9B+ Devices, 50B Mobile Signals Daily, 5+ Years of Data.” X-Mode’s website claims its data covers “25%+ of the Adult U.S. population monthly.”

It’s one thing to track the sixty-three cookie recipes I researched while I was supposed to be writing this newsletter, it’s another to track and sell where I am, where my family is, where my kids go to school, and more.

This has to end.

⚡️ Action Step: The Markup wants your help to find “a missing piece of the data pipeline: the mobile phone apps that harvest and share location data with the industry.”

Every time an app asks for your location, snap and email The Markup a screenshot and the name of the app to location@themarkup.org.

The Round Up

Huge congrats to everyone who won at the 2021 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards!

What to watch in health tech in Q4 (HOW IS IT ALREADY Q4?)

Sophie and Kim “construct” the energy transition’s biggest players

China’s energy crisis is complex and poorly timed with COP26 around the corner

• Related: How vulnerable is the fossil fuel system?

A cool new digital marketplace could help shore up EHR and other digital health tools

NASA’s going to shoot a rocket at an asteroid to test our planetary defenses (check out an all-time favorite convo with Dr. KT Ramesh for more context)

Why did it take 3 hours for an energy company to shut down a pipeline spewing into the ocean?

Pattie Gonia is an absolute delight

How proteins can make cancer more transparent

Valley fever -- not great!

The FDA is hosting a virtual public workshop on transparency in AI/ML medical devices

These are the 50 cities emitting the most carbon dioxide

The Hopi Tribe has lived in Arizona for over 1000 years. Can they survive the desertification?

California is 100% not ready for heat waves

Redlining is still a factor in premature births

This cool brain stimulation tool may be a key to treating depression

CVS is about to become your primary care situation

The 19th described a more holistic policy approach to dealing with parental mental health

Holy shit, Clearview is a privacy nightmare

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.

• Clinical Research Nurse/Research Coordinator - COVID, Boston Medical Center
• Research Assistant - COVID, Boston Medical Center
• Product Manager - User Engagement, Treecard
• Senior iOS Engineer, Aspiration
• Sr. Product Manager, Dividend Finance
• Director of Engineering - Sustainable Investing, Ethic

Browse 115+ open roles, or list your own for free at ImportantJobs.com.

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

-- Quinn