Welcome back, Shit Givers.

Spooky Season is in full effect and I just learned what Snapchat does, AMA. We moved to a new platform this week, so if you catch any bugs, please send my way!

Last week's most popular Action Step was donating to Against Malaria. Bed nets for everybody!

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

This Week: Climate finance, exposed; Moderna's COVID profits are...a lot; Beef's emissions problem, examined; Startups for aging; Who gets to write the AI bill of rights?

Reminder: You can read this issue on the website, or you can listen to it on the podcast.

Featured

Do Better Better

Don't want to get eaten by a shark? Don't get in the water.

It's that easy. For us. But for sharks, not so much.

Sharks, or as I like to call them, "water dinosaurs", have been cruising around for 400+ million years. They've inexplicably survived most of Earth's previous mass extinctions (plural), and yet, shark populations are down an astonishing 71% since 1970.

Super.

The actions we take affect sharks, whether we're in the water or not, whether we intend for them to affect them, or not.

That's what it means to live in an ecosystem.

A very large segment of the human population, however, has spent decades and centuries imaging referring to nature as this "other".

As if we're not part of the system, as if we're outside of it, or above it, as though we didn't come from deep ocean vents, too.

We've just got more leverage on Earth's ecosystems than any species has basically ever had, despite being around for less than 1% the time that dinos did.

The receipts are in. Biodiversity -- the immense diversity of flora and fauna that make our climate what it is, that provide the air we breathe and the water we drink -- is cratering.

The systems we are part of are comprehensive, they touch every part of our lives, from fossil fuels to palm oil to lithium, sand, air, and water.

As the kids say, "There is no Planet B".

85% of humans have already been affected by the climate crisis, including 1/3 of Americans just this year -- the same percentage who've probably been infected by COVID, even if they didn't know it, and even if that number is probably much higher.

We hope to be increasingly reliant on wind power, but "global stilling" from climate change may be contributing to slower wind speeds, thus reducing wind power's effectiveness, right when we need it the most.

We extract antibiotics from nature, but have become more resistant to them, because bacteria is the ultimate OG and will always find a way to outmaneuver us.

Hydropower has spent decades modestly reducing fossil fuel dependencies, but drought and desertification threaten that power.

Billions around the world suffer from energy poverty, and we know that access to energy can vastly improve education and health outcomes, but if the only available energy is a dirty source, we have to also factor in what we know about what air pollution does to the body.

Nothing we do happens in a vacuum, from overfishing to mosquito gene drives.

The good news: we are, in fact, social animals. Action begets action. You are more likely to get solar panels on your house not because it's cleaner power, but because your neighbor has them.

And that's why I'm so invigorated every week to build our community, to layer actions upon actions, to use the power we have to bend the needle back in the other direction.

LFG.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Invest in the future, they said

The news: The climate crisis is here. Capital markets are only beginning to catch up.

In the US, almost $20 trillion has been invested in "ESG" opportunities since 2020, and it's over $35 trillion globally.

On the surface, that's great. Look past the labels/behind the curtain/other metaphor, and you'll find we're in over our boots.

The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (SFDR and TCFD for the playas) have (correctly) forced investment managers the world over to start stripping terms like ESG off assets and out of public documents.

Greenwashing extends from retail investments to private equity to net-zero pledges, but a new day for regulations means folks with money in the game are suddenly asking "Wait, what the hell are we exposed to?"

Another factor: while entirely worthwhile, going completely green is pretty goddamn difficult -- because most companies and assets are exposed to fossil fuels in some way, and/or because fund providers use one hand to charge higher fees for ESG funds, and with the other, vote against more stringent disclosures.

What's next: A correction is due. But the transition was never going to be easy, especially where profits are concerned.

Profit-mad private equity investors ($7+ trillion under relatively secret management) are not only helping India go electric, but also helping fossil fuel companies shed some of their dirtiest assets, but those deprecated fossil fuel assets are still contributing to the crisis.

So listen. Passive index funds have taken over your portfolio and mine, and they've done well, but Doing Better Better means keeping a much closer eye on the ball.

⚡️Action Step: Get up to speed. Listen to my conversation with Boris Khentov, architect of Betterment's incredibly nuanced climate portfolio. You can check out Betterment's product here, and/or check out two very clean funds here and here.

COVID

The game is up

We know this: Moderna -- helped by a massive influx of government cash -- created a revolutionary vaccine to inoculate billions against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

How should they be compensated for doing so? And how far can they go to guarantee that compensation?

From The New York Times:

Moderna has shipped a greater share of its doses to wealthy countries than any other vaccine manufacturer, according to Airfinity, a data firm that tracks vaccine shipments.
About one million doses of Moderna’s vaccine have gone to countries that the World Bank classifies as low income. By contrast, 8.4 million Pfizer doses and about 25 million single-shot Johnson & Johnson doses have gone to those countries.

Of the handful of middle-income countries that have reached deals to buy Moderna’s shots, most have not yet received any doses, and at least three have had to pay more than the United States or European Union did, according to government officials in those countries.

Take a step back: COVAX, the global collaboration designed to provide equitable access to COVID vaccines, has mostly failed.

Untangling the reasons why the "naively ambitious" endeavor didn't live up to expectations requires a hell of an investigation, but STAT tried, and while the fundamentals are complicated and varied (Global North greed, India export bans, a brutal lack of communications), repeated failed deliveries from vaccine manufacturers have been one key reason why 98% of people in low-income countries remain unvaccinated.

⚡️Action Step: Use Common Cause to call your Congresspeople and demand they hold Moderna and Pfizer accountable for promises to waive vaccine patent rights and transfer their technology to other manufacturers, to boost global production and distribution.

IMPORTANT JOB OF THE WEEK

Help assess portfolios for climate exposure

Data Engineer, Cervest

Cervest -- a certified B-Corp with a new $30m series A behind them -- is building the world’s first open access AI-powered Climate Intelligence platform.

Speak Python? Got experience working with large scale, distributed computing? Join the team, and help them develop their data platform used by companies, governments and NGO's to manage the transition to a cleaner, better world, for everyone.

Apply here.

FOOD & WATER

Meat's back on the menu

Understand the system: land-use, from the US midwest to the Amazon and Europe, remains a key factor in decarbonization.

And meat's the biggest lever of all.

No, Joe Biden's not taking away your hamburgers.

And no, I don't think immediately regulating meat out of existence is the best way to win the next election, either. I'm not a moron -- even the most well-intentioned actions have consequences, because #America.

But if 24% of global emissions come from food, agriculture, and land-use, and if the US's goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030, ignoring meat's outsized role in GHG's -- 5% of the entire total -- is negligent, at best.

Bloomberg Green

Globally, demand is growing (and so is the methane):

Our World in Data

Meanwhile: Lab-grown meat is both reaping in capital, and facing huge headwinds. Can it scale? I'm not sure.

But plant-based substitutes are still on the rise (despite seeing supply chain issues like everyone else), and some big players like McDonald's have only just entered the arena.

⚡️Action Step: You know I'm focused on rethinking how to think. Read Ethan Soloviev's Paradigms of Agriculture to better understand where our food systems go from here.

HEALTH & BIO

Grumpy Old Men (it me)

Shit adds up.

As we age, the miles add up, old injuries pile up, DNA issues become more frequent, and our cells behave abnormally and don't divide the way they used to.

I, for example, frequently feel hungover in the mornings, despite not having actually had a drink.

Aging is fun. And much of it is inevitable.

But that doesn't mean we can't do a much better job of preparing ourselves, the population, and our health systems for getting older.

While Congress debates expanding Medicare to both slightly younger folks, and to cover dental, vision, and hearing, startups, funding, and research have entered the chat, hoping to succeed where many have failed before them:

1. Devoted Health raised a whopping $1.2 billion to pair a Medicare Advantage insurance product with caregivers who deliver services in clinics, online, and in patients’ homes, with the goal of snuffing out medical problems before they spiral out of control (if this sounds a bit like Kaiser, you're not wrong)
2. Clearing, Curable, and Remedee are just a few of the digital startups trying to fight chronic pain without opioids, and more are working on mental health access
3. New research shows 40% of antibiotic resistant infections occur in Americans 65+ (who spend more time in hospitals and often have multiple chronic conditions)

⚡️Action Step: Learn about Blue Zones -- the areas of our planet where people live the longest, healthiest lives. Find the research here, and the amazing new cookbook here.

BEEP BOOP

Do we need an AI bill of rights?

The similarities are uncanny: Greenwashing vs AI ethical standards.

The first principles are, too: It's us, not the algorithms, not the standards, not the money. It's us. It's always us.

So how do we -- a people canvassing a wealth of global cultures, operating across a shared international network -- design standards to bend the needle of progress, but still protect ourselves from ourselves?

And how do we enforce them?

How do we balance what's best for consumer privacy, for example, and corporate profits, and government data?

Does machine learning's black box conundrum need to bow to explainability? Can such transparency breed enough trust to operate in the health sector? (I'm not sure) Can it prevent real-world harm?

In the US, there are calls for an AI "bill of rights", like our first one, which sort of works?

In China, new guidelines call for data control and user rights, emphasizing systems that are “controllable and trustworthy”. But what about the autocrats behind them?

And finally, what the fuck are supposed to do about Astro?

Amazon's new robot called Astro is designed to track the behavior of everyone in your home to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties, according to leaked internal development documents and video recordings of Astro software development meetings obtained by Motherboard. The system's person recognition system is heavily flawed, according to two sources who worked on the project.

⚡️Action Step: Be a part of the solution. 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.

FROM MY NOTEBOOK

• What the climate disaster looks like at 1.5, 2, and 3 (stunning)
• Planting trees was supposed to be The Way. What if it's not? (this is one you really want to understad0
• A better risk prediction model for breast cancer in US Black women
• Biden wants wind farms along the entire US coastline
• COVID increases pregnancy complications. Get the shot.
• France banned plastic packaging for fruits and veggies
• LG's paying GM for all those exploded batteries
• What's next in biotech
• Phthalates are very very bad (and everywhere)
• Understand the first big energy crunch of the transition era (and why China -- where 2 million people were recently displaced with floods -- is suddenly building more coal plants)
• The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is throwing a cool $2 billion at biomedical inclusion and equity efforts
• 1/4 of US infrastructure could flood (here's looking at Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, and West Virginia)

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

IMPORTANT GUESTS IN THE NEWS

• Amanda Litman and Run for Something teamed up with Snapchat to get young people to...run for something. 3000 signed up on the first day.
• Julian Brave Noisecat and Dr. Leah Stokes talked to Jesse Jenkins and the OG Bill McKibben about how cheap renewables are charging up (see what I did there) climate activism
  
• Rep. Lauren Underwood talked to The Washington Post about making health care more affordable -- for everybody
  

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

-- Quinn