Quinn Emmett

October 29, 2021

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Welcome back, Shit Givers.

If you're one of the four people who got my Animal House joke about WWII last week, thank you.

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This Week, Summarized: Biden's agreement, revealed; Why vaccinating kids matters for everyone; Plant-based meat emissions questioned; Public health's original sin; Fixing Facebook

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Featured

Do Better Better

A few days ago, I posted this crudely annotated graphic to Twitter:

Pew

The items I've circled are the issues US adults claim to have the most concerns about, and are also all exacerbated by the climate crisis -- the item listed 10th on this list.

But climate's not a single issue (ask Venus), and this is where systems thinking comes in to play.

In this case, health care becomes less affordable when you're more likely to be sick or injured more often, and that's true when it's hotter.

The federal budget's going to balloon as we pay more for disaster relief, adaptation, and mitigation, and in more places
Crime and gun violence go up when it's hotter
Immigration will grow 10x across the world as drought increases and subsistence farming becomes untenable
COVID mortality is increased for people with underlying conditions, and at least partly tied to air pollution exposure
Racist, red-lined city blocks are hotter and carry considerably lower life-expectancies than more affluent, tree-lined areas...

...the list goes on and on.

You nor I can blame any one of these issues entirely on the climate crisis -- subpoenaing fossil fuel companies won't undo all of the foundational elements of, say, gun violence, but understanding what you’re exposed to -- as a person, family, investor, CEO, or society -- especially on the margins, as the margins grow more impactful, is essential.

Climate touches everything. The good news is 80/20 solutions are the most powerful we can implement.

This moment -- the rest of our lives -- will be, at best, uncomfortably transformational in a number of ways and to millions of people, but acknowledging and assessing how to adapt and mitigate and even capitalize on building new systems means we can Do Better Better.

CLIMATE CHANGE

All the cards (and tax rebates) are on the table

The news: On Thursday morning, and after months of intra-party haggling, the Biden administration released a deal framework to fight the climate crisis (and a few other notable challenges).

Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it over? Nope.

Whether it passes is anyone's guess, but we've come a hell of a long way, and as has been stated, and to be fair, as described it would be the most substantial effort to address the crisis in American history -- cutting a gigaton of emissions before 2030.

The deal includes, among others (read it here): "Support for building electrification & efficiency, rooftop solar, and purchase of electric vehicles, with bonus tax credits for EVs & batteries made in USA by Union labor."

Understand it: We've got a long way to go, but we're making progress.

While big oil continues to lie, coal roars back, Asian emissions grow, the economics of decarbonization become more clear, a painful transition comes into play, and a clear generational divide remains between those who will be most affected by the crisis and those in office, many legacy and new industries have gotten the message.

It's impossible to ignore the truly, unstoppably good news about clean energy.

All in all, and for simpler context, here's where the only habitable planet we know of stands vis a vis staving off a not-great future:

New York Times

⚡️Action Step: It's time to vote. Use Call 4 Climate to call your reps and demand they hold the line.

COVID

Here's why to vaccinate your kid

The news: As the FDA weighs approval of COVID vaccines for kids aged 5-11, the CDC is up next, and then we're off to the races with 15 million doses ready to ship to states.

But aside from protecting your own kid -- who, yes, is objectively far, far less likely to be infected, spread it, get sick, go to the hospital, and/or die from the virus, but they're still your kid, and all of the above do happen -- why should you vaccinate them?

Because that's how public health (is supposed to) work. You're not just protecting your child, you're protecting their friends, and their friends' families, grandparents, teachers, and so on.

Go farther: When rich countries make the decision not to subsidize shots to low-income countries, and corporations refuse to distribute shots and release patents to other manufacturers -- they're not only corrupt and greedy, and causing enormous harm, but also just fucking stupid: when 4 billion humans remain completely unvaccinated, that's 4 billion more opportunities for the virus to change and affect us all, and keep us further away from this thing being downgraded from "pandemic" to "endemic".

⚡️Action Step: Get informed, spread the word. Understand all the details about kids shots right here.

FOOD & WATER

Tracing fake meat

The news: Many, many folks have estimated that "plant-based" meat products from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are drastically better for the environment, from carbon and methane emissions to water and land-use.

But estimates aren't good enough anymore.

“We don’t feel we have sufficient information to say Beyond Meat is fundamentally different from JBS,” said Roxana Dobre, a manager of consumer goods research at Sustainalytics, a firm that rates the sustainability of companies based on their environmental, social and corporate governance impact.

[...] The problem, critics say, is that neither Beyond Meat nor Impossible Foods discloses the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions across all of its operations, supply chains or consumer waste. They also do not disclose the effects across all of their operations on forests or how much water they use."

Understand it: Quantifying the world around us has become both easier and more complex, but it's difficult to tear down old systems and replace them with new ones -- even if the end product is closer to the real thing than ever before -- if we don't know the impacts of supply chains that are as equally complicated as their predecessors.

⚡️Action Step: I'm all for good intentions, but given time, you've gotta show receipts. Beyond Meat (BYND)'s next earnings call is November 10th. If you're an analyst with access, it's time to get some answers.

HEALTH & BIO

How to fix public health

The news: Maybe the most significant improvement to health outcomes between World War I and World War II was the advent of penicillin.

But as incredible as that medicine may have been (and continues to be), systems and first principles thinking requires us to ask: "Wouldn't the best way to guarantee more and better health outcomes be to not go to war at all?"

To be clear: I'm all for punching Nazis, but in the early 20th century, with no common enemy invading Poland, public health asked similar questions.

With fewer ground-breaking medicines and no real pharmaceutical complex, much less ML-driven biotech, improving health outcomes meant examining and rectifying poor sanitation and overcrowded living and work conditions. And it worked.

So where did we go wrong? Well, not wrong. But astray.

And by many accounts, covered in this piece by Ed Yong (swoon) at The Atlantic, public health infrastructure began to crumble when we focused more on the microbes inside individual people as the problem, not the ones being passed around society.

When we built hospitals instead of housing, laboratories instead of labor unions, and surgery centers instead of well-ventilated schools, offices, and factories.

Public health's issues are fraught with economics and politics, but we've been there, we can Do Better Better.

⚡️Action Step: Get smarter. Read the entire piece by Ed here, and then contribute to Run For Something here. Why? Because it's always about the people with the power. We're never going to pass sick leave or paid family leave without people in office who understand their necessity.

BEEP BOOP

What Facebook (sorry, Meta) knew

The news: A lot. They knew a lot, from QAnon recruitment to antivaxx misinformation.

But most importantly, as much as some folks inside the company pushed for action, the issues and their pleas were mostly ignored, as "A mix of presentations, research studies, discussion threads and strategy memos, the Facebook Papers provide an unprecedented view into how executives at the social media giant weigh trade-offs between public safety and their own bottom line."

Understand it: I believe digital technology on the whole has benefited society, but it's clear that a lack of ethics and regulation around data privacy, transparent algorithms, and "too big to fail" sized companies have contributed to a more effective and widespread polarization than we've ever seen.

⚡️Action Step: Use Common Cause to insist your reps support Senator Ed Markey’s KIDS Act, which would ban auto-play, push-alerts, badges, harmful content, and manipulative marketing for children under 16.

FROM MY NOTEBOOK

Corporate net-zero pledges are mostly bullshit. Check them here.
Old flame Panasonic made a better, cheaper battery for Tesla (which might come in handy for the 100,000 cars Hertz just ordered)
Studies continue into long-COVID's "brain fog"
The US, UK, and Canada have devised new ethics guidelines for machine learning
Russia is cashing in on climate change
The US has few of the rare minerals needed for the battery revolution. The ones we do have are located on stolen Indigenous lands.
Big Tech is making the Big Pitch to elderly Americans, sure why not
The vast majority of genes have been tied to cancer. What does that mean? Related: gene therapy is on the way.

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