Quinn Emmett

November 5, 2021

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Welcome back, Shit Givers.

Finally watching Parks & Rec. Jean Ralphio.

Last week's most popular Action Step was reading Ed Yong in The Atlantic, on the past and future of public health.

This Week, Summarized: COP progress; Rapid tests; Impossible valuations; Digitizing Medicaid; Facebook quit your face

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

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Featured

Do Better Better

Nature vs nurture.

No matter how much DNA we share with one another, the moment we're born, our lived experiences begin, and begin to differ. Lived experiences which vary enormously and are effectively a lottery.

Through it all, nature as we know it has nurtured every system we've designed and relied upon.

And this is why the climate crisis feels so threatening.

While the Green Vortex has seemingly held off worst-case scenarios of 4°C of additional warming, and while emissions have flattened, warming is still increasing, just not as rapidly as it would have if we hadn't scaled solar and other more efficient technologies.

Thus, we've avoided the end of the world -- but have no doubt, this is the end of the world as you and I have ever known it. A reliably temperate world -- if one that may be a historical aberration over four billion years -- and yet the only one modern humans could have flourished in.

We are inextricably of this nature.

The phrase "Remember where you came from" implies "We came from the same place. I knew you, then" and "you've changed, man."

It implicitly references the songs we listened to back then, and the hometown foods we ate together, but also the people we left behind. All the way behind, to our shared natural beginnings: crawling out of boiling hot sea vents on the ocean floor, and then going our separate ways.

And thus our DNA is the same, and our lived experiences so different.

And now comes the future.

We always marvel at what a World War I vet might think of, say, Postmates, but the world our grandchildren will live in will be enormously different than our own.

The future is here, but it's still being written. It's why I take such care in learning from incredible, diverse humans working along the frontlines of the future.

We can edit our DNA now. We can use satellites to protect old growth forests. We might be able to scale mechanical carbon capture like we did solar before it. We can make our lived experiences more equitable.

But it's also why storytelling and world-building are essential.

If the (complicated) Virginia and New Jersey elections made clear, it's also why we can't simply be the coalition of "no".

We have to celebrate and explore our shared humanity, our multifarious lived experiences, to write the future, to come together to tell the people about it, to sell it, to fight for it, to make it.

To Do Better Better.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Checking in on COP

The news: COP26 is shaping up to be either the most successful or least successful of the lot.

The biggest question? How to decarbonize most of the world while still helping developing nations level up into the 21st (and sometimes 20th) century.

Our World in Data

Understand it: As you can see, rich nations shouldn't just provide financing to lower-income countries to help economies, or assist in the green transition, or to attract private investment, or to stave off billions of future climate migrants -- but because we overwhelmingly caused the problem.

David Wallace-Wells provided a stunning argument for climate reparations in New York Magazine this week.

On one hand, an agreement to end public support for fossil fuel projects abroad could be -- alongside a groundbreaking agreement on steel -- monumental.

On the other, over a billion people remain in energy poverty, and the only way out is up. And the IEA said today that if all of the COP26 climate pledges are actually enacted, we can limit this thing to 1.8°C. LFG.

⚡️Action Step: The US Senate is (shakes fists) still arguing over the climate bill, so we go again. Use Call 4 Climate to tell your reps to hold the line. The House (possibly) votes TODAY.

COVID

How is this still happening

The news: Since early 2020 (approximately 300 years ago) a growing variety of health officials and even sociologists have been clamoring for the US federal government to not only approve more at-home rapid COVID tests, but to foot the bill to crank up production and distribution.

That...hasn't really happened.

Understand it: According to companies who've tried to get tests approved, "The answer appears to be a confounding combination of overzealous regulation and anemic government support — issues that have characterized America’s testing response from the beginning of the pandemic."

Keep in mind -- nearly a year into President Biden's tenure, the FDA still doesn't have a permeant commissioner. Not helpful during a pandemic.

Take a step back: if COVID was a pop quiz on every choice we'd made to date, and we failed most, why does the Build Back Better bill short-change public health funding?

And further: As we throw vaccines at the problem, and learn to live with the virus, what's our most important KPI? Is it case rates (it shouldn't be)? Hospitalization rates?

You can't improve what you can't measure, especially if you can't decide what measures to pay attention to.

⚡️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, and prevent a more significant mutation, and another wave.

FOOD & WATER

An Impossible valuation?

The news: Following up on last week's news, Impossible Foods, makers of some of your favorite "plant-based" fake meat, is looking to raise $500 million more at a $7 billion valuation.

Their biggest competitor, publicly-listed Beyond Meat, is valued around $6.2 billion.

Understand it: In 2020, plant-base meat exploded. But like everyone else, both companies have been crushed by supply chain issues -- and questions.

So much of the promise of fake meat relies on 1) Tasting delicious but mostly 2) Drastically reduced environmental footprints. But until these companies show receipts, promises remain just that.

⚡️Action Step: Are you an investor in Impossible Foods? If so, demand they share environmental impact data. Beyond Meat (BYND)'s next earnings call is November 10th. If you're an analyst with access, it's time to get some answers.

Have an Action Step to recommend? Send the deets to questions@importantnotimportant.com, and we’ll check it out.

HEALTH & BIO

Digitizing Medicaid

The news: Investments in health tech are nearing $15 billion in 2021, passing 2020's entire intake.

Rock Health

A tiny morsel of that dough has gone to startups focused on low-income and "underserved" patients, like those on Medicaid. But there's a new day.

Understand it: Cityblock and Unite Us, two startups that work to connect Medicaid patients with services, have together raised almost $700 million this year.

Why

"Dr. Toyin Ajayi, Cityblock's president and cofounder, and Dan Brillman, the CEO of Unite Us, told Insider that investors were warming up to the idea that it's possible to make money while also reaching low-income and underserved patients.

That's partly because of the huge market: 75 million people were enrolled in Medicaid as of May, and investors see an opportunity to save money on their medical care by boosting preventive services."

⚡️Action Step: 2+ million people live in the 12 remaining states that have opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act provision, which is dumb. Senate Democrats are fighting to include an expansion program in the reconciliation bill, or at least a plan to subsidize private insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges for folks in the coverage gap. Use Common Cause to call and demand they do exactly that.

BEEP BOOP

What the what?

The news: Facebook (sorry, Meta, sigh) is deleting your face. Scratch that, a billion faces.

"Meta’s vice-president of artificial intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, said the technology had helped visually impaired and blind users identify their friends in images and can help prevent fraud and impersonation. But Pesenti said the advantages needed to be weighed against “growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole”.

Understand it: "Growing concerns." Sure, Jan.

⚡️Action Step: Thankfully, Facebook has "paused" work on an Instagram for kids. In the meantime, 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

Pfizer's new COVID oral anti-viral pill claims to be so good (reduced risk of hospitalization or death by 89%) that the independent board stopped the trial to get it into the world.
The Energy Department is going deeper on carbon capture research to try and bring the cost to $100/ton by 2030
Did Big Oil lie in front of Congress? Here come the subpoenas!
Sophie & Kim did hella work to build this essential climate VC capital stack
Scientists found a clue about Alzheimer's brains
Only 3.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one COVD vaccine dose
ProPublica's stunning new journalism: they mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals and hazardous air pollution across the country
What's the Patient Philanthropy movement?
US EV charging infrastructure is ahead of estimates
Extra climate Action Steps: Climate Con, the Climate Draft, Third Act (for the Boomers out there)
Native tribes have lost 99% of their land in the United States -- and onto "marginal" (and climate crisis-exposed) land
My friend and fantastic investments writer Packy goes long on Rivian

IMPORTANT JOBS

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