Welcome back, Shit Givers.

Full disclosure: It was VERY difficult not to name each section with a new TS or Adele song lyric, which all perfectly apply to the state of public health. #goeasyonme

Note: we're off next week for Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for each and every one of you.

Last week's most popular Action Step: you donated a shit-ton to Feeding America. Thank you, friends.

This Week, Summarized: Is there a green bubble?; Can you get a booster?; Where to find clean water; Why health workers are quitting; Amazon's privacy nightmare

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

What's your circle of competence?

I'll go first: being a generalist means "nothing" but also "everything".

As much as I hustle to get a 301 degree in every podcast subject before recording with an esteemed guest, I think we can all agree I've got no business actually doing cancer research, operating on your grandma, building wind turbines, or mixing battery chemicals.

I've learned enough to hold my own in conversations regarding each of those, to understand how they interact, and the power mechanisms behind them, but I'm continually reminded -- by my wife and children, and by our radically-changing world -- what I don't know, and when and where I'm very clearly outside my circle of competence.

And I love it. The entire goal of INI is to create measurable impact, and to do that I have to be continually learning cool new shit (or at least, new to me), asking a million questions about it, and then starting over again, all in an effort to paint a broader, more holistic worldview of why people do what they do, and why we build what we build.

Whereas I'm careful to only invest my time and resources in areas where I understand the product, company, and market, I don't stop there. It's important to me -- and should be to you -- to go further.

Be proactive and thorough: ask what the true costs of that product or transaction may be, what it's exposed to, who's promoting it, and what their incentives for doing so may be. We're human. There's always incentives.

You'd be amazed how often the answers rhyme, if not repeat.

I have discovered that I delight in seeking out what I don't know, even more so than building more scaffolding around my existing beliefs, principles, and guidelines. But bringing all those pieces together is my job.

Contextual, measurable impact is my KPI. What's yours?

From water scarcity to agriculture policy,  green bonds to nurse shortages, flood maps to air quality, there's an infinite world of details I'll never get to, or be able to grasp, but if I can help you understand how they come together, we can make sure each Action Step you take is more powerful than it would be in isolation.

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CLIMATE CHANGE

Is there a (green) bubble?

The news: Trying to time the stock market is a fool's errand. Always has been. So even though the future will almost certainly look nothing like the past, there's probably a few rules that won't change.

EV valuations, on the other hand, are an open question.

Elon's the richest person in the world and Tesla's market value is hovering around $1 trillion, but day traders seem less interested now that Rivian went public (sky-rocketed past the likes of VW, and then got creamed) and Lucid are actually making, you know, cars.

Legacy carmakers keep increasing output, battery, and capital goals, and scheduling the death of ICE vehicles. And now the House has passed the Build Back Better bill, which would incentivize even more EV purchases (if the Senate passes it, too hahaha sob).

Understand it: If you assume that electric vehicles of every flavor are the entire future of motorized ground transportation, you might say the fervor is warranted. I think it is.

But whether current valuations are reasonable is another question, considering:

• Certain structural and societal constraints that won't change
• A push for more walkable streets and human-powered options
  
• A need for free and expanded public transportation
  
• A huge variety of new, lower-cost players emerging across Southeast Asia
  
• A welcome proliferation of e-bikes across the globe
  

⚡️Action Step: There's more ways than ever to take part in the climate transformation. And more ways to get funded, too. Check out Climate Tech VC's comprehensive database of available Capital Stacks and join the party.

COVID

Boosters and equity, updated

The news: Let's make short work of this: Following an increasing number of states disregarding the CDC's guidance on selective booster shots, the FDA authorized Pfizer AND Moderna gang boosters for all adults, right meow.

Related: shots for 5-11 year olds are off to a hell of a start, as almost 10% of the group has received first shots. Huzzah.

We've vaccinated nearly over half the known galaxy's population in less than a year, from sequencing to shots in arms, soup to nuts. It may very well be one of humanity's most impressive accomplishments, full stop.

Understand it: And now here's your requisite weekly reminder that 47% of the world's population has yet to receive a single dose of any COVID vaccine, furthering illness, poverty, and death.

That's because of busted supply chains and garbage communication among myriad groups, but also because the Global North has hoarded patents, production, and distribution.

The Biden administration just announced new efforts to buy vaccines and oral treatments for low-income countries, but those won't really kick in until the second half of 2022. Not good enough.

⚡️Action Step: Get your booster, get your kids vaccinated, and then 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 yet another wave.

FOOD & WATER

How to find water

The news: If drastically reducing air pollution is the relatively-doable 80/20 move of the 2020's, making clean potable water available and affordable is just behind, if only because the infrastructure issues are more varied and complicated.

A sample:

• In the American southwest, "water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada are discussing plans to take even less water from the shrinking Colorado River and leave it in Lake Mead in an effort to prevent the reservoir from falling to dangerously low levels."
• In Michigan, "a federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement worth $626 million for victims of the lead water crisis in Flint." The recent federal infrastructure bill will start to repair the nation's busted pipes.
• In Keyna, a new study showed that chlorinating drinking water cut the under-5 mortality rate from a horrific 1 in 50 to 1 in 100. The cost per live saved? About $1,941, among the most cost-effective ever measured.

⚡️Action Step: Our friends at Food & Water Watch are fighting every day to prevent water shutoffs, improve our infrastructure, and reduce water impacts from factory farms. Volunteer or donate here.

Have an Action Step to recommend? Just reply to this email or send the deets to questions@importantnotimportant.com, and we’ll check it out!

HEALTH & BIO

Is there a doctor on board?

The news: The United States was short tens of thousands of nurses -- before COVID.

And now? (from Morning Consult)

• 18% of health care workers have quit their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, while another 12% have been laid off
• Among health care workers who have kept their jobs during the pandemic, 31% have considered leaving

Understand it: As the masterful Ed Yong put it in a related piece for The Atlantic:

"Health-care workers aren't quitting because they can’t handle their jobs. They’re quitting because they can’t handle being unable to do their jobs. Even before COVID-19, many of them struggled to bridge the gap between the noble ideals of their profession and the realities of its business. The pandemic simply pushed them past the limits of that compromise."

For all of its pluses (cronuts, Acadia, bagels, Beyonce, Gritty), the United States is not currently a Great Place to Work™ if you're anywhere near (what used to be) the middle class, or below.

And as the United States population continues to age (and grow larger in volume), our health systems will come under immense pressure, pandemic or not.

It's not just about the pandemic. From the same poll, "50 percent said they were seeking better pay or benefits, while the same share said they found a better opportunity elsewhere and 44 percent cited a desire for more career growth."

As Ed noted, his colleague Derek Thompson's conclusions from the US's "Great Resignation" include the possibility that so much quitting may be  "an expression of optimism that says, We can do better."

Sound familiar?

⚡️Action Step: Thinking of becoming a nurse? Here's one pathway, including education requirements, salary, and benefits.

BEEP BOOP

Amazon is watching everything you do

The news: An incredible investigation from WIRED and Reveal has...revealed...Amazon's dark secret:

"Amazon's vast empire of customer data—its metastasizing record of what you search for, what you buy, what shows you watch, what pills you take, what you say to Alexa, and who's at your front door—had become so sprawling, fragmented, and promiscuously shared within the company that the security division couldn't even map all of it, much less adequately defend its borders.

In the name of speedy customer service, unbridled growth, and rapid-fire “invention on behalf of customers”—in the name of delighting you—Amazon had given broad swathes of its global workforce extraordinary latitude to tap into customer data at will. It was, as former Amazon chief information security officer Gary Gagnon calls it, a “free-for-all” of internal access to customer information."

Understand it: From Ring doorbells to Alexa conversations and credit card information, Amazon's privacy record is a freak show, friends. Read the article.

⚡️Action Step: ...and then buy somewhere else. 120+ incredible podcast guests have recommended books to our audience. You can find them all on Bookshop -- and just in time for holiday season!

FROM MY NOTEBOOK

• Creatives are going after advertising behemoth Edelman for their work with fossil fuel companies
• France is gonna build new nuclear reactors, and I'm here for it
• The best and worst countries on food waste are...
• Saudi Arabia is about to drop some green bond sales, just in time for Black Friday
• Will the Supreme Court gut the EPA?
• The federal government held the largest oil and gas lease auction in history
• Etihad Airways CEO says carbon offsets are cheating and folks, he's not wrong
• Europe's probably not going to approve Aduhelm and boy this just isn't getting better for Biogen
• How to scale telehealth to treat PTSD
• Lithium drilling has commenced at the Salton Sea
• What a biological war with China might look like
• Will you sign up for the Civilian Climate Corps?
• Somebody's gonna have to pay South Africa to quit coal
• How Exxon duped The Daily

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.

• Data Engineer, Pachama
• Data Scientist, Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation
• Engineer, Childhood Cancer Data Lab
• Chief of Staff, Anja Health

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

IMPORTANT GUESTS IN THE NEWS

• Julian Brave Noisecat argues for the Build Back Better bill
• Orsola de Castro on how fashion finally showed up at COP26
• Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is (not surprisingly) leading the furor against Edelman

If you celebrate, please a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving, filled with rapid tests and gratitude.

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

-- Quinn