Welcome back, Shit Givers.

And to all of our new readers, welcome for the first time! Every week, I provide you with the make or break news, helpful context and analysis, and Action Steps you can take to improve your game and the world around you.

Along the way, you'll better understand why things are the way they are, how all of the inputs and outputs are connected, and how you can most effectively stir shit up.

I met some of my new INI co-workers (👀) for the first time yesterday. It was a delight! We've got so much exciting shit coming your way in the months to come. LFG.

This Week, Summarized: McDonald's isn't trying; Biden's test plan has to be better; Plant-based meat math is obvious; We need more biotech data scientists; We need less crime prediction software

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

Together With Avocado

In the face of an escalating climate crisis, what does it mean to do our part?

A Little Green is a short podcast series from Avocado Green Brands. Follow along as they demystify the questions many of us find ourselves asking these days, and show how we can each challenge the status quo and become climate leaders in our own communities.

Protecting our planet will take all of us. So let’s dig in — together. Find A Little Green wherever you listen to your podcasts, or head to AvocadoMattress.com to learn more.

Featured

Do Better Better

What happens next?

Unraveling the geopolitics of the fossil fuel industry, electrifying all of our transportation, buildings, and supply chains, reorienting “health care” into every day, value-based wellness—

—they’re all examples of massive, interconnected projects that’ll require an exhausting focus on not only uncovering first principles and “why the hell is this this way to start with”, but also interrogating the potential second-order effects of each new decision point along the way.

But there’s a cheat code.

Reverse engineering existing systemic outcomes is a helpful way to practice predicting second-order effects, whether you’re crafting policy on a national or local level, or deciding to commit a percentage of your monthly to a philanthropic goal.

For example, we know that nearly unregulated junk food marketing has (at least) contributed to systemic diabetes and obesity. We should not do that.

It’s recently been reinforced in a super fun way that only vaccinating people in wealthy countries against a novel coronavirus is both inexcusably unethical and also comes back to bite those same wealthy countries in the ass because viruses don’t give a shit about GDP.

And even in wealthy countries, decades of denying health care to marginalized citizens breeds distrust in the medical system just when you need it the most, say, during a pandemic.  

Annnnnd we now know that decades of rampant air pollution from fossil fuels, combined with diabetes, obesity, and said lack of trust, equates to a higher mortality rate among those exposed to all of them.  

Those are second-order effects. It's just math.

Like all of our DBB constructs, you can play this game at home.

Want to contribute 10% of your income to philanthropy? Great! Noble cause. What are the probable second order effects of such a commitment?

1. You’ll feel good
2. You’ll get involved with an organization (or two, or three) on a more on-going basis
3. You’ll meaningfully contribute to said organization’s mission and outcomes
4. You’ll model positive behavior for friends, neighbors, and children, possibly increasing overall giving
5. You’ll have 10% less take-home cash every month
6. You’ll have to readjust your monthly and annual budgets to compensate for 10% less cash
7. You might get a bit of that back at tax time
8. You might discover other avenues for automatically putting your income to work, say, in a climate-focused index fund
9. You’ll have less cash to blow on artisanal chocolate in the checkout line, don’t @ me

Always ask: What comes next?

What does it mean to not vote for city council? What does it mean to not vote for school board? What does it mean to cleanse your portfolio of extractive companies? What does it mean to have children? (pure joy/crippling exhaustion) What does it mean to quit your job and start over? To offer your employees 20% of their time to work on efforts to Do Better Better?

So -- what comes next?

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CLIMATE CHANGE

Thebang/Unsplash

Billions and billions (of emissions) served

The news: McDonald's, despite a decade of promises, has yet to meaningfully address their considerable methane emissions.  

It's an incomprehensibly difficult task. I don't envy it. But McDonald's recently declared, "When you eat one of our world-famous burgers, you’re joining a movement toward a more sustainable future” -- and now I'm furious.

It's not that they haven't made a dent. It's that, according to recent and quite rigorous research, they haven't really tried.  

This quote from Bloomberg sums it up (but the entire report is worth a read):

“There does not seem to be any proactive involvement or serious investment by McDonald’s to support its suppliers or make significant changes in its beef supply chain,” says Nic Lees, a senior lecturer in agribusiness management at Lincoln University in Christchurch, New Zealand, who studies beef sustainability programs in several countries.

Understand it: The land-use required for beef consumption is an enormous problem on its own (see: deforestation), but cattle burps are a major contributor to methane emissions, which don't last nearly as long in the atmosphere as carbon, but DO lock in far more heat in the short-term.

Which is what makes their continued growth so goddamn exasperating. Reducing methane emissions is maybe the easiest and most significant lever we have to pull to slow global warming this decade.

Meanwhile, McDonald's produces more emissions than Norway, and the total's only going up.

⚡️Action Step: Read "The Lentil Underground" by Liz Carlisle to understand how these valuable crops can retake and remake American land, soil, food, and industry -- and help slow emissions at the same damn time.

COVID

No, the tests aren't free

The news: In light of our upcoming inaugural Delta winter and the "new kid" variant Omicron, President Biden announced new plans for increased vaccination sites, boosters, travel requirements, and at-home tests that -- to be crystal clear, are not free -- just as his existing mandates were getting knocked down by judges.

Why aren't the tests "free"? Because in most instances you still have to pay for them out of pocket (around $20 bucks a box) and then insurance will theoretically reimburse you.

Why aren't tests everywhere, and free? Why has testing and tracing been abandoned, 100 years after it worked for smallpox?

Why do we insist on doing it this way? Why hasn't two relentless years of COVID forced us to rebuild public health, to reorient how we respond to pandemics, much less prepare for them, or even prevent them?

More to come.

Understand it: Whatever you read, we don't know the implications of the Omicron variant, yet.

And with significant existing vaccine hesitancy, a fragile health care system, and significant vaccine access obstacles in South Africa, we can't blame the new variant exclusively on greedy wealthy countries hoarding shots, especially when we don't even know where Omicron came from.

But we sure as hell know the probability of a more communicable and potentially more dangerous mutation is drastically increased so long as billions of humans just like you and I remain unvaccinated.

⚡️Action Step: Follow friend of the pod Dr. Sam Scarpino's new "Pandemic Prevention Institute" on Twitter for ultra-reputable situation reports on Omicron (and the rest).

FOOD & WATER

Show your work

The news: A few weeks ago, I covered environmentalists' inevitable push-back on plant-based meat manufacturers claims that their products were, in a variety of ways, measurably better for the planet than real beef.

I did it because they're inexplicably still not bringing receipts, and we're not going to make meaningful progress without receipts.

It turns out, the answer may have been sitting right in front of me: on the nutrition label.

Thankfully, Matthew Hayek and Jan Dutkiewicz did the math, and showed their work.

Understand it: Animal agriculture is somewhere around 15% of global emissions. Not great, Bob!

Of course, power-sector related emissions are a far greater share, but even if shut down or electrified those right meow, we're in overtime: growing appetites for beef and dairy would still push us over the 1.5-2.0 mark.

Not apocalyptic compared to the alternatives, and yet -- have you been outside lately? So -- back to that nutrition label. From the report at Vox:

"According to FDA regulations, food companies must list all ingredients on product labels, meaning that much of the “black box” of plant-based protein can be unlocked simply by looking at the back of a package.

Labels on conventional meat also do not disclose all the inputs and processes that went into producing it (Quinn's note: what the cow ate, how they were treated, how much water they used, etc). If you’re eating a Beyond Burger, you might not know exactly where its peas come from or how it was packaged, but you would know that peas were the most-used crop ingredient (and we already know peas' impact).

[...] The fact is that the overwhelming majority of the environmental impacts of our food are a result of what happens on farms, not in manufacturing or shipping."

⚡️Action Step: Read the rest of the article, share it with some friends who are thinking about eating less meat, and then give the authors (here and here) some props (do the kids still say "props"?) for their important work.

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 data scientist on board?

The news: Yes, I did re-purpose my own headline from last week. We're on the cusp of enormous, ground-breaking biotech advances, but there aren't enough data scientists available to do the work.

In STAT, oncology researcher Nikhil Munshi said, "Data science is throwing biology into a paradoxical crisis of both plenty and scarcity."

Which is all to say, the jobs of the future (and, cough cough, today) aren't being filled.  

But why?

Understand it: It's relatively simple: every company is a data science company now (not just the tech behemoths destroying democracy), and the pool of available scientists is only so large.  

But the economic tradeoffs in not staffing this biotech revolution could be steep. According to a new Schmidt Futures report, by way of Axios:

"The biology-based economy was already generating $960 billion in economic activity in 2016 — 5% of U.S. GDP.

But should the U.S. invest billions in bioeconomy research and manufacturing, it has the potential to create more than a million new jobs, keep $260 billion in economic activity from going overseas, and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 450 million tons."

⚡️Action Step: The report recommends "The government invest $600 million over five years in a Bioproduction Science Initiative overseen by the National Science Foundation, as well as another $1.2 billion in bioproduction infrastructure and public-private partnerships to scale development."

All things considered, that works for me. Use Common Cause to find and call your reps and then start the quote above with "My name is _____ and I live in ______. Senator/Representative ____ should (  quote). Thank you!"

BEEP BOOP

Precrime isn't working

The news: Crime prediction software that targeted 1 in every 33 US residents across almost 6 million predictions over the past three years drastically over-targeted "Blacks, Latinos, and families that would qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program" -- and the predictions were mostly stored on unsecured servers.

Understand it: Last year, over 1000 mathematicians wrote a letter pleading with colleagues not to work with the police community, and specifically around this kind of software, and even more specifically, with this software's creators, PredPol.

Why? Because almost universally, across the globe, these algorithms (and often, the data sets they're designed on) are rife with bias -- but implemented nonetheless.

⚡️Action Step: I cannot recommend enough that you contribute to The MarkUp's investigative journalism. I rely on their work every week, and nobody does a better job surfacing the biases built into these systems -- and then showing their work to prove it.

10 THINGS FROM MY NOTEBOOK

• Ex-Googler Timnit Gebru started her own ethical AI research center. Yay!
• Our sewer systems aren't ready for climate change
• Renewables are about to go HAM
• But what does it mean for precious metals? (Much more to come here from me)
• Two years ago we interviewed the DELIGHTFUL Dr. KT Ramesh about the need to nudge, not explode, an incoming asteroid. This week, the mission launched.
• The pedestrian infrastructure money machine is about to go brrrrr
• An incredible visualization of the coronavirus in one tiny drop
• There's no snow in Denver on December 2nd. Is it the first time?
• Batteries are extraordinarily cheap
• This is the plan to protect Lower Manhattan from another Sandy. Will it work?

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.

• Senior Manager of Operations, GiveDirectly
• Community Manager, Run for Something
• Director of Communications, Run for Something
  
• Chief of Staff, Anja Health
  
• Engineer, Childhood Cancer Data Lab at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation
• Data Scientist, Childhood Cancer Data Lab at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation
• Data Engineer, Pachaa

Browse 50+ open roles, or list your own for free at ImportantJobs.com.

IMPORTANT GUESTS IN THE NEWS

• Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wants to tackle plastic ocean waste
• Jessica Cisneros is running again and once again coming up against big oil money
• Representative Lauren Underwood had her veteran's mental health bill signed by President Biden. Huzzah!

🎧You can revisit any of our critically-acclaimed podcast conversations right here

One of my favorite parts of the week is hearing from readers, and I try to respond to as many folks as I can! Give me a shout -- did you find today's newsletter useful? Why or why not?

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

-- Quinn