Quinn Emmett

January 7, 2022

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Welcome back and Happy New Year, Shit Givers.

The odds you haven't picked up COVID since our last official newsletter are dicey, but I hope you're all safe and sound and ready to get back to saving civilization. NO PRESSURE.

Yesterday, I prefaced our glorious return with a new essay, "How to think about 2022." Yes, it's 3x longer than a typical newsletter, but also explicitly isn't a typical newsletter, and I think dives fairly well into the tone and stakes of the next twelve months. An audio edition is coming soon. I'd love your feedback.

Note: Today's Action Steps are more focused than usual on gaining additional context. Helpful if, like me, you've tried to turn your brain off for a little while.

This Week, Summarized: ESG bullshit; Vaccine equity and kid boosters; Countries that are feeling parched; CRISPR and Sickle Cell; Facebook's two worlds

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

CLIMATE CHANGE

Lingshor/Unsplash

ESG and carbon offsets are a mirage, at best

The news: To stave off worst-case scenarios for increased global warming, we need to simultaneously 1) Decarbonize everything and 2) Find a way to suck a ton of carbon out of the sky.

While both efforts require massive government resources, the private sector would like to use "the markets" to accomplish their part, and let me tell you, that's going about as well as can be expected considering what is essentially a complete lack of standardization and regulation.

Ever since Larry Fink and BlackRock led the charge into ESG, the inflows have been enormous, mostly thanks to MSCI's ESG ratings.

The problem, via Bloomberg: MSCI's "ratings don’t measure a company’s impact on the Earth and society. In fact, they gauge the opposite: the potential impact of the world on the company and its shareholders." (you should read the entire blockbuster investigation)

TLDR: We've been had.

Meanwhile, there isn't a company or government on Earth that hasn't pledged "Net-zero by 2050", and yet, despite and probably because of a frothy two-sided market, there's no agreed-upon definition of what "net-zero" means, and no one's regulating the mechanisms to do so.

It's not a stretch to say the entire thing is bullshit, as by one measure, less than 5% of offsets actually remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Understand it: I don't want to just come out and say that all of the ESG investing and carbon offsets you or your company have participated in have accomplished nothing, but I'm finding it difficult not to say that?

This, on top of the financial industry's massive exposure to fossil fuel infrastructure and real estate that should otherwise be uninsurable.

I believe in the private sector -- with little federal support, the Green Vortex has scaled solar and batteries to prices no one could have believed even three years ago. But as with Facebook, the rest of capitalism is clearly not going to supervise itself. Standardization and regulation are imperative, and the clock's ticking.

⚡️Action Step: Read the "Carbon Bubble" report, which includes an overview of financial system exposures, plus recommendations for regulating capital markets and banks.

COVID

A rundown on the pandemic that just won't end

The news: Almost two years to the day since we first linked to news about SARS-CoV-2, humanity has lost so much. We've also made some tremendous strides on the pharmaceutical front. But we've got a long way to go to heal society.

Three updates from this week:

The CDC approved boosters for kids ages 12 and up. Get 'em.
Walmart and Kroger raised prices on the impossible-to-find BinaxNOW rapid tests after a three-month agreement with the Feds expired, and months after the administration apparently turned down an offer for millions of holiday tests
I am vexed

Understand it: While US booster rates lag other wealthy countries, 6 times as many booster doses have been administered worldwide as first doses in low income countries.

Boosters will go a hell of a long way towards protecting you and I from a hospital stay -- at least, a stay specifically due to the Omicron variant -- but, and I feel like I've typed this sentence seventy-billion times, a pandemic is a public health problem:

There's almost as many people in US hospitals right now because of COVID than at any point in the last two years
Avoiding Omicron infection is like dodging rain drops, so immunity of all types is growing, but this thing doesn't truly become manageable until we produce a hell of a lot more mRNA shots and use them to vaccinate the rest of the world, drastically reducing infections/sickness/death/opportunities for new variants

⚡️Action Step: Understand the requirements and implications of scaling up to 22 billion mRNA shots under a government-owned, contractor-operated manufacturing model

FOOD & WATER

The well has run dry

The news: Yesterday I called water one of my biggest concerns for 2022, and for good reason.

On one hand, more places are running out of it, and with huge domino effect of consequences.

On the other, rising groundwater and sea-level rise threaten infrastructure of all kinds -- and we're only just recalculating insurance exposures to flooding of all kinds.

⚡️Action Step: Catch up with MIT Technology Review's excellent water-themed issue, specifically:

How we drained California dry
Why Mexico City is sinking
Is El Paso still "drought proof"?
Can we measure the world's freshwater? (like, all of it?)
But also, while we're at it, from Bloomberg: Iran's drought crisis -- and what it means for the regime

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

CRISPR: 1, Sickle Cell: 0

The news: Two years ago, Victoria Gray received an experimental CRISPR treatment to genetically modify her blood cells and free her from the complications of Sickle Cell disease, a disease that affects 1-3 million Americans and 8-10% of African Americans, and 300,000+ babies born in sub-Saharan African every year.

Two years later, the treatment is still working for Victoria, and for 22 of the 45 other patients doctors have treated so far. That's fucking awesome.

Understand it: CRISPR, while still mostly confined to labs and trials, has the potential to cure or treat a broad swath of genetic disease that we couldn't touch before, and possibly even improve upon food crops to reduce waste.

Underlying all of that potential is the idea that CRISPR, a natural defense mechanism in the DNA of your bacteria, and Cas9, an enzyme, can basically be programmed to snip-snip a DNA molecule at any point. What a process.

You could offer me all of the money in the world and I wouldn't be able to get past "Put gloves on."

⚡️Action Step: Understand how we got here with "The Code Breaker", Walter Isaacson's compelling biography of Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize winner and one of the inventors of CRISPR.

BEEP BOOP

Facebook's still ruining (everything)

The news: One year and one day after a bunch of Trump-inspired sore losers stormed the Capitol, revelations continue to reveal, that, yes Sheryl, the insurrection was planned on Facebook, and no, the situation hasn't gotten any better, further polarizing users into two vastly different realities.

From The Markup's "Citizen Browser" project:

"Early (this) week, some of our panelists who told us they voted for Joe Biden were likely to have any number of articles from NPR appear in their news feeds. One article noted the frighteningly rapid spread of the COVID omicron variant. Another suggested upgrading to a heavy-duty N95 mask for protection against the virus.

[...] Meanwhile, those who self-identified as Trump voters in our panel were more likely to be shown any of a number of culture-war stories from The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet.

(One) popular link from The Daily Wire was to a petition urging readers to “resist tyranny” by opposing “authoritarian” vaccine mandates from the Biden administration. The page includes a stark call to action: “DO NOT COMPLY.”

Understand it: So that's great.

Many of our most pressing issues remain intractable as long as Facebook continues to operate: from, yes, democracy on the whole, to COVID, wind farm permitting, and other climate disinformation.

⚡️Action Step: Shutting Facebook down isn't any closer than it was before we left off, and probably won't get any traction until after Democrats attempt to pass voting rights and climate legislation.

In the meantime, subscribe to and support The Markup's absolutely invaluable work examining the ways powerful actors are using technology to change society.

10 THINGS FROM MY NOTEBOOK

Did researchers finally find a way to curb methane emissions from rice? (God, I love rice)
17% of global power lines (and utility sector investments) are at risk in a climate disaster, we should fix those
NASA's next gen asteroid monitoring system is online
Two childhood African immigrants developed a reusable water bottle and they give 50% of their proceeds to fund clean water projects
Russia's got a new permafrost monitoring system
Welcome to Antarctica. Jump in, the water's warm.
This is what the USDA's new labels for GMO's look like
What stress does to the heart (breathe in, breathe out)
Oil majors don't care about cars anymore. Plastic is the new black.
Myocardia is nearly non-existent in kids 5-11 vaccinated with mRNA (Pfizer). Yay!

IMPORTANT JOBS

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