Welcome back, Shit Givers.

If you're new here, welcome! I provide you with the most vital science news (what's happening), analysis (how to think about it), and Action Steps (what the hell you can do about it).

I'm so thankful to you for sharing the newsletter with friends, co-workers, and more. This week there's an added incentive:

The first 40 people who successfully refer someone new to the newsletter today will win an INI-branded, kitted-out Bug Out Bag. It's got enough gear for 2 people for 72 hours and I proooobably don't have to tell you that being prepared for disasters is a key part of adaptation.

Scroll to the bottom to find your sharing tools -- this is a one-time thing, so don't miss out!

This Week, Summarized:

• The IPCC report, by the numbers
• Biden's new COVID plan
• Wheat (prices) on the rise
• Mental health apps need to meditate on some randomized control trials
• Pegasus: Not a horse, this time

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

🕛 Reading Time: 10 minutes

CLIMATE CHANGE

What climate change will feel like

Unsplash

The news: The latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, titled "Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability", composed by 270 researchers from 67 countries, was released on Monday, comes in at a brisk 3600+ pages, and has been described by wordsmith and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as "an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership."

So!

Let's break it down a bit, because this is a 1500 word newsletter (cough), not 5 phone books stacked atop one another.

Here's a potpourri of relevant numbers from Bloomberg:

• 3.3 to 3.6 billion: Number of people globally living in settings that are “highly vulnerable” to climate change
• 44%: Share of all disaster events since the 1970s that have been related to flooding
• 50%: Share of human population that may be exposed to periods of life-threatening climatic conditions arising from coupled impacts of extreme heat and humidity by 2100 in a low-emissions scenario
• 2050: Date by which simulations project the Arctic Ocean will likely become practically free of summer sea ice for the first time
• 99%: Estimated percentage of the world’s coral lost with a temperature rise of 2°C
• 10%-25%: Projected increase in losses in global yields of rice, maize and wheat per degree of warming
• 17%: Share of mobilized private finance related to climate change devoted to Africa from 2016 to 2018

Understand it: Take a big step back. We've made substantial progress in the past fifteen years. We've probably avoided worst case scenarios.

This report specifically focuses on real-world impact, not just numbers. We have to keep this pasta under 1.5 degrees Celsius, and we're not currently on track to do that.

The message is crystal-clear:

From Florida floods to California fires, from the US president to the US Supreme Court, from South America to Africa, , from biodiversity losses to racist disaster relief, from offshore wind to climate migration, from carbon to methane, we've got to do so much more, right now.

The good news: That's why INI exists.

It's so easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this, but I promise you: we can fucking do this.

There's so many incredible people working along the frontlines of our climate future. There are so many opportunities to write a new future that is cleaner and more equitable, to build more just societies, entirely new economies, the biggest markets of all-time.

Whatever your passions, whatever your skills, whatever your resources, there's a place for you.

⚡️Action Step: Elections have enormous consequences apparently, and November 2022 is right around the corner. Donate to and get involved with the Environmental Voter Project, which identifies inactive environmentalists and transforms them into consistent voters to build the power of the environmental movement.

Share on Twitter

COVID

Unsplash

Vaccine equity update: Just 13% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, and 36.9% of people worldwide have received no doses.

The next phase of COVID is here

The news: Freshly unmasked, the US CDC and Biden administration are out with new guidelines and a revised plan on how to reduce deaths and contain future waves.

America may be falling woefully behind other developed countries in the vaccination rankings, but in response to dropping case rates and disappearing blue-state mask mandates, and with increasing political pressure, the CDC's colorful new guidelines take the onus off policymakers and put them on you:

• Is your local hospital getting crushed? If no, feel free to skip the mask.
• If you do feel symptoms, pickup a free test at a pharmacy or use one you've already got at home (there's plenty, for now).
• If you test positive, well, that's where Biden's new "one stop shop" plan comes into effect (if Congress funds it)

A pharmacist will check for (potentially serious) interactions with your current medicines and if you're clear, offer you a free course of Paxlovid (reduces hospitalization or death by 89% if begun within 5 days of symptoms).

Exciting!

There's only one problem: At the moment, only doctors and pharmacies with on-site medical clinics can prescribe the drug.

Understand it: While I agree that this is the best moment we've had yet to assess our astounding successes and policy failures to date, and to reassess our public health plans, I'm frankly unsure how this one-size-fits-all, liberty-forward approach fulfills the "public" part.

Namely, how it protects the millions of high-risk individuals (from pre-existing conditions, or close-quarters work), and/or those who don't respond to vaccines -- many of whom suffer under America's pre-existing condition: being a person of color.

And none of this forgives or plans to address the gaping societal holes COVID made worse: Millions of children left without caregivers, and a mental health crisis the likes of which we have zero idea how to deal with (more on that below).

I believe we can put together the massive coordination effort required among the government, test makers, pharmacies, and relaxed/adjusted prescription rules to make "test to treat work", but addressing the whole kit and caboodle means not just testing for and treating the latest variant, but addressing the underlying systemic weaknesses that made us so vulnerable to the virus in the first place.

⚡️Action Step: There's no better one better suited to explain "endemicity" than our BEST FRIEND Dr. Nahid Bhadelia and team at Boston University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research. Get prepared for what's coming and tune in to their panel on March 9 at 1-2 ET right here.

Share on Twitter

FOOD & WATER

Unsplash/Polina Rytova

Feed the people

The news: For all of our success in reducing poverty worldwide, every tenth person still lives in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day), leaving subsistence farming the default for many, and affordable food out of grasp.

The war in Ukraine is putting crops like wheat even further out of reach for many -- starting with the people in those two countries.

Understand it: Russian and Ukraine are among the world's most prolific exporters of wheat, corn, and vegetable oil.

Tack on a (fossil-fuel...fueled) war, crippling sanctions, shipping clusterfucks, a more volatile climate, and food prices already at their highest since 2011 (a thousand years ago), people in food insecure countries like Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, and many in sub-Saharan Africa will suffer further.

⚡️Action Step: Longtime Shit Givers shouldn't be surprised that Jose Andres and the World Central Kitchen team sprang into action this week on the Ukrainian border, feeding tens of thousands of refugees. They've now expanded into Ukraine itself and have served over 50,000 meals and counting.

Two Action Steps: Feed Ukrainian refugees through WCK, and help lift 1 person above poverty elsewhere by donating just $30 a month with our friends at GiveDirectly.

Share on Twitter

HEALTH & BIO

Unsplash

It's time for new mental health apps to show some receipts

The news: That the United States (and many other countries) are suffering through a mental health crisis probably isn't news to you, or your doctor, or your kids, or your kids' teachers, or your kids' pediatrician...you get the point.

The question is: If we were ill-prepared to even talk about mental health in a more transparent, generous, and productive way before COVID, how will we improve on those metrics, and expand support and access for affordable treatment, in coming years?

The Biden administration (again, it's State of the Union week, so there's plans spilling out onto the White House lawn) announced a new strategy calling for, among others, training programs for clinicians, community health workers, and peer specialists, support for frontline health workers, improving veterans' care, expanding telehealth access, and improved online protections for everyone, but especially kids.

Understand it: With climate volatility growing, days are getting hotter, and a recent analysis showed that hotter days means 8% more ER visits for mental health emergencies. And that's probably an understatement, because the analysis didn't include the uninsured, who are many.

Enter: Mental health tech startups, flush with funding and millions of new users, but slightly bereft of evidence that they actually work.

Understand it: There's so much market potential for digital therapeutics, so much hunger for a system made easier, more affordable, more accessible, more personal -- right on your phone.

But that's the rap: Shouldn't a product or category that could be so enormously impactful also have the highest bullshit threshold?

Insurance companies have questions, too.

It's easy to say it's just a "meditation app", but that would being ignorant of how much people are suffering and looking for help, how much AI is being misused, how much lateral jumps could cause great harm, and how much money stands to be made from this market. Give the pharmaceutical industry a cookie and they'll take a mile.

⚡️Action Step: Not everyone is physically capable, and you should always talk to your doctor first, but if you're suffering from anxiety or depression, there's one therapeutic that's got plenty of data behind it: exercise. Take care of yourself, we need you.

Share on Twitter

BEEP BOOP

Unsplash

At least it's not named after a Tolkien crystal

The news: Pegasus might sound like the coolest unicorn ever, and it is, but it's also among the most widely used and hellishly invasive spyware ever deployed, often by governments against critics, journalists and politicians, among others.

And that's why many want it banned entirely.

Understand it: Let's remember that, like public health, your data health is my data health, and vice versa.

Governments, corporations, and other hackers don't just track critics, journalists and politicians, they track my location, and they track yours, too, every day.

And then they match them together, and ping them off a huge variety of other data and devices, and then data brokers sell the whole package off and you mostly never notice.

Pegasus is not that.

We need not only new cultural expectations, but new internal and external rules, with carrots and sticks, that are delicious and hurt (in that order).

A significant and questionably steadfast gap remains between the early principles of AI ethics, and the standardized implementation of practices that aren't invasive, racist, unpredictable, or all three. Principles that safeguard our myriad data (if they allow for collecting them at all).

In that gap lies us, massive wealth, and the alignment problem. Who watches the Watchmen?

⚡️Action Step: Listen to my conversation with Carissa Veliz, professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford and author of "Privacy is Power", and then read her book to find out how to protect yourself.

10 THINGS FROM MY NOTEBOOK

• Can hemp get PFAS out of soil?
  
• Beyond Meat sales slump as competition heats up
  
• The CRISPR patent was reversed and wow
• There's a massive new Alzheimer's study, he types for the 41st time
• Twitter's expanding Birdwatch, their fact-checking program
  
• Vatican launches online platform to help Catholics fight climate change
  
• A new binding ziplock international treaty could start to clean up plastic waste
• Two-fifths of London businesses are at risk of flooding
• Kenya's using solar panels over crops to "harvest the sun twice"
• The Netherlands has almost 5 million e-bikes. I LOVE E-BIKES.
• An extra, but it's timely: We should very obviously work hard to reduce the availability of nuclear weapons.

Don't forget to share today's newsletter with one person who could use it!

Thanks as always for reading, and thanks for giving a shit.

Have a safe weekend.

-- Quinn