Five Climate Tipping Points

Welcome to the week!

ICYMI: On Friday, we released our 2023 Charitable Giving Guide. Donate to some amazing organizations doing the work to move the needle here.

And if you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet (there’s still time!), check out our 2023 Gift Guide.

Now to the news.

This week:

• ☀️ Solar-powered hospitals

• 🦻The rise of hearing aids

• 🍌The race to save bananas

• 🤖Preventing discrimination in LLMs

• And more

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 25,000+ humans understand and unfuck the rapidly changing world around us. It feels great, and we’d love for you to join us.

👉 New Shit Giver Alejandro wants to help solve “getting cleaner energy and lowering the cost so people can be able to afford it all year long“.

World leaders have just pledged to triple the world’s renewable energy by 2030 — let’s hold them to it!

⚡️ Climate change:

• We’re on the verge of 5 catastrophic tipping points if the planet heats up past 1.5C (current action plans put us on track for 2.5C by the end of the century, so)

• Here’s where we’ve made progress on climate so far, and the areas where we need to get to work

• Solar-powered healthcare facilities in poorer countries could save lives

• The inside scoop on IRA’s remaining tax credits

• How women and girls are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis

🦠 Health & Bio:

• Thinking of gifting 23andMe this Christmas? Maybe don’t.

• A new digital pill can track your vitals from your stomach

• Hearing aids are the new reading glasses

• A backlog in US Visas is going to make the nursing shortage even worse

• A new study has answered questions about how bacteria change under the pressure of natural selection, leading to antibiotic resistance

💦 Food & Water:

• Why the Farm Bill is important for the climate

• LA County plans to shift its water supply away from other regions, and instead focus on collecting water from local sources

• Reforming crop insurance subsidies could save taxpayers billions of dollars

• Learn how to cook for the climate

• Bananas are being threatened by a deadly fungus — and genetic modification might be their only hope

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• 38% of Black households in the rural South don’t have home internet

• Google has launched Gemini, their version of GPT-4, and Meta has launched Purple Llama in the name of trust and safety in generative AI

• Meanwhile, predators are using Facebook to help find each other

• Anthropic has proposed a new method to proactively mitigate discrimination in LLMs

• Microsoft has launched an AI app to help blind and vision-impaired people “see”

Want more news? Become a Member.

Last week’s most popular Action Step was subscribing to Tofu to get access to a community of climate tech marketers.

• Donate to Our Climate to support young people advancing climate justice policies.

• Volunteer to run for school board with resources and support from Run For Something. We need you!

• Get educated about wastewater viral activity levels for COVID-19 nationwide and in your region (spoiler: the national level is currently High).

• Be heard about decarbonization and share Rewiring America’s Electrification Policy Menu for Local Leaders with your local government officials.

• Invest in socially responsible portfolios with Betterment.

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What are microplastics?

And why are they in everything, and how can you avoid them?

We’ve broken it all down in our microplastics explainer. Read it now 👇️ 

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This newsletter is free, but to support our work, get my popular “Not Important” book, music, and tool recommendations, connect with other Shit Givers, and attend exclusive monthly live events, please consider becoming a paid Member.

🐣 I love birds, and you should too! Click to read the full article and marvel at the badassery of vultures 👇️ 

🙋‍♀️ Today’s Poll

Last week, 57% of you said immigration reform is “pretty important” to climate change mitigation and adaptation policy.

Want to talk climate strategy, investing, or anything else?

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