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Welcome to the week.
Took a week off to slather some tofurkey in miso gravy (10/10 recommend) and there’s so much news to catch up on, so let’s get to it!!
But first! Proud to announce that BOTH of our podcasts — Not Right Now and The Most Important Question — are Signal Award winners. Not Right Now received Gold in Family & Child-raising podcasts, and The Most Important Question took home Silver (Activism, Public Service, and Social Impact) and Bronze (Sustainability and Environment). If you haven’t listened to either show yet, what are you waiting for??
Ok, let’s get to it for real this time.
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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🙋♀️ Vote!
How are you most likely to take action on causes or issues you care about?
Last week, we asked: Based on your interest in climate change, we'd like to understand which related areas you're most interested in learning about. Which of these topics would you most like to hear more about?
You said:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Public health (28%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Food (17%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Water (16%)
“I live in Tampico, Mexico, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, an area where water was never a problem until last year, when all our fresh water lagoons and artificial ponds went dry. Cattle ranches without water or grass. The city w/o water. Everbody was worried, government, businesses, chambers, we had emergency meetings, projects, ideas, save water campaigns, etc, etc. Then, suddenly, lots of rain, everything filled up and no one gives a shit any more.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Biotech (8%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Tech (9%)
“Tech's role in both adding to the problem with giant data centers as well as their role in finding solutions to climate change and its impact on people's lives.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Medicine (8%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ AI (8%)
“AI seems to have quickly become an albatross of energy waste so I'm interested in steps taken to combat this and use this new tech efficiently.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (send us your ideas!) (6%)
“Housing strategies to deal with consequences of climate change; migration from low elevation seaside areas and resulting migration pressures (as if there are not other migration pressures already!) Thanks for this survey... great idea!”
“The intersection of environmental design, architecture, urban planning, and economics as a response to climate migrations and severe weather events.”
“Political systems and democratic reform that supports climate change shifts for the better.”
New Shit Giver Susan is here because “I am especially passionate about vaccine advocacy and am maddened by the fact that the people now in charge of US health policy are rabidly anti-vaccine, and anti-science in general. I am also passionate about end-of-life care.“
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⚡️Climate change:
2025 hasn’t been completely terrible — in the first half of the year, renewables produced more electricity than coal globally and covered all growth in electricity (not in the US though). So celebrate just a little bit, and then keep working because four major Earth systems also moved dangerously close to critical tipping points 🙃 (The Crucial Years)
Environmental lawyers are fighting back, filing 96 legal actions against the government while simultaneously working on “Project Phoenix” to envision entirely new legal frameworks to protect the environment, we love to see it (What If We Get It Right?)
Federal EV tax credits are gone, leaving a patchwork of state policies including a mix of tax incentives and higher registration fees to balance environmental goals with infrastructure funding needs (Axios)
🌍Solar growth in Africa is surging across the continent, as 25 countries now import at least 100 MW annually, driven by distributed solar adoption that can replace expensive diesel generation with panels that pay for themselves within months (Ember)
Extreme heat kills by exacerbating common conditions like obesity and heart disease, and official counts vastly underestimate deaths because heat’s indirect role often goes unrecorded (The Guardian)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Media coverage of what actually kills us (heart disease, cancer) is vastly lower than coverage of deaths caused by rare dramatic events (homicides, terrorism), creating a stark perception gap in what the real threats are (Our World in Data)
A physician studying the link between air pollution and women’s health found that for every additional 10 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter of air, there’s a 10% increase in infertility risk (!) just had her research grant cancelled (guess who) (The New York Times)
Latino communities across the US are increasingly installing air quality sensors to monitor pollution levels and advocate for cleaner air (see infertility risk link above, etc.) (The Guardian)
Costco will sell Ozempic and Wegovy at a discounted rate to people without insurance, though it still may remain unaffordable to people who need them most (NBC News)
Where to turn for vaccine information as the CDC’s credibility crumbles under political influence? Here’s a list (Association of Health Care Journalists)
💦 Food & Water:
A history of ultraprocessed food from wartime innovations to aggressive postwar marketing to an explosion fueled by corn and wheat subsidies, and tobacco companies make an appearance too, because of course they did (The New York Times)
🌎GiveDirectly (our favs ❤) is using Google’s AI-based Flood Hub that provides five-day advanced warnings to deliver cash transfers to flood-prone households in Bangladesh before disaster strikes (Rest of World)
🌎A landmark global treaty (ratified by 111 countries) banning government subsidies for illegal and overfished fishing took effect in September, the first environmental sustainability agreement in the WTO’s history (Mongabay)
At least 27 states turned over extensive personal data on millions of SNAP food assistance recipients to the federal government, despite a federal judge’s ruling that the demand likely violates federal law, raising concerns that the data will be used for immigration enforcement (fuck ICE) rather than fraud prevention (NPR)
🌎Small scale farmers in Malaysia are demanding transparency over a proposed crop seed quality bill that they worry could criminalize seed sharing practices and increase corporate control (Mongabay)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
The climate tech landscape is crowded, with some technologies that are genuinely promising and others that are overhyped — learn to navigate the difference between viable solutions and smoke and mirrors here (Bloomberg)
🌍 Courts in Latin America are struggling to handle AI-generated crimes like deepfakes, even as they rapidly adopt AI tools and systems to clear massive case backlogs (Rest of World)
Here are four new indicators that an AI bubble may be forming, as concerns about the sustainability of AI growth continue to mount (Platformer)
Tech giants are racing to build gigawatt scale data centers at unprecedented speed, driving US data center spending from $13.8 billion to $41.2 billion annually since ChatGPT’s launch (Distilled)
Americans lost over $16 billion to internet crime in 2024 (a 33% increase from 2023), and legal protections for intelligence-sharing expired in September, leaving companies hesitant to continue sharing data with the government (Politico)
🌎 = Global news
(Spoiler: the answer is climate change)
Last week’s most popular Action Step was donating or volunteering with Food & Water Watch to fight for safe food, water, and a livable climate (the trifecta).
Donate to Everytown to support their evidence-based solutions to end gun violence.
Volunteer with Overdose Lifeline to aid communities affected by addiction with advocacy, education, and support.
🌏 Get educated about how the legacy of colonialism and fossil fuel development go hand in hand, and tools you can use to decolonize climate research.
🌎 Be heard about better climate policy in your town and have your city council join the Global Covenant for Mayors for Climate & Energy.
Invest in the ability of Black farmers to build health and wealth in their communities through the Black Farmer Fund.
🌎 = Global Action Step
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
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We have a new podcast series, co-developed with our besties at Run For Something!!
In a moment when the news out of Washington can seem untenably rough, when the gerontocracy that got us here won't give up their hold on power, when billionaires own every single media channel, when everything from housing to childcare to elderly care and healthcare have been made unaffordable, if accessible at all, and the question, what can I do? Can feel more fruitless than ever, I come bearing good news.
Look to the young people. Look to our school boards, our cities, and in many cases to our states, our country remains a promise unfulfilled on purpose.
You need more examples of fight and progress you can actually see and touch and feel and beginning today in partnership with our best friends at Run For Something we are doing just that.
Each episode of this new series will feature two guests, both sourced from the Run for Something pipeline and graduating classes, the next generation of American leaders.
First up today, our topic: more and more affordable homes for more of our neighbors.
It’s a big one. It’s a complicated one. There are a million ways for us to chip away at being short 4 million affordable homes and good news, again, even if it doesn’t seem that way, there are a million incredible humans already doing the work in towns and states across the country. And I’m going to introduce you to two of them today.
The first is our incumbent. Willie Burnley Jr. is a Run For Something alum who currently sits on the Somerville, Massachusetts City Council and because he is an overachiever, he is actually also running for Mayor of Somerville. Willie has firsthand experience with displacement, and he’s a fierce advocate for tenant rights and affordable housing initiatives, and he has made some real progress in Somerville.
Next I’ll talk to our candidate. Kelsea Bond is a renter, community organizer, and union member running for Atlanta City Council. They’ve organized for everyone from Nabisco workers to Delta ramp workers, and they’re running on a platform to expand inclusionary zoning, abolish parking minimums, and among other stuff, to create an Office of the Tenant Advocate.
Two amazing humans fighting more and more affordable homes for more of their neighbors, for our neighbors. Let’s find out what it means for their hometowns and for yours.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Has mycorrhizal fungi been giving us the blueprint to bioregional organizing this whole time?
In this month’s Life Finds A Way, Tasmin Lockwood explored how this underground network that’s been quietly organizing forests for millions of years can teach us lessons about building resilient communities through cooperation instead of competition.
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