Welcome back, Shit Givers.

The new format is chugging along and I'm so thankful for your feedback and support. I feel a sense of creative freedom that just wasn't possible before. Let's go.

⚡️ Last week's most popular Action Step was checking out your live energy footprint with Electricity Maps (seriously, you should know this).

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TOGETHER WITH AVOCADO MATTRESS

Introducing season two of A Little Green, a short podcast series featuring stories of lives transformed by the power of nature, brought to you by Avocado Mattress.

Avocado’s award-winning, certified organic mattresses are also inspired by the power of nature. Organic latex and wool from Avocado’s own farms deliver luxurious support and breathability. And Avocado is Climate Neutral Certified for net-zero emissions and donates 1% of all revenue to 1% For the Planet.

Learn more at AvocadoMattress.com.

WHAT WE CAN DO

• ⚡️ Understand your home's flood and fire risk with Risk Factor

• ⚡️ Work for a local government? Get real-time flood forecasting with FloodMapp

• ⚡️ Wildfire season is around the corner -- get an outdoor monitor and check the map with PurpleAir

• ⚡️ Get ahead of COVID and more. Get your town's wastewater monitored with Biobot

• ⚡️ Over 60? Use your life experiences to organize for climate action with Third Act

• ⚡️ Find the best "green" bank near you with Bank.Green

What the hell does it mean to have “insurance”?

Well, there’s actual insurance, which is a policy where you and an insurer contract with one another in case things go south with (usually) your home, your car, or your body.

There are other examples of actual insurance, of course, but the general agreement is you pay insurers what is sometimes a reasonable on-going fee and in return, they agree to indemnify you against losses, damages, or costs from adverse circumstances. Examples may include strep throat, a basement flood, wildfires, surgery, getting T-boned (and not in the fun way), theft, chemo, surgery, or death.

That’s the layman’s technical explanation, but more colloquially, and for our purposes today, “insurance” can mean just having a buffer or a back up plan, or a “thing you might do to make sure a big decision (like buying a home, having a child, or just generally being a person) doesn’t go to hell in a hand basket.”

For example, not spending your entire paycheck every month is a way of having insurance, a buffer, or a backup plan -- if you can afford to do so.

Building a savings account, and/or allocating a healthy chunk of your portfolio in cash and commodities in, say, a time of inflation, war, and climate impacts, is another.

So is eating healthy, getting vaccines, getting some cardio every day, and doing strength work as you age to protect against bone density loss. Again, if these are available to you.

In the former, you’re saying “I’m happy to compound a little less money so when shit hits the fan, I don’t lose it all.”

In the latter cases, you’re not paying an insurance company, but instead trading your processed food for some legumes, and trading your finite time right now for hopefully more time, later.

All of these decisions are usually the result of understanding that just by being alive you’re really putting yourself out there. While you believe in your choices, and the odds of actual calamity are (usually) reasonable, the costs of calamity can be devastating.

My friends: We are in a time of calamity. It’s time to get some insurance.

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