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Welcome to the week.
My apologies for missing last week, I was furiously editing our series with Run For Something before the US election day. We had a bunch of young, progressive candidates and RFS alumni on the pod to give you real, tangible examples of fight and progress all over the country. You can listen to the whole series here, it’s awesome.
Ok, news time.
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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🙋♀️ Vote!
Last week, we asked: Do you take public transportation?
You said:
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, every day (11%)
“Good free trolley system in our town.”
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, sometimes (23%)
“I live in a city in the UK, so this is fairly easy for me. I’m able to live without a car entirely.”
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No, because it's not available/reliable/accessible where I live (49%)
“Not available for my daily commute nor routine errands, but I do use the train, trolleys, and buses when going into the city (Boston & Providence) or to the airports.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No, it's available/reliable where I live but I prefer to drive (9%)
“I have arthritis and cannot stand to wait for the bus. ”
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No, because I never leave my home (5%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No for another reason (let us know!) (3%)
“Have had experiences with freaky people.”
New Shit Giver Dyana is here because “I care about everyone's future and protecting nature and fighting the climate crisis. My husband is a scientist and we don't see eye-to-eye on what can be done, so having some science-backed talking points is helpful to me.
My skills are in communication—I literally make words, but also I work with many clients all over the world, and I have learned a lot about running projects with people with all sorts of backgrounds. Another skill I have is that knowing that if you want something done, you can do it yourself. You don't have to wait for someone else with more expertise to come up with the idea and the ambition. You can go to them and say "how about you do this? How can I help you do it?"
Problems I'd like to solve: The climate crisis. The fall of democracy. The inability for people to communicate effectively with each other. The lack of emotional intelligence/awareness and genuine self-worth. I think they are all connected. I am in a pretty niche role, but I'd be excited to be connected with people who want to make a difference, and have the drive to actually do it. Even if all I can offer is making lots of spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets.“
This is so awesome — we all 100% have something we can contribute, whatever our skillset.
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⚡️ Climate change:
Rising electricity prices are being driven largely by extreme weather and natural disasters (which are, of course, made worse by climate change) (Distilled)
The disaster doesn’t end after a wildfire is extinguished — many survivors struggle to relocate, with insurance inadequacies, financial constraints, or emotional attachments forcing them to either remain in damaged homes or face financial losses when moving away (HEATMAP)
🌏 Some top notch reporting from Teen Vogue about what happens to discarded fast fashion in the Global South, where poor-quality donated clothing overwhelms sellers, pollutes ecosystems, and traps workers in cycles of debt (Teen Vogue)
The simultaneous race to build data centers and nuclear reactors in the US is creating a labor competition, where construction projects compete for the same trade workers (HEATMAP)
🌎 Traditional climate funding models may have reached their limits, leading to proposals for new models that bring together experts across sectors to work on clearly defined outcomes rather than broad, CEO-level commitments (Bloomberg)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Turns out, when you let polluters self-report their emissions using unreliable methods, it leads to drastically under-reported levels (in some cases, actual levels are more than 100 times higher) (ProPublica)
🌍 Sand and dust storms are becoming more intense and frequent, affecting hundreds of millions of people to dangerous particle pollution annually and triggering outbreaks of respiratory diseases, meningitis, and other health crises (Mongabay)
A growing body of evidence links fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution to dementia (The New York Times)
🌎 The Maldives has become the first country to implement a generational smoking ban, where no one born after 2006 can purchase, sell, or use tobacco products (The Washington Post)
Given that so many patients with Long COVID are housebound and too ill to participate in clinical trials, one of the largest Long COVID clinical trials to date will be completely accessible from home (The Sick Times)
💦 Food & Water:
LA plans to nearly double its wastewater recycling project to help the city become more drought-resilient and restore the ecologically important Mono Lake (LA Times)
Food waste is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions, yet the US still wastes about one third of its food supply. Solutions include less confusing date labels and more prevention-focused policy (Floodlight)
States are advising people who rely on SNAP to stock up on canned goods, but those goods are becoming more expensive due to inflation and tariffs on the materials used to make cans (The Atlantic)
In addition to the funding being up in the air altogether, new SNAP work requirements are now in effect, and are expected to make 2.7 million people ineligible for benefits (Civil Eats)
🌏Rescuing olive groves around the world can reverse rural depopulation, preserve biodiversity, and sequester carbon (while also, obviously, producing high quality olive oil) (The New York Times)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
About $200 billion worth of data centers are planned for the American South, predominantly in Black communities, causing huge increases in utility bills and prompting residents to fight back (Capital B)
Chatbots being used for therapy despite not being designed for it poses risks like reinforcing stigmas, enabling suicidal ideation, and providing dangerous advice, as tools optimized to keep users engaged rather than provide proper mental health care pose risks of delayed treatment (Undark)
Chatbots are fairly effective in reducing belief in conspiracy theories, with users having an 8-minute conversation with DeBunkBot leading to a 20% decrease in their confidence in their conspiracy beliefs, and one in four believers indicating they no longer believed in a theory afterward (MIT Technology Review)
California’s new law will require web browsers to offer users an opt-out signal that automatically tells websites not to sell or share their personal information, a change expected to set a de facto national standard (The Markup)
AI is accelerating attacks on libraries, education, and expertise by enabling book censorship, flooding library catalogs with AI-generated content, and being used to replace librarians and teachers (404 Media)
🌎 = Global news
Can you really put a price on nature?
Last week’s most popular Action Step was volunteering for the Pesticide Action Network to prevent kids from getting sick, and protect bees.
Donate to support Grist’s independent, nonprofit climate justice journalism.
🌍 Volunteer with the Ribbit Network by helping them collect data on local emissions.
🌎 Get educated about how to build a meditation practice that works for you, with this Guide to Meditation from Vox.
Be heard about your local government adopting their own heat pump targets using this script we co-developed with Rewiring America.
Invest in farms that are practicing regenerative agriculture, using renewable energy, and working on nature-based carbon projects using Farm VC.
🌎 = Global Action Step
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
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Run for state or local office.
Over the past few weeks, we had the pleasure of partnering with our friends at Run For Something, to develop a series of conversations with their alumni and new candidates running for (or currently holding a local or state office all over the US.
These conversations were super inspiring and energizing. Listen to learn about all the different strategies people are using to get shit done, and fight back, from the bottom up (and of course, how you can apply those lessons to your own community!)
Running For Housing (Because Someone Has To) with Somerville City Council member and mayoral candidate, Willie Burnley Jr., and Atlanta City Council candidate, Kelsea Bond
Running For Transit (Because Your Commute Doesn’t Have to Suck) with New York State Senator, Andrew Gounardes, and Tucson City Council Candidate, Miranda Schubert
Running For Gun Control (In The Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens) with Missouri State Representative Ray Reed, and Minneapolis mayoral candidate, Jazz Hampton
Running For School Meals (Because Learning Requires Eating) with school board member and Manchester mayoral candidate, Jessica Spillers, and candidate for the Buffalo School Board, Talia Rodriguez
Running For Water (Because Shutoffs Are Immoral) with Michigan State Representative Laurie Pohutsky, and Detroit City Council candidate, Denzel McCampbell
▶ Or watch full episodes on YouTube.
How oil money haunts the Gaia Hypothesis
In this month’s The Science of Fiction, Maddie Stone sets the record straight about the Gaia Hypothesis, a theory that imagines Earth as a self-regulating superorganism that inspired scientists and science fiction writers alike, but is haunted by oil money.
Life according to the seasons.
This week, guest writer Syris Valentine dives into why our circadian rhythms are at odds with our economy, and what beavers, vervet monkeys, and deciduous trees can teach us about honoring winter’s rhythms instead of fighting them.
While other species prepare for rest and social bonding, we keep plugging away at the same 9-5 schedule whether it’s June or January.
Turns out our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re supposed to ignore the seasons, and artificial lighting just isn’t cutting it.
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