Welcome to the week.
There’s still time to sign up for a phone banking session with the Environmental Voter Project, and take action to turn out more voters that give a shit about the climate! Quinn is hosting an event NEXT WEDNESDAY (April 23rd at 8PM ET) — hop on with other Shit Givers to get trained and then get calling! No experience required!
This Week
And more!
Have a great week,
— Willow
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🙋♀️ Vote!
Would you support your city or county implementing a small fee (eg., $1 on utility bills) to fund local regenerative agriculture projects?
Last week, we asked: How much do you trust standardized medical guidelines?
You said:
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Complete trust - science knows best (10%)
“I worked in an electro microscopy laboratory in school and watched the research being done there. I learned to trust the scientific method used by the researchers. And as a child in the polio epidemic in the 50’s I was given life saving vaccines for my own health. They didn’t even have measles vaccines, mumps vaccines ot chickenpox vaccines. We had all of those illnesses. A shot would have been better. ”
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Mostly trust but sometimes question them (55%)
“Science is fantastic, but never perfect.”
“I worked in health care for about 20 years and general guidelines were useful in getting treatment started promptly, while waiting for labs etc. There are times however, when reliance on them can interfere with needed treatment. ”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Somewhat skeptical - they seem too general (14%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Very skeptical - they don't account for individual differences (20%)
“Often over-influenced by big industries, often ignores essential data from excluded groups (e.g. women, non-white non-European)”
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else (let us know!) (1%)
New Shit Giver Tara is here because “signing up for your newsletter is one of the small steps I took this week to get my head reconnected to the climate realm and hopefully spark some ideas and connections.“
Love this. Welcome!
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⚡️ Climate change:
Some solutions to the climate x home insurance crisis could be creating Housing Resilience Agencies to provide fair public disaster insurance and address market failures (Data For Climate Progress)
Louisiana has a net-zero by 2050 goal, complete with a climate initiatives tsk force and state resilience effort (AP News)
🌍122 major fossil fuel and cement companies are responsible for 45% of current global temperature rise and 29% of sea level rise (Mongabay)
🌍 Renewable energy accounted for a THIRD of global electricity in 2024 (32% to be exact, up from 30% in 2023), and electricity demand grew by 4% due to extreme heatwaves, data centers, AI, EVs, and heat pumps (Energy Monitor)
🌎 We can make the financial system work for climate by increasing clean energy investment in emerging economies (Bloomberg)
🦠 Health & Bio:
The “Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act” would provide assistance to firefighters diagnosed with service-related cancer (studies show that firefighters have a 14% higher chance of dying from cancer) (LA Times)
Trump has rejected the plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs for millions of additional patients without diabetes or heart problems (The New York Times)
EPA rollbacks are putting Black communities at heightened risk from industrial pollution in areas like Indiana, Texas, and California (Capital B)
The SAVE Act (which passed the House) would require in-person presentation of citizenship documents when registering to vote or updating registration information, which could disenfranchise millions of Americans who have changed their names — like the estimated 69 million women whose birth certificates don’t match their current legal names (i.e. married women) (the 19th)
🌍Foreign aid cuts have severely disrupted the global fight against HIV/AIDs — in Kenya, clinics have closed, medication is being rationed, and other vital services have collapsed (The Washington Post)
💦 Food & Water:
Here are some practical ways to get involved with mutual aid to strengthen food systems in your community, from starting seed libraries to participating in community gardens (Civil Eats)
The Farm Bill probably (still) won’t get passed this year, but 6 significant marker bills have been introduced addressing issues like state animal welfare laws, land access, crop insurance, and more (Civil Eats)
Despite fading media attention, residents of Jackson continue to face water quality issues (Mississippi Free Press)
Two specific clusters of food additives commonly found in ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, suggesting additives may be more harmful when consumed together than individually (CNN)
A storm is causing rapid river flooding across the Midwest and South, prompting evacuations and water rescues in multiple states (The New York Times)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
Though human medical care will remain essential to the diagnostic process, AI tools for skin cancer detection are getting better and closer (The Washington Post)
American iPhone manufacturing is unrealistic, as the global supply chain is complex and involves components and materials from dozens of countries and would require years of restructuring to relocate to the US (404 Media)
🌏There were at least 60 instances of AI use in 15 countries during global elections in 2024 (Rest of World)
AI won’t replace radiologists, at least not yet, but is being used as a complimentary tool (Washington Post)
ICE’s investigative database allows government agents to search and filter people by hundreds of specific categories from physical characteristics to location data (404 Media)
🌎 = Global news
Time for a reality check
Last week’s most popular Action Step was fighting for voting rights and calling your Senators to urge them to vote NO on the SAVE Act.
Donate to the People’s Action Institute to help build a society that puts people and the planet first.
Volunteer with Emerge to help recruit and empower women to run for all levels of office.
Get educated about how the Black Maternal Health Caucus is building a movement for better maternal health outcomes.
Be heard about better food policy and join the Food Research and Action Center’s Action Network.
Invest in the health and wealth of Black communities using the Black Farmer Fund.
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
Together With Bookshop
Want to read what the people working on the frontlines of the future are reading?
Every week, I ask our podcast guest, "What’s a book you’ve read this year that’s opened your mind to a topic you haven’t considered before, or that’s changed your thinking in some way?"
And every week, we add their picks to a list on Bookshop, where every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores.
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Sometimes you buy organic, sometimes you hit a restaurant that's plant-based, or at least you choose the veggie option.
Maybe the fish option at the market or the restaurant is marketed as being sustainable. Maybe you compost. It's all useful. But we've been doing it for a while and it's not moving the needle for climate, for restaurants, for farmers, for our health.
So anyone who gives a shit wants to know, what can I actually do to scale regenerative agriculture to benefit everyone?
My guest today is Anthony Myint.
Anthony is the executive director of Zero Foodprint, where he and his colleagues work to mobilize the restaurant industry and allies in the public and private sectors to support healthy soil as a solution to the climate crisis. Anthony's also a chef who won the 2019 Basque Culinary World Prize for his work with Zero Foodprint. He is known in the restaurant industry as the co-founder of Mission Street Food. The San Francisco Chronicle called it the most influential restaurant of the past decade, Mission Chinese Food, which the New York Times named the Restaurant of the Year in 2012. And The Perennial, which was Bon Appetit's most sustainable restaurant in the country.
Anthony is currently on the board of trustees for the James Beard Foundation, and I am so excited to share this conversation with you because food is such a huge part of everything and we're doing it wrong and we can do it so much better.
And sometimes, like Anthony and his crew have, you've gotta fail a bunch of times and then take an end around before you can really start to make a difference.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
There’s still SO MUCH we don’t know about the brain
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