Welcome to the week.
Before we jump into the news, I need to plug our new episode of The Most Important Question, this week with David Schmidt, producer and co-director of the new Ken Burns doc The American Revolution, which premiered on PBS last week.
If you’re looking for something, anything to talk about around the Thanksgiving table, this is a great place to start! Listen here.
Ok, now the news.
This Week
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Have a great week,
— Willow
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Last week, we asked: Do you feel prepared or knowledgeable enough to recognize greenwashing?
You said:
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Yes (32%)
“I don't know that it's as much of a problem (anymore as it used to be). And not currently as much of a problem as simply misinforming people (& minimizing their concerns about climate change). I feel like we're in a time where, even BP, doesn't feel the need anymore to pretend as if they're doing the right thing by the environment. Trump has made it ok to just sweep all climate science under the rug and move on with your business.”
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No (36%)
“I don’t have consistent strategy of questions to evaluate greenwashing.”
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ It depends (32%)
“Some things are so greenwashed that I think they are confused about what they do.”
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⚡️ Climate change:
A real estate developer dedicated to walkable cities opened a 17-acre car-free neighborhood in Arizona, proving that building walkable cities is possible in the US (Yale Climate Connections)
A 2023 marine heatwave rendered two key coral species functionally extinct in Florida, threatening to worsen hurricane surges and flooding since healthy coral reefs reduce wave energy by up to 97% (National Geographic)
🌎 Colombia has banned all new oil and large-scale mining projects in its Amazonian region (42% of the country), declaring the region a reserve for renewable resources to prevent forest degradation, waterway contamination, and biodiversity loss (Mongabay)
California has approved stricter rules to reduce methane emissions from landfills and prevent dangerous underground fires by requiring operators to use satellites and drones for leak protection (LA Times)
You still have until the end of the year to install home electrification upgrades and claim federal tax credits before these incentives are eliminated (Canary Media)
🦠 Health & Bio:
The FDA is removing the black box warning from menopause hormone therapy products to correct decades of overly cautious prescribing, as new evidence shows the therapy can be safe and effective when tailored to individual women (Your Local Epidemiologist)
Grants for 383 clinical trials were canceled by the federal government earlier this year, disrupting research affecting more than 74,000 trial participants, including studies on HIV prevention and other critical health issues (Washington Post)
🌏 Gavi has reached its target of protecting 86 million girls in low-income countries against cervical cancer through HPV vaccination, preventing an estimated 1.4 million future deaths and generating $2.32 billion in economic benefits across 43 countries since 2024 (Gavi)
Short term health insurance plans have significant limitations and drawbacks, with some states banning them due to their limited coverage (Washington Post)
Child care workers in Chicago are creating detailed protection plans and resistance networks to keep families together during ICE raids, including acting as temporary guardians for children whose parents are detained (the 19th)
💦 Food & Water:
Texas is facing a severe water crisis as industrial operations and population growth strain supplies, with the state projected to face an annual water deficit of up to 12 million acre-feet by 2050 (The New Yorker)
🌍 Tehran is experiencing severe water rationing as it faces its direst and hottest autumn in nearly 60 years, with one of the capital’s five major reservoirs completely dried up (Vox)
The Trump administration is requiring all 42 million SNAP recipients to reapply for benefits to crack down on alleged fraud, though participants already must recertify their information regularly with state administrators (Politico)
US fisheries have rebounded from near-collapse through a “catch shares” system developed by an alliance of environmentalists and fishermen, which eliminated daily catch limits in favor of seasonal quotas (USA Today)
The EPA has proposed significantly loosening protections from streams, rivers, and wetlands from pollution and development (Civil Eats)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
Are algorithmic feeds protected speech? Big Tech is suing California over the Protect our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, arguing the law, which prohibits minors accessing personalized algorithmic feeds without parental consent, violates the First Amendment (Bloomberg)
🌏 India has established a comprehensive framework for data processing and privacy that includes requirements for verifiable consent, mandatory breach notifications, data retention limits, encryption and security safeguards, and restrictions on transferring personal data outside of India (The Economic Times)
Google has launched WeatherNext2, an improved AI weather model that generates forecasts 8x faster and can predict weather up to 15 days in advance with hourly updates (The Verge)
A federal judge dismissed the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, with the decision heavily influenced by an experiment that paid 6000 people to stop using Facebook or Instagram, found that they primarily substituted with YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat rather than apps the FTC claimed were Meta’s true competitors (Platformer)
🌏 Germany is giving the Interior Ministry new powers to ban technology components from specific manufacturers (particularly those from China) across critical infrastructure sectors (Politico)
🌎 = Global news
Last week’s most popular Action Step was checking out emissions data in your city to make more informed decisions about climate policy using the Crosswalk Labs open data portal.
🌎 Donate to Period to end period poverty and help them advocate for policy and legislation that supports menstrual health, ends stigma, and distributes products to people in need.
Volunteer with the Environmental Voter Project to help get environmentalists registered and ready to vote.
Get educated about how youth experiencing homelessness can overcome barriers to accessing a valid ID with resources from the National Network for Youth.
Be heard about getting your state to fund period products in schools so no student has to miss class due to their biology.
Invest in companies that align with your values and build a sustainable portfolio using Earthfolio.
🌎 = Global Action Step
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
If the American Revolution was, as Ken Burns put it, the biggest event since the birth of Christ, then there's probably never been a better time to explore and drastically expand on why it happened, who was involved, and what it set us up for than right now.
My guest today is David Schmidt.
David is the producer and co-director, along with Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, of American Revolution, a six-part, 12-hour series premiering on PBS this November.
David is a childhood friend, but two decades after he and I played Nintendo in his basement, he began working with Florentine Films as a researcher and apprentice editor, beginning with The Roosevelts in 2014, where he also supervised the documentary's seven-episode script.
David's research on the Vietnam War in 2017 won him the Jane Mercer Footage Researcher of the Year Award, and he also worked closely on that project with writer Geoffrey C. Ward and helped coordinate post-production. With Burns, Schmidt also produced the two-part biography Benjamin Franklin in 2022 for PBS.
I can't wait for you to hear this discussion. I think it pairs really nicely with our conversation with Clint Smith and can't wait for you to see this piece.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
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