Welcome to the week.
How’s everyone doing? Everything continues to be a lot right now. Between heavy/terrifying/infuriating news cycles, I’m focusing on the little things that bring me joy like my backyard hammock, weekly farm box pickups, and nightly episodes of Love Island USA.
Anything that helps me recharge before diving back into the work that matters.
Speaking of:
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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Do you know how your business affects ecosystems?
Last week, we asked: Do you feel like you are better educated and equipped to make a measurable difference on the most important issues you give a shit about after engaging with our content?
You said:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 5 (Strongly Agree) (34%)
“Regular prompting keeps me engaged in my own thought processes and biases.”
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 4 (Agree) (33%)
“I rely much more than I first thought I would.”
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 3 (Neutral) (29%)
“Better educated definitely. Able to make a measurable difference? Well, I'm not so sure. SEEING even an incremental change would help encourage but it seems I continue to move a step forward and get pushed 2 steps back. Vitriol and blame runs rampant these days. I wonder, at times, what's happening to us humans and whether anything I'm doing makes a difference at all. ”
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 2 (Disagree) (2%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 (Strongly Disagree) (2%)
New Shit Giver Madeleine is here because “I have long COVID, diagnosed back in 2021, so that’s a big part of why I’m here. I’m passionate about climate and deeply interested in learning more about how we can tackle ongoing challenges related to Long COVID, climate change, and other critical issues like health equity. I’d love to help contribute however I can, especially by sharing my experience and supporting efforts that make a real difference.“
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⚡️ Climate change:
🌍 Aerosol emissions have long acted as an “invisible brake” on global warming, but as clean air regulations reduce these emissions worldwide, they are unmasking approximately half a degree of warming that would otherwise be hidden. (Carbon Brief)
Repealing the IRA would disproportionately impact Southern Republican-led states, which could lose about half their projected renewable energy capacity by 2035. (Cleanview)
🇻🇳 Expensive infrastructure projects meant to block saltwater intrusion in Vietnam are frequently failing, prompting experts to call for a shift to nature-based solutions. (Dialogue Earth)
🌎 Marine heat waves are intensifying globally — a quarter of the world’s oceans experienced heat wave conditions in 2024, disrupting marine ecosystems and coastal communities. (The New York Times)
Over the past few decades, over 4000 companies have made climate pledges with little results and with emissions that continue to rise. (Bloomberg)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Deportations create ripple effects beyond those directly deported, increasing health risks for entire communities, and particularly harming children’s health and development through toxic stress. (Your Local Epidemiologist)
NOAA’s Center for Heat Resilient Communities, which helps cities develop heat protection plans, has been defunded, despite extreme heat killing more Americans annually than hurricanes and tornadoes combined. (Mother Jones)
The newly rolled-back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations will disproportionately threaten Black Americans who face higher COVID infection rates, hospitalization risks, and existing healthcare access barriers. (Capital B)
All 17 members of the CDC’s influential vaccine advisory committee have been fired, a move public health experts are calling a “public health disaster” that prioritizes ideology over evidence-based medicine. (The New York Times)
Terminated NIH grants have cut funding for research on HIV prevention, cancer disparities, LGBTQ+ health, and more, forcing scientists to abandon clinical trials mid-study and potentially harming participants who rely on continued treatment and data collection. (ProPublica)
💦 Food & Water:
The USDA is facing criticism for distributing disaster aid to farmers in a way that favors large commodity farms over small farms. (Civil Eats)
🇮🇩 Centuries-old seaweed cultivation traditions in Indonesia are now threatened by climate change. (Mongabay)
A program that successfully delivered free weekly food boxes to rural families during summers and is highly effective at reducing child hunger is stuck in a bureaucratic limbo due to DOGE cuts and USDA rule-making delays. (Texas Monthly)
🌎 Global ocean acidification has crossed a critical planetary boundary threshold. (Mongabay)
Republicans are proposing the sale of 2.2 to 3.3 million hectares of public land across 11 Western states to build housing, but there’s pushback within the party as well as from environmental groups. (The New York Times)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
Wikipedia has paused an experiment to show AI-generated article summaries following objections from the site’s editors. (404 Media)
The National Hurricane Center is partnering with DeepMind to use AI hurricane forecasting models that predict storm paths and intensity up to 15 days in advance. (The New York Times)
The US federal government is developing an AI website and API that will integrate AI tools from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic across government agencies. (404 Media)
OpenAI is partnering with Mattel to create internet-connected toys. I’m sure it’s fine. (Platformer)
A cybersecurity researcher discovered a vulnerability that allowed them to reveal the phone number linked to any Google account through brute force methods. (404 Media)
🌎 = Global news
A climate justice breakthrough
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.
Want an ad-free experience? Become a Member!
Toilet paper. You use it. I use it. Sometimes, even my children use it.
The point is, toilet paper is everywhere. Almost everyone needs it, and so much of it still comes from actual forests, and yet 2 billion people don't have access to even basic sanitation, much less readily available and recycled toilet paper.
That's about 40% of the global population. 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes. That's also completely fucking unacceptable.
So what can I do about toilet paper and sanitation, and can I do them at the same time?
My guest today is Bernie Wiley. Bernie's the Sustainability Director at Who Gives a Crap and, oh boy, do I love this company.
Who Gives A Crap makes toilet paper and paper towels and poop bags and more out of recycled paper and bamboo. And they give 50% of their profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world.
And because of Bernie's relentless focus, they consider every step of the supply chain along the way from water use to power use, all the way to last-mile delivery.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Last week’s most popular Action Step was finding ethical, sustainable, proven conservation and community programs to volunteer with abroad with GVI.
🇮🇳 🇰🇪 🇵🇰 Donate to the Aga Khan Development Network to meet immediate needs like food provision and disaster relief and also provide long-term solutions for lasting community wellbeing.
🇳🇵 🇹🇿 Volunteer with ethically and responsibly abroad on projects developed in partnership with community leaders with Raleigh International
🌎 Get educated about how climate change is contributing to extreme weather with this interactive map from Carbon Brief.
🇺🇸 Be heard about stopping cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. Keep calling until it’s done.
🌎 Invest in projects that accelerate social and economic development across Latin America and the Caribbean with IDB Invest.
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
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