Welcome to the week.
Last week was a tough one.
State and community-level engagement and organizing are more important than ever. We have Lyndsey Gilpin on the pod this week to talk about her essential work as Grist’s community engagement manager, finding new and creative ways to get communities the information they need. Listen now!
This week’s news:
🌍State-level climate action
💊Amazon’s health business
🚰Groundwater experiments
🗳 Voter doxxing
And more
Stay safe out there,
— Willow
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🙋♀️ Vote!
How important is it for you to reduce plastic in your home?
Last week, we asked: Based on your interest in climate change, we'd like to understand which related areas you're most interested in learning about. Which of these topics would you most like to hear more about?
You said:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Public health (24%)
“Heat domes and extreme drought and flooding and their effects on farming and the risk of landslides.”
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Food (16%)
“How is climate change affecting global production, and how are those in third world countries faring in regards to food security, child nutrition and incidence of death due to starvation?”
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Water (16%)
“Since most tap water in the US is not drinkable, I'd love to hear about ways that the sciences are developing to make clean water available, laws forcing industry to clean up, and home filtration systems that make it foolish to buy bottled water (and thus stop much plastic pollution).”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Biotech (8%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Tech (10%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Medicine (11%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ AI (10%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (send us your ideas!) (5%)
“Housing related to climate change ... for example: should you rebuild after a storm decimates your home and/or neighborhood? If you move, what happens to what you owned (land, buildings, etc), and who pays for that loss and how. Related - how is insurance handling this issue and claims?”
New Shit Giver Vanessa is here because “I am a UK person working in mathematical education, on national policy and programs, to ensure we have the curricula and teaching that young people deserve to become rational and informed citizens. “
Education is so, so important! Welcome.
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⚡️ Climate change:
Amy Westervelt at Drilled is, as always, doing the Lord’s work and clearly outlining everything that Project 2025 plans to do to the EPA, and climate action
A Trump presidency will surely mean rolling back federal climate action, but targeting clean energy won’t be simple
But state and local governments will need to step up and take the lead on climate action
It’s happening already — for example, climate and environmental ballot initiatives to spend billions on resilience and conservation triumphed in 5 states
🌍 CRISPR can help the world combat climate change by helping to create crops and animals better suited to hotter, drier, or wetter conditions
🦠 Health & Bio:
🌎 Rwanda is having an unprecedented victory against the recent Marburg outbreak, with cases and fatality rates dwindling
🌏 To build global health equity, actors in the Global North need to demonstrate allyship to make way for Global South leadership Shifting power in global health
Amazon is stepping up it’s health business, with a healthcare strategy that includes Amazon Pharmacy, a primary care provider chain, and a virtual care service for basic health needs
The mpox outbreak in Africa continues to grow, as does the risk of another US outbreak, but the cost of the vaccine in the US is causing vulnerable populations to skip it
🌏 End smallpox vaccinations may have created an immunity gap that allowed mpox to flourish, highlighting the importance of maintaining disease surveillance and infrastructure even after a threat appears eliminated
💦 Food & Water:
Farmers in Colorado are dealing with the groundwater crisis by implementing groundwater conservation easements
Over in California, farmers in the Central Valley are responding to water shortages with plans to convert 200 square miles into the largest solar installation in the world (instead of growing crops)
🌏 COP16 saw little progress in addressing failures of countries to meet biodiversity targets
🌍 Malaysians are facing a dilemma over a boom of data centers, which create thousands of jobs but cause real resource shortages (like power and water)
The US has strengthened its stance on plastics production ahead of the UNEP plastic pollution treaty summit by recognizing the need to regulate plastics over entire life cycle including production
👩💻 Beep Boop:
🌍 Canada has ordered TikTok to dissolve its Canadian business following a national security review, although the government stopped short of a full-on ban of the app
🌎 Australia plans to bar users under the age of 16 from using social media
A right-wing site is collecting voting rolls (which are public record) to allow anyone to search for a voters address and party affiliation
🌍 Tech start ups in India are struggling as the government keeps shutting down the internet
OpenAI challenges Googles search monopoly by adding search to ChatGPT adds search in a challenge to Google
🌎 = Global news
What kind of science research do we think is important? 👇
Last week’s most popular Action Step was learning about the best places for reforestation using WRI’s reforestation atlas.
Donate to build governing power at the state and local level with The States Project.
Volunteer with Documenters to keep local officials accountable by attending under-reported public meetings and publishing results.
🌎 Get educated about how you can recognize and combat disinformation by taking this Media Literacy Crash Course.
Be heard about building resilience hubs in your community by having your local officials implement policies from the Heat Action Platform.
Invest using data from Global Canopy to tackle hidden sustainability risks.
🌎 = Global Action Step
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
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What's the missing link in local journalism?
That's today's big question, and my guest is Lyndsey Gilpin.
Lyndsey is the Senior Manager of Community Engagement at Grist. Lyndsey was the founder and executive editor at Southerly, a nonprofit media organization that equipped people who face environmental injustices and are at most at risk of climate change effects with journalism and resources on natural disasters, pollution, food, energy, and more.
It was very groundbreaking, and now she's brought that to Grist. Lyndsey was recently a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University, focusing on information access in rural southern communities of color, where she is from, based in Louisville.
And in an age of mass dis and misinformation it's more important than ever that we not only fund journalism and obviously read it, but local journalism and journalists and publishers, editors, photographers, documenters, and more that are of the communities they are based in, who have and continue to build trust in an ongoing, two way conversation to help people get information, to connect the last mile and make sure it goes back and forth.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, anyone? 👇
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