Welcome to the week.
Another week, another news cycle that made me want to build a blanket fort and never come out—here's what you need to know anyway.
This Week
And more,
Have a great week,
— Willow
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Have you or someone you know experienced symptoms of Long COVID?
Last week, we asked: What helps you maintain hope during challenging times?
You said:
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Small personal wins (22%)
“The victor in any battle, be it for hearts or mind, is he who holds their head about them when all others are losing theirs!!! I believe it was a Churchill quip?”
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Community action (18%)
“We have a grassroots but getting more and more organized by the day group of women who understand the assignment.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Historical perspective (8%)
“I am old enough to have lived thru ups and downs and recessions and was born during the GREAT DEPRESSION. Patience is a virtue and whatever snarls the stock market and commerce will eventually work itself out.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Creative expression (5%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Spiritual/mindfulness practices (25%)
“Knowing self talk and gratitude for life can change my outlook on everyday to being alive is a blessing🙌”
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Seeing others' activism (14%)
“Knowing I'm not alone, and belong to a community trying to take action wherever possible.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Gallows humor (8%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else (please share!) (0%)
New Shit Giver Catherine is here because “I'm a parent and the world is scary and hard. I teach my kids that the world has problems, but that we have the power to make it a better place, especially in community with others. I work in philanthropy around kids and family policy. I'm thinking a lot about climate and environmental justice, food safety and access, disaster recovery, access to opportunity and education. I think a lot about the web of community surrounding our kids and strengthening that web. I think about health and access to health care. These days, I'm thinking a lot about where families are getting their information and who they trust. All this and the role of government - if we dismantle the federal government, then who is left to provide care, education, assistance to those who need it (and who will fund it).
It's a lot to carry around in my brain and heart, so I subscribed to have yet another source of information and hopefully some steps to take, because a plan and some action can help the world feel slightly more manageable.“
It is a lot. We’ll do our best to help you take action, thank you for being here.
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⚡️ Climate change:
🌎 Chinese automaker BYD is dominating EV innovation, with a new “Super e-Platform” that enables incredibly fast EV charging (Heatmap)
A jury in North Dakota has awarded a pipeline company over $660 million in damages against Greenpeace for its role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests (The New York Times)
🌎 Brazil has declared a nationwide environmental emergency ahead of the 2025 fire season to prevent a repeat of 2024’s devastating wildfires (Mongabay)
🌍 Slovenia is set to become the first EU nation to link its borrowing costs to climate goal achievements through a sustainability-linked bond framework (Bloomberg)
🌍 Indonesia is facing backlash over its appointment of political figures with little climate expertise to oversee an internationally funded climate program (Mongabay)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Federal funding cuts have resulted in the cancellation of a 30-year nationwide diabetes study run through Columbia University (STAT)
The measles outbreak in Texas is rapidly spreading and threatening to become a nationwide epidemic (Texas Tribune)
🌎Long COVID is pushing India’s marginalized workers deeper into poverty (The Sick Times)
The Trump administration has discontinued “X” gender markers on passports, creating uncertainty and safety concerns for transgender travelers (The 19th)
RFK Jr has proposed allowing bird flu to just spread through poultry flocks to identify potentially immune birds, an idea that veterinary scientists strongly condemn as dangerous, inhumane, and economically disastrous (The New York Times)
💦 Food & Water:
Black farmers are suing the US government for breaking a contract when it repealed a promised $4 billion debt relief program (Capital B)
🌍 Three African cities are implementing watershed restoration projects, planting millions of trees, and expanding green spaces to improve water security, prevent flooding, and build climate resilience (World Resources Institute)
The US beef industry has used similar tactics as the fossil fuel industry to obstruct climate policies and counter initiatives encouraging reduced meat consumption (Vox)
Food mutual aid builds stronger communities through reciprocity and solidarity rather than charity (Civil Eats)
A union is criticizing the USDA’s new waivers allowing increased line speeds in poultry and pork processing plants, arguing these changes endanger workers and compromise food safety (KFGO)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
OpenAI has released its first studies examining how ChatGPT affects users’ emotional wellbeing (MIT Technology Review)
AI slop is flooding social media platforms with content that targets algorithms rather than human audiences, and ultimately affecting how the public interprets reality (404 Media)
DeepSeek is preventing some key employees from travelling, taking their passports to prevent the leak of confidential information and trade secrets (The Information)
AI chatbots are beginning to replace traditional search engines, resulting in a significant shift in web usage patterns and raising questions about the future of the internet’s public commons (Platformer)
🌍 A group of European tech companies are calling for “radical action” from lawmakers to reduce reliance on foreign digital infrastructure (TechCrunch)
🌎 = Global news
The facts as we know them
Last week’s most popular Action Step was calling your representatives to insist they reverse the foreign aid freeze. Global health benefits everyone — keep going!
🌎 Donate to Water For People, an organization working with communities globally to help them find lasting clean water and sanitation solutions.
🌎 Volunteer to join the Ribbit Network and become a citizen scientist detecting and tracking local emissions to give us the best possible understanding of GHG concentrations all over the world.
🌎 Get educated about where you can help reduce food waste in your community using the Too Good To Go app.
Be heard about safeguarding federal science from political interference and urge your representatives to support the Scientific Integrity Act.
Invest in climate solutions by scaling companies working on climate-critical infrastructure technology using Full Cycle.
🌎 = Global Action Step
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.
Want an ad-free experience? Become a Member!
One of the ways this Trump administration is different from the last is, relatively at least, how much more unconstitutional, how much more organized and comprehensive the attacks on our institutions, particularly the scaffolding we built for ourselves the most precious parts of of our societies: immigration, agriculture, the VA, NIH, the CDC, the NSF and humanitarian work around the globe.
Do some of these need reform? Of course, they do. Is this the way to do it? No, it is not.
These institutions, the ones we built over the last century that, again, however imperfect, baseline keep us fed and safe and on the other hand, help advance remarkable scientific progress.
They're at more risk than ever. Every single day. To combat this onslaught, we need groups who are actually prepared to fight back.
My guest today is Dr. Gretchen Goldman.
Dr. Goldman is the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Previously, she served almost two years in the Biden-Harris White House as the Assistant Director for Environmental Science, Engineering, Policy, and Justice in the Climate and Environment Division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and later as the Climate Change Research and Technology Director at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
She is a prolific writer and speaker on science policy and her words and her voice have appeared in Science, Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and the BBC, among others.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
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