Welcome to the week.
It’s officially summer! Get outside, touch some grass, enjoy the sunshine (well, actually maybe just hide in the shade), and then maybe go to your local leaders to advocate for a heat action plan in your municipality because god damn is it hot out there.
Me all summer
Ok, let’s go.
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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🙋♀️ Vote!
Have you ever considered running for a local office?
- Yes, I have already run for or currently hold local office
- Yes, I'm actively considering it or planning to run in the near future
- I've considered it briefly but feel I lack the experience or qualifications
- I've never really thought about it but would be open to learning more
- No, I have no interest in running for local office
Last week, we asked: Do you know how your business affects ecosystems?
You said:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (45%)
“We are a food coop developing a sustainable climate resilient full cycle food hub model and are exploring ways to reduce packaging, food waste, restoring soil and reducing GHG’s in the food cycle and urban ag.”
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Kind of (20%)
“I work for a food company. We're very conscious of how our suppliers' agricultural practices affect the environment: it's a key benchmark for us. Probably less conscious of how distribution (via air and road) affects things. ”
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Not really (25%)
“I’m a middle manager in an SME, I’m kept very busy and we only publish what I think our CSR policy expects us to publish. So I doubt very much that we look into the wider impact.”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No (10%)
New Shit Giver Emily is here because “I want to live my life and raise my kids in a way that prioritizes meaningful relationships over stuff, time outside-ish (we are not an outdoorsy family) over screens etc., and the happiness and fulfillment of me and my husband as well as the kids. It's the holy grail of parenting in this era, and yet, so many ways to be wrong.
I can't quantify exactly how worrying about climate change fits in, but it is obviously an existential problem, and is so tied up with our fucked up system of government/economics... There's endless inter-connections, I guess just so many things to fret about.“
So many things, and they are all connected, which is why we get so excited about solutions that solve many problems at once. Welcome!
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⚡️ Climate change:
Commercial shipping companies are exploring nuclear-powered cargo ships as a carbon-free alternative to bunker fuel to help the industry meet its climate goals (Bloomberg)
Home air conditioners can help balance the power grid by adjusting their energy consumption in response to grid frequency changes (Gizmodo)
The reconciliation bill would aggressively phase out solar and wind tax credits, and eliminate most clean energy incentives within months (Distilled)
🌎 The world’s 65 largest banks increased their fossil fuel financing to $869 billion in 2025, a $162 billion jump from 2023. Great job, everyone (The Guardian)
A major US steel company is abandoning its plan to build America’s first green steel plant using hydrogen technology (Canary Media)
🦠 Health & Bio:
The NAACP has filed a notice of intent to sue Elon Musk’s xAI for alleged Clean Air Act violations in Memphis (Capital B)
Tick bites are increasing across the US, and experts are predicting a severe tick season in 2025 (msn)
🌍 Measles causes lasting immune system damage by destroying T and B calls, leaving children vulnerable to other infections for years after recovery (Our World in Data)
Former members of ACIP are condemning the dismissal of all committee members, arguing that this destabilizing action undermines decades of evidence-based vaccine policy (JAMA Network)
Side-eyeing the MAHA movement for promoting fear of processed foods and modern agriculture, which threatens to put the burden of cooking from scratch back onto mothers, and essentially push women back into unpaid domestic labor roles (SELF)
💦 Food & Water:
🇳🇿 Scientists in New Zealand accidently discovered that adding a wastewater treatment chemical to cow dung significantly reduces methane emissions (Bloomberg)
🇸🇦 South Africa has declared a national disaster after severe flooding in the Eastern Cape province has killed at least 92 people, displaced thousands, and damaged infrastructure (Mongabay)
Western mayors from the bipartisan Climate Mayors group are calling on the federal government to provide funding and support for water infrastructure projects and conservation efforts as the Colorado River faces severe shortages (Los Angeles Times)
General Mills plans to remove artificial colors from all US retail products by the end of 2027 and from school foods by 2026 (Reuters)
🌍 The coffee industry is a major driver of deforestation, slavery, and child labor, but better agroforestry practices, consumer pressure, and government regulations offer solutions (Mongabay)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million one-year contract by the US Defense Department to develop AI capabilities for national security challenges (CNBC)
AI scraping bots are overwhelming the servers of libraries, archives, museums, and galleries while harvesting training data (404 Media)
While Big Tech leaders are united in pursuing AGI as the next breakthrough, they can’t agree on what AGI actually is, leading critics to wonder if it’s more of a marketing buzzword and investment magnet than real scientific goal (Financial Times)
Though AI companies claim their models use minimal energy per query, researchers argue these figures are meaningless without transparency about how they’re calculated (WIRED)
LLM exhibit “position bias”, overemphasizing information at the beginning and end of documents while neglecting the middle (MIT News)
🌎 = Global news
Keep your data between you and your doctor
Together With 80,000 Hours
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Imagine waking up to discover that the United States has just pulled $35 billion out of foreign aid overnight, and that hundreds of HIV clinics, and child malnutrition programs, and poverty graduation trials will shut their doors within days and weeks.
Now imagine there's a rapid response team quietly sifting through every single grant, ranking them by lives saved per dollar and building lifeboat bridge grants before the lights go out.
That team exists. It's called Project Resource Optimization (PRO), and it's turning a disaster into a crash course in faster, smarter, truly lifesaving philanthropy.
So what can you do to keep the most effective aid on the planet from flatlining?
My guest today is Rob Rosenbaum, one of the co-leads of PRO.
Stick with us to learn how emergency triage, ruthless transparency on both sides of the market and a few well-placed dollars can keep millions of people from falling off a fiscal cliff and how you can help build the lifeboats.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Last week’s most popular Action Step was donating to the Aga Khan Development Network to improve lives in places like India, Kenya, and Pakistan through investing in infrastructure and education.
🌍 Donate to Project Resource Optimization (featured in this week’s TMIQ podcast, above!), a team of independent consultants from USAID identifying urgent high-impact funding gaps left from foreign aid cuts. This is an emergency — let’s save as many kids as we can.
🇺🇸 Volunteer with the Trevor Project to support LGTBQ+ youth. They need allyship now more than ever.
🌍 Get educated about human activity at sea using resources from Global Fishing Watch to make better, more sustainable decisions on how we use the ocean.
🇺🇸 Be heard about stopping The Big Beautiful Bill — millions losing SNAP benefits and health insurance, cutting renewable tax credits, selling millions of acres of public lands, tax breaks for millionaires — this is anything but beautiful. Call your Senators again and again, especially if you live in a red state!
🇺🇸 Invest in Black farmers to help them build health and wealth in their communities while contributing to a more sustainable food system with the Black Farmer Fund.
🌎 = Global Action Step
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
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