🌎📰 The Big Health Oligarchy

Happy Monday, Shit Givers!

ICYMI: You have until EOD this Friday to enter to win a $100 gift card to Patagonia!

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And now to the news!

This week:

• 🏭️ Green concrete and steel

• 🧠 Unchecked cognitive decline

• 🫒 The Mediterranean Diet

• 🌦️Unreliable weather apps

• And more!

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 25,000+ humans understand and unfuck the rapidly changing world around us. It feels great, and we’d love for you to join us.

New Shit Giver Aimee wants to help “bring about an ethical and just plant-based food system that is kind to animals and the earth, and that happens to be the healthiest for humans“.

Welcome, Aimee! Improving our food systems is a huge piece of the puzzle for pretty much every problem we cover at INI — from reducing emissions, to better land and water use, to nutrition and healthcare. Let’s do this!

🦠 Health & Bio:

• The middlemen profiting from America’s complicated healthcare system

• 10 million Americans have mild cognitive impairment and don’t know it — and neither do their doctors

• Controversial antibiotic treatments to improve the gut microbiome of malnourished kids

• Low and middle-income countries are leading the charge to improve air quality

• Learn how to spot the difference between abortion facts and misinformation

⚡️ Climate change:

• Decarbonizing heavy industry is a big lift — but not an impossible one

• Global CO2 emissions could peak this year

• A sexy new key component of climate policy: building codes!

• An easy fix to speed up heat pump installations in Europe

• Airlines are pivoting away from offsets in their climate-friendly flight plans

💦 Food & Water:

• What makes the Mediterranean Diet so good for you?

• Some simple changes to reduce your household food waste (and your emissions!)

• Half (half!!) of the continental US is used for meat production

• Irrigation plans to combat drought in India could actually further reduce rainfall

• The Biden administration is sending $8 billion to solve the groundwater crisis

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• Why your weather app kind of sucks

• OpenAI has created a team to study AI risks

• The energy footprint of AI

• Anxious teens want their parents to track them

• Artists have a new tool to fight generative AI

Want more news every week? Become a Member.

Last week’s most popular Action Step was investing to scale climate tech with Carbon Equity.

• Donate to Data For Progress to provide movements with the data they need to fight for a more equitable future.

• Volunteer to change the climate narrative, and pledge to contribute talent, media, and resources to the climate crisis with the Potential Energy Coalition.

• Get educated about products that are free from forever chemicals with this list from PFAS Central.

• Be heard about climate policy, and sign the petition from Escape The Chamber to get big companies to leave the climate-action-obstructing US Chamber of Commerce.

• Invest with a conscience and set up a climate-friendly 401(k) regardless of where you work with Sphere.

Together With Happy Masks

It’s winter, so that means more windows closing at the gym, at the office, and especially in schools.

Whether you’re not interested in COVID for the first (or fifth) time, or the flu (please get those flu shots!), and/or if you’ve got someone who’s immunocompromised in your life, it’s time to restock on quality masks.

Happy Masks makes my favorite masks (I wear them, and so do my kids), and their five layers of (adorably designed) protection have been third-party tested to have 99.9% viral and bacterial filtration efficiency, and 95% efficacy after 50 washes (that’s nuts).

Get the masks ranked by WIRED, Wirecutter, USA Today, and more (and right now there’s free shipping for orders over $60 in the US).

Want an ad-free experience? Become a Member.

🥓 Would you eat it?

Lab-grown, cell-cultivated, cultured — whatever you call it, meat grown in a lab is a polarizing topic.

Develop a deeper understanding of lab-grown meat with our explainer by clicking the button below 👇️ 

Support Our Work

INI is 100% independent and mostly reader-supported.

This newsletter is free, but to support our work, get my popular “Not Important” book, music, and tool recommendations, connect with other Shit Givers, and attend exclusive monthly live events, please consider becoming a paid Member.

Well, I guess we’re done here. Click for context 👇️ 

🙋‍♀️ Today’s Poll

Last week, 45% of you said you already have a heat pump! Let’s go.

Want to talk climate strategy, investing, or anything else?

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