🌎📰 Safe Zones For Humanity

Welcome to the week, Shit Givers.

And welcome to another roundup of news to help you better understand all the important shit going on right now, and action steps to help you do something about it all.

Let’s get to it!

This week:

• 🌏️ A guide to climate mis/disinformation

• 💉 Another COVID shot

• 🥕 Plant-based > local

• 🤖 A.I. is thirsty

• And more!

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 20,000+ 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 Cassandra wants to help solve “saving family farms & farmland (I'm not a fan of foreign nations buying arable acres within the US), sustainable food production & reducing food waste.“

Welcome, Cassandra! We’re on it.

⚡️ Climate change:

• Scientists have outlined nine boundary processes that map the safe zones for humanity — we’ve already crossed six of them

• Here’s what you need to know about climate mis- and disinformation

• Reason #9,738,951 for better public transit: the costs of car ownership are too damn high

• Kenya is leading the world in constructing geothermal power infrastructure, while Japan has started its first carbon credit exchange

• Meanwhile, the US is trailing behind Europe and China on climate fund investing, and falling short in committing money to the UN Green Climate Fund

🦠 Health & Bio:

• You’re probably due for another COVID shot

• Immediately cutting methane emissions could prevent 1 million premature deaths by midcentury

• CRISPR is being used to make bird-flu-resistant chickens, and a clinical trial to cure deafness using gene therapy has begun

• Teen depression is still going untreated, and a large chunk of mental health spending is being driven by young people

• California is the first state to ban disease-linked food additives

💦 Food & Water:

• What you eat likely matters much more for your carbon footprint compared to where your food comes from

• COP28 is sure to be awash with greenwashing — here’s a breakdown of six greenwashing terms to look for from Big Agriculture

• Eating large quantities of red and processed meat is unhealthy and bad for the environment — is a meat tax the answer?

• While natural disasters cost US farmers $22 billion last year (mostly uncovered by insurance), small-holder farmers in India are innovating to conserve water and adapt to drought

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• Disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding X

• Training A.I. uses a lot of water, which isn’t great during a drought

• The influence of billionaire A.I. advisers in Washington

• We should probably have some rules around federal use of facial recognition technology

• Southeast Asia is taking a business-friendly approach to A.I. regulation, in spite of the EU’s push for global rules that align with its own framework

Last week’s most popular Action Step was learning what areas in the U.S. are most vulnerable to climate change.

• Donate to the Global Restoration Initiative to help restore deforested and degraded land.

• Volunteer with Kiss the Ground to help shift U.S. policies and resources toward regenerative agriculture.

• Get educated about food waste policies and programs you can implement in your community with ReFED.

• Be heard about maximizing clean energy incentives in your community and forward this roadmap to your local government.

• Invest in a better planet by banking with ATMOS.

Why are all your favorite newsletters switching to beehiiv?

It’s because the founding beehiiv team were all early Morning Brew employees who helped scale that newsletter to over 4 million daily subscribers.

Years of trial and error went into building the precise tools, dashboards, and analytics needed to accomplish that. And now every newsletter on beehiiv has access to the same winning formula.

So what exactly does beehiiv offer?

• World-class growth tools like the referral program and recommendation network

• Monetization via the beehiiv Ad Network and premium subscriptions (i.e. beehiiv helps you get paid)

• Seamless content creation with a sleek collaborative editor

• Best-in-class inbox deliverability of 98.7%

• Oh and it’s the most affordable by a mile…

Take your newsletter to the next level — get started for free.

🧪 The pH Problem: Explaining Ocean Acidification

The ocean is basic, but all the excess carbon dioxide in the air is making it more acidic, which is bad news for marine life — especially coral and shellfish.

Get informed on this critical issue and get the full scoop on what ocean acidification means, what’s causing it, who it harms, and what we can do about it.

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.

Just when you thought you’d seen it all. Click for the full story 👇️ 

🙋‍♀️ Today’s Poll

Last week, 48% of you said you aren’t using any A.I. tools — largely due to ethical considerations.

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

Work with me 1:1

Want to sponsor the newsletter?

Get your brand, product, or service in front of 20,000+ sustainably-minded consumers: