Essay: How to Survive

This week:

There are a default group of problems that exist in our society because of the basic needs required to be a human.

They are:

• Air
• Water
• Food
• Sleep

These, our most primal needs, are more or less biologically inarguable, and the good news is, we understand them very well and have made enormous progress to ensure they are accessible to a greater percentage of humans than ever before.

There have been trade-offs along the way, of course, including plundering most of the solar system’s single habitable planet’s resources.

Without fulfilling our most basic requirements, we can’t truly move into the future, no matter how much one small but powerful group wants to skip ahead to electric planes or flying cars or extended life spans.

I want to get to the future as fast as anyone, but without equal access and enjoyment of these make-or-break requirements, there are simply no bootstraps to pull yourself up by, no ground to stand upon, much less to collectively reach higher.

Here's What You Can Do:

• ⚡ Understand the health impacts of what’s actually in your food, cosmetics, and cleaning products with the free Yuka app
• ⚡ Reduce food waste and take care of your grocery shopping with the Misfits Market
• ⚡ Interested in community solar? Plug your zip into Arcadia’s tool to find out how you can go clean and reduce your power bill
• ⚡ Want to invest in clean tech but don’t know where to start? Check out ImpactAssets and their donor-advised fund and put your cash to work saving the world

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

• Is this why lung cancer doesn’t respond to immunotherapy?
• The first federal gun crime report in 20 years dropped
• New blood donation rules will loosen restrictions on gay and bisexual men
• Prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes at just 2 years of age

Climate

• The US Treasury made more cars eligible for tax credits, and still, there’s nothing for e-bikes and other micro-mobility options
• The Colorado River crisis is not going swimmingly as seven states just can’t agree on cuts
• Europe’s fossil fuel use should plummet this year

Food & Water

• CRISPR could help feed the world but boy genome editing in crops is a tad bit controversial
• The FDA rolled out a plan to re-org the food side and not everyone is pleased
• How road salt is poisoning Michigan’s water

Beep Boop

• A new group called Health3PT is trying to address ransomware attacks along hospital supply chains
• GPT is coming to…everything
• The ACLU is suing the US intelligence community to try and further expose abuses of a warrantless surveillance program

COVID

• Vaccine makers kept $1.4 billion in prepayments for canceled COVID shots for the world’s poor and I am losing my mind
• VA Senator Tim Kaine, suffering from Long COVID, pushes for more research and treatments
• A good piece on we need an air-quality revolution

Get more:

• Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
• Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
• Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel
• Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
• Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors