The Grumpy Optimists Newsletter
Chemical pollution is damaging our reproductive health and making our ... smaller
Hello folks 👋
Hope you all enjoyed a cracking bank holiday weekend! We've pulled together our weekly platter of good reads, watches, and listens this week for you to get stuck into below, so see what takes your fancy and let us know your thoughts!
George and Will 💚
Quick reads
âš¡ Biden looks to modernise the electric grid. Without a three-fold increase in transmission lines, going fully electric is impossible. Biden has invested $8.5bn in innovation and infrastructure.
🤯 Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is behind on climate change. Warren Buffet refuses to look at the climate impact of his investments, instead saying it is the company themselves responsible. Why it matters? Buffet is seen as the godfather of value investing, his opinion is important and his $642.45B market cap is equally important.
🌴 The Amazon is no longer a carbon sink. Thanks to deforestation and government deregulation the Amazon now gives off more carbon dioxide, 16.6bn tonnes, compared to the 13.9bn it consumed. A stark warning that we need to protect the 'lungs of the earth'.
🧠Air pollution is damaging older men’s brain health. Repeat after us, "climate change is a health issue". We have said it multiple times, but again, science confirms that air pollution causes brain damage and can impair memory. That's why clean air walking routes are crucial in the interim.
📢 Young activists are calling for climate justice. Climate change is increasingly being framed as an ethical issue. Crucially, this shifts us away from our long-standing tendency to see climate change as an exclusively 'environmental' problem, and ensure that the action we take is accountable to the nations, corporations, and individuals who are the most responsible for the climate crisis in the first place.
🎮 Video games going green? We often hear about the dangers of video games in coercing teenagers into gun crime and violence, but what if instead they were able to create an immersive experience which taught its users the importance of looking after our oceans? The soft power opportunities for climate action and marine restoration in the gaming industry could be huge - sounds like our kind of video game.
You have to listen to this podcast!
Shanna Swan is an environmental epidemiologist whose work looks at the impact of chemical and plastic exposure on reproductive health and child development.
From all things sperm count to what soft plastics are doing to our bodies, this shit is scary af. You must listen to this. Dr. Shanna Swan is both informative and hilarious.
The takeaway? Plastic is interwoven to every part of our life and it’s causing serious problems to our reproductive system (we are genuinely getting smaller d***s) and damaging child health. Also, don’t ever put plastic in the microwave. insert referral link for glass Tupperware (we wish).
Xiye Bastida's rallying call for climate justice
Xiye Bastida is a Mexican-born teenage climate activist, who is a member of the Indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec nation and has grown up in the US after her family were forced to relocate following devastating drought and climate-induced flooding in 2015. At President Biden's Climate Summit last month, Xiye delivered this powerful address to stress the importance of reframing climate change as an intersectional issue rather than an 'environmental' one.
For Xiye, climate justice is about ensuring accountability - we have a moral imperative to address historic injustices over emissions, including the carbon footprint of the wealthy, whose lifestyles have (and continue to) contribute the most to climate change.
In addition to this, we must recognise that climate change is predominantly impacting those communities who've done the least to contribute to rising carbon emissions and who have the least resources to deal with it because they are living below the poverty line. These communities are also those who are on the front lines of severe flooding, devastating droughts and rising sea levels - who are forced to flee their homes and livelihoods, just like Xiye and her family.
Enjoy the week,
George and Will.