The multiverse, Kanban and the weight of us
The best stories of the week from business, nature, science and the future
Hello. Welcome back to Interior Analytics. A newsletter that chops it up about the business of American nature. If you are new here, welcome and thanks for subscribing!
Today I introduce the first installment of a weekly roundup of stories from the world of business, nature, science and the future.
This will be a regular look into the inspiration behind deep dive essays on Interior Analytics — like how philanthropy and private equity could learn from each other, or how the business of the outdoors (despite COVID) has been booming, for some.
This week includes seven fascinating topics:
There is now more stuff on the planet than us [Inverse]
The national park’s best friend is…a car company? [Bloomberg]
Will the great wealth transfer start an ESG revolution? [WSJ]
A chain letter for substack(s)? I’m in. [Twitter]
Kanban: how I discovered a new way to organize [Todoist]
Maps, I love Maps: Coral reef edition [The Nature Conservancy]
Does the multiverse exist? [New Scientist]
If you are new here, check out my other posts and sign up for this type of weekly content. I’ll send it directly to your email each Monday. Share it with your friends if you think someone else would like this. Thanks - Sam
Three little bullets
First off - each week, I check-in (real quick) with notes from my reading list. Including some feedback from my 8-year old daughter. We call it: Three little bullets.
Currently reading: Enlightenment Now. The case for reason, science, humanism and progress. By: Steven Pinker
From the first 45 pages:
There are three keystones to understanding the human condition: entropy, evolution and information
Almost everything in nature is designed to work against itself. Laws of entropy. (humans being no exception), yet we persevere and thrive. Why?
Progress: Although hard to grasp in 2020, we are living in the best time period in history. And it’s not even close.
Notes from my 8 year old daughter. After reading to her from page 27:
Thanks to language, ideas are not just abstracted and combined inside the head of a single thinker but can be pooled across a community of thinkers.
“I think that means that since humans invented words, they can write things down and talk to each other about ideas and agree or disagree”
“I wonder who came up with the idea to invent ideas”
“Who invented words?…I gotta go”
There is now more stuff on the planet than us [Inverse]
I am routinely blown away at what science has been able to accomplish. Like most recently the development of a COVID19 vaccine in less than a month and getting it safely into waiting arms within 10 months. This week, I read a startling headline: Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass. I had to look into this. And luckily for me, so did the good people at Inverse, where a great synthesis of this scientific article was written. In short, us humans have reached a point in the history of human kind where the weight of the stuff we have made outpaces that of all living things. The breakthrough here might not be in the headline, but rather how they measured this.
The researchers weighed life on Earth by calculating averages across different models of vegetation, finding that plant biomass constitutes some 90 percent of all the Earth's living biomass. Since 1900, human activity has cut the plant biomass in half — from 2 teratons to 1 teraton, the study finds.
No one:
Me: googling teraton.
Each teraton is 1,000,000,000,000 metric tons. That is almost 8000 times the weight of the island of Manhattan. Human-made objects are now exceeding this, the study finds.
Many more interesting tidbits in the full article from Inverse: HUMANITY HAS REACHED A NEW, TERRIFYING TIPPING POINT, STUDY FINDS
The national park’s best friend is…a car company? [Bloomberg]
I spend all of my (professional) time working on behalf of Yellowstone. Specifically, I have the distinct pleasure of seeking corporate partners to support important projects at the world’s first national park— a globally recognized symbol and brand of public lands and natural wonder. It’s truly the honor of my life. So it was no surprise to me to hear that one of the biggest donors to our national parks over the last several years was not an individual, but a car company. You may be quite familiar with Subaru’s “Share the Love” campaign but did you know it has provided more than $35 million in donations since 2013? And this isn’t just greenwashing:
In 2004 it turned its Lafayette, Ind., assembly facility into the country’s first zero-landfill auto plant by persuading suppliers to ship materials in Earth-friendly packaging and finding ways to recycle everything from Styrofoam to dinged bumpers.
The program, Don’t Feed the Landfills, has so far reduced landfill waste by half through recycling, composting, and educational initiatives. It has successfully eliminated 16 million pounds of refuse across the three pilot locations in the Denali, Yosemite, and Grand Teton parks.
Bloomberg does a great job telling this story. For more: THE BEST FRIEND OF THE NATIONAL PARKS IS…A CAR COMPANY?
Will the great wealth transfer start an ESG boom? Not without rules and data. [WSJ]
What is the “great wealth transfer”? TL;DR - The baby boomer generation is retiring and unfortunately beginning to pass on. That means, the largest accumulation of wealth in the history of the planet will begin to change hands. All $68 Trillion by some estimates. But, the recipients of this new cheddar are more concerned with a warming climate and social issues than ever before, and their decisions on investing (and whom to invest for them - I’m looking at you financial advisors) will change dramatically. This asset class, called ‘ESG’ for Environmental, Social and Governance is gaining steam. But it still only makes up a small portion of a very large investment pool. The reason? Some say, its hard to measure things like climate risk, compassion, and diversity in a company plus the impact these variables have on shareholder price. To complicate things, there are no mandatory reporting frameworks currently in place. Making cherry picked data often look better than it really is. As one analyst describes it:
Until we have some authoritative body, and maybe regulation mandating what to do, it’s just going to be the Wild, Wild West when it comes to standards and reporting for the time being.
For an industry that relies on research and data it’s a hard sell. But these metrics are becoming ever more important as ESG investments outperformed their peers in the first half of 2020. More on this massive opportunity here from the WSJ: COMPANIES COULD FACE PRESSURE TO DISCLOSE MORE ESG DATA
A chain letter for substack(s)? I’m in. [Twitter]
As a writer using Substack. I like this idea. Check it out and subscribe!
Kanban: how I discovered a new way to organize [Todoist]
This will either age me or show my complete ignorance of the emergence of digital organization tools (or both, whatever). But when I joined a scrappy startup almost two years ago to sell SaaS software, I was shown a new way to organize my pipeline. It was by using thumbnails of your prospects that you could drag and drop into the different positions of your sales cycle, like: discovery, pitched, contract sent and closed won/lost etc. It was revolutionary for me and how my brain works; not to mention never having to edit a list in excel or any other sales tools I had used before. It was life changing. Then, I discovered this thing had a name: Kanban. And I fell in love even more. I have no idea why its called that or how long I have been missing out. The moral of the story is that it works and now I use it in Trello, Microsoft Teams and virtually anywhere I can. Here is a great rundown on the productivity masterpiece known as Kanban from Todoist: KANBAN: MOVE YOUR PROJECT THROUGH A VISUAL PIPELINE FROM START TO FINISH
Maps, maps, I LOVE MAPS: Coral Reef Edition [TNC]
I couldn’t have described it any better. So this is straight from the horse’s mouth (AKA The Nature Conservancy):
High-resolution maps of the underwater habitats of the entire Caribbean have the potential to transform marine conservation and significantly enhance our knowledge of the ocean.
Today, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, along with partners, published detailed maps of important shallow underwater habitats throughout the entire Caribbean — including all shallow water coral reefs. For the first time ever, countries and territories now have a clear picture of the habitats found beneath the waves of the Caribbean. These revolutionary maps will help guide the sustainable use and protection of marine resources for island nations in which 60% of living coral has been lost in the past few decades alone.
Seriously, this is cool. Check it out.
Does the multiverse exist? [New Scientist]
I am a bit obsessed with frontier tech. It appeals to me for two reasons. 1. I’m old enough now to see technology that might have originated in a sci-fi movie (think Total Recall) become not only real, but totally useful in everyday life. What was once considered far fetched and totally unimaginable 20-30 years ago. And yet, here we are. And 2. I see frontier tech as the solution to our next big problems, like climate change and, as we are witnessing, future pandemics — mRNA was a moonshot 15 years ago. So, I do my best to keep tabs on things that are mindbendingly difficult to comprehend, like quantum mechanics and the “many world’s theory”🤓 . This posits, among other things, that everything is replicating on top of each other because there exists an infinite number of universe’s out there for every outcome of everything. What does this have to do with tech or climate change? Maybe nothing, but as scientists continue to push these boundaries, test these theories, design experiments and develop a lens to see into them, what will come out of the other side of that exercise will be groundbreaking. Like advances in computing and better tools for any problem that lay in front of us. So, is there another you out there somewhere? Some scientists are sure of it, others are waiting for more information. Decide for yourself, from New Scientist (possible paywall): IF THE MULTIVERSE EXISTS ARE THERE INFINITE COPIES OF ME?
Did you like these articles? Did any of them spark a conversation or question? I’d love to hear from you. If you have suggestions for articles or topics drop a comment or DM on twitter.
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