CLIMATE

The UN Sounds All the Alarms

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an official UN task force, released a 3,949-page report from 234 scientists yesterday that called current climate change trends a “code red for humanity.”

Here’s what you need to know

It’s all our fault. If there was any doubt that maybe we could partly blame volcanoes for climate change, the IPCC put it to rest. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land,” the scientists wrote. They found that human activity has increased the global average temperature by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.

Weather goes mid-2000s candy “EXXTREME!” Tropical storms, heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and flooding are all expected to get more severe and more frequent if climate change continues at its current rate, the report said.

• More extreme weather shouldn't just be thought of in the future tense, but the here and now. Just last week Greece, Turkey, and much of the Western US experienced some of their worst wildfires in history. 

All eyes on the energy industry. The report blamed one particular human activity for exacerbating climate change: burning fossil fuels. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are the highest they’ve been in 2 million years. 

• “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet," UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres said. 

There’s a little hope. Since the IPCC’s last big report in 2013, countries have done a better job in curbing carbon emissions. But they need to speed up those cuts dramatically, the report argued. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to keep global temps from spiraling higher.

Looking ahead...world leaders will head to Glasgow, Scotland, in November for the pivotal COP26 international climate talks. They'll be tasked with taking the IPCC's scientific report and turning it into meaningful policy. 

GOVERNMENT

The Dems' Budget Outline Is Yuge

With the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill set to pass the Senate this morning, Democrats want to keep the momentum going with another massive government project—a $3.5 trillion budget framework they released yesterday.

Spending will go toward...

• Universal pre-K and child care of working families
• Two free years of community college 
• Expanded Medicare to cover hearing, dental, and vision care 
• Public housing 
• Clean energy development 

Why it matters: The plan represents the biggest investment in the social safety net in decades, per the NYT. “At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st century,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a statement. 

"Thanks, I hate it," said Republicans, who consider the framework way too expensive and also oppose the tax increases Democrats have put forward to fund it. Unfortunately for them, Democrats could push it through later this year without any GOP support thanks to their thin majority in the Senate.

One high-stakes battle remains: the debt ceiling, aka the limit on the US' ability to borrow money. Democrats will need to find a way to raise or suspend it soon to avoid economic chaos. 

AUTO

Rental Car Companies Are Looking Like New

From pandemic-demolished to meme stock legend to actual business turnaround—that's the Hertz story. One year after it filed for bankruptcy, the car rental company posted a 62% jump in sales and plans to relist on a major stock exchange by the end of 2021.

The great Covid comeback story: Hertz went bankrupt last June at the peak of the pandemic, weighed down by nearly $19 billion in debt and roughly 700,000 cars parked with no one to drive them. This May, it reached a deal with private equity firms to pull itself out of bankruptcy, rewarding the individual investors who made the company the OG meme stock. 

Zoom out: The surge in summer travel and the nationwide shortage of used cars has fueled the rebound of the rental car industry. Searches for rentals nearly doubled in late June over the same period in 2019, according to Kayak.

And to cap off a successful Monday for the sector, Turo, the “Airbnb for cars,” filed for an IPO confidentially yesterday. After cutting about a third of its workforce during Covid, Turo reported its first-ever profitable quarter this year.

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Pencils, Erasers, and Life Insurance

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GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Stat: The Forest Service has 10,000 firefighters on staff, including 3,000 seasonal employees—and that’s not close to enough to battle the 100 active fires that are raging across the country, per the WSJ. Firefighting is a tough job to recruit for, paying $15–$18/hr and offering few benefits. 

Quote: “AMC’s journey through this pandemic is not finished, and we are not yet out of the woods.”

AMC CEO Adam Aron sang a cautious tune after his company, which got clobbered by the pandemic but staged a furious, individual investor-led comeback, beat revenue expectations last quarter. And, because YOLO, the company will accept bitcoin at all its US locations by the end of the year.

Read: A riveting history of the ill-fated Segway. (Slate)

SPACE

NASA Is Recruiting Human Guinea Pigs

If you want to get away from it all—Covid, climate change, people who just text “hey”—NASA is giving you an opportunity to live on fake Mars for a year.

The agency has opened up applications for four people to live in a 3D-printed Martian habitat it built inside its Houston HQ. NASA will use this experiment to help prepare for actual missions to the Red Planet.

Job responsibilities:

• Go on simulated spacewalks.
• Eat space food, grow crops like Matt Damon, and play around with virtual reality equipment.
• Coexist with three strangers in a 1,700-square-foot room for a year.

Job qualifications:

• American citizen or permanent US resident aged 30–55.
• A master’s degree in a science, engineering, or math-related field. Or be a fighter pilot.
• Must not derive pleasure from looking out of windows, because there aren’t any.

Bottom line: If you’re basically an astronaut already and don’t want to pay rent for a year, this could be the gig for you. If not, we hear Richard Branson is selling tickets to space for $450,000 a pop.

WORK

Let's Talk About Work

Thanks to Covid-19, work will never be the same. But how it will not be the same is less clear.

As companies prepare to bring workers back to the office (eventually), we’re going to spend the week releasing stories that’ll make you smarter about the thorny politics, awkward vaccination conversations, and workplace attire debates that are bound to arise as employees leave their couches behind.

Up first: Why managing a hybrid workplace is going to be a lot more complicated than you think. Read it here.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• The Pentagon unveiled a plan that would require members of the US military to be vaccinated beginning Sept. 15. 
• Why The Suicide Squad stumbled at the box office.
• Canada reopened its border to fully vaccinated American tourists. Banff is calling.
• Uber and Lyft ride-hailing prices in July were up 50% over 2019 levels.
• Barstool Sports and MLB have had “significant negotiations” about airing midweek baseball games on Barstool’s platforms, per the NY Post.

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BREW'S BETS

Time to GET SCHOOLED—on financial wellness. Check out M1nute Money Masterclass, our four-part video series with tips on everything from saving to investing to what to eat for breakfast (the answer is always donuts). Learn more today.*

Helpful links: Some good tips for aspiring writers, a comprehensive list of all branches of science, and advice on how to nail interview questions.

Tech Tip Tuesday: How to increase the time you have to unsend an email in Gmail (or decrease it, if you want to live on the edge).

Your work experience: If you've been working from home during the pandemic, we'd love to ask you a few questions. Take our 30-second survey here.

GAMES

The Puzzle Section

Brew Mini: It’s like a crossword, but smaller. Play the Mini here.

Famous book lines

Yesterday was Book Lovers Day. We’re book lovers, and we assume you are too, so this quiz will test your knowledge of famous lines from literature. We’ll give you a line from a book, and you’ll have to name the book. 

1. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
2. “The answer to the great question...of Life, the Universe and Everything...is...forty-two.”
3. "Aunt Lydia said it was best not to speak unless they asked you a direct question. Try to think of it from their point of view she said, her hands clasped and wrung together, her nervous pleading smile."
4. “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
5. “A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.”

ANSWERS

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison