here I am

Some points of interest:

Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.

The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Create green spaces, especially ones with trees, to mitigate both heat and flooding, and reduce air pollution as well. They could be parks of varying size, swales, nature strips, wall gardens, rooftop gardens, etc. Increasing tree cover is probably the most beneficial though.

Design urban spaces so that excess water is directed into green spaces, to mitigate flooding and/or make the most of rainwater. Swales, “sunken” gardens, and large green spaces where rivers are likely to overflow are all good ideas.

Urban farming and urban gardening to mitigate disruption of food supply, as well as provide green spaces. Dig for victory!

Diversify food sources as much as possible.

Paint rooftops white to mitigate heat. I have also heard of painting road surfaces white.

Where there must be a hard surface (roads, footpaths, etc.) use a porous surfacing material that allows water to seep through. That could be pavers with small holes or a new type of porous “concrete” (I’ve forgotten what it’s called).

If you can grow mangroves, plant mangroves to mitigate storm surges, as well as improve biodiversity.

Build large offshore wind farms to reduce storm intensity, as well as provide electricity. Yes, really.

Build a modular energy supply to mitigate damage from natural disasters. Avoid large areas being reliant on one energy source or distribution network. Ensure backups for important resources like hospitals, communication, and transportation.

Educate and inform citizens.

Create and strengthen community networks. Community projects, community hubs, and buy nothing/food sharing groups are good places to start.

Anticipate what emergencies are likely to occur and what peoples’ needs will be in that situation. Allocate funding, stockpile resources, and make plans accordingly.

Install early warning systems if necessary, and make sure everyone understands them.

Relocate people or important resources that are unavoidably in harm’s way.

Enforce vaccinations. The last thing anyone wants to deal with in tough times (never mind an emergency) is a pandemic.

In flood-prone regions, have government buyouts of flooded houses and turn those areas into green spaces

Change zoning laws where necessary to allow denser population (looking at California) while maintaining green spaces and flood planes

Ensure that city planning takes into account making evacuation routes

In drought-prone regions, subsidize homeowners collecting rainwater