Upper-class traitor Chuck Collins on how "wealth hoarding" will create more Trumps'

Chuck Collins walked away from a family fortune — and he's here to tell us how the super-rich dominate society

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

SALON
APRIL 13, 2021 

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Businessman with Coin Bank (Getty Images)

Rich people may live on the same planet as the rest of us, but they exist in their own very special world.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed millions of people and caused economic, social, and political crises around the world. During this time of tumult, the world's richest people have seen their income and wealth grow immensely. For example, the world's billionaires have increased their collective wealth by a trillion dollars, at least a 50 percent expansion compared to the previous year.

In the United States, the language of "essential workers" is summoned to describe how the working poor are exploited by huge corporations like Amazon and Walmart. The billionaires who own or control such corporations are becoming even wealthier while preventing their employees from earning a living wage or organizing to defend their rights, health and safety.

Propaganda economy-speak about the alleged "K-shaped recovery" also masks the true extent of poverty and human misery that has been caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump regime's negligent, if not criminal, response.

Of course, while many millions of people have been imperiled by the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. and around the world, the very rich received early access to vaccines and lifesaving experimental treatments.

Money has been enshrined as a form of free speech in American politics. This has translated into enormous power and influence over the machinery of democracy. The predictable outcome is the peoples' democratic will is smothered, if not wholly ignored by elected officials; what political scientists describe as "plutocratic populism" is doing the work of American neofascism and autocracy.

Gangster capitalists are escalating their exploitation of the rainforests, jungles, and other crucial habitats and wilderness areas. This only increases the likelihood that other pandemic-scale diseases such as COVID-19 will spread from animals to humans.

How have the plutocrats responded to these crises and others? Instead of displaying social responsibility, many of the world's richest individuals and families are building bunkers, buying fortified islands or even making ultimate plans to abandon the planet.

What is it like to be a member of that social class? Chuck Collins knows. He was born into the Oscar Mayer meat and cold cuts family fortune. At age 26, he was compelled by conscience to give away his inheritance in an act of solidarity with the poor and broader community. Living his principles of human solidarity and social change work, Collins is now director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Collins is also the author of several books, including "Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good" and "Is Inequality in America Irreversible?" His new book is "The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions."
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In this conversation, Collins explains how wealth hoarding negatively impacts American society, and how the very rich use the "wealth defense industry" to hide their assets in order to avoid paying taxes — and to remain above the law in other ways as well. Donald Trump is a prime example of that corrupt and dangerous plutocratic class.

He also discusses the unspoken cultural rules of the wealthy and the antisocial values and beliefs which guide their lives. At the end of this conversation, Collins debunks right-wing talking points about "the death tax" and "makers and takers" that are used to propagandize far too many "working-class" Americans into voting against their own economic self-interest.

During America's ongoing pandemic and this age of death, the rich have become even more powerful and wealthy while "essential workers" are being sacrificed. Unions have been further undermined and income is stagnant, if not declining, for the average American. There is mass unemployment and human misery. Given your life and decision to walk away from an inherited fortune, how do you make sense of this moment?

In a way, the pandemic was the great reveal of what happens when you allow a society to pull apart economically, socially, racially and politically. The fact that billionaires have seen their wealth increase and so many other people have lost so much — their lives, livelihoods, their savings, and their health. In my opinion, we should be making a big pivot and a transition in American society because of these lessons learned. There is a broader recognition that we need to do things to lift up the most vulnerable, pay a living wage, and have proper health care. More people are also realizing how top heavy the country's wealth concentration is.

Because I have an intimate front row seat to the world of wealth, I also see things cracking at that level. There are many wealthy people who do not want our society to keep going down this path. They know it is not going to end well.

What do we do with hope? Is hope a dangerous thing in America today?

I am friends with a labor organizer named Ernesto Cortes. He used to say, "You need to cultivate your cold anger." There is hot anger at the deep and entrenched systemic inequality and systemic racism. We can take that anger and lash out or we can take the steely cold anger and steer it into transformational activities. Let's get organized. Let's get people to run for office. Right now, there is a big fight over this question: Should a small, rich minority rule over America, who want to block the social and political changes that so many people want for this country? I think the pressure is going to keep building for a political realignment.

The concept of the "moneyed classes" is a very important one. I prefer it to the "one percent" or "plutocrats," which is vague and imprecise language. What does the concept and language of the "moneyed classes" allow us to communicate to the public at large?

We are drifting toward an oligarchy or what we could also describe as a "hereditary aristocracy of wealth". We could also describe that group as consisting of "wealth dynasties." In 20 years, the sons and daughters of today's billionaires will be calling the shots, running the economy, dominating politics, blocking change that everyone else wants and even using their philanthropy as an extension of their power and influence.

America is going to be moved even more away from a democratic self-governing society and toward raw rule by money. I do not believe this is in anyone's long-term interests. I have been trying to explain to wealthy people how ecological crises impact everybody. The super-rich need to reinvest back into society in order to solve some of the problems that impact and hurt them too. It is in their self-interest.
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How is the world you are describing any different from America right now?

It is a matter of degree. The inequality will be even more entrenched than it is today. It will be harder to dig out of the rut if you will. We'll have many more Donald Trumps running for office. The social safety net will be even more dismantled. There will be more political and social polarization. America may even be controlled by autocratic, totalitarian institutions. If these trends continue here in the United States, the country could look more like Brazil, a country with a very weak state, a powerful plutocratic governing class, a very small and precarious middle class and lots of desperate people. That is the dystopian outcome that could await America in 20 years.

What is life like for the rich, especially the extremely wealthy?

These people live in their own distinct realities. I grew up in middle "Richistan." I'm not from "Billionaireville." I'm not from old dynastic wealth. But I know enough about the rich to know that the higher up you get, the more unplugged you are from the day-to-day struggles of most people. In that way, wealth and privilege are a type of disconnection drug.
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Some members of the very rich might be politically engaged through their philanthropy and attempts to solve social problems. Some of these people might be liberal or even radical in terms of their politics. But as a group they are far removed from people, the majority of Americans, who experience true economic vulnerability and a feeling of being the precariat.

In discussing the rich we also need to make a distinction between those who are "merely" rich and those who are the very rich. I draw that line at $30 million. At $30 million and up, we see an oligarch class that have more money than they need to meet their needs. Now members of the group are focusing on achieving more social and political power. They are focusing on using their wealth to rig the rules of society to get more wealth. It is these oligarchs who the United States should be focusing tax reforms on. They are hoarding and hiding wealth through a whole "wealth defense" industry. They are also politically engaged and rigging the system to accomplish that goal.

What does their culture teach its members? What are the unstated rules?

One rule is that capital preservation is the norm — that you want wealth to continually grow. Do not touch the principal. Do not touch the assets. If you have to ask how much something is, you can't afford it. Look like you belong everywhere.

There are other rules and cultural norms as well. Be wary of everybody. People are after your money. Be careful who you marry, because they might want to take your money. There is much distrust among this class that keeps them from having meaningful connections with other people.

Among the rich there is also a very deep mythology of deservedness. Even if you are born on third base and you inherit wealth, you repeat that line from Donald Trump: "Well, I'm from a good family. My family's virtuous. My family worked hard, even though I just happened to have picked wealthy parents. There's something virtuous about me too!" That myth of deservedness, whether it's a first-generation wealth builder, entrepreneur or old wealth, is how social inequality is justified. The implication becomes "I deserve all the wealth that I have because I am virtuous and work hard." The corollary of that logic is that those people who are not wealthy deserve to be just where they are.

My response to that culture was to ask myself, "How come I have all this money? I didn't work to get it." To me that was wrong and an example of how the system is broken. All these other people are working incredibly hard, and they experience so much risk and insecurity in their lives. Something is broken here. I know I am not alone in those feelings.

What did the choice to walk away from your inheritance cost you? By this I do not mean money, but the cost in other ways to your life.

To be honest, it did not cost me much. I have so many other types of privilege and advantage. That is the nature of multigenerational advantage. Multigenerational disadvantage is the flipside of that. The privilege and advantage include such things as being fourth-generation property owners, financial literacy, access to education and the like. I also had a debt-free college education. I'm white, I'm male. I don't have to worry about economically supporting my parents in their older years. That is a huge advantage.

What is Donald Trump an example of, in this context?

Donald Trump is an example of a second-generation wealth dynasty. He was born into a privileged circumstance, but he remade his identity. Trump pretends that he is a first-generation entrepreneur. Trump is also a crypto-eugenicist. He talks about his genes all the time. He does not speak in terms of societal opportunities or advantages, but rather in terms of some form of genetic superiority. He is not alone: There are many other rich people who think of the world in the same terms. Donald Trump received $400 million from his father. That is a great head start in life. I would like to do an experiment and give that $400 million to another hundred people and see what they do with their lives.

I see Trump as an example of a class of wealthy white people who live largely consequence-free lives.

That is an apt description. Actually, one of the things that the wealth defense industry does is to take a rich person's wealth and put it in asset protection trusts. With these trusts, for example, if a rich person drives through a red light and kills somebody, they are not going to be held financially responsible for their actions. Another scenario: What if a rich person steals money from people and then parks it in an offshore trust or some other type of account or asset? There is a law professor at the University of Richmond named Allison Tait who describes this as "high-wealth exceptionalism." The rich believe that they live by a separate set of rules. You believe you get to have a separate set of rules. And in fact, the wealthy truly do have a separate set of rules than the rest of us in America.

What does that sense of immunity from consequence do to their emotions, morals and values? That core level of what it means to be a human being?

It leads to a breakdown in empathy and a breakdown in individual responsibility for your actions. Privilege is a disconnection drug. It separates people from one another, and it also separates them from the impact of their actions or inaction.

How does the wealth defense industry work?

The wealth defense industry has many tools at its disposal. These are individual wealthy people who help other wealthy people who are worth $30 million or more. There is also a parallel industry and set of personalities who help global corporations to hide their wealth and income.

But in terms of wealthy individuals, let's consider someone who lives in another country, some mineral-rich country in the Southern Hemisphere. You've been siphoning wealth off, through bribery or through deals selling off minerals. Perhaps you are a government official. You want to get that money out of the home country because someday there will be people who want that money back.

So what do you do? You move it into an offshore tax haven. You open up a bank account. You may also create a shell company that does not have your name on it. Eventually you bring that money or company to the United States, where you can purchase a luxury condominium in somewhere like downtown Chicago or New York.

There are other ways to launder the money through the system. You can take that money to South Dakota and create a dynasty trust, where the money can just sit in an account that you control but will never be subject to accountability or taxation.

A wealthy person in the United States can also create a Delaware shell company. There are a variety of complicated loopholes that the rich use. The complication is intentional because complexity is the bread and butter of the dynasty defense industry. At the simplest level, what is being done is to create a labyrinth of ownership structures to pretend that the billion dollars that you have is no longer in your name. When the tax collector comes, you just hold up your hands and say, "It's not my money!"

How do you explain to the average American how the wealth defense industry impacts their lives?

One, it is tax avoidance, which translates into the narrative from the government and elected officials that there is no money, we have to cut services, we can't afford low-cost student loans or mortgage subsidies. We can't alleviate poverty because supposedly there isn't any money. The impact on the average American is also manifest in how the wealth defense industry empowers and enables kleptocrats. It makes social inequality worse. The wealth defense industry and wealth hoarding also enables anti-democratic concentrations of wealth and power.

How do we rebut the right-wing narrative that there are "makers" and "takers" in society and that these discussions of social inequality and economic injustice are just "class warfare" or a politics of resentment?

It's a diabolical framing of the world, one that ignores how we are all interdependent. Even rich people are dependent on the public investments and property law protections in American society. None of these rich people do it alone. They exist in a society that makes it possible.

And what of the "working-class" Republicans and Trump supporters in "middle America" who are obsessed about the "death tax" and class warfare? That right-wing propaganda has been very effective these last few decades.

We have lived through 40 years of intensified class war, where the wealthy have rigged the rules to funnel more income and wealth to the top of the economic pyramid. People who work for wages are being punished. Such an outcome is what happens when you tip the economy to the benefit of wealth against work and against wages.

In terms of the wealth tax, if you have less than $12 million, you are never going to pay this estate tax. It's not a tax on success. It's a tax that slows the creation of these democracy-distorting wealth dynasties. The wealth tax is a good tax.

The rich have funded campaigns to make people think, "Oh, you're going to have to pay the death tax. And that farmer over there is going to have to pay the death tax." It's just helpful to say, "Hey Joe on the barstool there, do you have more than $23 million, you and your spouse? Well, why are you bellyaching about that? Why are you defending the plutocrats who are picking your pocket?"

If rich people were taxed in the same way as regular people — bus drivers, schoolteachers, nurses and the like — what would American society look like?

On a fundamental level, America would be a much better place to live in. There would be so much less stress and fear and division. We would not have people afraid that a job loss or divorce or illness would lead them to destitution and having to live in a car. In the '50s, '60s and '70s, it seemed as if American society was moving towards more egalitarianism. But then the country took a huge wrong turn in the late '70s and '80s. It does not have to be that way.

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Japan To Dump Wastewater From

Wrecked Fukushima Nuclear Plant Into Pacific Ocean


April 13, 2021
ANTHONY KUHNTwitterFacebook

NPR

People in Tokyo protest a decision to start releasing into the ocean massive amounts of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant. The plant was damaged in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Japan's government announced a decision to begin dumping more than a million tons of treated but still radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years.

The plant was severely damaged in a 2011 magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami that left about 20,000 people in northeast Japan dead or missing.

Despite Tokyo's assurances that discharging wastewater will not pose a threat to people or the environment, the decision was roundly criticized by the local fishing community, environmental groups and Japan's neighbors. Within hours of the announcement, protesters rallied outside government offices in Tokyo and Fukushima.

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Remembering Fukushima: 10 Years After The Devastation

"On the premise of strict compliance with regulatory standards that have been established, we select oceanic release," Japan's government said in a statement after Cabinet ministers finalized the decision. The water will be further treated and diluted, and the release will begin in two years, and take decades to complete.

The damaged Fukushima plant will take at least decades to decommission. A swath of land around the plant remains uninhabitable, thousands of residents remain displaced, and the wastewater issue is another example of the 2011 disaster's complex, long-term effects.

Since the quake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, water used to cool the nuclear reactors and contaminated groundwater have been stored in massive tanks at the plants.

The plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), says that by around next summer it will run out of space to build new tanks to hold the accumulated 1.25 million tons of wastewater. Critics argue that the government could acquire more land to build storage tanks.

Last year, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said Japan's plan to release the water — or alternatively, to let it evaporate into the air — was technically feasible, "routinely used by operating nuclear power plants worldwide," and soundly based on safety and environmental impact assessments.

TEPCO says the wastewater has been treated to remove most of the radioactivity. However, tritium — a radioactive hydrogen isotope — remains.

But environmental groups remain skeptical of the government's and TEPCO's claims. "This process of decision-making is quite undemocratic," says Ayumi Fukakusa, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Japan, a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization.

"The government and TEPCO said that without consent from the fishing communities, they won't discharge the contaminated water," she notes. "That promise was completely broken."

She adds that a series of hearings intended to canvass residents' opinions on the Fukushima water issue involved almost all men, thereby excluding women's viewpoints.


Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met last week with Hiroshi Kishi, the president of JF Zengyoren, a nationwide federation of fishing cooperatives, and asked for their understanding about the government's decision, but Kishi said the group's stance remains unchanged.

Another problem, Fukakusa adds, is that "TEPCO and the government said the water just contains tritium, which cannot be separated from water. But it turned out that the water contains more radioactive materials. But they didn't disclose that information before."

"That kind of attitude is not honest to people," she says. "They are making distrust by themselves."

The nonprofit Health Physics Society says tritium is considered to be hazardous to health only in large amounts and "may very slightly increase the probability that a person will develop cancer during his or her lifetime," although humans are naturally exposed to many other forms of radiation.

But Friends of the Earth Japan says the water in the storage tanks contains unknown quantities of radioactive contaminants besides tritium. Local media report that in February, shipments of black rockfish were halted after one sample caught near Fukushima contained cesium far in excess of acceptable levels.

Fish catches are at 17.5% of pre-quake levels, and many fishermen have been subsisting on handouts from TEPCO. They argue that the government's decision to dump the wastewater will make it impossible to sell their catch and will devastate their industry.

China expressed grave concern at the decision to dump wastewater, which the Foreign Ministry called "extremely irresponsible" and damaging to neighboring countries' interests.

In Seoul, South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-moon summoned Japan's ambassador to Seoul to protest the decision, expressing "deep regret over the potential threat to our citizens' health and environment."

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price commented in a statement that Japan "appears to have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards."

TEPCO again apologized for the nuclear accident in a statement Tuesday, saying it would work to restore trust in the company, "ascertain the root causes of these incidents and strengthen countermeasures throughout the entire organization."

The bizarre push to kill more of Montana’s wolves, explained

Four new hunting bills in the Big Sky State are reigniting a centuries-old debate.

MONTANA WOLVES ARE FROM CANADA THEY ROAM THE ROCKIES SOUTH

Amanda Northrop/Vox

By Benji Jones Apr 12, 2021, 11:20am EDT
Illustrations by Amanda Northrop/Vox

This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

Late this winter, Greg Gianforte, Montana’s recently elected Republican governor, trapped and shot a male wolf just outside the boundary of Yellowstone National Park at a private ranch owned by his pal Robert E. Smith, a director of the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting Group (a former campaign donor).

Hunting wolves is legal in Montana, and Gianforte later told the Helena Independent Record that he’d been after one for five years. “I put a lot of time in over many, many years and not every sportsman is fortunate to ultimately harvest a wolf,” said Gianforte, who added that he planned to mount it on his wall.

Not everyone who initially knew about the governor’s trophy was impressed, apparently. In the weeks after the hunt, someone tipped off a reporter with the Mountain West News Bureau that not only had the governor killed one of the 94 wolves that frequent Yellowstone, but he’d also failed to comply with a state regulation requiring hunters take a wolf-trapping course before catching an animal.

Nate Hegyi, the bureau reporter, also learned that the wolf had a name, “1155.” It had worn a radio collar since 2018 when National Park Service biologists began to track his movements in and out of the park.

The timing of the governor’s hunting protocol gaffe was disconcerting to conservationists already worried about the fate of Montana’s wolves. Gianforte, the first Republican governor in 16 years, would soon be deciding on several hunter-friendly bills to relax restrictions on killing wolves.

The argument behind those bills — which seek to legalize a range of new hunting methods and offer reimbursement to trappers for their expenses — is that wolves in Montana are killing too many game species like elk and deer, which people like to hunt. As of 2019, there were almost 1,200 wolves in Montana, according to the state’s Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department. (The agency hasn’t yet released numbers for 2020.)

“Wolf numbers need to be reduced,” Paul Fielder, a Republican state representative behind two of the four bills, told Vox. One of them legalizes the use of snares, which catch and choke animals to death.

“Allowing the snaring of wolves in Montana by licensed trappers will give wildlife managers another tool to reduce wolf numbers — especially in areas where ungulate populations are stressed by wolves,” Fielder said at a state hearing in February.

There’s just one problem: This isn’t true. Parks department data doesn’t indicate that hoofed wildlife populations are stressed by wolves. Many wildlife biologists — and even the Montana Wildlife Federation, a pro-hunting conservation group — agree.

“The truth is, we have record numbers of elk in the state of Montana, including in areas with wolves,” said Nick Gevock, the federation’s conservation director. What’s more, critics of the bills say hunting methods like snares are cruel and indiscriminate.

On this highly charged issue with a complex history, the governor appears sympathetic to wolf hunters, many of whom have ties to his party. Gianforte recently signed Fielder’s two wolf bills into law.

“I think trapping is an important tool for predator control and for wildlife management,” he told the Independent Record in March. “I’m proud to be a trapper.”

But the wolf debate doesn’t seem to have much to do with science-based management. Instead, it comes down to how people view wolves across the state — and how their politics inform those views.

The rise and fall and rise of the gray wolf, briefly explained

Indigenous communities had, of course, been living with wolves for centuries before European settlers arrived.

“Traditionally, in the tribal views, when you look upon wolves, we look at them as kin, as helpers,” Letara Lebau, a resident of Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation, said last October during a presentation about human-carnivore coexistence. “We really look at the wolves as deserving of respect.”


Settlers and their early descendants held a vastly different view.

They saw wolves as villains that posed a threat to valuable livestock. And so in the 19th and 20th centuries, the US led a campaign to exterminate them. It was wildly effective: By the mid-20th century, only two populations of wolves remained in the lower 48 states.

In the decades that followed, we learned about the animal’s integral role in ecosystems — a fact Indigenous people already knew — causing attitudes toward the predator to shift. What started as a campaign to eradicate wolves became a campaign to save them. And in 1974, they were added to the newly minted Endangered Species Act, setting the stage for their recovery.

Twenty years later, that recovery got a huge boost: Biologists reintroduced 31 gray wolves from Canada into Yellowstone National Park (and some more into Idaho). It remains one of the most significant moments in the history of carnivore conservation in the US.

The recovery worked, and Montana was central to its success. By 2009, there were enough breeding pairs for the wolf to be delisted in Montana and in a few other regions, though the wolf remained on the federal ESA for another decade. (The Trump administration delisted it last year, much to the chagrin of environmental groups, citing a “successful recovery.”)

“The restoration of the gray wolf in the Northern Rockies is arguably the most successful wildlife reintroduction in United States history,” said Gevock.

Tim Williams/Vox

It’s still not easy to stumble upon a gray wolf in Montana — there are about 1,160 of the animals across the Big Sky State, just a fraction of their historic population. Yet the number is safely above the federally mandated minimum, set at 15 breeding pairs and 150 wolves.

Fielder, the state representative who sponsored the two bills that Gianforte signed and a retired wildlife biologist, says that to maintain 15 breeding pairs you need about 285 wolves, because not all packs have breeding pairs. So, in his view, 1,160 is way too many.
Critics say the anti-wolf bills hark back to the extermination campaign

The bills, in short, would make it easier to kill more wolves.

One of them, sponsored by state Sen. Bob Brown, would provide reimbursement for trapping expenses — which critics call a bounty. The Senate bill is currently making its way through the House.

“Montana’s territorial legislature first offered a wolf bounty in 1883, and the goal was to reduce the wolf population,” said Jennifer Sherry, an environmental scientist and wildlife advocate at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “Here we are over 100 years later talking again about the need for a wolf bounty to reduce the wolf population.”


Another bill, also sponsored by Brown, allows individual hunters to shoot an unlimited number of wolves and legalizes nighttime hunting using spotlights that temporarily blind the animals, with the intent of reducing the wolf population. Brown did not respond to a request for comment.

The other bills — both of which Fielder sponsored and the governor signed — extend the trapping season and allow hunters to use snares. (Montana allows for the snaring of some other animals, including bobcats.)

The reasoning that Fielder and Brown use to justify their bills is simple: Wolves in some parts of the state are eviscerating deer, elk, and moose populations. “Wildlife is suffering,” Fielder said in the hearing.

But the data tells a different story.

Elk and most other game species are doing just fine across Montana — and throughout the West

“The numbers don’t add up,” Sherry said. “Elk numbers are consistently strong across the state. Hunter success rates are consistently strong.”

In fact, the number of deer and elk killed by hunters across Montana has actually gone up overall in the past decade, according to Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department hunting estimates.

Tim Williams/Vox

“These are good times for elk hunters, as Montana elk populations continue to be strong across most of the state,” said the agency’s 2020 hunting forecast.

Moose are an exception — their numbers are trending down — but there’s no evidence that wolves are to blame. The state commissioned a 10-year study in 2013 to pinpoint a culprit.

“Despite widespread speculation that adult moose are being killed by wolves and other carnivores, the study shows that the main culprits are health related,” Tom Dickson, the editor of the parks department’s newsletter, wrote in 2019, in reference to the study.

Fielder, however, argues that the problem is most severe in western Montana — where wolves are, by far, most abundant. But again, the evidence is sparse to tie the predator to any ungulate decline.

If you zero in on the northwest, home to the highest densities of wolves, you find that deer kills by licensed hunters have hovered around 2,000 a year for more than a decade (though they were much higher if you go back to 2004), according to parks department data. And while elk harvest numbers have fluctuated, there doesn’t seem to be a clear downward trend in the last decade either.


“White-tailed deer numbers have been on an upward trend in general,” the hunting forecast says about deer in the West.

Not surprisingly, the number of moose killed by hunters in the northwest is falling, but again, that may not have much to do with wolves. For one, the population of wolves isn’t growing, at least through 2019, the most recent year for which there’s data; it’s actually about the same as it was a decade ago. Plus, there are several other factors that shape the population of game animals, including forest fires and weather.

“Fire and winter have a much more significant impact than all the predators combined,” said Diane Boyd, a renowned wolf biologist and former parks department wolf specialist in northwest Montana. Prey have other predators, too, such as bears and mountain lions.

Parks department spokesperson Greg Lemon said the agency provided information to the legislature but declined to comment on aspects of the legislation.

“We find these bills to be based on misinformation about wildlife, misinformation about the effects of predators on prey species, and a lack of understanding about the complexity of natural environments in Montana,” residents and wildlife biologists, including Boyd and 16 former parks department employees, wrote in a March 16 letter to the state legislature and governor. “These bills are not based on science.” (Fielder disputes this claim.)

So if the bills aren’t based on science, what are they based on?

That’s a more challenging question to answer. Boyd, a hunter herself, pointed to politics. Far-right conservatism has surged in the last few years, she said, emboldening lawmakers with anti-wolf views. The stance among some conservatives on issues like gun and property rights often conflict with wildlife protections, she added.

But the relationship between far-right ideology, which flourished in the US in the Trump years, and wolf conservation isn’t so clear cut. One survey from 2012 found that while hunters tend to lean Republican or independent, and support gun rights, they also highly value conservation and access to the outdoors. To say conservative values are aligned with these bills would be an oversimplification.

“We’re really not sure why this extreme anti-wolf sentiment is here,” Gevock said, adding that he believes much of it comes from far-western Montana. Both Brown and Fielder hail from Thompson Falls, a small town about two hours northwest of Missoula.

Others say the new push to kill wolves with more brutal measures is rooted in antiquated views of these predators. Some influential lawmakers simply don’t believe in the inherent value of wolves, said Mike Phillips, a retired Democratic state senator and director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, who was involved in reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone.
All four bills are likely to become law, but that doesn’t mean Montana’s wolves are headed off a cliff

Gianforte has already signed two of the wolf bills, another is headed to his desk, and the fourth is still going through the legislature. Gevock says all four bills are likely to become law, whether or not Gianforte puts his signature on them.

“The governor will carefully consider any bill that the legislature sends to his desk,” Brooke Stroyke, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement to Vox.

But as Gevock and others point out, that doesn’t necessarily mean wolves are imperiled across the state, even if their numbers fall. As history has demonstrated, wolves are highly resilient animals.

“Wolves are a very elastic species, meaning they can take some pretty extreme measures and survive,” Gevock said. “Yes, we will kill more wolves, but they can bounce back quickly. They can take a pretty aggressive hunt.”

What’s harder to stomach, at least for Phillips, is what he calls a “disregard for life.”

“This is a moment defined by people of authority who don’t value large carnivores much at all,” Phillips said. “Why would we ever sanction needless killing?”

Marijuana legalization has won

Marijuana legalization is sweeping states from Virginia to New Mexico. The writing is on the wall.

By German Lopez@germanrlopezgerman.lopez@vox.com Apr 12, 2021

 

A marijuana-themed US flag flies during a 2019 protest at the US Capitol. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

The US is nearing a tipping point of sorts on marijuana legalization: Almost half the country — about 43 percent of the population — now lives in a state where marijuana is legal to consume just for fun.

The past two months alone have seen a burst of activity as four states across the US legalized marijuana for recreational use: New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and, on Monday, New Mexico.

It’s a massive shift that took place over just a few years. A decade ago, no states allowed marijuana for recreational use; the first states to legalize cannabis in 2012, Colorado and Washington, did so through voter-driven initiatives. Now, 17 states and Washington, DC, have legalized marijuana (although DC doesn’t yet allow sales), with five enacting their laws through legislatures, showing even typically cautious politicians are embracing the issue.

At this point, the question of nationwide marijuana legalization is more a matter of when, not if. At least two-thirds of the American public support the change, based on various public opinion surveys in recent years. Of the 15 states where marijuana legalization has been on the ballot since 2012, it was approved in 13 — including Republican-dominated Alaska, Montana, and South Dakota (although South Dakota’s measure is currently held up in the courts). In the 2020 election, the legalization initiative in swing state Arizona got nearly 300,000 more votes than either Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Legalization has also created a big new industry in very populous states, including California and (soon) New York, and that industry is going to push to continue expanding. One of the US’s neighbors, Canada, has already legalized pot, and the other, Mexico, is likely to legalize it soon, creating an international market that would love to tap into US consumers.

The walls are closing in on this issue for legalization opponents — and quickly.

Many politicians have played it cautiously in response to these trends. While some high-profile Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have come out in support, Biden continues to oppose legalization. Republicans, including Trump, are almost entirely opposed.

But at this point, their refusal comes off more like a last gasp than a movement that can hold back the tide of change. At a certain point, lawmakers will have to follow public opinion or risk losing an election. And the public has spoken very clearly, time and again.

What’s less clear is how it’ll happen. Maybe it’ll be a slow, state-by-state battle before the federal government ends its own prohibition on cannabis, or maybe federal action will lead to a flurry of states legalizing. What has become clear is that legalization will eventually win, and the vast majority of states, if not all, will soon join the ranks of the legalizers.

Marijuana legalization is very popular

In the span of two decades, marijuana legalization has gone from a fringe issue to one the vast majority of Americans embrace.

In 2000, just 31 percent of the country backed legalization while 64 percent opposed it, according to Gallup’s public surveys. By 2020, the numbers flipped: The most recent Gallup poll on the topic showed that 68 percent supported legalization and 32 percent were against it.

There are a few possible explanations for the flip. The general failure of the war on drugs to actually stop widespread drug addiction (see: the opioid epidemic), as well as backlash to the punitive policies the drug war brought, left a lot of Americans craving new approaches. The public has come to see marijuana as not so bad — less harmful than legal drugs such as alcohol or tobacco. The advent of the internet likely sped up some of these conversations, too, and the spread of medical marijuana might have shown more Americans that the US can handle the drug’s legalization.

Gallup

Regardless, the trend toward support is found in basically every major survey on this issue, with polling groups consistently finding a strong majority backing of legalization, from the Pew Research Center (67 percent in 2019) to the General Social Survey (61 percent in 2018).

The trend toward legalization is found in the real world, too. Oregon voters rejected a legalization measure in 2012, only to approve a separate initiative two years later. Arizona voters said no to a legalization measure in 2016, only to approve another one four years later.

There’s even solid Republican support for legalization. Gallup found that a slim majority of Republicans supported it in 2017, 2018, and 2019; a majority opposed it in 2020, but the difference was within the margin of error, and a sizable minority of 48 percent still backed legalization. Pew also found a majority of Republicans — 55 percent — backed legalization in 2019.

This Republican support is also seen in the real world. In the 2020 election, Trump won Montana by 16 points and South Dakota by 26 points. In both states that same year, most voters approved legalization initiatives, with pretty strong margins of around 8 percentage points in South Dakota and 16 percentage points in Montana.

To put this another way, marijuana legalization has appeared on the ballot in four states dominated by Republicans: Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. It’s won in three of them, losing only in North Dakota. Marijuana legalization is 3-1 in solid red states!

There’s little reason to think that any of these trends will change soon.

There’s not much that can turn this around

There’s a world in which you could envision growing support for marijuana legalization suddenly collapsing. Maybe after Colorado, Washington, or a few other states legalized, things went really badly. Teen use went up, along with car crashes, crime, ER visits related to pot, and other bad outcomes. Voters see the error of their ways and change course.

But that just hasn’t happened. In the states that have legalized, things have generally gone fine. There were some concerns about marijuana-laced edibles in the early days, but those worries died out quickly as regulators instituted some new rules and retail outlets bolstered their advice to newbies about how to consume edibles. The gigantic rises in all the problem outcomes legalization opponents warned against never came to fruition.

A big tell here is how often politicians flip-flop to support legalization once their state legalizes and things go basically fine. In Colorado, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2012 said he opposed the ballot measure, only to fully support legalization and brag about how his administration implemented it by the time he ran for senator in 2020. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who opposed legalization during his 2012 run, said in March that the one thing he’d do differently is “[embrace] this position of decriminalizing it earlier, had I known how successful this has been with not any really large increase in juvenile usage, which was a concern while we were debating this.”

There are also major forces that will continue to support legalization and encourage its expansion. The US marijuana industry is now valued at more than $18 billion, supporting the equivalent of over 300,000 full-time jobs, more than the total number of electrical engineers or dentists, according to the 2021 Leafly Jobs Report.

This is simply a big industry now, for better or worse. Any politician moving to shut it down risks incurring the wrath of hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs. And because it’s a promising industry, there’s a strong economic incentive — between additional jobs and tax revenue — for more states to embrace legalization.

Not to mention that this major new industry can now use its economic weight to directly back legalization measures, providing much-needed funding to help get them across the finish line. In this way, marijuana legalization’s success at the ballot box so far will lead to more success.

There are, of course, still major barriers to full legalization nationwide. Marijuana remains totally illegal under federal law, including in states that have legalized it under their own statutes. International treaties prohibit countries from legalizing marijuana for recreational uses (although with Canada, Mexico, and Uruguay moving to legalize, it doesn’t seem like anyone really cares). Most of the US population still lives in a state that hasn’t legalized, and it will take a lot of time and effort in legislatures and ballot boxes to change that.

But it’s now very clear where the trends are heading. It might take several more years to become national reality, but marijuana legalization is here to stay.

What a 1,600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about climate change

Buried in mud for millennia, some of the hulking kauri trees in rural Northland are portals to the past, present, and future of Earth’s climate.

What the scientists get in return is something they can’t find anywhere else.
THERE’S NO OTHER WOOD RESOURCE LIKE IT FOR THIS PART OF EARTH’S HISTORY, FULL STOP.

By Kate Evans Apr 13, 2021

A massive kauri tree rests in three pieces in the parking lot of the Ngāwhā marae, or meeting house, in New Zealand’s far north, watched over by Donna Tukariri. Kate Evans


This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

In February 2019, Mark Magee was scraping the bucket of his 45-ton excavator through a hillside when it hit something 30 feet down that wouldn’t budge.

It was high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and Magee, a construction foreman, was clearing a platform for a new geothermal power plant near Ngāwhā, a tiny community in New Zealand’s Northland region, the long peninsula that stretches from the city of Auckland to the country’s northern tip.

He called in additional digger drivers to help. Gradually, as the machines peeled away the mudstone encasing the obstinate object, they realized it was a tree — and not an ordinary tree. More and more of it appeared, a seemingly endless log. When it lay uncovered, complete with a medusa-like rootball, it measured 65 feet long and 8 feet across, and weighed 65 tons.

It was a kauri tree, a copper-skinned conifer endemic to New Zealand. The indigenous Māori hold the species sacred and use its honey-colored softwood for traditional carvings and ocean-going canoes. Although this kauri tree had clearly been buried for thousands of years, Magee was astonished to see leaves and cones stuck to its underside that were still green.

The power company, Top Energy, called in a local sawmiller named Nelson Parker to examine Magee’s find. Parker, a champion woodchopper with powerful shoulders and a missing finger, had been digging up, processing, and selling kauri logs like this one since the early 1990s. As soon as his chainsaw bit into the bark, he knew from the color of the sawdust (dark yellow) and from the smell (subtle, resiny) that this tree was very old, and worth a lot of money.

Parker also knew that swamp kauri, as the buried trees are known, are worth a lot to science. One this large would be of special interest to a group of scientists who study the information that the ancient trees have coded into their rings. After removing the roots, he cut a four-inch-thick slice from the base of the trunk and sent it to them for analysis.

What he couldn’t know then was that this particular tree held the key to understanding an ancient global catastrophe — and how it may have shaped our collective past.

A brief history of the swamp kauri boom

The kauri tree, or Agathis australis, is one of the largest and longest-lived tree species in the world. An individual kauri can live for more than two millennia, reaching 200-feet tall and more than 16 feet in diameter. Today, the living trees grow only in remnant pockets in northern New Zealand, where the national Department of Conservation lists them as threatened, due to a century of heavy logging, forest clearing for agriculture, and, more recently, the onslaught of a deadly fungus-like pathogen.

Yet for tens of thousands of years, kauri forests dominated a vast swath of the upper North Island. As the trees grew, they recorded information in their annual rings about the climate and makeup of the atmosphere. When they fell, some of the heaviest plunged deep into nearby peat bogs, where they stayed mostly unchanged for millennia.

Itinerant 19th-century gumdiggers, who sought the swamp kauri’s preserved golden resin for use in varnish and jewelry, were the first to exploit the trees for profit, digging up fields and wetlands in search of buried gum. In 1985, after environmentalist protests, the New Zealand government banned loggers from cutting live kauri on public land, and Parker and other Northland timber merchants turned their attention to swamp kauri. They clawed the trees from the earth with excavators and sold the exotic wood to furniture makers in New Zealand, the United States, and several European and Asian countries.

The industry grew slowly until around 2010. Then, it exploded, thanks to demand from a booming China, where customers are often willing to pay more for materials with antiquity. Fetching up to $200 per cubic foot, swamp kauri became one of the most valuable timbers in the world. Chinese agents roamed rural Northland, New Zealand’s poorest region, offering farmers cash in exchange for the right to prospect on their land.

The lure of a fast buck also attracted a host of dubious kauri extractors. Among them were the aptly-named “Swamp Cowboys,” who drained endangered wetlands — only 8 percent of Northland’s wetlands are still intact — to reach their quarry. In the years that followed, conservation groups successfully fought to restrain the swamp kauri industry and hold the national Ministry for Primary Industries and regional council accountable. Finally, in 2018, New Zealand’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision limiting swamp kauri exports. By then, the shadiest companies had gone bankrupt, and swamp kauri exports dropped from more than 200,000 cubic feet in 2013 to around 10,000 cubic feet in 2019.

The end of the swamp kauri boom was a big victory for wetland advocates — and a big relief for the scientists who study the ancient trees. The slowdown has made it easier for them to take samples from every piece of unearthed swamp kauri before it disappears into the mill and heads out of the country. Every single tree, they know, has a story to tell.

Long-lived, well-preserved kauri are something of a ‘high-resolution time-capsule’

In a windswept paddock on Northland’s remote Karikari Peninsula, on a cool October day in 2019, I watch Andrew Lorrey use a chainsaw to cut a four-inch slab called a “biscuit” off the end of a huge kauri trunk. Around him, beached on the surface like stranded whales, were dozens more unearthed logs, their forms twisted and gum-encrusted, the tortured roots of their massive stumps reaching for a squally sky.

Lorrey, a stocky, bearded American originally from New England, is a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). He came to the country in 2002 to study swamp kauri for his PhD. During the “gold rush” years, he felt a lot of pressure to “scurry around” collecting samples, knowing most of the wood was slipping through his fingers. But over time, he and a handful of other scientists forged relationships with the main timber extractors. “I want to look back and say I did what I could to get this precious natural archive preserved for science,” he tells me

.

Scientists collect a “biscuit” from each ancient kauri log, enabling them to analyze the annual rings and take samples for radiocarbon dating. Kate Evans

Swamp kauri fall into two age clusters: “young” trees that died anywhere between a few thousand and around 13,000 years ago, and “ancient” ones that were alive more than 25,000 years ago. No one has yet found a kauri from the roughly 12,000-year span in between. That was the height of the last glacial period, when temperatures were cooler and sea levels more than 300 feet lower. Scientists speculate that the kauri’s range may have shrunk during that time because of the cold, or that the forests moved to lower elevations on the continental shelf when sea levels fell, and were later submerged as the climate warmed and seas rose again. Or perhaps the trees from that time are simply still out there, waiting to be discovered.


The landowner here on the Karikari Peninsula, a taciturn, pipe-smoking farmer named Chris Hensley, found this batch of buried logs when he was converting an old pine forestry plantation to pasture. For Hensley, the kauri are a nuisance. “They bugger up the farm equipment,” Lorrey says. But for Lorrey, they’re treasure. After learning about them, he quickly organized an expedition, driving more than four hours from Auckland to examine them. Hensley had used his digger to lay the huge haul — 104 individual trees — on the ground like matchsticks. “When I got there, I said, ‘I’ve got gold,’” Lorrey remembers.

Now, Lorrey moves from log to log, slicing biscuits from each one, making detailed notes about their measurements and where they were found, then brushing the cut faces with a white glue-based paint to protect the wood from the elements.

While Lorrey works, Hensley arrives to watch. A tiny white fluffy dog jumps from his truck and runs frenetically among the dark logs. Knowing the age of the timber will help him sell it later, Hensley says. “This way I get them dated for free.”

What the scientists get in return is something they can’t find anywhere else.
THERE’S NO OTHER WOOD RESOURCE LIKE IT FOR THIS PART OF EARTH’S HISTORY, FULL STOP.

There are other ancient trees in the world, but none as old, as long-lived, or as numerous as the kauri. Because migrating ice sheets demolished everything in their path, few trees survived the glacial periods in the Northern Hemisphere, and scientists have found only a handful — including one 23,000-year-old cypress buried in a volcanic mudflow near Mount Fuji in Japan. Northland, however, remained ice-free. “The kauri are globally unique,” Lorrey says. “There’s no other wood resource like it for this part of Earth’s history, full stop.”

Other natural climate archives, such as ice cores, lake sediments, and stalactites and stalagmites, also allow scientists to peer into the past. But trees are the “gold standard,” Lorrey says, because they directly sample the atmosphere, and make a new record of it and other aspects of the environment in each annual growth ring of wood they lay down. Unlike ice cores and lake sediments, tree rings don’t compress over time. Multiple trees growing at the same time can be cross-referenced, too, smoothing out any local or individual variation that might interfere with broad conclusions about the climate. (Imagine a single tree growing poorly for a few seasons because its roots were waterlogged or it was shaded by others.) Long-lived, well-preserved kauri are therefore a kind of “high-resolution time-capsule,” Lorrey says.

Tree rings illuminate the past in several ways. Most simply, counting them under a microscope reveals how long a tree lived. The biscuit that Nelson Parker cut from the log found near the village of Ngāwhā, for instance, indicates that the kauri was about 1,600 years old when it died: 1,600 rings, 1,600 years. Measuring the varying width of the rings from year to year allows scientists to observe changing growing conditions. Chemical analysis of each ring can indicate relative humidity, rainfall patterns, and soil moisture. And by using computer programs and eyeballing tree-ring patterns to string together multiple samples from different times and locations, scientists can create long tree-ring sequences, called “chronologies,” that span millennia and help reveal larger regional climate patterns.

University of Auckland dendrochronologist Gretel Boswijk and collaborators, for example, used 700 samples of both ancient and living kauri to piece together a continuous 4,491-year chain of trees that lived between 2488 BC and today. The chronology allowed Boswijk’s colleague, Anthony Fowler, to figure out that kauri are especially sensitive to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that affects annual temperatures and rainfall around the world. “When we have an El Niño year, here in the north of the country we’ll get more southwesterly flow — clearer skies but also cooler average temperatures,” Boswijk says. “Kauri tend to respond well in those conditions, so they tend to put on a wide ring.” Conversely, in a warmer, cloudier La Niña year, kauri add narrower rings. “They get stressed, they don’t grow as well.”

Using this information, the team was able create a 700-year reconstruction of ENSO variability in northern New Zealand, providing a lengthy picture of the country’s natural climate variation. For comparison, historical climate records date back only 150 years. The longer timeline is crucial for climate modelers trying to predict how ENSO will respond to future anthropogenic warming.

Scientists have also assembled a handful of other kauri chronologies that go even further back in time, each covering a few millennia of the past 60,000 years. But because they’re not connected to the present, they’re called “floating chronologies,” meaning their calendar ages remain relatively uncertain. Lorrey dreams of one day finding the right logs to link all of them into one unbroken chain.

In the meantime, the floating chronologies and ancient kauri samples are already proving incredibly valuable for global science in other ways. As a start, they can help scientists determine the ages of other plant, human, and animal artifacts, from as far back as tens of thousands of years ago.

Read the rest in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.

 THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS

IN HEALTH & SAFETY; THEY'RE KNOWN AS 

PREVENTABLE INCIDENTS

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WHAT ABOUT AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, REPTILES, OH MY

COVID-19: World Health Organisation calls for ban on sale of live wild mammals in food markets

The statement comes after a WHO team visited Wuhan in China to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Tom Gillespie
News reporter @TomGillespie1
Tuesday 13 April 2021 

Image:Flying foxes - mega-bats - are seen at a food market in Indonesia. File pic


The sale of live wild mammals at food markets should be suspended as an emergency measure, the World Health Organisation has said.

The statement comes after a WHO team visited Wuhan in China to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

The most likely scenario is that the virus originated in bats, was spread to another unidentified animal, and then passed on to humans, a WHO report said in March.

The organisation said in a separate report on Tuesday that animals, "particularly wild animals", are the source of more than 70% of emerging infectious diseases in humans.

They added many of these are caused by novel viruses - a virus that has not previously been recorded.

The report states: "Wild mammals, in particular, pose a risk for the emergence of new diseases. They come into markets without any way to check if they carry dangerous viruses.

"There is a risk of direct transmission to humans from coming into contact with the saliva, blood, urine, mucus, faeces, or other body fluids of an infected animal, and an additional risk of picking up the infection from contact with areas where animals are housed in markets or objects or surfaces that could have been contaminated with such viruses."

The WHO said "traditional markets play a central role in providing food and livelihoods " around the world.

It added that banning the sale of live wild animals would help to protect the health of both shoppers and workers.

Play Video - WHO: Lab leak COVID origin 'unlikely'

WHO: Lab leak COVID origin 'unlikely'

The closest-related viruses to COVID-19 have been found in bats in southwest China.

The intermediate host is more elusive: mink, pangolins, rabbits, raccoon dogs and domesticated cats have all been cited as a possibility.

The WHO team said that a theory the virus was leaked from a lab was "extremely unlikely" but it has not been ruled out.

The call for a ban of the sale of wild animals comes as the the WHO said the global coronavirus pandemic is at a "critical point".

It added that people need a "reality check" as restrictions are eased.

Dr Maria van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's technical response, told a news conference vaccinations alone are not enough to combat COVID-19.

Coronavirus restrictions were eased in parts of the UK on Monday, with shoppers returning to high streets and drinkers visiting pub gardens in England, and non-essential retailers reopening in Wales.

Dr van Kerkhove, speaking on Monday afternoon, urged caution, saying: "We need headlines around these public health and social measures, we need headlines around the tools that we have right now that can prevent infections and save lives.

"We are in a critical point of the pandemic right now, the trajectory of this pandemic is growing."

Amazon drivers describe the paranoia of working under the watchful eyes of new truck cameras that monitor them constantly and fire off 'rage-inducing' alerts if they make a wrong move

ahartmans@businessinsider.com (Avery Hartmans,Kate Taylor) 
4/13/2021

© Provided by Business Insider An Amazon delivery driver. Patrick Fallon/Getty Images

Amazon drivers now have multiple cameras constantly filming them as part of the Driveri system.

Drivers told Insider they're worried about privacy, with cameras monitoring every yawn.

They fear they'll fail to keep up with Amazon's breakneck pace because of the new surveillance system.

Many Amazon drivers say the solitude and the independence of working on the road are big draws of the job.

But those perks are under threat since Amazon started installing surveillance cameras in delivery vans that monitor workers' driving, hand movements, and even facial expressions.

Some workers are paranoid about what the cameras - which peer at them from their windshields and fire off audible alerts following missteps - are watching and how they could be punished for what the technology flags, according to interviews with five drivers.

"I know we're on a job, but, I mean, I'm afraid to scratch my nose. I'm afraid to move my hair out of my face, you know?" a female driver based in Oklahoma told Insider. "Because we're going to get dinged for it."

The Oklahoma driver and several others interviewed asked that their names be withheld for fear that their jobs would be affected, but Insider verified their identities.

Several drivers said the cameras could be helpful in cases of collisions or other dangerous situations. But they also worried about how the technology was affecting their productivity and described concerns with managing bathroom needs, like changing adult diapers, within sight of the cameras.

"We have zero privacy and no margin for error," a California-based driver said.

Netradyne, the maker of the camera system, did not respond to Insider's request for comment. A representative for Amazon said in a statement to Insider that Netradyne cameras are used to keep drivers and communities safe. In a pilot of the cameras from April to October 2020, accidents dropped by 48%, stop-sign violations dropped by 20%, driving without a seatbelt dropped by 60%, and distracted driving dropped by 45%, according to the company.

"Don't believe the self-interested critics who claim these cameras are intended for anything other than safety," Amazon's statement said.

The cameras capture yawns, distracted driving, and more

 A still from the instructional video on Amazon's Netradyne camera system. Amazon/Vimeo

The camera system, called Driveri, isn't made by Amazon. It was created by Netradyne, a transportation company that uses artificial intelligence to monitor fleets of drivers.

The system, mounted on the inside of a windshield, contains four cameras: a road-facing camera, two side-facing cameras, and one camera that faces inward toward the driver. Together, the cameras provide 270 degrees of coverage.

While the cameras record 100% of the time when the ignition is running, Amazon says the system does not have audio functionality or a live-view feature, meaning drivers can't be watched in real time while they drive. The cameras upload the footage only when they detect one of 16 issues, such as hard braking or a seatbelt lapse, and that footage can be accessed only by "a limited set of authorized people," Karolina Haraldsdottir, a senior manager for last-mile safety at Amazon, said in a training video about the cameras.

The Driveri system also sounds alerts in four instances: failure to stop, inadequate following distance, speeding, or distracted driving.

The system can be shut off, but only when the ignition is also turned off. Amazon said it would share video data with third parties, such as the police, only in the event of a dangerous incident.

The camera system sparked a backlash from some drivers shortly after it was announced. A driver named Vic told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the cameras were the final straw that led him to quit, calling them "both a privacy violation and a breach of trust."

A driver named Angel Rajal told Insider last month that he thought the new cameras were "annoying" and made him feel as if he were always being watched.

"I get a 'distracted driver' notification even if I'm changing the radio station or drinking water," he said.

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Drivers say they're worried about their privacy

© AP The struggles of Amazon drivers have been in the spotlight recently. AP

In interviews with Insider, drivers whose vans have the cameras installed highlighted a slew of issues they were facing so far. Lack of privacy is a top concern, they said.

Several drivers said they feared that yawning while driving would result in an infraction for drowsiness. And with some drivers feeling pressured to urinate in bottles on the job, there are concerns about being caught on camera in an uncomfortable position.

Bronwyn Brigham, a driver based in Houston who has driven trucks outfitted with Driveri for about two weeks, told Insider that the presence of the cameras made her feel as if she were being watched and made her worry about how to manage her bathroom needs inside the van.

"I have to wear a Depends because I'm 56," she said, referring to a type of adult diaper. "If I wet that Depends, I need to take that off. Then the cameras are on, so that makes it hard. If I need to change into another one, they're watching that."

"We are all worried that we have zero privacy," the California driver said. "Considering we have to use bottles to relieve ourselves - is that being watched?"

The ignition must be off to turn off the cameras, but that leaves drivers with no air conditioning.

As a result, drivers in regions that experience extreme heat during the summer will need to choose between privacy and cool air while they take their breaks.
'Rage-inducing' voices and guidance 'designed to make you slower'

A male driver based in Oklahoma who has been driving with the cameras for about a month told Insider that the Driveri system was obstructing his view while he drives, making it difficult to see house numbers - and children playing - on the passenger side of the street.

"I've had times where I look up and there's nobody there, and then all of a sudden the kid pops out from behind where the camera is obstructing the view," the driver said.

The driver also said the camera's verbal alerts, which use a computer-generated voice, were distracting and "rage-inducing." That sentiment was echoed by several other drivers who said the alerts made them feel as if they were being micromanaged.

Several drivers told Insider that they were worried about receiving infractions for handling their phones on the job, even though they need the devices for navigation.

Drivers rely on two apps while they work: Mentor, which monitors driving, and Flex, Amazon's navigation app. A driver who delivers near the Twin Cities told Insider that he juggled this by loading one app on his work phone and the other on his personal device.

"In order to be successful throughout your day, you have to zoom in and out on the map on the Flex app that you have on a dock that you can look at while driving," he said. "My concern is that ... with the cameras in place, it's going to be noticing we're using our phone while driving."

Keeping up with Amazon's demands is an ongoing concern for drivers. Some are worried that the new system will slow them down, making it more difficult to deliver all the packages they're expected to drop off every day, which could be as many as 300.

For example, Driveri is triggered by a "failure to stop" at an intersection. However, the female Oklahoma-based driver said that in situations where a stop sign is several feet before the intersection, she had to stop twice to avoid an infraction, costing her valuable seconds. The California driver said he feared being reprimanded for going just a few miles above the speed limit.

Brigham said that she was doing her best to drive especially carefully now that the cameras are installed and that it was slowing her down. If she's not moving fast enough, she said, she'll get a call from her dispatcher - a supervisor who tracks drivers' progress - telling her she's running behind in her deliveries.

The male driver from Oklahoma said the new system felt like a Catch-22.

"The job is all about speed and how fast you can get to the door," he said. "But these cameras and some of the other policies Amazon has in place, it's like they're designed to make you slower."

Being watched by a computer is now part of the job

© AP Cameras have advantages and create challenges. 

Several of the drivers Insider interviewed said there were advantages to the Driveri system.

If an accident occurs during a delivery, for instance, the system will automatically upload the footage. Drivers will be able to prove if they were paying attention and following the rules of the road.

And the cameras will record outside the delivery van for 20 minutes even if the ignition is turned off, which could help drivers if someone approaches the van to harass or rob them.

Still, drivers say the cameras are a new frustration in an already challenging job.

"I do like my job, but it is stacked up against me," the California driver said.

The driver said that 99% of the time he enjoyed delivering packages but that the cameras highlighted the extreme demands of the job. Recently, he said, he worked from 10:45 a.m. to 10:10 p.m. He said he did not have time for a single break and had to pee in a bottle twice. The entire time, he was aware the camera was on.

"The part that bothers me the most is that we're being watched by a computer," the male driver from Oklahoma said, "and that computer is what makes a judgment as to whether we're doing something wrong or not, whether or not we get to keep our jobs."