GREEN CAPITALI$M
Climate scientists swap fieldwork for finance

By Iain Withers, Carolyn Cohn and Simon Jessop

4/14/2021

© Reuters/LAURA GARCIA VELEZ A handout image shows Laura Garcia Velez photographed in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in 2017

LONDON (Reuters) - Environmental scientist Laura Garcia Velez cut her teeth on projects to help Ethiopian farmers insure crops for drought and connect remote Colombian communities to the electricity grid before working for conservation campaigners WWF.

Now she's an analyst for Lombard Odier, charged with improving the $350 billion Swiss bank's green credentials.

"It's really important that finance recruits from science," said Velez, one of a growing number of campaigners and scientists who have switched to banking, which she hopes can play a role in "greening the polluting industries".

Activism and finance may seem an unlikely pairing of two implacable foes.

Yet banks, asset managers and private equity firms, faced with tough regulations to decarbonise portfolios and loan books, are competing to grab the people with the right green expertise, according to jobs data and Reuters interviews with finance firms, recruiters and universities.

"Working in sustainability, it used to feel like you were trying to knock down walls," said NatWest's head of climate change James Close, a former director of climate change at the World Bank.

"Now they are pulling us in from the streets through the front door."

Many environmentalists, for their part, say the only way to save the planet is to force big businesses to radically reduce their carbon emissions, and they see the finance world that funds them as one of the best levers.

Some charities and campaigners argue, though, that "greenwashing" is rife in the finance industry. Many new recruits, they say, are used as a marketing tool and often lack the power to drive real change.

DOUBLING PAY PACKETS

Nonetheless, the green rush is on.

The number of job ads for "sustainability" roles nearly doubled to more than 1,000 during the year to February, versus the previous 12 months, according to global finance recruitment specialist eFinancialCareers. Positions range from junior-level analysts to new director-level roles such as head of sustainability or climate change. 

GRAPHIC:  https://tmsnrt.rs/2PAFaLH

Green recruitment specialist Acre said its hires in finance had increased by more than a quarter year-on-year every year since 2017. The most senior posts now offer pay packages of well over 750,000 pounds ($1 million), up around three-fold over the period.

LinkedIn data shared with Reuters shows a steady increase in the number of finance jobs listed as requiring at least one "green skill", such as pollution prevention or ecosystem management, particularly in the United States. 

GRAPHIC: https://tmsnrt.rs/2OtubTF

"There is a race for talent right now, there's no doubt about it," said Elree Winnett Seelig, Citi's global head of ESG for markets, adding that demand was particularly strong in fixed income.

Indeed banks, asset managers and private equity firms have been ramping up their climate teams in the past year, pushing salaries up by 30-50%, said Jon Williams, partner in sustainability and climate change at PwC UK.

One of his team recently doubled their salary by jumping ship to an asset management firm, he added.

Environmental advocacy group workers who move to a bank are typically able to at least double their pay packets once bonuses are factored in, recruiters say. (Graphic: Finance firms ramp up search for green hires, 

https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-CHANGE/azgvoxwarpd/chart.png

'A DIFFERENT BREED'

Leading universities with specialist centres that combine climate science and finance say they have seen companies beat a path to their door to recruit graduates.

Charles Donovan, executive director of Imperial College London's Centre for Climate Finance and Investment, which is jointly run by climate science hub the Grantham Institute, said there had been an "unbelievable" rise in interest in its students from finance sector employers in the past 18 months.

Banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered are seeking prospective hires through climate-research partnerships, while some firms are offering scholarships, he added.

While the London financial district may be pulling some talent away from government and advocacy roles, Donovan was unconcerned, saying many who targeted the financial sector were "a different breed of students" who recognised the value of expertise in areas like climate change to differentiate themselves from other graduates looking for jobs in finance. 

Graphic: 'Green' skills growing across most industries

 https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-CHANGE/FINANCE-TALENT/rlgpdzmkxpo/chart.png

CHASING HURRICANES

Some of the more established environmental experts who have moved across to finance say the rewards are not just financial.

Rob Bailey, director of climate resilience at consulting firm Marsh & McLennan's research unit, previously worked for Oxfam and international affairs think-tank Chatham House.

"I can deploy the knowledge in a different way and working with different stakeholders is quite invigorating," he said.

Some specialists are also drawn by the challenging and often highly technical nature of the work.

For example quantitative analyst Velez, who moved to Lombard Odier last year, is building a tool that links assets to near real-time environmental and geospatial data tracking hurricane risk and pollution.

Swiss bank UBS, meanwhile, has recruited people for its Evidence Lab analyst team with experience across a range of disciplines including geomodelling and hydromodelling in recent years.

"We had to adopt new recruitment strategies and methods to find people with these skills who weren't looking for a job in financial services," said Barry Hurewitz, global head of UBS Evidence Lab Innovations.

Finance firms across the board told Reuters they were expanding scientific and sustainability teams.

Asset manager Schroders said it has more than 10 staff with scientific backgrounds in its insurance-linked securities team, including people with PhDs in climatology. Its sustainable investing team has grown by four people to 22 in the last year and is planning further expansion.

Britain's biggest domestic bank Lloyds has more than doubled the number of staff with core sustainability roles in a year, to over 40, while Zurich Insurance said it had expanded its team researching the modelling of wind, flood, cyber and climate risks, to seven from one in five years.

'PART OF THE MACHINE'

The demand for green expertise is partly being driven by tightening climate regulation on financial services firms in Britain, Europe and beyond.

Euro zone banks will be expected to take climate change into account when making loans or investing, for instance. Funds in the EU will have to disclose how sustainable their products are, while UK lenders could face tougher capital requirements for polluting assets held on their books.

Yet while companies say they are making progress, some charities say they are still playing catch-up.

"In my experience finance firms don't have a great depth of knowledge across the piste. Their skill sets are massively tilted towards the past," said Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace UK.

Better hiring must be matched by strategy changes at the top, according to the charities. While many large financial services firms have pledged to decarbonise their lending and portfolios in the coming years, most remain exposed to fossil fuels in some way, they say.

"If you just have a bunch of sustainability officers who are kind of shoved off to the side and are effectively there to help with greenwashing, that's not going to really change the results very much," said Ben Cushing, campaign manager for financial advocacy at U.S.-based environmental group Sierra Club.

And not everyone with an environmental background finds high finance fulfilling.

Ian Povey-Hall, a director at green recruiter Acre, said that while most had no regrets, some had become disillusioned.

"ESG becoming more of a commercial focus has changed things for some people who say their work has become productised as it's become more part of the machine," he said.

Lombard Odier's Velez says she's happy with her decision and satisfied she's not part of a greenwashing problem.

"We are working a lot on how companies will decrease their emissions," she adds. "Of course I want these changes to happen faster - I am a bit more realistic than optimistic."

($1 = 0.7279 pounds)

(Reporting by Iain Withers, Carolyn Cohn and Simon Jessop; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Pravin Char)

UNDERGROUND ECONOMY

Alberta carpenters' union says construction industry costing province billions by avoiding taxes

Lauren Boothby 

© Provided by Edmonton Journal The Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers launched its second annual Tax Fraud Days of Action awareness campaign on Wednesday, April 14, 2021, saying the underground cash-based economy has been growing in the province in recent years.

Construction companies are robbing the province of billions of dollars in revenue by shifting the tax burden to unsuspecting workers, says an Alberta carpenters’ union.

The Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers launched its second annual Tax Fraud Days of Action awareness campaign Wednesday, saying the underground cash-based economy has been growing in the province in recent years.

Executive secretary Derrick Schulte said the industry is hiring more and more workers as subcontractors rather than employees in order to drive costs down and outbid competitors on big projects, including for repair work on some bridges and roads in Edmonton like Anthony Henday Drive.

“There’s a number of contractors doing repair work on the bridges, and they are using similar formulas … to hire people who are listed as subcontractors rather than employees,” Schulte said.

This designation shifts responsibility for paying taxes, Canada Pension Plan contributions, and workers’ compensation on to individuals who don’t understand their rights and legal obligations, leading to legal trouble for these unprotected workers down the road, he said.

“Some of these folks are not construction business people, they’re tradespeople, and they do not understand that,” he said.

Director of organizing Paul Zarbatany says legitimate contractors are being undercut by companies who are cheating the system.

“It’s a system of a (race) to the bottom. It seems the majority of employers and contractors are involved in this. It’s some kind of modern type of serfdom, like in the Middle Ages.”

The union wants the provincial government to take a closer look at the industry, protect workers in these scenarios, and ensure companies pay their taxes to fund needed programs and services in local communities.

Alberta’s finance department declined an interview request and said all questions must be directed to the Canada Revenue Agency.

A Statistics Canada report released last October showed 1.8 per cent of Alberta’s GDP in 2018 was connected to the underground economy.

The same study found residential construction was responsible for 26 per cent of the underground economy across the country. Residential construction has been one of the largest industries involved since the study began in 1992.

 

Record numbers of migrants attempt to enter U.S. amid worsening economic conditions at home

Duration: 02:36 

The Southern border continues to see an overflow of migrants. Manuel Bojorquez reports from Guatemala to provide an inside look at the conditions fueling the migration.

Fed leaders agree: Economics has a racial-disparity problem



WASHINGTON — Top Federal Reserve policymakers on Tuesday underscored their concern that Black and Hispanic people are sharply underrepresented in the economics field, which lessens the perspectives that economists can bring to key policy issues.

“If we don’t have a diverse group of people in the field, we won’t have the right topics to focus on,” said Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

At a webinar sponsored by the 12 regional Fed banks, the officials and many outside economists addressed the problem on the same day that a study from the Brookings Institution reported that the top ranks of the Federal Reserve system remain disproportionately white, particularly on the boards of the regional banks.

The viral pandemic and last summer's racial justice protests have thrown a national spotlight on longstanding racial and gender disparities within the U.S. economy, with unemployment rates chronically higher for African Americans and Hispanics and levels of wealth, income and homeownership sharply lower. Yet even in that context, economics trails other fields in measures of diversity, the officials said, and the profession has been slow to address racism as a source of economic inequality.

President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Raphael W. Bostic speaks at a European Financial Forum event in Dublin, Ireland February 13, 2019.

“Race is a variable that economists are lazy about,” said Raphael Bostic, the president of the Atlanta Fed and the first Black president of a regional Fed bank in the system's 108-year history. "That means we’re drawing conclusions that are often not reflective of reality.”

In an interview, Bostic noted the Fed's adoption last summer of a new policy framework that calls for the central bank to wait for actual increases in inflation before potentially raising its benchmark interest rate. Previously, the Fed would raise rates on the expectation that inflation was poised to accelerate, even though those forecasts didn't always prove accurate.

This new framework, Bostic suggested, reflects the Fed's broadening recognition of the consequences of its policymaking.

“If you cut off the recovery because of fears of inflation, even when you haven’t seen it, you’re preventing groups of people from really fully participating in the economy,” Bostic said. “And when you look at those groups, they tend to be lower-income people, and they tend to be minorities that are the last ones to benefit.”

Ebonya Washington, an economist at Yale University, said during the webinar that just 2.8% of economics Ph.D.'s in 2019 were granted to Black students and 5.8% to Latinos. African-Americans earned more Ph.D.’s in mathematics and other scientific fields, she said.

That suggests, she said, that the problem isn't just a question of building a bigger “pipeline” of young students but of making economics more welcoming to African Americans.

“It’s not about solely changing the student to fit into the flawed profession, but let’s change the flawed profession," Washington said.

The lack of diversity results in a narrower range of research. Dania Francis, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, co-founder of the Sadie Collective, a non-profit that supports Black women in economics, calculate that from 1990 through 2018 the top five economics journals published only 29 papers that explicitly addressed race and ethnicity. That was fewer than 0.5% of all papers published during that time.

Lisa Cook, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that the lack of representation is difficult to overcome without more role models in the profession. She praised a summer program run by the American Economics Association for helping address that obstacle.

Young students who participate in the program often say, “This is the first time I've ever had ... a black woman as a professor in an economics class,” Cook said. “We’re not developing, promoting, or tenuring black women ... and that’s true for underrepresented minorities more generally.”

Participants in the webinar noted that academic economists have often been dismissive of racism as a factor in incomes, employment and other economic barometers. A result is that young minority students who are seeking solutions to racial inequalities might be discouraged from pursuing a career in economics.

“There appears to be no evidence that will get economists to admit, yes, there is discrimination, and yes it matters," said William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO.

Spriggs and Cook have been mentioned as potential Biden administration choices for the Fed’s Board of Governors, which has one vacancy. If either were nominated and confirmed by the Senate, he or she would become just the fourth Black person to serve as a Fed governor.

The report Tuesday from the Brookings Institution pointed out that the directors of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, who select the banks' presidents, are mostly white men with business backgrounds.

The bank directors “are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly drawn from the business communities within their districts, with little participation from minorities, women, or from areas of the economy — labour, nonprofits, the academy — with important contributions to make to Fed governance,” the report's authors, led by Peter Conti-Brown, a financial historian at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, wrote.

Bostic suggested, though, that the Fed has made progress in the past two decades on board representation.

“We do a lot of analytics to make sure we understand what the nature of the diversity of our boards are,” he said. “That is something that we really give a lot of attention to.”

Christopher Rugaber, The Associated Press

Raphael Bostic, the Fed's first Black branch president, says racism has economic impacts (cnbc.com) JULY 2020

'Dumbest bet you could make:' NCAA under fire again for women's sports inequities

CBC/Radio-Canada  4/14/2021

© Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP The Central Florida women's volleyball team practices before the NCAA volleyball tournament on Tuesday. The NCAA is being criticized for subpar conditions at the Omaha, Neb., bubble.

Just one month after coming under fire for its mistreatment of women, the NCAA is once again taking heat for the same issue.

With the national women's volleyball championship tournament set to be begin Wednesday, players and coaches are speaking out about subpar conditions in the Omaha, Neb., bubble.

Among their issues are locker rooms that look more like tents, potentially dangerous flooring and a lack of broadcast coverage.


In March, NCAA women's basketball players revealed similar inequities compared to the men's tournament, most notably an underwhelming weight room.

"Anybody who put money on the NCAA changing in a week lost a lot of money and it was the dumbest bet you could ever make," CBC Sports contributor Meghan McPeak said on the latest episode of Bring It In.

"I was not shocked at the NCAA women's tournament and what they had. That's just the NCAA doing what they do best: not caring about anything but the men's side of sports. Not caring about their athletes, period."

Bring It In, CBC Sports' video podcast series, returned Tuesday with its first episode of Season 2, in which host Morgan Campbell discussed with McPeak and fellow contributor Dave Zirin the NCAA double-standards, the potential CFL-XFL partnership and more.

Upon arrival in Omaha, multiple coaches pointed out that the practice courts at the convention centre where the tournament will take place were just "sport court layered over cement flooring," according to Big Ten Network reporter Emily Ehman.

Those conditions increase injury probability — especially for a sport that requires so much jumping.

The locker-room tents and lack of commentary on broadcast streams, originally for the first two rounds of the tournament, also provided cause for concern.

The NCAA responded by saying it inserted felt between the cement and sport courts to ease impact, while adding ESPN commentary for all rounds — though not before claiming it had "no requirement" to include such.

"They didn't apologize because they felt bad, they didn't apologize because they were wrong, they didn't apologize because they had a misstep. They apologized because they got caught — publicly," McPeak said.

Campbell pointed out that the NCAA says it can't pay high-revenue sport athletes such as men's basketball and football players because those funds must be distributed to non-profitable sports.

The lack of investment in women's volleyball, then, is curious.

"Volleyball is a big business in [the U.S.]. Volleyball is huge. Volleyball is the second most popular sport in Brazil, which is only one of the biggest countries on earth. There is money to be made from women's volleyball, but they can't see it for the very reason they can't see that the weight room is absolutely disgusting and insulting compared to the men's," Zirin said.

Commissioner Mark Emmert should be held accountable for the NCAA's continued ignorance of women's sports, the panel agreed.

"He is hurting the NCAA's ability to make money, because women's basketball is on the precipice of being big business, but it can't be big business if its wings are clipped, and that's exactly what Mark Emmert is doing," Zirin said.

US women soccer players appeal decision against equal pay

SAN FRANCISCO — Players on the women’s national soccer team have asked a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court decision throwing out their lawsuit seeking equal pay to the men's team.

THEY SHOULD BE PAID MORE THEY WIN MORE

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Players led by Alex Morgan asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday to reinstate the part of their suit that U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner threw out last May when he granted a partial summary judgment to the U.S. Soccer Federation.

“For each win, loss and tie that women players secure, they are paid less than men who play the same sport and who do the same work; that is gender discrimination,” players' spokeswoman Molly Levinson said in a statement. “A pervasive atmosphere of sexism drove this pay discrimination.”

Appeals are assigned to three-judge panels. The 9th Circuit estimates that oral arguments in civil appeals will be scheduled 12-20 months from the notice of appeal and 9-12 months after written briefs have been completed.

The U.S. has won the last two Women's World Cups and is the favourite in this summer's Olympic women's soccer tournament.

Players sued the USSF in March 2019, contending they have not been paid equitably under their collective bargaining agreement that runs through December 2021, compared to what the men’s team receives under its agreement that expired in December 2018. The women asked for more than $66 million in damages under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Klausner threw out the pay claim last May, ruling the women rejected a pay-to-play structure similar to the one in the men’s agreement and accepted greater base salaries and benefits than the men, who failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

The sides reached a settlement Dec. 1 on working condition claims that Klausner approved Monday. The deal calls for charter flights, hotel accommodations, venue selection and professional staff support equitable to that of the men’s national team.

The USSF says it pays equally for matches it controls but not for tournaments organized by soccer's world governing body.

FIFA awarded $400 million in prize money for the 32 teams at the 2018 men’s World Cup, including $38 million to champion France. It awarded $30 million for the 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, including $4 million to the U.S. after the Americans won their second straight title.

FIFA has increased the total to $440 million for the 2022 men’s World Cup, and its president, Gianni Infantino, has proposed FIFA double the women’s prize money to $60 million for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, where FIFA has increased the teams to 32.

___

More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

The Associated Press

Opinion: Under fire on race, the AMA should drop its support for the war on drugs

Opinion by David L. Nathan, H. Westley Clark, and Joycelyn Elders 


The American Medical Association (AMA) recently made the news for its stance on institutional racism, and not in a good way. The longtime editor in chief of the association's flagship journal, Dr. Howard Bauchner, was put on administrative leave after JAMA tweeted, "No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?"

© Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images A jar of Insane OG, a strain of marijuana, is displayed at the opening of a California dispensary.

The now-deleted tweet promoted a podcast in which JAMA's deputy editor Dr. Ed Livingston said, "Structural racism is an unfortunate term ... Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist." He wasn't the only one offended. Now Dr. Bauchner and JAMA are facing fellow physicians' outrage for these and other actions, an alleged "failure to diversify the editorial staff and/or displaying blatantly discriminatory behavior patterns."

The podcast episode has since been withdrawn and replaced online with an apology from Dr. Bauchner, who said comments made in the podcast were "inaccurate, offensive, hurtful, and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA." He also said structural racism exists in the US and in health care.

The AMA's racist tweet was not a momentary lapse of judgment. JAMA's doubt about "structural racism in health care" lays bare the hypocrisy within an organization that has struggled with racism since its creation before the US Civil War. Through most of the AMA's history, Black physicians were refused membership in the organization because they were denied prerequisite membership in many state medical societies. As recently as 1966, the AMA successfully persuaded the federal government to exempt physicians from signing a statement of compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discriminatory practices in federally funded hospitals.

There have been a few bright spots in the AMA's long history of racism and misguided support for the drug war. In 1937, the AMA's Legal Counsel Dr. William Woodward testified before Congress in strong and unequivocal opposition to the prohibitionist Marihuana Tax Act. He eerily predicted our current crisis of mass incarceration, asserting that the government "would meet with the same difficulty that it met in prosecuting under the National (Alcohol) Prohibition Act; inadequacy of courts ... (and) the inadequacy of jails."

Woodward was an exceptional physician and lawyer for his time. In a career that spanned six decades, he served as a public health officer and president of the American Public Health Association. He also taught medicine and law at six prestigious universities, including Howard -- a historically Black medical school whose graduates were banned from the AMA of Jim Crow America. The association probably unknowingly accepted its first Black physicians in 1888 when the AMA set rules to offer membership to all state medical society members, and a few in Northern states were Black. Some Southern states, in contrast, didn't stop discriminating against Black physicians until at least the 1950s.

During the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the AMA issued a news release that denounced its own racist past. In November, the nation's largest physicians' association proudly declared that they had "detailed a plan to mitigate (systemic racism's) effects."

The AMA pointed to police brutality, unconscious bias and systemic racism without a single mention of its support for cannabis prohibition, a centerpiece of what is arguably the most powerful instrument of systemic racism: our nation's failed war on drugs.

The AMA actively supports cannabis prohibition, a cornerstone of the drug war, even as it hypocritically condemns systemic racism for creating inequity and limiting access to health care among communities of color. The organization fails to appreciate or chooses to ignore the fact that the uneven application of laws on cannabis prohibition contributes to poverty, which is one of the largest obstacles to health care access in communities of color.

Cannabis is demonstrably safer for the vast majority of adults than alcohol, but the AMA doesn't call for a return to alcohol prohibition. Cannabis is far less harmful to adults than tobacco, but the AMA advocates tighter regulation rather than the prohibition of tobacco products. While the medical community offers an evidence-based, nuanced assessment of the health effects of cannabis, the AMA hyperbolically asserts that "without question, the public health risks (of legalization) are immense."

Cannabis use is not the "immense" public health threat that the AMA claims, but its prohibition is a powerful weapon of racially biased policing. In 2019, US law enforcement made over 500,000 arrests for simple cannabis possession alone. An American Civil Liberties Union report from 2018 found that Black people in America are nearly four times more likely than Whites to be arrested for cannabis possession, despite similar usage rates between the two groups. According to a 2013 ACLU report on race and marijuana prohibition, low-income people of color face disproportionate consequences from cannabis arrests due to their inability to pay fines, inadequate access to counsel and potential loss of housing, employment, and student loans.

Despite the cost in Black and brown lives, cannabis prohibition has failed in its most basic objective: the prevention of underage use. For decades, government statistics have shown that around 80% of American twelfth graders can easily access cannabis. Interestingly, as legalization spreads around the country, underage access is now trending downward, and underage use has remained level in legalized states. In fact, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published a study showing that the number of US high schoolers who had ever tried cannabis increased from 2009 to 2013 and decreased from 2013 to 2019. The turning point was in 2013, a year after US states began legalizing and regulating cannabis for adult use.

In a nation where tens of millions of adults consume cannabis, and according to a November Gallup poll, more than two-thirds of Americans support the legalization of cannabis, groups like the AMA have retreated to a watered-down version of prohibition.

"Decriminalization" is a policy that theoretically reduces or removes penalties for cannabis possession while maintaining the illegality of cultivation and sales. Decriminalization encourages the illegal cannabis industry and prevents the government from regulating cannabis products. In practice, decriminalization doesn't stop arrests for minor cannabis offenses, and racial disparities persist.

Therefore, the AMA finds itself in the morally and logically indefensible position of opposing government regulation of a drug that it wants decriminalized. It sends the message that we are better off with an untested cannabis supply, vulnerable to contamination and adulteration. By opposing regulation, the AMA stands against standardized labeling of cannabis products with health warnings, ingredients, and potency. It would put the nascent regulated cannabis industry back in the hands of unregulated growers and dealers who don't pay taxes and sell cannabis -- sometimes with more dangerous drugs or heavy metals and pesticides -- to minors as well as adults.

Given that its policy runs counter to basic principles of scientific evidence, social justice, and common sense, there can be only one conclusion: The AMA still suffers from the institutional racism it claims to oppose.

Fortunately, a rapidly growing number of physicians recognize that only legalization can end the social injustice of the war on cannabis, and effective regulation is a no-brainer for a drug consumed by a significant percentage of American adults. In 2016, we launched Doctors for Cannabis Regulation (DFCR), which now has members in nearly every US state and territory and recently joined the broad-based Marijuana Justice Coalition. Along with our allies -- including the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Marijuana Policy Project, and other organizations -- DFCR believes that regulation and education are the best tools for addressing cannabis misuse.

This year, the AMA has doubled down on its support for a social policy that criminalizes millions of Americans, disproportionately in communities of color. In an effort to invalidate the ballots of an overwhelming 74% of Mississippi voters, the AMA filed an amicus brief with the Mississippi Supreme Court in January to overturn the state's wildly popular medical cannabis ballot initiative.

Last week, AMA President Dr. Susan Bailey posted that "Our AMA does not support legalization of cannabis for adult use until additional scientific research has been completed to fully document the public health, medical and economic consequences of its use." She cites a webpage of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to shoot down the health benefits of cannabis, but she conveniently overlooks NASEM's 486-page report in which experts evaluate decades of copious government-funded research into the health effects of cannabis, which are far less negative than those of alcohol and tobacco. Since the scientific method makes it impossible to "fully document" the impact of any drug, Dr. Bailey has now signaled that the AMA will not change its position no matter what the evidence tells us.

The organization's current position will not stop the nation's march toward cannabis legalization. But make no mistake: Its active opposition to legalization prevents cannabis regulation and delays the end of this racially biased policy. The AMA's blindness to its own institutional racism is a moral stain on our profession. And with every passing year -- every day -- a heavy cost is paid in Black lives.

Voters around the nation approved all five cannabis initiatives on the ballot in November -- three for adult use, one for medical use and one for both uses -- so the need to properly regulate this drug has never been greater. If the AMA is serious about righting the wrongs of its past, it must renounce the racist war on drugs and support effective regulation of cannabis as the only logical alternative to the destructive policy of prohibition.

NEW YORK FARMERS PLAN TO SWITCH FROM HEMP TO MARIJUANA

ALBANY, N.Y. — Legal marijuana is coming to New York and hemp farmer Samir Mahadin sees it as a potential lifeline.

Farmers dealing with depressed prices for plants that produce CBD are eager to take part in a statewide marijuana market expected to generate billions of dollars a year once retail sales start.

They already know how to grow and process cannabis plants, since hemp is essentially the same plant with lower levels of THC, marijuana's active ingredient.

Now they're waiting on rules that will allow them to switch seeds.

“I would love to get a license to grow cannabis. My wife and I love working with this plant, I believe in its ability and power as a medicine," said Mahadin, who runs Breathing Web Farms in the Finger Lakes with his wife. "And it could save my farm because what happened with the hemp has been catastrophic.”

Last month, New York became the second-largest state to legalize recreational marijuana after California, with retail sales expected to begin as early as next year.

Existing medical marijuana businesses in New York are expected to play a major role in the new adult market, but lawmakers wrote in provisions to mitigate market dominance. Half of the licenses are supposed to go to “social and economic equity” applicants, which would include financially distressed farms.

Regulators are likely months away from answering market-defining questions such as how many licenses will be made available and how much they will cost. High prices for cultivation licenses, for instance, would freeze out some smaller farmers from the market, said Allan Gandelman, president of the New York Cannabis Growers & Processors Association.

And while commercial marijuana is often grown in highly controlled, indoor settings, Gandelman expects regulations to allow farmers to grow outdoors.

Gandelman, who runs Head & Heal CBD products, is among about 700 hemp farmers in the state. Many of them are motivated to move into marijuana not only because of their familiarity with the flower, but a crash in commodity prices driven by oversupply. Even growers who have succeeded in the retail market for CBD, like Gandelman, see marijuana as integral to their future.

New Frontier Data estimates the legal production of smokable flower in New York will surge to 1.3 million pounds by 2025, all of which would have to be grown within the state.

"If you’re a cannabis grower, you should be able to grow cannabis, period,” said Gail Hepworth, CEO of Hempire State Growers in the Hudson Valley.

Hepworth grows hemp at the large organic farm she runs with her sister in the Hudson Valley and they sell CBD products retail and wholesale through their Hempire business. She said keeping farms like hers from the marijuana market would be like telling a tomato farmer “you can only grow beefsteak, you can’t grow cherry tomatoes. It just doesn’t make sense.”

She'd like to follow the same integrated business model for marijuana that they have for CBD, though the law sets limits on most licensed growers from running retail dispensaries.

One exception would be a “microbusiness” license that would allow “limited” growing and selling. Gandelman compared it to New York’s farm brewery program, but with customers coming to picturesque farms to buy craft buds instead of craft beer.

The idea would link cannabis to rural New York's tourism industry.

“Something I could envision for the northeastern states, and New York is no exception, is for example leaf peeping tours in the fall where you tour a cannabis farm and then you go wandering in the Adirondacks,” said John Kagia chief knowledge officer of New Frontier Data.

Mahadin and his wife Kristin Rocco are considering the microbusiness option for the picturesque farm where they also raise chickens and grow organic vegetables. Ideally, they'd like to grow it outdoors or in a greenhouse.

“I want to stay farming," he said. “And I want to work with the cannabis plant in all facets.”

Neighbouring New Jersey also must establish state regulations for its marijuana market after voters approved legalization in November. New Jersey CannaBusiness Association President Edmund DeVeaux said he did not expect outdoor marijuana growing in New Jersey, in part because of fickle Northeast growing seasons. In Connecticut, lawmakers were considering legislation to legalize recreational marijuana.

In New York, marijuana regulations can't come soon enough for farmers, who typically plant in early May.

But the five-member board governing the new Office of Cannabis Management has yet to be appointed. Attorney Karl Sleight, who has experience with the state's cannabis industry, expected more clarity on regulations by Labor Day.

“It might take a little time and the road will be bumpy,” Gandelman said, “but ultimately, this will be a good thing for farmers around the state of New York.”

Michael Hill, The Associated Press

Summer high: Molson Coors' JV Truss launches 6 pot-infused drinks in Canada

ONLY IN CANADA YOU SAY, PITY*

(Reuters) - Miller Lite beer-maker Molson Coors Beverage Co's cannabis joint venture Truss Beverage Co on Wednesday launched six pot-infused beverages in Canada, as it hopes that summer demand will offset recent sales hits from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Coronavirus restrictions in major provinces including Ontario have forced weed stores to shut for extended periods, and are expected to hit cannabis companies' results for the March quarter.

The summer season, which tends to represent peak demand for beverages, will be crucial for companies to undo the damage.

Truss, jointly run by Canadian pot producer Hexo Corp, launched five CBD-infused beverage brands in August last year and claims to have already won a 43% market share in the category in Canada. https://bit.ly/3wThh2D

"Summer ... is the biggest opportunity for the beverage category; it is the inflection point for consumers to try out our products," Truss Beverage's Chief Executive Scott Cooper told Reuters in an interview.

"Cannabis-infused beverages are still new and tend to be an impulsive purchase, so having the store open is important to the trial and awareness of the category," he added.

Truss said its latest beverage line included watermelon, lemonade, sparkling tonic and honey green iced tea flavors, and are expected to be rolled out to retailers over the next few months.

*MOTTO OF THE RED ROSE TEA COMPANY OF CANADA

Ford's first VW-platform electric car is a small SUV, report says

Andrew Krok 

Vehicle development takes a pretty long time, which is why it came as no surprise when we didn't really hear much after Volkswagen and Ford announced a platform-sharing partnership that would see the American automaker using the German company's MEB scalable electric-vehicle platform. While official news has yet to land about the fruits of their partnership, a new report gives us an idea of what to expect in the near future.

© Provided by Roadshow Ford's Cologne facility is currently undergoing a $1 billion renovation to shift its focus to electrified vehicles. Oliver Berg/AFP/Getty Images

Ford's first use of VW's MEB platform will spawn a small SUV, Autocar reported Monday, after sighting what it believes to be the vehicle in question. Representatives for Ford did not immediately return a request for comment, Volkswagen declined to comment, and neither automaker provided comment for Autocar's report.

Pictures published by Autocar show a vehicle wrapped in a blue cover, with only a hint of its styling revealed on the lower portion of the car. Based on its color, it could be a full-size clay model, but since automakers routinely decline to discuss future vehicles until the time and date of their choosing, answers will likely be hard to come by until Ford delivers more information on its efforts, which Autocar understands will happen later this year. The report says that Ford will build this MEB-based EV at its factory in Cologne, Germany, which is currently being renovated specifically to produce future electrified vehicles.

Ford's Cologne facility is currently undergoing a $1 billion renovation to shift its focus to electrified vehicles.

Given its size relative to the workers standing by it in Autocar's photos, this small SUV looks to slot beneath the Mustang Mach-E and would likely be analogous to VW's own ID4, which relies on the same MEB platform.

Rumors of a Ford and VW partnership first surfaced in 2018, and the two automakers chose the Detroit Auto Show to announce their joint venture, which at first was limited to midsize pickup trucks and commercial vans . Later that year, VW announced it would invest $2.6 billion in Argo AI and allow Ford to use its MEB EV platform for future vehicle development. It's all part of Ford's plan to go entirely electric in Europe by 2030, including commercial segments.