They're in a state of fear': CEOs are worried about quiet quitting

Jo Constantz and Nicole Bullock, Bloomberg News

Sep 23, 2022

CEOs are worried about quiet quitting.

As news of the trend flooded the internet, human resources companies, consultants, law firms and even artificial intelligence startups have jumped in to offer advice on how to prevent and combat it. By all accounts there is demand: Leaders at large and well-known companies in finance, tech and health care are very concerned, said Ben Granger, chief workplace psychologist at survey firm Qualtrics.

“It’s pretty rare that a lot of leaders in major organizations would bring this up to us within as short of a time as this has been talked about in the media,” he said. “I don't see that a lot.”

But executives don’t know what to do about it. Human resource professionals say leaders are concerned about whether they can rely on their employees if there’s a recession — or if they can afford to fire and replace quiet quitters in a tight labor market, Granger said. Leaders are worried they won’t be able to spot it spreading under their noses. 

“A lot of leaders and clients I work with, some for the first time in 30 years, they’re in a state of fear as an employer.” said Erica Dhawan, workplace consultant and author of a book about remote and hybrid work. “They feel they have to keep people that aren’t performing.”

Especially scary for leaders is the “invisible” nature of the trend, according to Granger. In a remote or hybrid environment, the classic signs that an employee is checked out, like tardiness and absenteeism, can be harder to spot. While their first reaction is often to blame quiet quitting on laziness, Granger said many come to realize that it’s actually a management problem. There’s even an artificial intelligence startup claims to offer a solution, analyzing emails and Slack messages to detect engagement, burnout and turnover risk among employees.

However, chief human resource officers tend to be less freaked out about all the talk of quiet quitting than others in the C-suite, according to Caroline Walsh, vice president in the human resources practice at consulting firm Gartner. Since they’ve spent years focusing on and talking about burnout, the phenomenon comes as less of a surprise.

They could be underestimating the issue. More than half of HR professionals from a range of industries surveyed in late August were concerned about quiet quitting, according to a Society for Human Resource Management poll of over 1,200. Yet only about a third think it’s happening in their own organization, a perception that doesn't align with Gallup’s recent estimate that a full 50 per cent of the US workforce can be considered quiet quitters. 

While it’s hard to say how much more quiet quitting is happening since the trend went viral, Granger said the fact more people are talking about it is itself significant because it’s more likely to catch on and spread.

“Now you’ve got a big problem,” he said. “If you get into a situation where organizations start to see this tip, and now there’s massive amounts of quiet quitting happening, that is almost certainly going to lead to some massive downstream effects on the business.”

UK
Hydrogen could ‘nearly double’ cost of heating a home compared with gas

Using hydrogen would add about 70% to home energy bills, according to a report by a renewable energy charity

Ministers are poised to allow hydrogen to be blended with fossil fuel gas in the UK’s gas networks, as a way of reducing carbon emissions from home heating. 

Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Fiona Harvey 

THE GUARDIAN

Environment correspondent

Mon 26 Sep 2022

Ministers’ plans to pin the UK’s energy hopes on hydrogen could nearly double the cost of heating a home by the end of the decade compared with natural gas, research has shown.

Using hydrogen for home heating could prove much a more expensive option than natural gas, according to the leading energy analysts Cornwall Insight. Between now and 2050, when the UK is legally bound to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, using hydrogen would add about 70% to home energy bills compared with using gas, according to the report, commissioned by renewable energy charity MCS Foundation.

Jitendra Patel, senior consultant at Cornwall Insight, said: “While hydrogen does have a part to play in the decarbonisation pathway, through for example use in the industrial sectors and in the use of surplus electricity, current and forecast costs all show it is simply uneconomical to use 100% hydrogen fuel for heating our homes.”

Ministers are poised to allow hydrogen to be blended with fossil fuel gas in the UK’s gas networks, as a way of reducing carbon emissions from home heating. They are also considering a potential large-scale rollout of hydrogen to supply gas boilers in homes from 2026.

In the mini-budget unveiled by the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday, there was a promise to boost five hydrogen infrastructure projects.

Hydrogen supporters argue that the gas could be used with little need to upgrade the UK’s existing network of gas pipes and gas boilers, which make up the vast majority of home heating systems in most parts of the country.

But serious concerns have been raised over the use of hydrogen, with some experts warning that it faces technical difficulties that could prove insurmountable.

Michael Liebreich, chair of Liebreich Associates and founder of the analyst firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has hit out at “boiler-slingers” – the UK’s existing network of gas companies, plumbing firms and engineers – who see hydrogen as a route to maintain as much of the status quo as possible, rather than moving to heat pumps and other proven low-carbon technology.

Liebreich tweeted: “Heating with hydrogen from renewable energy is six times less efficient than using the same electricity in a heat pump. I don’t know a single serious energy analyst not affiliated with the gas industry who thinks hydrogen heating will be a thing.”

There are also doubts over the low-carbon nature of some forms of hydrogen, as there are both “green” ways of producing hydrogen from renewable energy, and “blue” methods to produce the gas from fossil fuels. The latter does not represent a saving of greenhouse gas emissions unless the resulting carbon dioxide is captured and stored.

Those voicing concern have been largely drowned out, however, by intensive lobbying from fossil fuel companies, which see hydrogen as an alternative income source, a way to turn their existing resources and infrastructure to supposedly low-carbon ends.

There are at least 120 paid lobbyists for hydrogen operating in parliament at present, according to separate estimates from MCS Charitable Foundation. Big energy companies including Shell and BP, as well as a host of smaller companies and start-ups, are promoting hydrogen as a green fuel.

Hydrogen lobbyists are also out in force at the ongoing Labour party conference, and are to sponsor events at the Conservative party conference beginning this weekend.

Cornwall Insight, whose widely followed modelling forecast the big hikes in the energy price cap this year, found that blending hydrogen with gas would result in much smaller price increases for home heating, of about 5% in the short term and by 2050. However, that would still involve the use of natural gas long after the UK is supposed to have moved away from fossil fuels.

The five hydrogen infrastructure projects included in the government’s growth plan are: HyNet hydrogen pipeline; INOVYN hydrogen storage; East Coast Cluster hydrogen pipeline; Aldbrough hydrogen storage; and hydrogen electrolyser capacity deployment.

Movement to defund fossil fuels is coming for the private equity industry

BY IRINA IVANOVA
SEPTEMBER 19, 2022/ MONEYWATCH

As Wall Street banks and investors face mounting pressure to disinvest in fossil fuels, the massive private equity industry is taking their place, according to climate activists. The eight largest buyout firms have put nearly as much money into coal, oil and gas as the big banks, according to a recent analysis from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF).

The firms, which include Apollo Global Management, Blackstone Group, Brookfield Asset Management, Carlyle Group, KKR and Warbug Pincus, collectively oversee $216 billion worth of fossil-fuel assets — on par with how much money big banks put into fossil fuels last year, the nonprofit groups found. Looking at the 10 largest private equity funds, it found that 80% of their energy investments were in fossil fuels.

"The billions of dollars private equity firms have deployed to drill, frack, transport, store, refine fossil fuels and generate energy, stand in stark contrast to what climate scientists and international policymakers have called upon to align our trajectory to the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming scenario," states the report, which was cosigned by major climate groups including Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Project, Sierra Club and the Sunrise Project.

"Pollution financiers of last resort"

As banks, utilities and other public companies offload polluting assets, private equity firms are "emerging as pollution financiers of last resort," Oscar Valdés Viera, research manager at AFREF, told CBS MoneyWatch.

"These polluting assets are shifting from the public markets, where there is greater amount of regulatory and public scrutiny, into the shadows of our financial industry, where private equity usually operates," said Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer, research director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

For instance, New Jersey-based utility PSEG, which has a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2030, recently sold 13 fossil-fuel power plants to ArcLight Capital Partners, a private equity firm.

Brookfield Asset Management recently bought oil pipelines in Canada and liquefied natural gas facilities in Louisiana. Warburg Pincus, through Citizen Energy, purchased oil and gas wells in Oklahoma. KKR, through subsidiaries, is invested in oil and gas production in Texas, Utah and Canada.

The Blackstone Group — one of the world's largest private equity funds — is also one of the worst polluters, according to the report. It notes that Blackstone-backed power plants produced 18.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, the same as 4 million gasoline-burning cars.

Warburg Pincus and KKR disputed their portrayal in the report, which they said incorrectly attributed assets they don't own. In a statement, Brookfield said, "We are proud to be one of the world's largest renewable energy operators and manager of the world's largest climate impact fund," and noted that it plans to achieve net-zero emissions in its portfolio by 2050.

Blackstone did not respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch.

Net zero — eventually

While some PE firms have promised to eliminate carbon, environmentalists say they could be moving much more quickly.

Carlyle Group, which earlier this year pledged to have net-zero emissions by 2050, still maintains $24 billion in carbon-based energy through NGP Group, in which it holds a stake, according to the report, which noted that 60% of Carlyle's profit in the first half of this year came from NGP.

A Carlyle executive said the company doesn't control NGP's activities, and disagreed with the environmentalists' timeline on how quickly it's possible to retire fossil-fuel plants.

"Carlyle's approach to invest in, not divest from, the energy transition is a different one, grounded in seeking real emissions reductions within portfolio companies over the long term," the company said in a statement. "In order to work toward meaningful progress on climate change, we will continue to partner with companies across the energy spectrum to collect better data and strive for clear progress reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

The executive cited several examples of Carlyle's environmental push, noting the company has shut down coal plants under its ownership and pushed oil-and-gas companies Cepsa and Varo Energy to shift to renewables.

Carlyle announced in February that it would reach a net-zero portfolio by 2050. However, in the past year — with rising energy prices and now Russia's war in Ukraine — the fund is focused on energy security as much as sustainability, the executive said. That means keeping natural-gas plants online longer than initially planned.

More broadly, private equity firms say their investment in thousands of companies around the U.S., including many small and midsize employers, helps sustain struggling businesses and preserve jobs.
Will they listen?

Over the past decade, activists have has considerable success pressuring major banks and money managers to yank funding from fossil fuels, to the point where Republican states are trying to outlaw the practice.


But private equity firms — which raise and manage investment funds on behalf of large investors, including public pension plans — are more resistant to public criticism. Also called buyout firms, they have largely shrugged off accusations of squeezing community hospitals and nursing homes, gutting local newspapers, and destroying popular retailers like Toys R' Us, with the PE industry continuing to thrive

.Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. introduced the "Stop Wall Street Looting Act" in 2019. It would make private-equity firms responsible for debts and retirement pension obligations of companies they purchase, while making their profits contingent on the success of the entities they control.

ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

"The banks are accountable to their shareholders and to the public — companies are accountable in the same way, but private equity firms are only accountable to their limited partners," said Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, referring to the investors in a buyout fund.

Typically, limited partners sign on with a private equity fund manager without knowing what that person plans to buy. Once those investments are made, they don't have any say in how they're managed or when they're sold.

"In private equity, you're investing in what we call a blind pool — you're committing to this fund, but you don't know what you're buying because the private equity firm doesn't know what they're going to buy yet," said Hilary Wiek, lead analyst for fund strategies and performance at PitchBook. "They need to raise their fund first, and then they go out and find investments."


Wiek noted that some PE investors are coming around to the idea of decarbonization, and investors today are much more concerned about their portfolios' climate impact than just a few years ago.

But with deadly heat waves, wildfires and floods this year killing people by the thousands, defunding fossil fuels can't come soon enough, critics say. Many entities currently funding fossil fuels have promised to stop by 2050, a generation in the future. But a typical private-equity fund owns a company for just three to five years before selling it.

"Private equity firms have a very short timeframe," said Mehta-Neugebauer of the PESP. "If they're just holding on to these companies for three to five years, then perhaps even by the end of this decade they could achieve fossil-free portfolios."

INTO THE INFINITE

Maarten Schmidt, the father of quasars, dies at age 92

Famed astronomer Maarten Schmidt's 1963 breakthrough discovery rocked the astronomy world, helping change the universe's origin story.

By Paul Sutter  |  Published: Friday, September 23, 2022

Maarten Schmidt, seen here investigating a spectra in 1965, played a pivotal role in unraveling the early mysteries of quasars.

Caltech Archives

The world of astronomy mourned the recent passing of Dutch-American astronomer Maarten Schmidt, the first person to measure the distance to a quasar. His groundbreaking work in the 1960’s greatly expanded the size of the known universe, providing one of the first clues that the Big Bang theory was correct. Schmidt died on Sept. 17 at his home in Fresno, California. He was 92 years old.

The story of quasars began several years before Schmidt focused his attention on them. Starting in the 1950s, astronomers identified several sources of radio emissions in the sky. Many of those radio sources could be assigned to known objects, like bright stars or nearby galaxies. But some remained frustratingly elusive, having no visible counterpart. Whatever these strange radio sources were, they appeared as point-like objects, indicating that they were either huge in size but incredibly far away or small and nearby.

Astronomers, never slow to assign a name to a new category of celestial phenomenon, quickly designated these radio sources “quasi-stellar objects,” which was shortened to quasars.

Unraveling the mysteries of quasars

Schmidt, who received his Doctor of Philosophy from Leiden University in 1956 under the tutelage of Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (of Oort Cloud fame), eventually moved to the California Institute of Technology to continue his studies into the properties and evolution of galaxies. Among Schmidt’s many accomplishments during his tenure there, he was the first to discover that the density of interstellar gas within galaxies was proportional to their rate of star formation, a relationship now known as the Schmidt law (or, more recently, the Kennicutt-Schmidt law).

Schmidt then turned his attention to finding the light spectra of radio sources, especially these mysterious quasars. By the early 1960s, astronomers had been able to identify optical light counterparts to one other quasar, but its spectrum remained poorly understood — its light output did not match any other known type of astronomical object.

In 1963, Schmidt used the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory to discover the optical counterpart of the quasar known as 3C 273, one of the first to be discovered. He also gathered the spectrum of this poorly understood object, and that spectrum featured strange emission lines that, once again, defied explanation.

After several weeks of deep contemplation and much nervous pacing around his home, Schmidt realized what he was looking at: a perfectly normal galaxy. All the emission lines from all the usual elements were there, like hydrogen and helium, but they were simply shifted far down toward the red end of the spectrum.

The light spectrum of an astronomical object can shift from two things. One is the Doppler effect: If an object is moving away from us, the wavelength of its emitted light will lengthen, and its emission lines will be redshifted. But the position of the emission lines from 3C 273 implied a recession velocity of around 100 million mph, some 15 percent the speed of light!

This redshift result was orders of magnitude larger than that found for any other known object.

Quasars: The luminous cores of distant galaxies

Schmidt argued for another interpretation in his Nature paper describing his discovery: the Big Bang. Distant objects are pulled away from us due to the expansion of space itself, which also causes a redshift. It was this realization that allowed Edwin Hubble to lay the observational groundwork for the Big Bang theory in the 1920s. But besides Hubble’s insight, there was little more to anchor the Bang Bang in observations. And so astronomers continued to debate its validity.

Schmidt’s work showed that 3C 273 was billions of light-years away, making it the most distant astronomical object known at the time. This discovery of the first distance to a quasar dramatically rewrote our understanding of the true scale of the cosmos.

For quasars to be detectable at such vast distances, they must be insanely luminous. In fact, they must be the most luminous objects in the universe. Schmidt believed that when we observe a quasar, we are seeing the light emitted as gas violently swirls and grinds together around a gigantic black hole in a newly forming galaxy, which turned out to be the correct interpretation.

The existence of quasars provided proponents of the Big Bang theory a major observational win. Quasars only appear in the distant universe; there are no nearby objects like them.

In the Big Bang model, the universe changes and evolves as it continues to cool and expand. And because quasars are only found far, far away, they must have only existed in the early universe, not our modern-day one.

In 1966, Time magazine put Schmidt on their cover, likening his discovery of the true nature of quasars to those of Galileo’s in its power to reshape our understanding of the universe. And an accomplishment like that is sure to live on. 

Caltech Mourns the Passing of Maarten

Schmidt, 1929-2022



September 19, 2022

Maarten Schmidt, Francis L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on Saturday, September 17, 2022. He was 92 years old. Schmidt is well known for his 1963 discovery of quasars—extremely bright and distant cosmic objects powered by active supermassive black holes.

Schmidt was born in December of 1929, in Groningen, the Netherlands. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Groningen, a PhD from Leiden University in 1956, and a Doctor of Science degree from Yale in 1966.

After earning his PhD, Schmidt did postdoctoral work at the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories for two years as a Carnegie Fellow. He then returned to the University of Leiden for one year before moving to the United States.

Schmidt joined Caltech in 1959 as an associate professor of astronomy. He became full professor in 1964, Institute Professor in 1981, and Moseley Professor in 1987. He retired and became Moseley Professor, Emeritus, in 1996. He had also served as the executive officer for astronomy from 1972 to 1975, chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy from 1976 to 1978, and director of the Hale Observatories from 1978 to 1980.

After first coming to Caltech, Schmidt focused on mass distribution and dynamics of galaxies. During this period, he published a paper titled "The Rate of Star Formation," in which he outlined a relationship between gas density and star formation rate in a given region. This relationship came to be known as the Schmidt law.

Schmidt is best known for his discovery of quasars and his measurement of their great distances from Earth. While studying the light spectra of radio sources, he noticed that a cosmic object called 3C 273 produced spectral lines that had been shifted to the red end of the spectrum, or "red shifted," indicating that the object was roughly 3 billion light-years away, well outside our galaxy. Because the faraway object shone too brightly to be a star, Schmidt came to the realization that the "quasi-stellar object" was the core of a forming galaxy, in which swirling disks of matter surround a supermassive black hole.

Since this pivotal observation in 1963, thousands of quasars have been identified. These objects were more common in the early universe and are visible from Earth today because of the time it takes for light to travel over such enormous distances. Schmidt's work gave astronomers a deep insight into the history of our universe.

Schmidt is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Kavli Prize for Astrophysics (2008); the Bruce Medal (1992); the James Craig Watson Medal (1991); the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1980); the Henry Norris Russel Lectureship (1978); and the Helen B. Warner Prize (1964). He was also on the cover of Time magazine on March 11, 1966.

He is survived by his three daughters: Anne, Marijke, and Elizabeth.

GEOLOGY

Volcanoes in Canada could one day be used to generate renewable energy

“World-class conditions” for generating geothermal energy have been found at Mount Meager in British Columbia.

Published on Sep. 22, 2022, 
Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.ScReporter

Will Canada use volcanoes to generate energy?

Scientists and policymakers are exploring all possible renewable energies that will help Canada lower its greenhouse gas emissions and eventually reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

It might come as a surprise, but Canadian volcanoes could one day play a role in lowering national emissions, according to Steve Grasby, a research scientist from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).

Although many are unaware there are volcanoes in Canada, the country is home to five potentially active volcanic areas: one overlaps the Yukon-Alaska border and four are located across British Columbia.

The most recent Canadian eruption occurred 150 years ago at Lava Fork in northwestern B.C.

Grasby and fellow researchers are focused on analyzing Mounts Cayley and Meager, which are located along the South Coast near Pemberton.

View of Mount Cayley from research helicopter. 

(Steve Grasby/ Research Scientist/ Natural Resources Canada)

Their analysis indicates there is a “high potential” for extracting geothermal energy from volcanoes in Canada, particularly from Mount Meager. The team has detected volcanic gases being released, which indicates that it is “more of an active volcano than an inactive one.”
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“A well has been drilled at Mount Meager and temperatures up to 250°C have been discovered at about 1.5-kilometre depth. These are really world-class conditions with these very high-temperature waters at a pretty reasonable depth,” Grabsy told The Weather Network.
Harnessing energy from volcanoes

Extracting geothermal energy begins with drilling a well, pumping water into the ground, and then drawing it back to the surface. Rocks within the volcano are extremely hot and heat the water as it flows past them.

A drone flies over one of Mount Meager's three fumaroles. The footage shows how much ice is melting, allowing gas and steam to escape from the volcano. (Aeria Solutions)

As the hot water returns to the surface it transitions into steam due to the drop in pressure, which then spins a turbine to generate electricity. Energy can also be created by using the hot water to heat other fluids that transition into steam. Afterwards, the used water is safely pumped back into the ground, and the cycle continues.

If the water extracted from the well is less than 100°C it is not hot enough to generate electricity through the process mentioned above, but it can flow through pipes and be used for direct heating in homes, buildings, and industrial systems.

“The volcanic belts of western Canada and areas with hot sedimentary basins in Yukon, North West Territories, western Alberta, and southern Saskatchewan are all prime for electricity. Other regions across Canada have the potential for direct heating,” said Grasby.

Although using volcanoes to generate electricity might seem futuristic, many countries have developed large-scale operations around this renewable energy and have been utilizing it on a national scale.

UNICORN TECH

See also: Nuclear fusion powers the Sun and stars. Here's how we can generate it on Earth

Helicopter at a magnetotelluric measurement site.

 (Steve Grasby/ Research Scientist/ Natural Resources Canada)

“Iceland, is a prime example, it produces most of its energy from its volcanic systems,” said Grasby.

“The Pacific Ring of Fire is a whole range of volcanoes that go all around the Pacific Ocean, from the West Coast in North America, South America, and around the east coast of Asia. Canada is really the only country in the Ring of Fire that has yet to produce geothermal energy. We kind of stand out in the world for not yet making use of that resource.”

Some of the most attractive aspects of geothermal energy include reliability, robust potential to generate high levels of electricity and heat, and zero requirements for storing excess energy generated, which is the case for other renewables like solar and wind.
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Grasby noted that Canada is home to many other geologic environments that also have the potential to be utilized for geothermal energy, such as certain Prairie regions.

NRCan research scientist at the Turbid Creek thermal spring on the south flank of the Mount Cayley volcano. The bright colours are from minerals precipitating from the spring waters and algal and bacteria mats growing in the warm water. 

(Steve Grasby/ Research Scientist/ Natural Resources Canada)

For example, DEEP Earth Energy Production Corp, located in southern Saskatchewan, states that they have the potential to generate approximately 140 MW of geothermal power, which could offset the amount of emissions released by 85,000 cars annually.

Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan notes that investments in geothermal technology, as well as other renewable energies that are not yet commercially deployable, such as tidal energy and carbon capture and storage systems, will “allow Canada to be a world leader in these new technologies.”

An example of federal support in expanding geothermal energy is the $5 million investment in Novus Earth.

This company is exploring the geothermal potential in Hinton, Alberta in hopes of one day combining geothermal energy, hydroponics, and aquaculture to grow produce and seafood in the province and in Canada’s Arctic.

NRCan research scientist Wanju Yuan on the south flank of Mount Cayley looking south over the Squamish Valley. (Steve Grasby/ Research Scientist/ Natural Resources Canada)

When asked about potential opposition to building infrastructure on a volcano that could be active, Grasby explained that eruptions are notoriously difficult to predict and there is currently no clear understanding yet about the degree of hazards Canadian volcanoes currently pose.
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“I think there'll be a lot larger problems if we had a volcanic eruption than just one geothermal plant being damaged. There'll be a much larger impact on the entire region. So I think that's a relatively minor concern,” stated Grasby.

The next steps for NRCan researchers involve compiling data and analysis about the volcanoes to determine optimal drilling locations with high temperatures at relatively shallow depths.

“What we hope to do is to help reduce the economic risk of drilling wells so that we can share the techniques that we developed and information that we gather in the data. And then [industries] can use that information to make decisions along with regulators and First Nations to decide if this is something worth developing and drilling in the future,” said Grasby.

Thumbnail image: Sharp peaks cover the top of Mount Cayley, marking the old central core of the volcano. (Steve Grasby/ Research Scientist/ Natural Resources Canada)

Two ways to think about Patagonia’s $3 billion climate donation

Is it a groundbreaking philanthropic move, or a way to avoid taxes?

Budrul Chukrut / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images


John McCracken

GRIST
Published Sep 20, 2022

When Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard announced last week that he and family members were giving away the company to use its profits to fight climate change, the move was hailed as historic and remarkable by philanthropic experts.

The outdoor retailer, with a history of sustainability and environmental efforts, once told people to “think twice” before buying one of its iconic jackets. Now, in the wake of their decision to give away the company, some observers are in fact thinking twice — about whether the giveaway is actually that groundbreaking.

According to some legal experts, it’s a typical tax move.

Chouinard, his wife, and their two adult children transferred all of the company’s voting stock, or 2 percent of all shares, to the newly created Patagonia Purpose Trust, as first reported by the New York Times. The rest of the company’s stock has been transferred to a newly created social welfare organization, the Holdfast Collective, which will inject a projected $100 million a year into environmental nonprofits and political organizations. Patagonia Purpose Trust will oversee this mission and company operations. The giveaway was valued at roughly $3 billion and did not merit a charitable deduction, with the family paying $17.5 million in taxes on the donation to the trust.

While this move is groundbreaking in the philanthropic world, New York University law professor Daniel Hemel told Quartz that the giveaway allowed the family to reap the benefits of a commonly used tax law maneuver used by philanthropists. The Chouinard family paid more than $17 million in taxes when all was said and done, however, Hemel noted that the payment is a small percentage of the donation made, and the way the trusts and ruling organizations played out still allowed the family to call the shots on both the business and its future charitable contributions.

The Chouinard family’s gift has been compared to a recent move by conservative billionaire Barre Seid, who sold his entire company to the tune of $1.6 billion to fund right-wing political actions. When the New York Times reported on Seid, his transaction was noted to be shaded in dark money, while Patagonia’s was historic, despite both billionaires funneling money into 501c4 organizations. Hemel called out this juxtaposition both on Twitter and in his recent interview, where he said the gifts were “substantively similar.”

Billionaires use charitable giving to address a variety of issues, from right-wing politics to preserving wildlife. Communication and public policy professor Matthew Nisbet of Northeastern University has been outspoken against the role philanthropy and billionaires play in climate change before and told Grist that the newly announced Patagonia decision may be applauded by many in environmental industries, but Yvon Chouinard has essentially gone from a reluctant billionaire to political fat cat.

“Now that they’ve invented this (model) and introduced it to the marketplace for politically motivated billionaires, regardless of their background, everyone’s going to do it,“ Nisbet said. “This is an escalating zero-sum political arms race.” With the creation of the new 501c4 Holdfast Collective, Nisbet likened this new organization to other notable political spending groups, such as the National Rifle Association and the conservative Club for Growth.

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. Campbell Brewer

A 501c4 organization, considered a tax-exempt, social welfare organization by the Internal Revenue Service, is not required to disclose its donors but must disclose money granted to other organizations equal to $5,000 or more. 501c4 organizations can engage in political lobbying and endorse candidates related to their organizational mission.*

Nisbet feared that the influx of cash controlled by an interest group would set the agenda of climate issues in the political realm moving forward. “Do you believe that our politics should be decided by billionaires who can spend hundreds of millions of dollars in elections with no accountability, no transparency, and pick and choose winners or pick and choose issues?” he asked.

Lack of transparency in political spending and philanthropy has mired public perception of charitable giving, causing long-standing scrutiny that dates back to 20th-century oil baron John D. Rockefeller’s creation of his namesake foundation. 501c4 organizations have funded anti-climate Facebook ads and directly influence climate legislation at the state level, with little knowledge of who funds these actions. While the source of the Holdfast Collective’s funding will come directly from Patagonia’s profits, Nisbet said he worries the new organization could become a way for other billionaires to donate and influence climate issues. Modern-day billionaires have taken climate change, the environment, and agriculture under their charitable wings more often in recent years, despite 10 percent of the world’s richest people producing half of the globe’s carbon emissions.

Soon-to-be trillionaire Jeff Bezos created a $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund in 2020, but Amazon has come under fire from watchdogs for undercounting its carbon footprint, punishing climate-focused workers, and polluting neighboring communities. Bill Gates has focused his philanthropy on agriculture and global hunger, while critics accuse him of gobbling up American farmland and cornering the market on seeds. Both Bezos and Gates have poured billions into tech-focused climate solutions, as well as Tesla founder Elon Musk also offering up $100 million for carbon capture innovations.

Patagonia has increased its political presence in recent years when it went to the courtroom to fight for the conservation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and joined legal battles against logging, as well as commented on voting rights. The outdoor retail giant does have a long history of charitable giving, as they’ve donated 1 percent of all profits to environmental causes for decades and donated back $10 million of tax cuts to climate advocates.

Patagonia spokesperson Corley Kenna told Grist that, at this time, there are no publicly announced organizations that the company’s future funds will go to, but “all options are on the table.” She said Chouinard and the Holdfast Collective are interested in tackling the root causes of the climate crisis, including land and water protection, grantmaking to on-the-ground groups, and funding policy focused on solutions.

The spokesperson strongly rebuked the criticism that the recently announced company transition is not rooted in transparency and will fuel untraceable funds, citing Patagonia’s long history of transparency about its manufacturing, giving, and leadership.

“Yvon Chouinard, the Chouinard family, and the Holdfast Collective is not an extension of a political party,” Kenna said. “What we’re talking about here is a family that is committed to addressing the existential crises facing our planet.”

With big-name companies and wealthy families entering the fray, climate-focused philanthropy has grown in recent years, but still accounts for less than 2 percent of global giving, according to a report last year by ClimateWorks Foundation. Shawn Reifsteck, vice president of strategy and communications for the foundation, said Patagonia is “trailblazing a new way for companies to give back for generations to come” and he hopes others will follow suit. Philanthropic strategist Bruce DeBoskey said more and more philanthropists are recognizing that the traditional model of writing checks and giving grants has not been successful in solving overarching societal problems and billionaires are adopting new models of giving, such as the Chouinard family’s giveaway.

“It’s not about changes in the tax laws that I’m aware of,” DeBoskey said. “It’s about the changes in thinking.”

Editor’s note: Patagonia is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

*Correction: This story originally misidentified a 501c4 organization’s political capabilities.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PATAGONIA 

New contract gives Manitoba health-care workers retroactive raises, signing bonus


The Canadian Press
Published Sept. 23, 2022 

WINNIPEG -

Some 18,000 health-care support workers in Manitoba have ratified a new collective agreement that includes pay raises.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees says its members have voted in favour of the deal reached earlier his month.

It covers workers in many areas, including the southern, northern and Winnipeg regional health authorities

The seven-year deal is retroactive to 2017 and contains annual wage hikes that total 9.6 per cent.

The union says there is also a signing bonus, an increase in pay for people who work nights and weekends, and improvements to family sick leave.

The union says the negotiations were difficult, dating back to when the provincial government tried to impose a wage freeze on public-sector workers.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23

PATHETIQUE RIGHT WING JINGOISM

Not a hint of a heckle for the least Labour thing you’ll see at a Labour conference

If some had their reservations about opening with the national anthem, they kept them to themselves in a show of unity

SIR Keir Starmer leads a formal tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II at the Labour party conference in Liverpool. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

JOHN CRACE

THE GUARDIAN
Sun 25 Sep 2022 

Stick to what you’re good at. It’s in the nature of things – especially during a party conference – that opposition leaders find themselves put under the microscope for character flaws. For reasons why they may never make it to prime minister. Keir Starmer is no exception. No matter that he has been consistently ahead in the polls for months now, or that Liz Truss has spectacularly failed to secure the traditional new prime minister bounce – she seems to be taking her desire to be unpopular extremely seriously – as she tries to crash the economy. Starmer gets it in the neck from left and right. He’s too timid. He’s too vague. He never says anything.

Except that over the last few weeks we’ve now found something at which Keir genuinely excels. In fact, he’s probably one of the best, if not the best, in the business. He’s just an exceptional mourner. Were I to pop my clogs in the not too distant future, I would hope that my family fell to their knees and begged him to organise the 10 days of national psychosis. There would be tears. There would be pomp. There would be circumstance. Chopin’s funeral march on repeat. And more and more tears.

When the Queen died, our lantern-jawed superhero with the sensitive, middle-distance stare suddenly came in to his own. Come the tributes in parliament, he was note-perfect. While Librium Liz couldn’t even connect with herself in a drab, monotone speech that said everything about her and nothing about the Queen, Starmer was emotionally literate enough to convey the nation’s feelings.

He touched us. He held us. Acknowledged our loss. And then, for the rest of the ceremonies over the next nine days, he was strong and silent. Present but unobtrusive. Not trying to game the situation for his own political advantage. If one of the pallbearers had fainted, Keir would have been first to step up.

All of which goes some way to explaining why this year’s Labour party conference began with the singing of the national anthem. Now, anyone in the Commons last Friday for Kwasi Kwarteng’s asset-stripping suicide note would have realised politics was well and truly tribal again. You’d have needed a heart of stone not to enjoy the sight of free marketeers not quite grasping what a free market actually meant as the pound sank without trace. Not so much Britannia Unchained as Britannia Unhinged.

No matter. Starmer wanted to get the conference off to a good start – he’d navigated the traditional leader’s interview on the morning’s Sunday politics shows without taking much collateral damage, though sometimes you wish he’d learn to lie a little better. It wouldn’t hurt him to say he’d freeze energy prices for longer than six months given that he’s never going to be in a position to do so – so he was determined to play to his strengths. Doubling down on mourning it was.

Just before 11am, Starmer took to the conference stage in a packed hall. Above him was a giant video screen with a black and white image of the Queen. Behind him was a new Labour logo of a swirly union jack. There’s sometimes a fine line between patriotism and nationalism. But if some people had their reservations, they kept them to themselves.

This was to be a theme of this year’s party conference. There might be a few angry members on the periphery, but everyone else was determined to put on a display of unity. Labour has now decided it’s in with a genuine chance of winning the next election and will do whatever it takes. These days it’s the Tories who are the real political psychopaths. Imagine trashing the economy just because it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, and finally all the grownups have left the room and there’s no one left to stop you.

Starmer kept it short and sweet, sensing that not everyone might share his enthusiasm for mourning and that they might have come to Liverpool to talk politics. She wasn’t just Our Queen, he said, ripping off Emmanuel Macron’s high-class tribute. She was The Queen. The Queen of the World. The very best Queen we had ever had. The very best Queen there ever could be. We had been blessed. Keir’s eyes half closed in a moment of zen-like calm. He gulped. Perhaps he was laying it on a bit thick.

Cut to the national anthem. Starmer, Angela Rayner, Anneliese Dodds and John Ashworth all dressed in black. Ashworth looking as if he had a magnificent soprano as the broadcast footage focused on him rather than the woman leading the singing. The audience all standing and singing along. They didn’t even need the printed sheets of the words that the ushers had thoughtfully left out. It was about the least Labour thing you’ll ever see at a Labour conference. But everyone was on message. Not even a hint of a heckle. This was an unashamed land grab for the now vacant middle ground. A siren call to the red wall.

SIR Keir Starmer pays tribute to Queen at start of Labour conference – video

Stranger things still were about to happen. In her speech as deputy leader, Rayner twice made reference to “rising to the occasion” of this 1997 moment. Normally any mention of Tony Blair is the kiss of death in the conference hall. Then in the afternoon, at a session on winning the next election, the same video screen that had hosted the Queen now showed images of Blair and Gordon Brown. Weirdly, members of the audience started clapping and cheering. Unheard of. Most disturbing of all, there was even a fleeting sighting of Peter Mandelson on the screen. Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane.

Toronto charity questions why feds chose only one aid agency to match Fiona donations

Feds to match Red Cross donations after Fiona


One death confirmed in P.E.I. after Fiona

Austin Delaney
CTV News Toronto Videojournalist
Published Sept. 25, 2022 

A Toronto charity with expertise in disaster relief is questioning why the federal government is offering to match donations to just one registered charity providing relief in the aftermath of tropical storm Fiona.

During a press conference on Saturday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the federal government would match any donations made to the Canadian Red Cross to provide relief in the wake of destruction left by Fiona.

Guy LePage of the Canadian Red Cross told CTV News Toronto the agency is on the ground on the east coast, closely working with other agencies in the area.


“It’s going to take a long time to clean up and [is] going to cost a lot of money,” LePage said, asking Canadians to consider making a donation.

RELATED STORIES

One person dead after historic Fiona sweeps Prince Edward Island

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RELATED LINKSThe Canadian Red Cross - Hurricane Fiona Relief

“We appreciate all the money that Canadians traditionally cough up,” Lepage said, in asking for donations. “As Canadians, we’re very generous and we can empathize with our fellow Canadians who go through a rough time.”

However, Rahul Singh, with GlobalMedic, a humanitarian relief organization that provides aid in areas affected by natural disasters or complex emergencies, argues this is a bad decision.

“When you create a matching fund that only benefits one agency, it actually comes at the expense of other agencies,” he said.

Singh says less private funding will now flow to his organization, instead going the other way to the Canadian Red Cross and hampering GlobalMedic’s ability to help in the Maritimes.

“In our sector, there are many agencies like us trying to help Canadians in need and the resources coming to us will dwindle because of this decision.”



Fallen trees lean against a house in Sydney, N.S. as post tropical storm Fiona continues to batter the Maritimes on Saturday, September 24, 2022.

FOREVER CHEMICALS

How birds of prey are exposing a toxic time bomb

Ida Emilie Steinmark - 17h ago - THE GUARDIAN

Rui Lourenço first started collecting feathers because they were beautiful. Below the birds’ cliff-side nests in rural Portugal, he would find their shed feathers and bring them back to his ecology lab at the University of Évora. “It was just the typical curiosity of a naturalist,” he says. “Especially the flight feathers, they’re large, they’re soft, they have really interesting patterns.”

One day, a colleague asked if she could check them for toxic chemicals. As top predators, raptors’ concentration of chemicals is particularly high due to a phenomenon called biomagnification in which concentrations increase as you go up the food chain. This means that monitoring them can help reveal what substances are polluting the natural world. Lourenço now regularly sends feathers for analysis. “They work as an alert system not only for predators, but for the environment and humans,” he says.

And we need to be alerted. This year, a team of scientists warned that we had probably breached the planetary boundary for how much chemical pollution the Earth can handle and still remain a suitable home for human beings. Since the release of new chemicals now far outstrips our ability to test and regulate them, they argue, the situation is out of control.

Then, last month a paper showed that just one class of chemicals – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), also known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment – is now ubiquitous in Earth’s rainwater at concentrations above the safe drinking limit. “At the UN environment programme, they talk now consistently about the triple crisis: climate, biodiversity and pollution,” says Linn Persson from the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, who co-authored the planetary boundary warning.

Chemical pollution is a vast problem, the depth of which is still unclear because many chemicals are not extensively tested for their environmental impact and not routinely monitored. This means that analysing raptors and other top predators is one of the only ways to tell how bad the situation really is – and how to save it.

***

Most under-studied chemicals face no regulation and are not routinely monitored

‘There are around 350,000 substances marketed worldwide and around 100,000 of these are marketed in the EU,” says ecotoxicologist Paola Movalli. “Of these, only about 500 are well-characterised for their [hazards and] exposure.” That leaves a huge knowledge gap for scientists and for regulators deciding where to step in. “You can’t regulate something unless you know whether it’s a problem and why it’s a problem,” says Daniel Lapworth, who researches groundwater pollution at the British Geological Survey.

Since 2007, the EU has had Reach, a regulatory framework for industrial chemicals not covered by food, medicine or agricultural legislation, and post-Brexit, the UK has UK Reach. While similar, UK Reach is starting to diverge on what substances to regulate and how. “[We] are trying to create a UK version of it rather than just what we acquired on the day we left the EU,” says Andrew Smith, a regulatory scientist at the UK’s Health and Safety Executive. Under either system, however, companies must provide substance dossiers with information on hazards to human health and potential environmental effects.

But the lower the amount produced or imported, the fewer tests are required. The European Environment Agency estimates that more than 70,000 mostly low-volume chemicals have little to no toxicity information available. On top of that, reports from the German Environment Agency show that at least a quarter of dossier datasets for medium and high-volume chemicals do not actually comply with Reach’s requirements. “We are producing tens of thousands of different compounds,” says Lapworth, “but for many of them, we don’t have the toxicity data.”

Most under-studied chemicals face no regulation and are not routinely monitored. Scientists, however, have started to find some of them in the environment: in water supplies, the Arctic and now in top predators such as birds of prey. Dubbed “emerging contaminants” (ECs), their presence is worrying because it suggests that they build up in living organisms and do not easily break down. Such pollution is very difficult to reverse and can cause problems for decades: for example, polychlorinated biphenyls were banned in the 1980s, but still seem to cause infertility in Britain’s last orcas.



Point of no return? Orcas around the British Isles produce calves only rarely, with fertility thought to be affected by high levels of PCBs. 

Photograph: SeaTops/Alamy© Provided by The Guardian

ECs are not necessarily new in the environment, but advanced mass spectrometry techniques mean that scientists can now spot more and more of them. They give an almost complete picture of “the ‘universe’ of chemicals in the environment”, says Movalli, who is based at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands. That is critical because wildlife is exposed to chemicals in combination, not one by one.

For example, a study this year found an overwhelming 85 contaminants in 30 white-tailed eagles from northern Germany, including pharmaceuticals, musk fragrances, pesticides and PFASs. While some were long-banned chemicals such as DDT, still frequently found in wild animals after over 40 years of restrictions, many were ECs. Other recent raptor studies also report detecting new types of flame retardants, UV filters from sunscreens and plastic additives such as bisphenols

PFASs are a particular concern, says ecotoxicologist Veerle Jaspers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. They are used for all kinds of things, such as lining takeaway bags and waterproofing raincoats, and some have been linked to hormone and immune disruptions as well as cancer in humans. Jaspers has found PFASs in eagle-owls in Norway and has seen “very clear effects” of them in the lab.

Related: ‘Forever chemicals’: what are PFAS and what risk do they pose?

In one study, she and her team tested the effect of a now restricted PFAS against an unregulated alternative in chicken eggs, at comparable concentrations to those observed for PFASs in wild eggs. They found that both chemicals altered the chicks’ heart rate, potentially imperilling their hatching. At a higher dose, which was still significantly less than the reported PFAS exposure in eggs close to European chemical plants, the unrestricted alternative also resulted in abnormally large livers.

And because there are so many of them, they also make up a complex cocktail on their own. Movalli and her colleagues recently detected 56 different PFAS compounds across nine species, including buzzards. Only two are currently banned by Reach and the Stockholm Convention, an international treaty that tackles persistent pollutants worldwide.

***

Research like Jaspers’s and Movalli’s suggest that exposure is significant and widespread in the environment, so it is no surprise that people are also exposed to many ECs. After all, we are surrounded by them: we put them straight on our skin and cook our food with utensils covered with them. According to estimates, almost everyone on Earth has PFASs in their blood.

That exposure is full of unknowns, even for chemicals we are beginning to understand better. Take the plastic additive and endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA). In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that normal exposure was way under the safety limit and posed no health risk to the public. But in late 2021, it suggested lowering that limit by many orders of magnitude due to new evidence. This would mean that it now considers most people to be ingesting too much.

As with raptors, biomonitoring can bring clarity here. Environmental epidemiologist Carl-Gustaf Bornehag from Karlstad University runs a large human biomonitoring project called Selma on endocrine disruptors. In a paper published in Science earlier this year, he and his colleagues showed how considering the broader endocrine-disrupting mix of chemicals we are exposed to can help us judge our risk from them better.



Scientists recently analysed the livers of 30 white-tailed eagles in northern Germany and found over 85 contaminants. 

Photograph: Our Wild Life Photography/Alamy© Provided by The Guardian

“We have a risk assessment system [of chemicals today] where we take one compound at a time,” he says, “but we are always exposed to very complicated mixtures.” In the study, he identified a mix of chemicals from the blood and urine of nearly 2,000 pregnant Swedes that was associated with having children with a language delay. It consisted of BPA, phthalates and various PFASs.

His colleagues then extensively tested the mix in tadpoles, zebrafish and lab-grown human “mini-brains”. They found significant hormone disruption that increased with dosage. Based on these experiments, the team defined a level of concern before checking the pregnant Swedes: a whopping 54% were above the threshold. Considering the effect of mixtures revealed by biomonitoring, Bornehag says, the safety limit of many everyday chemicals might need to be lowered.

According to Jaspers, however, sufficient action on problematic chemicals can take decades, whether it is to protect humans or wildlife. Movalli shares her frustration: “When a chemical is restricted or banned after years of studies, industry simply replaces it with a similar one,” she says. “It then takes more years of studies to restrict the new substance – repeat ad infinitum.”

Bornehag says he saw the exchange of one phthalate for the next throughout the 2000s. In certain cases, BPA has also been swapped for other endocrine-disrupting bisphenols in products where BPA has been restricted and some replacement flame retardants show similar toxicity to their banned predecessors. But to Smith, it is not as black and white as that. Just take asbestos, he says. Industry is “always going to be very wary of anything that looks like asbestos. The last thing they want to do is to be accused of creating the next big problem.”

One way to circumvent this is to group and regulate substances together. That does look set to become more common: member states are preparing a proposal for the EU to ban most PFASs and the European Commission recently published its vision for restricting a huge number of harmful chemicals by group as part of its new chemicals strategy. At the same time, the EFSA is looking to consider chemical mixtures in its risk assessments.



Rannoch Moor on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. A recent study has shown that rainwater is no longer safe to drink due to levels of “forever chemicals”. 

Photograph: Adam Burton/Alamy© Provided by The Guardian

“[Grouping chemicals] is increasingly what we want to do because it is much more efficient,” says Smith, though with regard to PFASs, he says they are more varied than most people realise. The UK recommendation on how to deal with PFASs, including potential restrictions, was expected this summer but has yet to be published. Similarly, the UK’s delayed chemicals strategy, which was proposed in 2018 with the 25-year environment plan, is expected some time this year.

With the EU’s new strategy signalling a step change, there are fears that UK Reach will fall behind. “Any divergence or any kind of delays in making decisions about particular groups of contaminants [could cause] a problem,” says Lapworth. “It’s potentially a dilution of the gold standard that we were working in line with.”

Persson and her co-authors worry that trying to assess all the chemicals out there is too big a job, a view they share with the European Environment Agency. “The constant inflow of new substances that we synthesise is so much quicker than our capacity to assess,” she says, especially on a global scale. Instead, she and co-authors floated the idea of a fixed cap on chemical production, inspired by emissions caps in the fight against global heating

This idea might find sympathy among the ecotoxicologists who study raptors. When you ask Movalli what chemical worries her most in relation to the peregrine falcons she monitors, you get a list that goes on for some time. PFASs, old toxic metals, the long-banned dioxins, endocrine disruptors, even stimulants such as nicotine. “Sincerely, I am worried about everything,” she says.