Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached a Record High in 2022

The report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists.

By The Associated Press

Published on 3/2/2023 at 10:10 AM

Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant Neurath near Grevenbroich, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)
Carbon dioxide is released when fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas are burned to powers cars, planes, homes and factories. When the gas enters the atmosphere, it traps heat and contributes to the warming of the the climate.

Extreme weather events intensified last year's carbon dioxide emissions: Droughts reduced the amount of water available for hydropower, which increased the need to burn fossil fuels. And heat waves drove up demand for electricity.

Thursday's report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists, who warn that energy users around the world must cut emissions dramatically to slow the dire consequences of global warming.

“Any emissions growth — even 1% — is a failure,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, an international group. "We can’t afford growth. We can’t afford stasis. It’s cuts or chaos for the planet. Any year with higher coal emissions is a bad year for our health and for the Earth.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from coal grew 1.6% last year. Many communities, primarily in Asia, switched from natural gas to coal to avoid high natural gas prices that were worsened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the IEA said

And as global airline traffic increased, carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil grew 2.5%, with about half the surge resulting from the aviation sector.

Global emissions have grown in most years since 1900 and have accelerated over time, according to data from IEA. One exception was the pandemic year of 2020, when travel all but came to a standstill.

Last year's level of emissions, though a record high, was nevertheless lower than experts had expected. Increased deployment of renewable energy, electric vehicles and heat pumps together helped prevent an additional 550 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions, the IEA said.

Strict pandemic measures and weak economic growth in China also curtailed production, helping to limit overall global emissions. And in Europe, the IEA said, electricity generation from wind and solar power exceeded that of gas or nuclear for the first time.

"Without clean energy, the growth in CO2 emissions would have been nearly three times as high,” Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said in a statement.

“However, we still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world’s climate targets. International and national fossil fuel companies are making record revenues and need to take their share of responsibility, in line with their public pledges to meet climate goals."

Though emissions continue to grow at worrisome levels, a reversal that would help achieve the climate goals that nations have committed to remains possible, said John Sterman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Sustainability Initiative.

Nations must subsidize renewables, improve energy efficiency, electrify industry and transportation, set a high price for carbon emissions, reduce deforestation, plant trees and rid the system of coal, Sterman argued.

“This is a massive, massive undertaking to do all these things, but that's what's needed,” he said.

___

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

Carbon emissions from boreal forest fires 

rose in 2021

Smoke from wildfires that burned frosty, northern forests of North America and Eurasia in 2021 contributed the most to global fire carbon emissions since 2000, according to a new study

BY DREW COSTLEY - AP Science Writer
Mar 2, 2023 

THEY CALLED IT THE 'BEAST'

A wildfire moves towards the town of Anzac from Fort McMurray, Alberta., on May 4, 2016. Smoke from boreal fires in 2021 contributed the most to global fire CO2 emissions since 2000, according to a new study in Science being released with a press briefing at the annual AAAS meeting. Using satellite-based atmospheric measurements, researchers from around the world determined that boreal fire smoke made up 23% of global fire CO2 emissions when it typically accounts for 10% of these emissions.Jason Franson - foreign subscriber, The Canadian Press

Phillip Meintzer was hours away by car from the largest fires raging in the forests of British Columbia and Alberta in summer of 2021, but the air was still thick with smoke from the Canadian infernos.

“The fires weren't next door. It was a little ways away,” Meintzer, a conservation specialist with the Calgary-based environmental group Alberta Wilderness Association. “But we spent the whole month under a blanket of smoke.”

Fires like these in North American and Eurasian boreal forests created historic amounts of climate-changing carbon dioxide in 2021, according to a new study Thursday in the journal Science.

Smoke from these wildfires made up 23% of global fire emissions — the largest share from boreal forests since 2000, said findings presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science. They usually only make up 10% of global fire emissions.

That summer was particularly dry and warm in Canada — even in the country’s boreal forests, the cold, carbon-dense ecosystems in the north. In one of them, the Marguerite River Wildland Provincial Park, over 69,000 acres (28,000 hectares) of forest burned.

But such conditions will become more normal as the climate changes, leading to more intense fire seasons that could create more carbon emissions and reduce the amount of trees available for storing carbon, the study authors said.

“This warming that's massing in the Arctic and boreal regions is going to continue,” said Steve Davis, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “So we’re what we’re worried about is that it’s not actually an anomaly. It’s like the new normal. And there’s going to be a lot of these boreal forests burning in the coming years.”

Much attention has been paid to wildfires in the western United States, tropical rainforests such as the Amazon and even the Australian bush. But boreal forests have received less attention, Davis said.

That's concerning, he said, because there is a lot of carbon stored in these northern ecosystems, which are among the most rapidly warming on the planet, according to the U.N.'s panel on climate change

In addition to the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from boreal forest fires themselves, the loss of trees and soil from more frequent and intense wildfires could mean Earth is losing a major source of carbon storage. The danger scientists say, is that boreal forests could tip further toward emitting more carbon than they absorb.

“One very important but complicated piece of the puzzle .... is what happens to the carbon balance of boreal landscapes after large and severe fires,” said Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.

One question with global warming, he said, is whether a longer growing season would stimulate new growth in boreal forests and pull carbon out of the atmosphere or whether warming and burning would create new sources of emissions, such as permafrost thawing.

“We don’t know what end of that ledger will be, whether we’ll be in the red or in the black,” said Dan Thompson, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service who was not involved in the study. “It is a little bit uncertain.

The study attributed the 2021 record for boreal forest fire emissions to dry and warm conditions in both North America and Eurasia, not just one or the other.

To reach their findings, researchers examined satellite data from 2000 through 2021 to measure how much carbon monoxide has been created in the world’s boreal forests and found a steady increase over the last two decades. Then they used the amount of carbon monoxide, which is more easily detectable by satellite than carbon dioxide and is created along with it during fires, to figure out how much carbon dioxide was emitted

Study co-author Davis pointed out that burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal remains the greatest source of carbon dioxide emissions by far. But he said that, if boreal forest fires continue to become more frequent and intense, it's more likely that the forests can't sequester as much carbon as they have historically.

“If we see more and more of these fires," he said, "it could be that all of these forests are no longer helping us so much as they’re a new source of emissions to just pile on to the human emissions and make our climate challenge even greater." ___

Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

 

Biden Says Labor Nominee Julie Su Represents American Dream

“She’s committed to making sure that dream is in reach for every American,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

By The Associated Press

Published on 3/1/2023 at 5:53 PM

President Joe Biden talks about his nomination of Julie Su, left, to serve as the Secretary of Labor during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his labor secretary nominee, Julie Su, is a “real leader” who has supported unions, enforced worker safety and protected the victims of human trafficking.

“Julie is the American dream," Biden said in remarks at the White House. “She’s committed to making sure that dream is in reach for every American.”

The daughter of an immigrant mother who arrived on a cargo ship, Su said she believes “in the transformative power of America.” She noted that a union job gave her parents a path to the middle class, one that eventually led her to college at Stanford University and law school at Harvard University.

“To all workers who are toiling in the shadows, know that we see you, we stand with you, and we will fight for you," Su said.

Su, the current deputy labor secretary, would replace the departing incumbent, former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, whom Biden hailed by saying, “If I ever want anybody in the foxhole with me, I want Marty Walsh.”

A civil rights attorney and former head of California's labor department, Su was central to negotiations between labor and freight rail companies late last year, working to avert an economically debilitating strike. She also has worked to broaden employee training programs and crack down on wage theft. If confirmed by the Senate, Su would also be the first Asian American in the Biden administration to serve in the Cabinet at the secretary level.

Su was considered to lead the department when Biden won the White House but instead became the department’s deputy. Walsh announced his intention to leave the administration earlier this month to lead the National Hockey League Players’ Association. Su will serve as the acting secretary until the Senate acts on her nomination

Biden had been under pressure from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and other Asian American and Pacific Islander advocates to select Su to head the department. This administration was the first in more than two decades to not have a Cabinet secretary of AAPI descent, despite its regular declarations that it was the most diverse in history. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai are of AAPI descent but don’t lead a Cabinet department.

Acknowledging twice the push by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., to have an AAPI Cabinet secretary, Biden joked Wednesday that if he didn’t pick Su, he would be “run out of town.”

Su, if confirmed, would also expand the majority of women serving in the president’s Cabinet. She was confirmed by the Senate to her current role in 2021 by a 50–47 vote.

Su's nomination drew swift support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying Tuesday that she would be “phenomenal” in the job.

“The president couldn’t have picked a better nominee," he told reporters. "I’m really excited about her, and we’re going to move to consider her nomination very, very quickly.”

But Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate health, education and labor committee who opposed Su when she was selected for deputy secretary, called her work overseeing the department “troubling” and “anti-worker.”

The committee should “have a full and thorough hearing process,” Cassidy said.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Su to lead the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which included the department responsible for paying unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

The state had massive amount of fraud, estimated at $20 billion. Nearly all of that fraud was part of a hastily approved expansion of unemployment benefits by Congress that state officials said lacked key safeguards. But a state audit also blamed Newsom’s administration for “significant missteps and inaction.”

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said she was “overjoyed” by the selection, thanking Biden in a tweet for “nominating your first AAPI Cabinet Secretary!”

“It certainly is better late than never,” Chu said in a brief interview, citing CAPAC support for Su two years ago for the top Labor post and praising Su's credentials as a leader and enforcer of labor laws including minimum wage and occupational safety standards. She said GOP criticism about Su had been fully vetted two years ago and that the coming confirmation process will show their charges “have no basis.”

Su's nomination also comes at a key moment for labor unions, which have been facing a decline in membership for decades. Unions gained some momentum as workers at major employers such as Amazon and Starbucks pushed to unionize. But Biden — an avowed pro-union president — had to work with Congress to impose a contract on rail workers last year to avoid a possible strike.

The Labor Department said just 10.1% of workers last year were union members. That figure has been cut nearly in half since 1983 and could fall further, as younger workers are less likely to belong to unions.
___

By SEUNG MIN KIM and JOSH BOAK

U$A

Communities Await First Us Limits on “Forever Chemicals”

Experts say removing them will cost billions, a burden that will fall hardest on small communities with few resources.

By The Associated Press
Published on 3/2/2023 

Eric Kleiner, center, sorts samples for experimentation as part of drinking water and PFAS research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Center For Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Cincinnati. 

(AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose restrictions on harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water after finding they are dangerous in amounts so small as to be undetectable. But experts say removing them will cost billions, a burden that will fall hardest on small communities with few resources.

Concerned about the chemicals' ability to weaken children's immune systems, the EPA said last year that PFAS could cause harm at levels “much lower than previously understood.”

"We as a community of scientists and policymakers and regulators really missed the boat early on,” said Susan Pinney, director of the Center for Environmental Genetics at the University of Cincinnati.

There is also evidence the compounds are linked to low birthweight, kidney cancer and a slew of other health issues. It’s unclear what the EPA will now propose and how well it will protect people from these recently-understood harms.

PFOA and PFOS are part of a larger family of compounds called PFAS, for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that are widespread, don’t degrade in the environment and have been around for decades. They’ve been used in nonstick pans, food packaging and firefighting foam. Their use is now mostly phased out in the U.S., but some still remain.

Water providers are preparing for tough standards and testing that will undoubtedly reveal PFOA and PFOS in communities that don’t yet know the chemicals are in their water.

“This rule would help ensure that communities are not being poisoned,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, senior attorney, toxic exposure and health at Earthjustice.

Over the last decade, an increasing number of cities and towns, often abutting manufacturing plants or Air Force bases, suddenly realized they had a problem. In 2016, for example, Sarah McKinney was on maternity leave when she got word there was too much PFOA and PFOS in the tap water in her Colorado Springs suburb. She picked up her weeks-old daughter and hustled out to buy enough bottled water for her family of five.

“If I’m just spitting it out, can I brush my teeth?” she remembers wondering.

In response to concerns from people who had been drinking the water for years, McKinney’s water utility switched to a different source, provided water bottle filling stations and installed a $2.5 million treatment system that was the first of its kind in the country, according to Lucas Hale, the water district manager. The chemicals had gottem into the water from nearby Peterson Air Force base, which then builta treatment facility.

For communities with the pollutants, it's not a cheap problem to solve.

Nationally, it could cost roughly $38 billion to remove enough of the chemicals to meet a strict EPA rule limiting them to where they can’t be detected, according to an estimate prepared by engineering consultant Black & Veatch for the American Water Works Association, an industry group. There also will be ongoing costs for filter material and testing.

The consultant looked at federal and state test results and estimated that 4% to 12% of water providers nationally will need to treat for PFAS due to the EPA rule.

Smaller, poorer communities will have a harder time affording the new systems and training staff on how to use them, experts said. And in general, smaller water providers with fewer resources already violate water quality rules more often than utilities that serve large cities.

“Small systems often need technologies that are more simple to operate,” said Jonathan Pressman, engineer and EPA water researcher. The agency offers technical assistance to states and communities and it recently made $2 billion available to states for contaminants like PFAS.

Inside the EPA’s research facility in Cincinnati, a row of vertical, forearm-sized glass tubes were partially filled with a resin material that can remove PFAS. The work ensures the agency knows how long it will last and how much PFAS it removes. That's important for designing treatment systems.

Last year the agency lowered its conservative, voluntary health thresholds to levels that tests can’t even detect – a fraction of a part per trillion. In 2016, it was 70 ppt. Before that, it was even higher. As the EPA recognizes the increased danger of these compounds, it will mean people who were once told their water was safe to drink will find out it actually requires treatment.

When people feel misled about the safety of their tap water, they are less likely to drink it. Instead, they tend to reach for expensive bottled water and consume sugary drinks more often, choices associated with health problems like diabetes.

"We do have challenges in this community with trust,” said Abel Moreno, the district manager of the South Adams County Water & Sewer District that serves Commerce City, an industrial stretch of Denver. Contaminants leaked from a nearby chemical manufacturing plant decades ago. Although the district built a facility to treat the contamination, it sparked long-simmering distrust in the predominantly Latino neighborhood, and questions about how long people had been exposed.

Last year, Betty Rivas was startled by a letter telling her that the drinking fountains her 8-year-old used at school weren't safe. PFAS stories had been in the local news and the school district told families to use bottled water. It reinforced Rivas’s fears.

“With this recent PFAS issue, it’s one more reason to be certain that you shouldn’t drink the water in Commerce City,” she said.

Moreno responded that the district tested for PFAS long before the news reports, in 2018. It discovered extremely high levels in certain wells, but once the water went through the treatment plant, it didn't surpass the EPA health advisory threshold in place at the time. Moreno's agency closed the wells. He said the letter Rivas received was frustrating because PFAS hadn't spiked — it had just made the news. Now, the district purchases and mixes in water from Denver to keep PFAS at undetectable levels and plans to build a treatment plant for a permanent fix.

Across the U.S., so far only local utilities and state regulators have imposed changes, not the federal government. Michigan set a drinking water limit and paid for testing. Those tests helped quickly find and fix some places with contamination and Michigan officials have said since then its limits haven't proved too expensive.

New standards, however, will force tradeoffs, according to Chad Seidel, president of a water consultant company.

“Resources going towards addressing this are in some ways coming at a cost” of other needs, like removing dangerous lead pipes and replacing aged water mains, he said.

Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said too many people are drinking contaminated water. Cost can't be a barrier.

“The solution is to do whatever you have to do to ensure that people are not getting sick,” he said.

___

By MICHAEL PHILLIS and BRITTANY PETERSON

Biden Administration Announces Measures to Curb Illegal Child Labor

March 02, 2023 
Aline Barros

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra 

The Biden administration this week announced a task force and extra measures to curb child labor in response to a significant increase in the illegal employment of migrant children in the United States and a recent New York Times investigation of migrant child labor.

The Labor Department reported on Monday a 70% increase in child labor violations since 2018, and it said that nearly 835 companies violated child labor laws in fiscal 2022.

“Every child in this country, regardless of their circumstance, deserves protection and care as we would expect for our own child,” Xavier Becerra, secretary of health and human services, said in a statement to the press.

The number of migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents has steadily grown in recent years. In fiscal 2020, 33,239 unaccompanied children were processed at the border. In 2021, that number jumped to 146,925, followed by 152,057 migrant children in 2022 and 46,825 so far in fiscal 2023.

They are largely from Central America and are first placed in U.S. custody.

“The government then releases them into the custody of a sponsor - so in some cases, it's a family member; in some cases, it's a family friend - while these kids are going through their immigration court proceedings. And what they [reporters] found was many of these kids are ending up in exploitative labor situations,” said Jennifer Podkul, vice president for policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense.

Investigations by the Times and Reuters found children as young as 12 working shifts of more than 10 hours in dangerous conditions across the United States in multiple industries, including food processing plants, farms and slaughterhouses. Many of them were not enrolled in school.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh 

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said, “Everyone has a responsibility here. This is not a 19th-century problem - this is a today problem. We need Congress to come to the table, we need states to come to the table. This is a problem that will take all of us to stop.”

Migrant advocates say they have been urging the government to implement more protective measures to make sure migrant children are safe once they are released from U.S. government custody.

“There were some really tragic stories about very dangerous working conditions and wholly inappropriate working conditions for children,” Podkul said.

Following the Times investigation, Biden officials announced new measures, including efforts nationwide to use “all available enforcement tools, including penalties, injunctions, stopping the movement of goods made with child labor, and criminal referrals where warranted.

“And today, the Department of Labor and HHS announced that they will create a new interagency task force to combat child exploitation. They will also increase scrutiny of companies that do business with employers who violate child labor laws,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

Chiara Galli, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and a migration and asylum scholar with a focus on children, said unaccompanied minors often come from very low-income backgrounds, and they usually have relatives relying on them to send money back home. Those factors help make them a target for exploitative situations as work becomes normalized in their lives.

 

Migrant children play soccer inside a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 21, 2022.

Children from poor backgrounds from Central American countries more often than not had to drop out of school to work at an early age, Galli said.

“They struggle in many realms. They struggle in school because they've had interrupted schooling and it's very hard to catch up. … Schools aren't super well-equipped to help kids who maybe had to drop out two [or] three years before migration because they had to help their families and work,” she said.

Since the Times report, U.S. government officials have said they are investigating the employment of children at various companies, including Hearthside Food Solutions, one of the companies cited in the report.

A spokesperson from Hearthside wrote in an email to VOA that the company would work with the Department of Labor in its investigation and said it was appalled by the migrant child labor taking place at one of its locations.

“Our hearts break for the young people whose stories are documented in the [Times] article,” according to a statement from Hearthside.

The penalty in the U.S. for a child labor violation is $15,138 per child, which some U.S. officials and migrant children advocates say is not high enough.

“Everyone from employers to local law enforcement and civic leaders must do their part to protect children,” Becerra said.

Online platforms embroiled in Supreme Court cases on content moderation spend millions lobbying on internet legislation

• By Harshawn Ratanpal
• March 2, 2023 

A smart phone with the icons for the Facebook, Twitter, Google applications is seen in Ankara, Turkey on September 5, 2018. (Photo by Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in two cases that could drastically change current regulations on online content moderation. Google, Twitter and Facebook are being sued for allowing terrorist content and activity on their platforms.

The lawsuits are the latest battle in the war over regulation of platform content moderation that has played out in courts and in Congress. Over the last few years, these tech giants have spent millions lobbying the federal government on legislation that attempts to strip away online platform immunity appearing frequently in lobbying reports. 

Families of ISIS victims sue media platforms

In Gonzalez v. Google, the Supreme Court is faced with challenging regulations that typically grant online platforms legal immunity when hosting third-party content.

The family of Nohemi Gonzalez seeks to hold Google liable for a 2015 ISIS attack at a Paris concert hall that killed Nohemi. The Gonzalez family alleges that Google should be held accountable for algorithmically recommending ISIS videos to YouTube users.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ensures that online platforms are not treated as publishers and generally grants them immunity from being held liable for not removing offensive content. It also allows platforms to voluntarily restrict access to objectionable material.

The core question the Supreme Court is tasked with answering is whether or not recommendation systems like YouTube’s also fall under the purview of Section 230’s protection. 

In a 2021 opinion, the Ninth Circuit agreed with Google that under Section 230, the company is not liable for removing content from third parties. The Supreme Court heard the case last Tuesday and reportedly seems hesitant to weaken Section 230 despite its supposed drawbacks. 

The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh, in which the social media platform is being sued for allegedly failing to remove — and even promoting — ISIS content. After an ISIS gunman killed 39 people in Istanbul including Nawras Alassaf, the Jordanian citizen’s American relatives sued Twitter, Google and Facebook over ISIS’ alleged use of the platforms for recruitment and messaging. 

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed Taamneh v. Twitter in 2018. Rather than applying Section 230 immunity, the judge ruled that the actions of the tech giants failed to meet the standards of the Anti-Terrorism Act. But the Ninth Circuit reversed Taamneh v. Twitter three years later, leading the companies to petition the Supreme Court. 

The case gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to determine whether online platforms can be held liable for violating the Anti-Terrorism Act if they could have taken more “meaningful” or “aggressive” action to prevent terrorists from using their services.

Meta, Alphabet and Twitter lobby on legislation attacking Section 230  

Alphabet, parent company of Facebook, Meta, parent company of Google, and Twitter spent a combined total of nearly $100 million lobbying the federal government since 2020, according to OpenSecrets data. Meta spent $59 million, and Alphabet spent $34 million. Twitter spent $4.6 million. 

Based on lobbying reports analyzed by OpenSecrets, some of these efforts involved legislation that would reduce the immunity granted by Section 230. None of them became law.

The EARN IT Act of 2020 was introduced with bipartisan support in the Senate and House of Representatives. The act would have created the National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, which would be tasked with developing “best practices for interactive computer services providers (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) to prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children.”

The bill would have also directly weakened Section 230 immunity, exposing service providers to civil and criminal lawsuits for child sexual abuse material posted by users. 

The EARN IT Act of 2020 showed up six times in lobbying reports for Alphabet, making it the second most listed bill that year. Lobbyists for Twitter and Meta also disclosed lobbying activity related to the bill throughout 2020. 

After failing to come to a vote before the end of the 116th Congress, the bill was reintroduced again in 2022. The EARN IT Act of 2022 appeared in the three companies’ lobbying reports. It also failed to pass before Congress’s last session ended.

The PACT Act, which was reintroduced in the Senate after failing to pass in 2020, showed up both in Twitter and Meta’s lobbying reports. The act would have required online platforms to publish a policy “explaining the types of content permissible on the service and provide a system for users to submit complaints about content that may violate the policy or involve illegal content.” 

In 2021, Meta’s lobbyists also reported lobbying related to the SAFE TECH Act, which would have weakened Section 230 protections in cases of “civil rights law; antitrust law; stalking, harassment, or intimidation laws; international human rights law; and civil actions for wrongful death.” 

The Kids Online Safety Act showed up in all three technology companies’ lobbying reports last year. The bill would have mandated that platforms provide safeguards for minors using their site and provide parents “tools to supervise the minor’s use of a platform.” 

Alphabet and Twitter did not respond to OpenSecrets’ requests for comment. Meta declined to comment on the company’s lobbying. 

At least two bills that failed to pass previously have already been reintroduced this year by both Democrats and Republicans. 

In late January, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reintroduced the See Something, Say Something Online Act that would revoke Section 230 immunity if an online platform failed to report suspicious activity, like terrorism, to law enforcement. 

Also in January, Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) reintroduced the CASE–IT Act, which would remove a platform’s immunity if it “facilitates (1) illegal online content; (2) certain exploitive contact between adults and minors; or (3) content that is indecent, obscene, or otherwise harmful to minor.”

Prior iterations of the bills did not make it to vote in either the 116th or 117th Congress, and none of the three tech giants reported lobbying on them in either session. 

Liberty groups lobby to safeguard Section 230

Tech companies are not the only ones opposed to weakening Section 230 immunity. 

The American Civil Liberties Union filed amicus briefs in Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google, supporting the online service providers in each case.

“In order to facilitate the free exchange of ideas on the Internet, Section 230 provides critical immunity to social media platforms,” the ACLU wrote in its Gonzalez v. Google amicus brief. 

The ACLU and Americans For Prosperity both lobbied against the EARN IT Act. The groups publicly raised concerns over the erosion of privacy and online speech that undermining Section 230 and encryption technology could lead to. 

“The measure would lead to a “backdoor” in encrypted services, thereby jeopardizing the security of every individual. Technology experts and civil society organizations have repeatedly warned that backdoors could be exploited by bad actors and that no backdoor could guarantee only law-abiding officials have access,” the ACLU wrote in a joint statement with the AFP. 

The ACLU also lobbied against the Kids Online Safety Act. Along with more than 90 LGBTQ and human rights organizations, the ACLU argued that the bill’s mandates are overly vague, censorial and invasive. 

“In short, while KOSA has laudable goals, it also presents significant unintended consequences that threaten the privacy, safety, and access to information rights of young people and adults alike,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to Congress. 

The ACLU spent nearly $1.5 million on lobbying the federal government last year and over $4.5 million since 2020. The ACLU did not respond to OpenSecrets’ request for comment.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its decisions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh before the end of the term in June. 

RECESSION = LAYOFFS & AUSTERITY

Citigroup cuts hundreds of jobs weeks after JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs announce layoffs

BYJENNY SURANE AND BLOOMBERG
March 2, 2023 


Citigroup Inc. is cutting hundreds of jobs across the company, with the Wall Street giant’s investment banking division among those affected.

The cuts amount to less than 1% of Citigroup’s 240,000-person workforce, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing personnel information. Staffers across the firm’s operations and technology organization and US mortgage-underwriting arm are also among those affected.

The routine cuts are part of Citigroup’s normal business planning, the people said. There’s been no broad mandate for managers to cut staffers; instead, various divisions have been grappling with different reasons for the cuts.

A spokeswoman for Citigroup declined to comment.

The move comes just weeks after rival JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut hundreds of mortgage employees. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for its part, embarked on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts ever in January when it planned to eliminate thousands of positions across the company.

In the technology division, Citigroup has spent billions in recent years upgrading its underlying infrastructure. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser has long said those investments would ultimately allow the bank to reduce its reliance on manual processes.

“As our investment in transformation and control initiatives mature, we expect to realize efficiency as those programs transition from manually intensive processes to technology-enabled ones,” Fraser said in January. Play Video

In investment banking, on the other hand, the firm is grappling with an industrywide slowdown in deals. The dearth of activity sparked a 53% drop in revenue from the business last year and analysts are expecting additional declines in the first quarter.

Citigroup’s recent moves in its mortgage division — which is largely based in O’Fallon, Missouri — come after the bank already dismissed dozens of staffers last year. Mortgage demand has dropped in recent months amid rising prices and a rapid increase in mortgage rates.

“We’re actively hiring to execute against our strategy, but we’re also re-pacing where that makes sense in light of the environment that we’re in,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said in January. “We’re constantly combing talent and making sure we’ve got the right people in the right roles, and, where necessary to restructure, we do that as well.”


Amid the cuts, Citigroup continues to hire and build teams dedicated to resolve a pair of consent orders received in 2020 from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve. Those additions helped swell firmwide headcount by 30,000 in the last two years alone.

“We continue to invest in our transformation to address our consent orders and to modernize our bank,” Fraser said in January. “We’re streamlining our processes and making them more automated, whilst improving the quality and accessibility of our data. This will make us a better bank.”

Opinion
Clean energy can be an inexpensive option

March 2, 2023
WASHINGTON POST

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Feb. 25 Metro article “Virginia is set to rein in utility” noted that Virg of them would be less expensive to run if their generation capacity was replaced with renewables such as solar or wind powerng Dominion to convert to renewable energy — such as wind and solar — on asn aggressive timetable, driving up rates for customers.”

Forbes recently reported that of the 210 U.S. coal plants it investigated, 209 of them would be less expensive to run if their generation capacity were replaced with renewable such as solar or wind power. A transition from coal to clean energy across the country was estimated to be worth $589 billion.

Dominion Energy is in the process of closing its coal facilities. The company is also building a huge offshore wind farm that will eventually power more than 650,000 Virginia homes with clean power.

The governor should do some research before he starts blaming Democrats for high electricity rates.

Earle Mitchell, Springfield
The writer is a member of the Sierra Club.

U$A

UK,EU,NZ,AUS,CANADA IT'S ALL THE SAME

Address the nursing shortage with realistic staffing and fair contracts

BY MARINA ZHAVORONKOVA, NICOLE RAPFOGEL AND EMILY GEE, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 

03/02/23 

AP/Craig Ruttle
Nurses stage a strike in front of Mt. Sinai Hospital in the Manhattan borough of New York Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, after negotiations broke down hours earlier. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

America’s persistent nursing shortage reached a dramatic new inflection point earlier this year when 7,000 New York City nurses went on strike, alleging that their hospitals are so short staffed they’re unsafe. New York’s strike comes on the heels of 714 strikes or labor actions from healthcare personnel over the past two years, many centered around inadequate staffing and pay. In a 2022 survey, more than 90 percent of nurses reported staffing shortages at their organizations.

Policymakers at all levels of government have taken steps to increase the number of nurses entering the profession through investments in nursing education. However, new programs will be of limited effectiveness if they are not paired with reforms that prevent nurses from leaving the floor altogether, starting with staffing policies that limit the number of patients per nurse and banning all types of health care employers from requiring workers to sign noncompete agreements.


Concerns about healthcare and nursing shortages are nearly as old as the nursing profession itself. During the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale trained a group of women to provide standardized sanitary interventions because insufficient physician staffing led to high rates of patient mortality. Yet the health care system has long struggled to train and retain enough nurses to keep patients safe, which can increase worker injuries, diminish patient safety and leave staff vulnerable to violence, burnout and mental and physical strain.

A 2021 study of New York state hospitals — where nurses were assigned an average of 6.3 patients each — found that each patient added to a nurse’s load was associated with higher rates of in-hospital mortality, longer lengths of stay and higher rates of readmission. Staffing ratios of 4:1 saved an estimated 4,370 lives and $720 million over two years.

Three main factors contribute to the current nursing shortage: demographics, educational pipelines and working conditions. Stereotypes of nursing as a woman’s profession — an example of occupational segregation — mean men are less likely to pursue nursing, while the expansion of professional opportunities for women throughout the 20th century further lessened the pool of available workers. Today, the aging of the Baby Boomer generation and innovations in medical science to extend lives also mean that the nation requires more care. The nursing workforce itself is increasingly nearing retirement, while not enough new nurses are entering the workforce. In 1978, 45 percent of nurses were between the ages of 18 and 34; in 2021, that number was only 29 percent.

And educational institutions lack adequate capacity to train aspiring nursing students. In 2021, nursing colleges turned away more than 90,000 qualified applicants, largely due to a lack of clinical placements, faculty and facilities.

The federal government, states and localities have sought to alleviate the nursing shortage by addressing educational pipelines. Becker’s Hospital Review counts at least 135 new or expanded nursing programs in 2022. Last fall, the U.S. Department of Labor announced an $80 million investment to support career pathways from direct care roles into nursing and increase the number of nursing instructors. The approved federal fiscal year 2023 budget includes nearly two dozen earmarks for nursing education.

And yet, once trained, nurses are increasingly leaving the profession. In 2021 alone, more than 100,000 registered nurses exited the profession, the greatest decline in the last 40 years, and in June 19 percent of nurses surveyed considered leaving direct patient care in the next 6 months. Many nurses report poor workplace conditions resulting from being overburdened.

Some states have enacted laws and regulations to address a common request from nurses: set and enforce patient-staff ratios. Several states including New York require nurse-driven hospital committees to set ratios and/or require hospitals to publish their ratios. Only California has implemented explicit nurse-to-patient ratios across settings, while Massachusetts has ratios for intensive care units. A 2006 survey of California nurses found that the ratios made them more likely to stay at their jobs and improved patient safety. On the federal level, policy proposals such as the Nurse Staffing Standards for Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2021, would require hospitals to be more transparent about their staffing levels. Say no to child predators and other criminals going off the radarHow to get serious about climate change

Another step forward is the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed ban on noncompete agreements, employment contract terms that prohibit employees from working for a competitor in their next job. Besides trapping workers in low-paying or poor-quality jobs, noncompete clauses can also force those who do want to quit to leave the profession. The ban would advance worker power, but its effectiveness in health care may be limited by the FTC’s lack of enforcement authority over nonprofit hospitals.

While the New York City strike resolved, the national nursing crisis is far from over. Investing in nursing education expands access to good jobs for many more people and expands the size of a workforce critical to American health care. But policymakers must also support nurses by addressing the factors that are causing nurses, newly trained and experienced alike, to leave.

Marina Zhavoronkova is a senior fellow for workforce development at the Center for American Progress and Nicole Rapfogel is a policy analyst for Health and Emily R. Gee is the senior vice president for Inclusive Growth at the Center.