A quarter of Americans live with polluted air, with people of color and those in Western states disproportionately affected, report says

Story by Jen Christensen • CNN Yesterday 

About 1 in 4 people in the United States – more than 119 million residents – live with air pollution that can hurt their health and shorten their lives, according to a new report from the American Lung Association. People of color are disproportionately affected, as are residents of Western cities.

U.S. EPA unveils new emissions standards to push electric vehicle production

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Duration 5:40

Since President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in 1970, emissions of outdoor air pollutants have fallen 78%, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. But Wednesday’s 2023 State of the Air report, which focuses on ozone and particle pollution, shows that millions put their health on the line every time they step outside.
Cleaner air, but not for all

To capture pollution levels at the county level, researchers analyzed data collected by the EPA’s Air Quality System, a repository of ambient air quality data from more than 10,000 monitors. They characterized the hourly average ozone concentration and the 24-hour average particle pollution concentration for 2019-21 at each monitoring site and factored in year-round pollution information from the EPA.

There were significant improvements in some areas. Generally, 17.6 million fewer people were breathing unhealthy air than in last year’s report, due largely to falling levels of ozone in some regions.

Ozone pollution is the main ingredient in smog. It comes from cars, power plants and refineries. Exposure to ozone can immediately exacerbate asthma symptoms, and people with long-term exposure to higher levels face a significantly higher risk of death from respiratory diseases than those who live with cleaner air.

Around 25% more counties got an A grade in the report for lower levels of ozone pollution. Some of that improvement can be attributed to the Clean Air Act, according to Katherine Pruitt, author of the report and the American Lung Association’s national senior director for policy.

Emission controls have helped, she said, as has the country’s continuing move away from its reliance on coal for its energy needs. Even something simple as the increase in the number of people who work from home has played a role.

“The Biden administration has set themselves a good, strong to do list of things that will help with environmental justice and climate protection,” Pruitt said. “They’re moving kind of slow, though. So we’d like them to pick up the pace.”

Despite the progress, not everyone was lucky enough to live in a county with good ozone levels. More than 100 million people live in counties that get an F for ozone smog, the report says.

Western and Southwestern cities are the most ozone-polluted, with 10 of the 25 most-polluted cities in California. New York, Chicago and Hartford, Connecticut, were the only three on that list east of the Mississippi River.

The five metropolitan areas with the worst ozone pollution are Los Angeles-Long Beach, California; Visalia, California; Bakersfield, California; Fresno-Madera-Hanford, California; and Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona.

Problematic particle pollution

Particle pollution, the other form of pollution tracked in the report, still seems to be a significant issue for the US.

Often hard to see, particle pollution is a mix of solid and liquid droplets that may come in the form of dirt, dust, soot or smoke. Coal- and natural gas-fired power plants create it, as do cars, agriculture, unpaved roads, construction sites and wildfires.

Particle pollution is so tiny – 1/20th of a width of a human hair – that it can travel past your body’s usual defenses.

Instead of being carried out when you exhale, it can get stuck in your lungs or go into your bloodstream. The particles cause irritation and inflammation and may lead to respiratory problems. Exposure can cause cancer, stroke or heart attack; it could also aggravate asthma, and it has even been associated with a higher risk of depression and anxiety, studies show.

The new report says the number of people living in counties with failing grades for daily spikes of particle pollution was the highest it has been in a decade. Nearly 64 million live with these kind of unhealthy spikes in counties that get failing grades.

One driver of the high amounts of particle pollution are the wildfires that have consumed hundreds of thousands of acres. In 2021 alone, there were 14,407 fires, many in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. There used to be a wildfire season, experts say, but now they happen year-round.

Those fires are why the regions with the highest concentrations of air pollution are largely in the West.

When the American Lung Association started producing its report in 2004, 106 counties in 30 states got failing grades for daily spikes in particle pollution. Fewer than half were in eight states west of the Rocky Mountains. Today, 111 counties in 19 states got Fs for spikes in particle pollution, and all but eight counties are in the West, the report says.

Urban centers in the Rust Belt and the industrialized East had gotten the most failing grades in the early 2000s, but many have cleaned up and now get passing grades.

Bakersfield, California, displaced Fresno as the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution, but Fresno did not suddenly develop cleaner air. That city still had the most-polluted label for year-round particle pollution, tied with Visalia, in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley.

Los Angeles is still the city with the worst ozone pollution, according to the report, as it has been for all but one of the years included in the report.

California has some of the more progressive environmental legislation in the country, but the climate crisis has not been kind to the state, said Tarik Benmarhnia, an air pollution and wildfire researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who did not work on the new report.

“All these cities like Bakersfield and Visalia are in a valley near the forests that are seeing big fires. There’s also intense agricultural and industrial work there, so they unfortunately have all the worst conditions for air pollution,” Benmarhnia said.

There are some newcomers to the list of the 25 areas with the most particle pollution, including Denver and Fargo, North Dakota. Reno, Nevada; Yakima and Spokane, Washington; and Boise, Idaho; all made the worst list this year.

San Luis Obispo, California; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle and Bellingham, Washington; all moved off the list of worst 25 cities.

Residents in the cities ranked worst for particle pollution are living with more of it, the report says. In the top 25 cities with the worst air, the average number of days residents were exposed to high levels of fine particle pollution increased to a weighted average of 18.3, up from 16.5 in last year’s report.

East of the Mississippi, Pittsburgh and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were the two worst metropolitan areas in the country, posting more days high in fine particle pollution in this year’s report.

Unequal exposure

Not everyone experiences pollution the same way in the US. Regardless of the region, communities of color bear the brunt of the problem.

Specifically, although people of color make up 41% of the overall US population, they are 54% of the nearly 120 million people living in counties with at least one failing grade for unhealthy air. And in the counties with the worst air quality, 72% of the 18 million residents are people of color, the report said.

Other research has also shown this trend. On maps that lay out areas with high levels of air pollution and where communities were redlined – areas where Black people were forced to live – they line up perfectly, Pruitt said.

“Then, the other aspect is, when you have a community of color that is a voluntary community, people aren’t forced to live there, those are communities that tend to have less of a voice, so decision makers place polluting sources in those communities because there’s not as much howling by people with power when they do. So those communities get the highways; they get the landfills; they get the fence lines,” she said.

There’s a myth that only poor communities live with disproportionate pollution levels, says Chris Tessum, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Illinois. Tessum, who was not involved in the new report, says race really is the determining factor.

“The thinking is that people with more money will buy better property, which has lower air pollution and that’s just the way of the world or whatever, but that’s just kind of emphatically not, not true,” he said.

Solutions to pollution

Communities need to play a key role in making decisions to help clean air, Tessum said.

“People that have the power will use that power to benefit themselves and not the people that have been historically overburdened,” he said.

The new report says government and residents can make a difference. One suggestion is to leverage Inflation Reduction Act funding to help reduce emissions at ports and to invest in zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles and in infrastructure that would improve air quality monitoring.

States can also use the Clean Air Act authority to adopt the California zero-emissions standards for cars and trucks, the report says.

At the federal level, agencies must finalize stronger limits on air pollution to truly protect public health and advance environmental justice, the report says, including standards to move the country toward zero-emissions vehicles. The EPA also has to set stronger national standards for particle pollution and ozone, the researchers say.

Pruitt said she knows firsthand how better policies can work. She said growing up before the Clean Air Act, pollution was so high that she could see it every time she stepped outside. Today, the pollution is not nearly as visible.

“I’m in my mid-60s, and of course, air pollution was very tangible when I was young, but these days, thank goodness it isn’t. Most people don’t see it,” she said. Unless a person has a lung condition, they may not even feel it.

But just because you can’t see it or feel it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Pruitt encourages people to remember that no level of pollution is safe. The World Health Organization estimates that the combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution are associated with 6.7 million premature deaths annually.

“People don’t really recognize that what they’re breathing is impacting their health,” Pruitt said.

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Fukushima’s fishing industry survived a nuclear disaster. 12 years on, it fears Tokyo’s next move may finish it off

Story by Emiko Jozuka • Yesterday - CNN


It is still morning when Kinzaburo Shiga, 77, returns to Onahama port after catching a trawler full of fish off Japan’s eastern coast.

That's because the port is around 40 miles from the Fukushima nuclear plant 

CNN goes inside the Fukushima nuclear plant where wastewater is being treated

Duration 3:36    View on Watch

But the third-generation fisherman won’t head straight to market. First, he’ll test his catch for radiation.

It’s a ritual he’s repeated for more than a decade since a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, spewing deadly radioactive particles into the surrounding area.

Radiation from the damaged nuclear plant leaked into the sea, prompting authorities to suspend fishing operations off the coast of three prefectures that had previously provided Japan with half of its catch.

That ban lasted over a year and even after it was lifted, Fukushima-based fishermen like Shiga were for years mostly limited to collecting samples for radioactivity tests on behalf of the state-owned electricity firm Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, rather than taking their catches to market.

Ocean currents have since dispersed the contaminated water enough that radioactive Cesium is nearly undetectable in fish from Fukushima prefecture. Japan lifted its last remaining restrictions on fish from the area in 2021, and most countries have eased import restrictions.

Shiga and others in the industry thought they’d put the nightmare of the past years behind them.

So when Japan followed through on plans to gradually release more than 1 million metric tons of filtered wastewater into the Pacific Ocean from the summer of 2023 – an action the government says is necessary to decommission the plant safely – the industry reeled.

The Japanese government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations body promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy, say the controlled release, which is expected to take decades, will meet international safety regulations and not harm the environment, as the water will be treated to remove radioactive elements – with the exception of tritium – and diluted more than 100 times.

But with the deadline for the planned water release looming this summer, Fukushima’s fishermen fear that – whether the release is safe or not – the move will undermine consumer confidence in their catches and once again threaten the way of life they have fought so hard to recover.

A year before the 2011 disaster, government data shows Fukushima’s coastal fishing industry landed catches worth around $69 million. By 2018, that figure had dwindled to little more than $17 million. By 2022, while it had recovered somewhat to around $26 million, it was still just a fraction of what it once was.

“I know that the government has decided to go ahead with the policy of releasing treated wastewater into the sea, but for us fishers, it really feels like they made this decision without our full consent,” said Shiga, adding that it made his “blood boil.”

The wastewater dilemma

In 2011, the earthquake and tsunami cut off the power supply to the Fukushima plant, disabling its cooling systems. This caused the reactor cores to overheat and contaminate water within the plant with highly radioactive material.

Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors. At the same time, ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater that now needs to be stored and treated.

TEPCO has built over 1,000 massive tanks on the site to store what is now 1.32 million metric tons of wastewater – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic pools.

But space is running out and the company says building more tanks isn’t an option. As decommissioning work approaches a critical stage, it says it needs to free up space to store the fuel debris from the stricken plant.

A Trade Ministry official told CNN the government considered five options, including hydrogen release, underground burial and vapor release, which would have seen wastewater boiled and released into the atmosphere, but in April 2021, officials approved the controlled release of the water into the sea. They reasoned that other nuclear facilities around the world had done this and it would be easier to monitor.


Fukushima’s fishing industry survived a nuclear disaster. 12 years on, it fears Tokyo’s next move may finish it off© Provided by CNNTEPCO has built over 1,000 massive tanks on this site to store what is now 1.32 million metric tons of wastewater, in Okuma of Fukushima prefecture. - Daniel Campisi/CNN

The IAEA told CNN it will also monitor and review the release for as long as necessary, at the request of the Japanese government.

While radioactive wastewater contains dangerous elements including Cesium and Strontium, TEPCO says the majority of those particles can be separated from the water and removed. TEPCO claims its filtering system, called advanced liquid processing (ALPS), can bring down the amount of those elements far below regulatory standards.

But one hydrogen isotope cannot be taken away, as there is currently no technology available to do so. This isotope is radioactive tritium, and the scientific community is divided on the risk its dissemination carries.

How safe is tritium?

TEPCO and the Japanese government say that tritium occurs naturally in the environment. They say that the concentration of tritiated water it plans to discharge would be on par or lower than the amount other countries allow. Since 2021, they’ve been on a mission to promote public awareness about the wastewater and their plans for it, releasing videos and creating a multilingual portal.

The IAEA also says that releasing small amounts of tritium can be safe because it is already present in small quantities in everything from rain and sea water to tap water; small amounts even exist naturally in the human body.

However, experts are divided over the concept of “safe” radiation, with some arguing it is to a large extent a political rather than a scientific concept.


Fukushima’s fishing industry survived a nuclear disaster. 12 years on, it fears Tokyo’s next move may finish it off© Provided by CNNConstruction workers assemble an undersea tunnel through which TEPCO plans to release treated wastewater into the sea, in Okuma of Fukushima prefecture on April 12, 2023. - Daniel Campisi/CNN

“For decades, nuclear power plants worldwide – including in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, China and South Korea – have been releasing waste contaminated with tritium, each under its own national quota,” said Tim Mousseau, an environmental scientist at the University of South Carolina.

But Mousseau argues tritium is overlooked because many countries are invested in nuclear energy, and “there’s no way to produce it without also generating vast amounts of tritium.”

“If people started picking on TEPCO in Fukushima, then the practice of releasing tritium to the environment in all of these other nuclear power plants would need to be examined as well. So, it opens up a can of worms,” he said, adding the biological consequences of exposure to tritium have not been studied sufficiently.

In 2012, a French literature review study said tritium can be toxic to the DNA and reproductive processes of aquatic animals, particularly invertebrates, and the sensitivity of different species to various levels of tritium needs to be further investigated.

TEPCO’s website states that it started assessing the effect of tritium on fish from Fukushima last year. A technical document published by the company in 2022 stated that “fish tritium measurement is very difficult.” It says “there are only a few analysis agencies capable of performing this measurement,” and they do not all produce the same findings.


Fukushima’s fishing industry survived a nuclear disaster. 12 years on, it fears Tokyo’s next move may finish it off© Provided by CNNA TEPCO researcher conducts a radiation impact assessment of the ALPS-treated water in a laboratory in Okuma of Fukushima prefecture on April 12, 2023. - Daniel Campisi/CNN

Currently, countries set different standards for the concentration of tritium allowed in drinking water. For example. Australia, which has no nuclear power plants, allows more than 76,000 becquerel per liter, a measure used to gauge radioactivity, while the WHO’s limit is 10,000. Meanwhile, the US and the European Union have much more conservative limits – 740 and 100 becquerel per liter respectively.

Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, told CNN that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when it comes to Japan’s decision to release tritiated water. He argues TEPCO should build more storage tanks to allow for the decay of the radioactive tritium, which has a half-life of 12.3 years.

Lack of trust for the ‘nuclear village’

In Japan, the Fukushima wastewater issue has become highly contentious due to a lack of trust among influential advocates of nuclear energy, or what’s locally known as the “nuclear village.”

The informal group includes members of Japan’s ruling party (the Liberal Democratic Party), the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry and the nuclear industry.

“(The nuclear village) used to tell us that nuclear energy is 100% safe – but it wasn’t, as the Fukushima Daiichi plant accident revealed,” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University, in Tokyo.

A series of missteps after the disaster further eroded public trust, according to a 2016 report written by Kohta Juraku, a researcher at Tokyo Denki University.

For instance, in 2012, the government and TEPCO presented a proposed action plan to local fishing representatives that involved pumping up groundwater before it flooded into the nuclear reactor buildings and releasing it into the sea. Fishing bodies were on board but the plan was it postponed until 2014 after 300 tons of radioactive water leaked from the plant into the sea, infuriating fishers.

Standing between the towering wastewater tanks, Kenichi Takahara, a risk communicator at TEPCO told CNN that the company is aware that people in Japan and overseas are skeptical of the company’s assurances.

“While TEPCO has been promoting nuclear safety in the first place, the nuclear accident happened in 2011. So, we understand that there are many people who can’t trust us,” said the TEPCO official.

“We are hoping that if the IAEA and other organizations can show them that there is no problem, people will understand us,” Takahara added.

The problem of changing mindsets

Japanese officials told CNN that they have taken the voices of locals in Fukushima into consideration and will send a message to other nations and consumers around the world that the treated water is safe to release.

Tokyo has also created a fund of 30 billion yen ($225 million) to buy and store freezable seafood if consumer confidence takes a hit following the release, an official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told CNN.

And in an effort to convince both fishermen and consumers that the water to be released is safe, in March 2022 TEPCO started conducting tests on the tritium concentrations in fish, shellfish and seaweed reared in regular seawater as compared to those raised in ALPS-treated water.


Fukushima’s fishing industry survived a nuclear disaster. 12 years on, it fears Tokyo’s next move may finish it off© Provided by CNNA TEPCO researcher feeds flounder that are being raised on site in both seawater and ALPS treated water that has been diluted with seawater, in Okuma of Fukushima prefecture on April 12, 2023. - Daniel Campisi/CNN

But Satsuki Takahashi, an anthropologist specializing in sustainability studies at Hosei University, warned that changing mindsets is no easy feat.

“From the consumer’s perspective, whether it’s processed or not, this is wastewater. It’s hard for (people) to grasp what safety means or what risks mean,” she said.

“One of the biggest issues in terms of this wastewater, for those who used to purchase the fish from Fukushima before the disaster, is whether they are going to come back and buy the fish once the label states its provenance.”

For fishers like Shiga, the work to restore their way of life is far from over.

“We’re taking the initiative and appealing to consumers so they understand (our products are safe), but we have a hard time reaching them,” said Shiga, who fears that countries may reimpose bans on imports of Fukushima fish following the wastewater release.

“If the government releases the water into the sea off Fukushima now, everything we’ve done so far and our current efforts will be wasted,” he said.

CNN’s Moeri Karasawa, Carlotta Dotto, Natalie Leung, Henrik Pettersson, Will Mullery and Alberto Mier contributed from Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Atlanta and Berkeley.
CNN.com

Bolshoi pulls Nureyev ballet citing ban on LGBT 'propaganda'

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Bolshoi Theater has removed a ballet dedicated to dancer Rudolf Nureyev from its repertoire, citing a new Russian law that expands restrictions on activities seen as promoting LGBT rights, its director said Wednesday.

Bolshoi director Vladimir Urin said the ballet “Nureyev" had been dropped “in connection with the newly signed law, which unambiguously deals with issues related to propaganda of non-traditional values," the Interfax news agency reported.

The law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December bans advertising, media and online resources, books, films and theater productions deemed to contain “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations,” expanding a 2013 ban on such ”propaganda" aimed at minors.

The ban on any “demonstration of non-traditional relations” contained in the new law apparently prompted the Bolshoi to pull the ballet because it touches on Nureyev’s homosexuality.

Rights groups have harshly criticized the law as a state encouragement of homophobia, intolerance and discrimination.

Nureyev, a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer, defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961.

The ballet choreographed by prominent theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov premiered in 2017. Its performances scheduled for the last year were cancelled after Serebrennikov criticized Moscow's military action in Ukraine and left Russia.

Last month, the Bolshoi also cancelled another Serebrennikov production, the ballet “A Hero of Our Time” that was supposed to premier in May. It didn't give any reason for the cancellation.

The Associated Press

News coverage of artificial intelligence reflects business and government hype — not critical voices

Story by Fenwick McKelvey, Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy, Concordia University, 

Jonathan Roberge, Professor, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS),

Guillaume Dandurand, Postdoctoral Fellow, Shaping AI, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS)

THE CONVERSATION • TODAY


The news media plays a key role in shaping public perception about artificial intelligence. Since 2017, when Ottawa launched its Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, AI has been hyped as a key resource for the Canadian economy.


Over the last two years, a multinational research team has analyzed how mainstream Canadian news media covers artificial intelligence.© (Shutterstock)

With more than $1 billion in public funding committed, the federal government presents AI as having potential that must be harnessed. Publicly-funded initiatives, like Scale AI and Forum IA Québec, exist to actively promote AI adoption across all sectors of the economy.

Over the last two years, our multi-national research team, Shaping AI, has analyzed how mainstream Canadian news media covers AI. We analyzed newspaper coverage of AI between 2012 and 2021 and conducted interviews with Canadian journalists who reported on AI during this time period.

Our report found news media closely reflects business and government interests in AI by praising its future capabilities and under-reporting the power dynamics behind these interests.

The chosen few

Our research found that tech journalists tend to interview the same pro-AI experts over and over again — especially computer scientists. As one journalist explained to us: “Who is the best person to talk about AI, other than the one who is actually making it?” When a small number of sources informs reporting, news stories are more likely to miss important pieces of information or be biased.

Canadian computer scientists and tech entrepreneurs Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Jean-François Gagné and Joëlle Pineau are disproportionately used as sources in mainstream media. The name of Bengio — a leading expert in AI, pioneer in deep learning and founder of Mila AI Institute — turns up nearly 500 times in 344 different news articles.

Only a handful of politicians and tech leaders, like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, have appeared more often across AI news stories than these experts.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Jean-François Gagné, co-founder and then-CEO of Element AI, at the Fortune Global Forum, in Toronto, in October 2018.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Few critical voices find their way into mainstream coverage of AI. The most-cited critical voice against AI is late physicist Stephen Hawking, with only 71 mentions. Social scientists are conspicuous in their absence.

Bengio, Hinton and Pineau are computer science authorities, but like other scientists they’re not neutral and free of bias. When interviewed, they advocate for the development and deployment of AI. These experts have invested their professional lives in AI development and have a vested interest in its success.

AI researchers and entrepreneurs

Most AI scientists are not only researchers, but are also entrepreneurs. There is a distinction between these two roles. While a researcher produces knowledge, an entrepreneur uses research and development to attract investment and sell their innovations.

The lines between the state, the tech industry and academia are increasingly porous. Over the last decade in Canada, state agencies, private and public organizations, researchers and industrialists have worked to create a profitable AI ecosystem. AI researchers are firmly embedded in this tightly-knit network, sharing their time between publicly-funded labs and tech giants like Meta.

AI researchers occupy key positions of power in organizations that promote AI adoption across industries. Many hold, or have held, decision-making positions at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) — an organization that channels public funding to AI Research Chairs across Canada.

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When computer scientists make their way into the news cycle, they do so not only as AI experts, but also as spokespeople for this network. They bring credibility and legitimacy to AI coverage because of their celebrated expertise. But they are also in a position to promote their own expectations about the future of AI, with little to no accountability for the fulfilment of these visions.

Hyping responsible AI

The AI experts quoted in mainstream media rarely discussed the technicalities of AI research. Machine learning techniques — colloquially known as AI — were deemed too complex for a mainstream audience. “There’s only room for so much depth about technical issues,” one journalist told us.

Instead, AI researchers use media attention to shape public expectations and understandings of AI. The recent coverage of an open letter calling for a six-month ban on AI development is a good example. News reports centred on alarmist tropes on what AI could become, citing “profound risks to society.”


Computer science professor Yoshua Bengio poses at his home in Montréal in 2016.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Bengio, who signed the letter, warned that AI has the potential to destabilize democracy and the world order.

These interventions shaped the discourse about AI in two ways. First, they framed AI debates according to alarmist visions of distant future. Coverage of an open letter calling for a six-month break from AI development overshadowed real and well-documented harms from AI, like worker exploitation, racism, sexism, disinformation and concentration of power in the hands of tech giants.

Second, the open letter casts AI research into a Manichean dichotomy: the bad version that “no one…can understand, predict, or reliably control” and the good one — the so-called responsible AI. The open letter was as much about shaping visions about the future of AI as it was about hyping up responsible AI.

But according to AI industry standards, what is framed as “responsible AI” to date has consisted of vague, voluntary and toothless principles that cannot be enforced in corporate contexts. Ethical AI is often just a marketing ploy for profit and does little to eliminate the systems of exploitation, oppression and violence that are already linked to AI.

Report’s recommendations

Our report proposes five recommendations to encourage reflexive, critical and investigative journalism in science and technology, and pursue stories about the controversies of AI.

1. Promote and invest in technology journalism. Be wary of economic framings of AI and investigate other angles that are typically left out of business reporting, like inequalities and injustices caused by AI.

2. Avoid treating AI as a prophecy. The expected realizations of AI in the future must be distinguished from its real-world accomplishments.

3. Follow the money. Canadian legacy media has paid little attention to the significant amount of governmental funding that goes into AI research. We urge journalists to scrutinize the networks of people and organizations that work to construct and maintain the AI ecosystem in Canada.

4. Diversify your sources. Newsrooms and journalists should diversify their sources of information when it comes to AI coverage. Computer scientists and their research institutions are overwhelmingly present in AI coverage in Canada, while critical voices are severely lacking.

5. Encourage collaboration between journalists and newsrooms and data teams. Co-operation among different types of expertise helps to highlight the social and technical considerations of AI. Without one or the other, AI coverage is likely to be deterministic, inaccurate, naive or overly simplistic.

To be reflexive and critical of AI does not mean to be against the development and deployment of AI. Rather, it encourages the news media and its readers to question the underlying cultural, political and social dynamics that make AI possible, and examine the broader impact that technology has on society and vice versa.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Rather than focus on the speculative rights of sentient AI, we need to address human rights

Generative AI like ChatGPT reveal deep-seated systemic issues beyond the tech industry

Guillaume Dandurand receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Fenwick McKelvey receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Les Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC).

Jonathan Roberge receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Les Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC).

GREEN(WASHING)CAPITALI$M

How environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing controversies can impact fossil fuels

Story by Sibo Chen, Assistant Professor, School of Professional Communication, Toronto Metropolitan University • TODAY -THE CONVERSATION

The past few years have witnessed a surge in the popularity and momentum of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing — a form of responsible investing that aligns financial returns with positive environmental and social ones.

Environmental, social and governance investing, a form of responsible investing that aligns financial returns with positive environmental and social ones, has gained exponential popularity in recent years.© (Shutterstock)

Institutional investors and asset managers have been viewing ESG investing as a means to mitigate investment risks and increase long-term returns. The basic premise is that industries that effectively manage their environment, social and government-related risks will be less susceptible to changes in regulations or societal expectations. This will improve their performance over the long term.

In recent months, however, numerous news articles have highlighted the growing tensions and conflicts surrounding ESG investing. In February, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed legislation to further restrict state investments involving ESG. Meanwhile, many ESG opponents have targeted BlackRock, the world’s largest funds manager and most prominent provider of ESG products and services.

ESG has received criticism from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Right-wing forces regard ESG as politically charged governance that advances “woke capitalism” led by corporations. In contrast, the left has expressed skepticism regarding ESG’s claims, arguing that its business- and market-friendly approaches to equity and sustainability are antithetical to the interests of the working class.

How can we make sense of the public debates surrounding ESG investing? As a scholar researching how issues like decarbonization are contested in the public sphere, I find these debates indicative of the growing polarization in the fossil fuel sector.

The politics of ESG investing

A closer look at the rising anti-ESG sentiment in the United States shows that attacks on environmental, social and governance investing are based on cultural, rather than economic grounds.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal analysis, the main goal of conservative activists is to turn the anti-ESG movement into “a rallying cry against woke capitalism, much the way critical race theory became shorthand for broader criticisms about how race is taught in schools.”

Meanwhile, the conservatives’ attacks on ESG investing call for anti-ESG legislation. This contradicts their belief that governments should not determine how capital is allocated and investment decisions are made.

The costs of making ESG investing a political issue are glaring. According to an analysis conducted by scholars at the Wharton School, a Texas law, prohibiting municipalities from doing business with banks that have ESG policies against fossil fuels and firearms, came at a price. This was because its issuers incurred $300 to $500 million in additional interest on the $31.8 billion borrowed in the eight months following the law’s enactment.

As exemplified by the Texas case, one of the main causes of rising anti-ESG sentiment among conservatives is the increasingly apparent existential crisis of the fossil fuel industry.

In May 2021, a landmark shareholder vote at ExxonMobil resulted in the ouster of three board members by Engine No. 1 — a small activist hedge fund pushing the oil giant to adopt a more aggressive climate strategy and reduce its carbon footprint.

Around the same time, Shell was mandated to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent between 2019 and 2030 by a Dutch court in response to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups and activists. Such events raise serious questions about the future profitability and sustainability of carbon-intensive businesses.

Divergent views on ESG investing

The political disagreement over ESG investing can also be viewed as an ideological conflict over the role of capitalism in addressing societal problems like inequality and climate change.

This conflict encompasses three main ideas.

First, those advocating for ESG investing believe capitalism can be reformed and redirected to serve the common good by incorporating environmental and social criteria into financial decision-making and creating positive change incentives.

Second, conservative opponents of ESG are dismissive of ESG investing’s promotion of what they consider to be liberal causes.

Thirdly, progressive opponents of ESG accuse ESG investing of being a form of greenwashing — the deceptive practice of making a company or product appear to be more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

Independent assessments of ESG performance

ESG investing is still mired in controversy, and many believe it will play a significant role in the presidential election in the U.S. next year.

What are the implications of the controversy for Canada? Briefly speaking, while many Canadian corporations have expressed positive attitudes toward ESG, it is concerning that public narratives regarding the fate of bitumen have become increasingly polarized, which parallels the politicization of ESG investing in the U.S.

The public opinion on the profitability of the bitumen industry in comparison to the subsidies it receives from provincial and federal governments is becoming increasingly divergent. This has significant implications for the future of the bitumen industry and its relationship with the government. If the perception that the industry is not paying its fair share persists, political pressure to reduce or eliminate existing subsidies will rise.

We urgently require comprehensive and independent assessments of the compatibility of the Canadian fossil fuel industry with ESG criteria. This will allow us to make informed decisions about how Canada’s fossil fuel industry aligns with the global transition to a low-carbon economy in the future. By taking a proactive approach to ESG, we can create a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Everyone should have a say on the future of green accounting

COP15: A call to action for investors to help us meet vital biodiversity goals

Sibo Chen receives funding from Toronto Metropolitan University and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is affiliated with International Environmental Communication Association.

Spain's Sánchez warns drought now a major national concern

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s prime minister warned lawmakers Wednesday that the acute drought afflicting the southern European country has become one of its leading long-term concerns.



“The government of Spain and I are aware that the debate surrounding drought is going to be one of the central political and territorial debates of our country over the coming years,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the Madrid-based Parliament.

The territorial tensions between regions over water that Sánchez referred to are already being seen in protests over the rerouting of water and disputes between farmers and ecologists.

Three years of scant rainfall and high temperatures put Spain officially into long-term drought last month.

The national weather service said 2022 was the hottest year ever recorded, when average daily temperatures rose above 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time since records started in 1961. The country has warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (34 F) since the 1960s, a warming that is noticeable all year round, but especially in summer when average temperatures have risen by 1.6 degrees.

The Mediterranean region as a whole is warming faster than the global average because of climate change caused by the release of greenhouse gases, experts and authorities say.

And there is no sign of the situation in Spain improving over the coming weeks.

That has led to water restrictions in the driest areas. Regional authorities in northeast Catalonia said this week that Barcelona and a wide surrounding area that's home to around 6 million people could enter a drought “emergency” by September unless forecasts prove wrong.

Related video: Spain's Barcelona faces drought 'emergency' (The Canadian Press)
Duration 1:10  View on Watch

EuronewsDrought threatens grain harvests in Spain

1:32

AccuWeatherDrought in Spain reveals medieval village

0:57

WIONFlash droughts besieging the Planet

3:59

The reservoirs that provide northern Catalonia with water have shrunk to 27% of capacity. Only the reservoirs connected to the Guadalquivir river basin in southern Andalusia are worse off, at 26% of capacity.

Andalusia and other agricultural areas are bearing the brunt of the drought as farmers lose crops.

Spain’s agriculture ministry met with farming associations and local authorities charged with irrigation management in Madrid on Wednesday. Agriculture Minister Luis Planas committed to asking the European Union to temporarily relax common agricultural regulations for Spanish farmers to help speed up financial help for the sector.

Andrés Góngora, representative of the COAG farmers and breeders association, said that his group urged the ministry to take emergency measures.

“(The government must) issue an emergency decree so it can adopt measures to address the catastrophic situation that many farmers and breeders are facing,” he said. “This year, unfortunately, there won’t be any green shoots, but instead a lot of red numbers.”

Spain’s forests are also suffering as firefighters battle blazes that are normally not seen until the hottest summer months.

Sánchez, a Socialist leader who faces a general election in December, said that a priority of his government is to invest heavily to “help recover our rivers, improve our water purification and cleaning systems and the reuse of water, and digitalize our water management.”

“This is clearly our responsibility, our duty, because the challenge we face from climate change and water stress is evident,” Sánchez said.

___

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Joseph Wilson, The Associated Press

In South Sudan, a new front line of climate change after historic flooding

The water came in the night, rushing into her home.

And I can only imagine what you witnessed first hand.
Duration 4:09  View on Watch

And as it covered everything she owned in her hometown of Niahldiu, Nyathak took her children through the waters to the shore, waiting to be rescued.

Flooding during the rainy season is not uncommon here in South Sudan, but as the weeks and months passed without the waters receding, Nyathak -- like so many here -- made the decision to leave Niahldiu with her family in search of dry land.

She said it took her six days to reach dry land -- almost 30 miles away in Bentiu, the seat of Unity State, where, for two years now, tens of thousands of people have come seeking dry shelter, medicine and food, as the flood water claims more and more communities and cuts off many others from supplies.

"ABC World News Tonight" anchor David Muir and his team traveled to South Sudan to report on yet another front line of the climate crisis, with more than 1 million people now facing severe food insecurity due to the worst floods here since the 1960s, according to the United Nations.



The floods caught everyone by surprise; villages quickly became underwater and the people and their livestock got displaced.© Jimmy Gillings/ABC News


Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by both conflict and climate in the town of Bentiu depend on humanitarian workers, such as from the World Food Programme, for necessary supplies and food.© Esther Castillejo/ABC News

They joined humanitarian workers from the World Food Programme as they race against time to bring necessary supplies -- and food -- to support the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by both conflict and climate in the town of Bentiu. So many here have been cut off by the water, forced to rely on canoes or wade through the high waters in search of food, shelter and medicine.

Khaula Waqar, a logistics officer with the WFP who has been in South Sudan for five years, said the floods caught everyone by surprise.

"We were totally taken aback ... We were completely surrounded by water, and Bentiu had basically become an island. It was really heartbreaking to see all the villages underwater and the people and their livestock getting displaced," Waqar told Muir in Tong, one of the villages now isolated due to the flooding. "These people, they're not water-based communities, so they had no canoes or boats to transport their items. But they just had plastic sheets and were carrying all their possessions in the flood water and moving, searching for higher ground."

The South Sudanese are no strangers to conflict or displacement. It's the youngest nation in the world -- this region broke away from Sudan in 2011, with the promise of peace after protracted conflict. The people here sacrificed for decades to achieve independence, and thousands of them were displaced in the fighting.

The country, home to one of the world's largest swamp lands, and its people would move with the seasons. During the rainy season from April to October, the swamp would swell, leading to a dry season where communities here would take their livestock to pasture and grow crops.

ABC News was there as humanitarian convoys traveled the only road in and out of the region -- the Bentiu Panakuach Road -- that comes from Sudan, witnessing the aid's uncertain future, as the road is threatened by rising waters in the coming rainy season and now conflict north of the border in Sudan.



David Muir and his team traveled to South Sudan to report on another front line of the climate crisis, with more than 1 million people now facing severe food insecurity due to the worst floods here since the 1960s, according to the United Nations.© Jimmy Gillings/ABC News

"WFP is in a race against time to preposition the food before the rainy season starts, because if we can't preposition the food, then people will be on the brink of starvation," Waqar told Muir. "We also have some IPC 5 counties here, which means there's almost famine there." The IPC is the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, and phase 5 is considered catastrophe and famine, according to the system.

The aid is crucial. One in five children here are severely malnourished, with mothers forced to feed them water lilies, which grow in the flood waters, to keep their bellies full.

"It is a coping mechanism because they don't have enough food," Aachal Chand, WFP's head of nutrition in South Sudan, told Muir outside a nutrition site in Tong. Mothers were arriving there by canoe, desperate for help.



With farmland now covered by water, mothers now collect water lilies from the flood waters to feed their children.© Jimmy Gillings/ ABC News

Chand warned that, with conflict elsewhere in the world, attention and funding have moved away from South Sudan. Currently, the organization is only able to provide food rations for half the month.

"We do not have enough funds to provide the needs for the whole month, so we only provide a 50% ration, so the other 50% has to be sourced by the community," Chand told Muir.

Water lilies and fish caught in the flood waters round up the rest of the month, presenting yet another issue.

"Water and sanitation is a big issue here, as well, so diarrheal diseases are very common," Chand said. "If you don't have safe drinking water or safe cooking water, then whatever you cook also can harm your child."



One in five children in South Sudan are severely malnourished.© Jimmy Gillings/ABC News


Photo: Mothers arrive to a nutrition site in Bentiu, desperate for help. So many don't have enough food, so they are forced to feed their babies with water lilies, which grow in the flood waters, to keep their bellies full.© Jimmy Gillings/ABC News

Muir and his team met some of the children affected at the Bentiu State Hospital, where the most severe cases have been admitted. On a recent day, there were 20 children admitted to the hospital for malnutrition, including baby Goer -- at 42 days old, he weighs under 4 pounds.

Officials here say the baby's mother, Nyadier, can't find enough food to feed herself and thus is not producing enough breast milk for Goer. The flood has claimed the lands; food is scarce.

"The reason of this child being admitted is because the mother does not have milk, breast milk," Kuajien Gathook, a clinical officer with World Relief, working with WFP at the hospital, told Muir. "The mother cannot find enough food so that she can produce."

According to the World Food Program:
$7 provides a month of school meals for a child in need, which is sometimes their only reliable meal.
$25 provides 50 mothers with nutritious meals, supporting multiple generations.
$50 provides a child with a year of school meals, keeping kids coming back.
$75 feeds a family of five for one month, providing staples such as rice, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, flour, beans and lentils.
$1,000 can feed a family of five for one year, creating a lasting impact.

Click here to help children and families displaced by the floods in South Sudan.

Mexico finds 8 sacrificial victims at Gulf coast pyramid

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Archaeologists in Mexico said Wednesday they have found 13 buried sets of human remains, eight of which appear to be young men who were apparently decapitated as part of a ceremony to consecrate a temple.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the skeletal remains may be as much as 2,000 years old. Ceremonial offerings of hundreds of beads, arrowheads and rings made of shells were with the remains.

They were found at a Mayan ruin site known as Moral-Reforma in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. The site apparently functioned as a stop on a river trade route connecting the Mayan kingdoms of the Yucatan and Central America with other cultures on the Gulf coast.

The institute said the remains of the eight sacrificial victims appear to have been hacked up and dispersed in an area at the foot of the pyramidal temple, because the bones were found scattered.

Another group of bones was found at the same site that might come from hundreds of years later.

The Associated Press

New propellers with looped blades could help make the oceans quiet again, sparing both marine life and the climate

Story by mmcfalljohnsen@insider.com (Morgan McFall-Johnsen) • Today

Sharrow Marine makes a propeller based on loops that's designed to reduce noise and increase efficiency. Sharrow Marine© Sharrow Marine

The propellers of the world's ships and boats create a constant drone that disrupts ocean life.
New propeller designs based on loops could one day quiet that drone and be more fuel efficient.
Sharrow Marine sells them for small boats but would need to scale up to reach the shipping industry.
This article is part of "Gains in Green Tech," a series showcasing some of the most transformative solutions to the climate crisis. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub.

Imagine you're a whale. You spend your entire life in the open water. You can see well enough, but you mostly listen.

Songs of other whales help you communicate and travel with your pod. Rhythmic waves crashing on distant shores orient you on migrations that span thousands of miles each year.


A sperm whale swimming off the coast of Mirissa, in southern Sri Lanka. 

 Joshua Barton/Reuters

But a distant drone, like white noise, is starting to obscure the sounds you rely on.

It's the constant hum of all the cargo, cruise, and charter ships crisscrossing the ocean and trailing the coasts. Their noise is growing more thunderous each year as their propellers blare into the ocean void.

"A ship traveling from Tokyo to Shanghai is going to have direct sound impacts in that area but could potentially send noise all the way across the ocean to Los Angeles," Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Insider.

At any given moment, thousands of commercial ships are traveling over the oceans.



A container ship in Hong Kong's harbor, one of thousands traveling the ocean at any moment. Kevin Phillips/Getty Images© Kevin Phillips/Getty Images

"You can get quite a substantial hum of all those propellers that can potentially cover up that natural noise," Halpern said.

It's not just whales that suffer. Many marine creatures rely on sound to communicate, navigate, find food, or avoid predators.

Research indicates that the overpowering hum of ships can kill off sea-slug larvae, make humpback whales stop singing, and cause schools of bluefin tuna to change direction and become "uncoordinated." Other studies have found that the temporary disappearance of shipping traffic during COVID-19 lockdowns brought a resurgence in endangered pink dolphins near Hong Kong and, after 9/11, reduced stress among North Atlantic right whales.

Much of this underwater noise comes from ships' propellers. But it's not from the mechanics of the propeller motors — it's the physics at the tips of the propeller blades.

A traditional ship propeller that has blades in a screw-like form. Christian Charisius/Reuters© Christian Charisius/Reuters

That's why engineers like Tommy Sebastian, a senior staffer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, are tinkering with unconventional propeller shapes. New loop-based models are designed to not only reduce noise pollution and help protect marine life but also increase energy efficiency — a win-win-win for the oceans, the climate, and the shipping industry.

Propellers that close the loop cut out some of the noise


A traditional blade propeller, left, and MIT's toroidal propeller. MIT Lincoln Laboratory

When a blade propeller spins in the air (like the one on the left in the above image), it generates regions of high and low pressure that meet at the blade's tip to create a vortex.

It's these so-called tip vortices that make a lot of noise, both in the air and underwater.

When you replace the blade with a loop, there's no tip. The high- and low-pressure regions meet along the edge of the loop, distributing the vortices more widely so that they dissipate faster and therefore more quietly.

That's what Sebastian realized when he put loop propellers on a drone.

Hear how much of a difference it makes:

"I think this gives people another dimension to explore in propeller design," Sebastian said.

Bringing the closed loop to water

Greg Sharrow was trying to make quieter drones to film live classical music when he realized that his loopy design, which aimed to limit tip vortices, had an advantage in the water too.


Sharrow Marine is working to adapt its closed-loop propellers for different types of boats and ships. Sharrow Marine© Sharrow Marine

As a boat propeller spins, it creates similar high- and low-pressure regions in water as a drone propeller does in air. These pressure changes create cavities of air that form bubbles.

This process, called cavitation, is very loud — Kathy Metcalf, the president and CEO of the trade association Chamber of Shipping of America, said it accounts for most of a boat propeller's noise.

Sharrow said his loop-based boat propellers are about 20 decibels softer than traditional propellers because both tip vortices and cavitation are "eliminated or significantly reduced."

But to determine the noise reduction for ocean life, Halpern said that it's crucial to measure the frequencies, in hertz, of the propeller noise. Marine animals can hear a much wider range of frequencies than humans can.

Sharrow began selling propellers to recreational boaters in 2020 through a company he founded called Sharrow Marine.

Sharrow plans to run third-party tests to better assess the extent of his propellers' underwater noise reduction. He said he aims to publish the results in the next year.

Loops could be more energy efficient, too

Metcalf described cavitation as lost energy.

Testing led by the company BoatTEST found that the Sharrow Propeller was up to 30% more efficient than a standard blade propeller.

Efficiency doesn't just save money — it can also help ships use less fuel and emit less heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere.



A man cleaning up engine fuel from a refrigerator ship that ran aground near Algeciras, in southern Spain. 

Anton Meres/Reuters

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said that about 90% of traded goods are transported by ocean shipping, which represents 2.9% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Sharrow hopes to expand into the shipping industry as his company scales up manufacturing.

"We have been actively designing propellers of 10 meters in diameter for many years and working collaboratively with shipping-container companies around the world to apply the technology for container ships," Sharrow said.

He said that Sharrow Marine produces up to 1,300 propellers a month at its facilities in Detroit and that the company had months' worth of back orders to catch up on through a supply collaboration with Yamaha. His plan is to scale up to make hundreds of thousands of propellers each year.

The future of shipping could be much cleaner and quieter

Though loop propellers aren't widely used for commercial shipping vessels — the main culprits of underwater noise from propellers — they could one day replace those ships' noisy screw propellers or traditional blade propellers.


Ever Forward, a container ship owned by Evergreen Marine Corp., sits grounded in the Chesapeake Bay off the shore of Maryland. 

Julio Cesar Chavez/Reuters

Quieter propellers are just one part of an impending reckoning for the shipping industry.

To reduce emissions, cargo ships have to switch to low-emission fuel sources like green methanol. That would involve redesigning new ships, retrofitting old ones, and building the coastal infrastructure to refuel them.

Nobody's requiring shipping companies to do that, so they aren't rushing to do it. But Metcalf said there's "a very quiet push" to turn sustainability guidelines from the UN's International Maritime Organization into a mandatory code or market instrument to kick-start the fuel transition.

Reducing underwater noise could go hand in hand with that transformation.

"There's a synergy there," Metcalf said. "You can improve your energy efficiency and reduce your underwater noise with the same kind of things."

Strategies with such synergy include reshaping bows and hulls, maintaining a clean hull and undamaged propellers, and adding extra structures to decrease cavitation around the propeller. Some of those options are operational, and some involve retrofitting the ship. All can help save energy, reduce noise, and make greener shipping.

"Propellers are a big piece of the solution, but they're not the only piece," Metcalf said.

April 19, 2023: This story has been updated to clarify the findings of the study on stress among North Atlantic right whales.