Twitter removes section of Hateful Conduct Policy protecting transgender users

Story by MobileSyrup • Tuesday

Twitter has changed its Hateful Conduct Policy to get rid of protections for its transgender users, which was first spotted by the nonprofit organization Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and reported by The Verge.



In the Hateful Conduct Policy, Twitter used to have a line that included “repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category,” but removed the part that read “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

GLAAD used Wayback Machine to learn that Twitter removed the inclusion of misgendering and deadnaming people back on April 8th. Twitter originally added the misgendering and deadnaming back in 2018 to cover transgender users.


DailymotionCalls for greater legal protection for transgender people
1:48

Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, states that this is another example of how unsafe the company is for its users and advertisers.

TikTok and Pinterest prohibit misgendering and deadnaming in their hate and harassment policies. Meta has also stated that it will “prohibit violent or dehumanizing content directed against people who identify as LGBTQ+ and remove claims about someone’s gender identity upon their request.”

According to The Verge, Twitter hasn’t completely gotten rid of its protections; however, the choice to remove misgendering and deadnaming seems like it’s purposefully attacking the trans community.

Source: GLAAD, The Verge

FASCIST FLORIDA

DeSantis signs bill eliminating unanimous jury decisions for death sentences

Story by Sydney Kashiwagi • Yesterday 

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Thursday that will no longer require juries agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, reducing the number of jurors need to recommend a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any state with capital punishment.

SB 450 reduces the number of jurors needed to recommend a death sentence from 12 to 8.

The bill was prompted by a jury’s decision last year to not hand the death penalty to Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz. A jury recommended Cruz receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole instead for the February 2018 shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Of the 12 jurors in Cruz’s trial, three voted against the death penalty.

The move left some family members of the victims disappointed and upset.

“A few months ago, we endured another tragic failure of the justice system. Today’s change in Florida law will hopefully save other families from the injustices we have suffered,” Ryan Petty, the father of Parkland victim Alaina Petty, said in a statement Thursday.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an anti-death penalty group, warned that the new law would be challenged immediately and could lead to more wrongful convictions.

“If one of the primary justifications for the death penalty is to provide solace and finality to victims, instituting this new unconstitutional statute almost certainly does the opposite,” FADP’s Director Maria DeLiberato, said in a statement. “This change is a return to Florida’s prior scheme - which the United States Supreme Court has already found unconstitutional - and which required nearly 100 new penalty phase trials. Many of those are still pending. This new law will be immediately challenged, and there will be extensive litigation, plunging the system - and victims’ families in particular - into decades of uncertainty and chaos.”

The ACLU of Florida also slammed the new bill.

“Florida already has the highest number of death row exonerations in the country. With this bill and others, Florida is rapidly widening the net of who will be sent to death row with absolutely no consideration for the flaws that will inevitably lead to the harm of more innocent people,” Tiffani Lennon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.

Florida once required a simple majority, or 7-5, vote for a death sentence. But the US Supreme Court ruled the state’s sentencing process unconstitutional in 2016, because a judge was allowed to overrule a life recommendation and impose the death penalty.

That was followed by a Florida Supreme Court ruling that found the jury must be unanimous to impose the death penalty, and Florida lawmakers adopted the unanimity requirement soon after. But the Florida Supreme Court reversed that ruling in 2020, and while acknowledging the legislature had already changed the law, the ruling gave the legislature discretion to revise the statute.

“Once a defendant in a capital case is found guilty by a unanimous jury, one juror should not be able to veto a capital sentence,” DeSantis said in a statement. “I’m proud to sign legislation that will prevent families from having to endure what the Parkland families have and ensure proper justice will be served in the state of Florida.”

SB 450 found broad support among Florida lawmakers. The legislation’s sponsors framed it as an attempt to curtail the influence of “activist jurors” who, critics say, lie about their openness to considering the death penalty when questioned during jury selection. The bill leaves in place requirements a jury be unanimous to find guilt, and Florida judges will still be allowed to overrule a death penalty recommendation and impose a life sentence instead.

Additionally, if less than 8 jurors determine a defendant should be sentenced to death, the jury’s recommendation to the court needs to be a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, according to the bill.

Nearly all 27 states that have the death penalty require a unanimous jury to recommend or sentence a capital defendant to death. Currently, the only exception is Alabama, where a judge can impose a death sentence if 10 of 12 jurors recommend it.

CNN’s Melissa Alonso and Dakin Andone contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

US gun safety group’s chilling new ad calls for assault weapons ban

Story by Joan E Greve • Yesterday 

A gun safety group has created a provocative new ad campaign calling for the renewal of a federal assault weapons ban, in the wake of several devastating mass shootings across the US that involved the use of military-style rifles.

The ad, released on Thursday by the gun safety group Brady and shared exclusively with the Guardian, features a US navy veteran of the Vietnam war reading a chilling account of coming under gunfire and being struck by a bullet.

“I remember someone picking me up as they ran. They put me down on the floor and covered me with blankets,” the veteran says in the ad. “Someone was screaming – took me a moment to realize it was me. But I survived.”

The veteran then reveals that the writer of those words was not a fellow service member but Josh Stepakoff, who was six years old when a mass shooter attacked his Jewish community center in 1999. The ad ends with the message, “Assault weapons belong in war zones, not our communities. Ban assault weapons.”

The campaign also includes images showing a casket draped in an American flag, an honor given to soldiers killed in battle, in everyday places that have been the site of mass shootings, such as schools and grocery stores.

“These weapons and their tactical features are designed for the battlefield and not for civilian hands,” said Christian Heyne, Brady’s vice-president of policy. “These are not scenarios that exist in the rest of the industrialized world. This ad is really attempting to sort of tell that story in a powerful way.”

Related video: Emotional testimony over proposed assault weapons ban underway (KMGH Denver, CO)

Duration 3:34

View on Watch

More videos

KMGH Denver, COColorado gun control bills progress; semi-auto ban unlikely

2:11

MSNBCPoliticians need to follow will of the people, says gun safety group president

6:43

According to a Politico-Morning Consult poll taken in late January, 65% of US voters support banning assault-style weapons while 26% oppose the policy. Heyne suggested that the ad could help viewers better understand the very real ramifications of this policy debate.

“As advocates, this is one of our chief goals, to connect with people in an emotional way,” Heyne said. “We’ve got to break through a lot of this noise and remind people that what we’re talking about is very clearly and very simply that weapons of war are tearing our communities apart.”

Brady’s push for the renewal of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, comes just weeks after another school shooting devastated a US community and reinvigorated calls for action to address gun violence. Last month, a shooter wielding an AR-15 military-style rifle attacked the Covenant school in Nashville, killing three children and three adults. The shooting prompted Joe Biden to once again call on Congress to pass a federal assault weapons ban.

“We’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship and communities less safe,” Biden said earlier this month. “Congress must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require safe storage of firearms, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and require background checks for all gun sales, and state officials must do the same.”

Last year, House Democrats managed to pass a bill banning assault weapons, but the proposal stalled in the Senate. Now that Republicans control the House, Democrats’ chances of passing the bill during this session of Congress are virtually nonexistent. But gun safety groups have seen progress at the state level; Washington is expected to soon enact an assault weapons ban, becoming the 10th US state to do so.

Still, gun safety advocates hope to see action at the federal level, and they point to data suggesting an assault weapons ban could help make mass shootings less deadly and may even prevent them from happening. One analysis released in 2019 found that mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur when the federal assault weapons ban was in effect, while another study from 2021 concluded that the ban prevented 11 public mass shootings between 1994 and 2004.

The data underscores the urgent need to take action against assault weapons at the federal level, Heyne said. He said inaction is no longer an option.

“The answer can’t be to just put our hands up in the air and to do nothing. If we want to stop the reality that we’re living in, it will require proactive steps to accomplish it,” Heyne said. “Our leaders should have the courage to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

Montana Republicans are trying to censure a transgender legislator for castigating them about a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors

Story by mhall@businessinsider.com (Madison Hall) • Yesterday 


Montana Public Affairs Network© Montana Public Affairs Network

Democratic Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr is the state's first openly transgender legislator.
She gave an impassioned speech on Tuesday admonishing Republicans for trying to ban gender-affirming care for children.
Following her speech, Montana's Freedom Caucus demanded Zephyr be censured.

A group of Republicans in Montana's House of Representatives are calling to censure state Rep. Zooey Zephyr for admonishing the legislature for attempting to pass a bill banning children from receiving gender-affirming care.

"If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture. This body should be ashamed," Zephyr said.

Following Zephyr's comments, Montana House Majority Leader Sue Vinton rose in opposition.

"I speak on behalf of our caucus. We will not be shamed by anybody in this chamber. We are better than that," Vinton said.

Related video: Republican-led state legislatures target gender affirming care (MSNBC)

Duration 7:19  View on Watch

The Washington PostHouse passes bill barring trans athletes in female sports

0:28

MSNBCHouse Republicans pass transgender school sports ban

2:12

KTVQ Billings, MTGianforte sends gender-affirming care bill back to Legislature

0:46

"If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time there's an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands," Zephyr responded.

The GOP-led legislature passed the governor's requested amendments to the Youth Health Protection Act later Tuesday, barring children from receiving access to puberty blockers and other gender-affirming healthcare, though it hasn't been signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte just yet.

Later that day, the Montana Freedom Caucus took to Twitter, demanding Zephyr be censured "For attempting to shame the Montana legislative body and by using inappropriate and uncalled-for language during a floor debate over amendments concerning Senate Bill 99."

Additionally, the caucus also misgendered Zephyr, the first openly transgender member of the Montana legislature, in the letter.

House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, in a statement to the Helena Independent Record, admonished the Montana Freedom Caucus for disrespecting her colleague.

"The language used by the so-called Freedom Caucus, including the intentional and repeated misgendering of Rep. Zephyr, is blatantly disrespectful and the farthest thing imaginable from the 'commitment to civil discourse' that these letter writers demand. I find it incredibly ironic that these legislators are making demands of others that they refuse to abide by themselves," Abbott said.

Zephyr defended herself in a press release on Wednesday, standing by her comments.

"I stand by my accurate description of the devastating consequences of banning essential medical care for transgender youth," Zephyr wrote. "The recently passed Senate Bill 99 is part of an alarming trend of anti-trans legislation in our state."

Despite the Montana Freedom Caucus' call to censure Zephyr, there's yet to be an official vote on the matter, and it's unlikely a censure vote would pass — the Montana Free Press reported Abbott said there's a "zero percent chance" of it actually happening.

‘Nobody is left’: brutal fighting lays waste to wealthy central Khartoum

Story by Jason Burke and Zeinab Mohammed Salih in Khartoum • Yesterday 

On one street is a small cafe where diplomats, successful businesspeople and visiting dignitaries enjoyed smoothies and burgers under umbrellas set against the blistering sun. On another is a showroom for custom-designed kitchens imported from Europe, a once well stocked pharmacy and a fast-food joint. Down dusty potholed roads, there are villas behind high walls and apartment blocks where chandeliers hang above shining marble stairways.


Photograph: Marwan Ali/AP© Provided by The Guardian

These central Khartoum neighbourhoods, once the most sought-after addresses in Sudan’s capital city, are now so dangerous that residents cannot wait to flee. For almost a week, they have been the stage for a brutal power struggle, shattered by shelling, grenades and automatic rifle fire that trapped tens of thousands in their homes.

Some have managed to escape. On Thursday, people continued to stream out of central Khartoum and, to a lesser extent, the twin city of Omdurman across the Nile.

Omer Belal, a resident of Khartoum 2, a neighbourhood close to major ministries and the fiercely contested international airport, has sent his family to distant relatives in al-Hajj Yousif, on the eastern outskirts of the city.

“I could be the last person to leave. I am just waiting for the explosions to stop for a bit,” Belal said. “There was random artillery strike and my neighbour’s house was hit by a huge rocket. Entire neighbourhoods and the areas around us are empty … Nobody is left here.”

Nearly 300 people have been killed and thousands more injured since the fighting erupted on Saturday, according to numerous estimates. Medics say the true toll is likely to be much higher.

The conflict has pitted soldiers loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional governing sovereign council, and the regular army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Their power struggle has derailed a shift to civilian rule and raised fears of a long, brutal civil war.

Both came to power in 2019 after the fall of the dictator Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled for nearly 30 years. They then joined forces to marginalise civilians and crush the pro-democracy protest movement that had been crucial in the fall of the former regime. Now they have turned their guns on each other in an attempt to win uncontested control of Sudan’s precious resources and its crumbling but still powerful state.

Related video: Khartoum's residents search for safety and food as fighting enters fifth day (France 24) Duration 1:41  View on Watch

The wealthy neighbourhoods in the centre of Khartoum have suffered most in this brutal fight because they are closest to key strategic locations, such as the defence headquarters where Burhan is believed to have his command bunker, the presidential palace and the airport.

But the damage also has another cause. Hemedti and his fighters see themselves as underdog insurgents from Sudan’s margins who are taking on an establishment that has monopolised power and wealth for too long. The young men who fill the ranks of the RSF are recruited in Hemedti’s home region – distant Darfur, 530 miles (850km) to the south-west of the capital – and see the streets where they are now fighting as bastions of the political, cultural and economic elite that has paid them little or no attention.

So too does their commander.

“Bashir kept the relatively affluent elite onside and Burhan has been trying to do the same … Hemedti seems less interested in their support and seems unconcerned about collateral casualties or damage to their neighbourhoods,” said Dr Nick Westcott, the director of the Royal African Society and a professor of diplomacy at SOAS in London.

“The RSF soldiers have little to lose. They are experienced and tough fighters. The Sudanese armed forces are used to living in barracks, regular meals et cetera, so Hemedti feels confident he can prevail.”

Of those fleeing the centre of Khartoum, many have headed for Wad-Madani, a city 80 miles south-east of the capital, where thousands spent their first night in their cars on the streets

“People just took anything that was going on to the south of Khartoum and fled, whether on a lorry or a minibus … Many of us do not even have any cash,” said Majid Maalia, a human rights lawyer and former resident of Khartoum 2 whose apartment was hit by an airstrike shortly after he left on Thursday morning.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Thursday became the latest foreign leader to call for an end to the conflict, in separate phone calls with Burhan and Hemedti. But even a temporary truce seems a distant prospect and successive ceasefires have collapsed within minutes.

“There is no other option but the military solution,” Burhan told the television network Al Jazeera.

In 2019, Hemedti made a chilling promise to a crowd of supporters in northern Khartoum. Speaking days after his RSF forces had attacked and dispersed a peaceful pro-democracy sit-in in front of the military headquarters, killing more than 200 people, the warlord said that if the protests had continued for a month rather than just the three days, his men would have reduced Khartoum to a “ghost town” resembling those in Darfur depopulated by decades of conflict. “These expensive buildings … [would] only be inhabited by cats,” Hemedti said.

For Belal and other residents of what has now become a battleground, this vision has been realised and there is little hope of any return to pre-conflict normality even when the fighting eventually stops.

“If you survive the shooting, you will die with hunger,” he said. “This is an absurd war.”

New search underway for World War II shipwreck that poses pollution threat

Story by Emily Mae Czachor • Yesterday 

Scientists have resumed their search for the SS Norlindo, an elusive and potentially hazardous World War II shipwreck off the coast of Florida, for the third time in less than two years, officials said. This latest attempt to locate the sunken vessel, considered "the first casualty of WWII in the Gulf of Mexico," comes after previous expeditions led by an international team of oceanic explorers and archeologists in 2021 and 2022.

The SS Norlindo was a sprawling American steam freighter measuring 253 feet in length, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It went down near the small island of Dry Tortugas, about 75 miles from Key West, on May 4, 1942, after being torpedoed by a German U-boat. Officials say the freighter sunk so quickly that five people on its 28-person crew could not escape, and the location of the wreck has remained a mystery ever since.

The most recent attempt to find the SS Norlindo is led by scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi, who ventured out on their research vessel Point Sur on April 14, for an expedition scheduled to wrap up this Saturday. Previous expeditions, led by a team of German, Italian and American scientists and archeologists, began with a three-week search toward the end of 2021. The same team returned for a second search in late January and early February of last year, NOAA said, but bad weather conditions ultimately hampered their efforts.

Although the SS Norlindo has not been found, those expeditions led scientists to identify "several magnetic anomalies" in the Gulf waters that they probed, which they believe could indicate the presence of a shipwreck. Explorers could not survey the designated search area in full during either of their past expeditions because of the early cancellations.


During the first expedition to search for SS Norlindo, scientists used autonomous underwater vehicle Eagle Ray to collect bathymetry and backscatter data to identify potential targets that may be the shipwreck. 

 Image courtesy of L. Macelloni via NOAA

The team involved in the newest search is using high-resolution side-scar sonar technology to reach areas of the potential wreck site that were left unexplored in previous years, according to NOAA.

"If promising targets are located, the team will conduct a successive expedition to deploy a remotely operated vehicle to visually determine if they have indeed found the wreck of this significant piece of our nation's history," the agency wrote in a statement.

In addition to its historical value, finding the SS Norlindo is potentially a matter of environmental importance, as the freighter could still have fuel barrels on board. While scientists cannot predict whether "an acute hazard is present" without seeing the shipwreck and its fuel contents, they have said that the presence of an "intact, but corroding fuel container" on the SS Norlindo could present serious pollution risks and pose threats to the surrounding marine microbiome.

Some estimates by the NOAA's Offices of Marine Sanctuaries suggest that the shipwreck, if intact, could be carrying as much as 5,000 barrels — or about 200,000 gallons — of fuel, the Miami Herald reported. A screening level risk assessment report compiled by that same branch of NOAA has determined that the SS Norlindo is one of 87 shipwrecks in U.S. waters that pose potential pollution threats linked to fuel contents on board the ships when they sunk, the agency said.

US, memory chipmaker Micron settle claim of immigration-related discrimination

Story by By Kanishka Singh • Yesterday 

 Illustration shows Micron logo© Thomson Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it reached a settlement with memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc to resolve an allegation of immigration-related employment discrimination.

"The settlement resolves the department's determination that Micron violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by discriminating against a U.S. citizen when it failed to hire him for a position and instead hired a temporary visa worker," the Justice Department said in a statement.

The investigation began when a U.S. citizen worker complained that Micron unfairly denied him employment because of his citizenship status.

The Justice Department said it determined that Micron unlawfully preferred a temporary visa worker for the position, failing to meaningfully consider the U.S. citizen's qualifications.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Micron will pay a civil penalty to the United States and offer back pay totaling $85,000 to the affected worker, according to the settlement details. The amount of the civil penalty was not specified in the Justice Department statement.

Micron will also need to train its staff on the anti-discrimination provision of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, change its policies and procedures, and be subject to departmental monitoring for a two-year period, according to the settlement.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department reached a settlement with General Motors Co to resolve the department's allegation that the automaker discriminated against non-U.S. citizens.

The Justice Department also released a fact sheet on Tuesday to help employers avoid immigration-related discrimination.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis

Canada approves major west coast port expansion with 370 conditions

Story by By Nia Williams • Yesterday

(Reuters) - Canada approved a port major expansion on the coast of southern British Columbia on Thursday, while requiring the project meets 370 legally binding conditions designed to protect the environment and marine life.

The government said the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project, proposed by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, will be key to supporting Canadian economic growth and help prevent congestion in west coast ports.

More than C$275 billion ($204 billion) of trade passes through Vancouver Fraser Port Authority each year. The Roberts Bank expansion involves building a three-berth marine container terminal near the mouth of the Fraser river, and will increase the port's capacity by 50%.

Environmental campaigners have long opposed the project, arguing it will harm endangered species like chinook salmon and Southern resident killer whales.

"With 370 environmental protection measures that the port must meet, we have set a high bar for this project to proceed," Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement, adding the federal government will invest in protecting endangered wildlife.

Conditions include installing infrastructure to allow for the safe passage of fish and noise level limits to protect killer whales.

2,000-year-old graves found in ancient necropolis below busy Paris train station

Story by CBSNews • Yesterday 

Just meters from a busy train station in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the modern-day French capital's predecessor, Lutetia, nearly 2,000 years ago.

Somehow, the buried necropolis was never stumbled upon during multiple road works over the years, as well as the construction of the Port-Royal station on the historic Left Bank in the 1970s.

However, plans for a new exit for the train station prompted an archaeological excavation by France's National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which covers about 200 square meters of land. The excavation revealed burials believed to be part of the Saint Jacques necropolis dating back to the 2nd century, the research institute said in a news release.

Camille Colonna, an anthropologist at INRAP, told a press conference that there were already "strong suspicions" the site was close to Lutetia's southern necropolis.

The Saint Jacques necropolis, the largest burial site in the Gallo–Roman town of Lutetia, was previously partially excavated in the 1800s.

However, only objects considered precious were taken from the graves, with the many skeletons, burial offerings and other artifacts abandoned.

The necropolis was then covered over and again lost to time.

The INRAP team discovered one section that had never before been excavated.

"No one has seen it since antiquity," said INRAP president Dominique Garcia.

Colonna said the team was also "very happy" to have found a skeleton with a coin in its mouth, allowing them to date the burial to the 2nd century A.D.

The excavation, which began in March, has uncovered 50 graves, all of which were used for burial -- not cremation, which was also common at the time.


One of the skeletons unearthed in an ancient necropolis found

 meters from a busy Paris train station.

 / Credit: Thomas Samson/AFP

Ferryman of Hades

The remains of the men, women and children are believed to be Parisii, a Gallic people who lived in Lutetia, from when the town on the banks of the Seine river was under the control of the Roman Empire.

The skeletons were buried in wooden coffins, which are now only identifiable by their nails

About half of the remains found during the recent excavation were buried alongside offerings, such as ceramic jugs goblets, dishes and glassware.

Sometimes a coin was placed in the coffin, or even in the mouth of the dead, a common burial practice at the time called "Charon's obol." In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of Hades, and the coin was considered a bribe to carry the souls of the dead across the river Styx.

The archaeologists also found traces of shoes inside the graves. They identified them based on the remains of small nails that would have been used in the soles. Some of the dead appeared to have been buried with shoes on their feet, while others were seemingly buried with shoes placed on either side of the body inside the grave, according to INRAP.

Colonna said the shoes were placed "either at the feet of the dead or next to them, like an offering."

Jewelry, hairpins and belts were also discovered with the graves, while the entire skeleton of a pig and another small animal was discovered in a pit where animals were thought to have been sacrificed to the gods.

Unlike the excavation in the 1800s, this time the team plans to remove everything from the necropolis for analysis.

"This will allow us to understand the life of the Parisii through their funeral rites, as well as their health by studying their DNA," Colonna said.

Garcia said that the ancient history of Paris was "generally not well known," adding that the unearthed graves open "a window into the world of Paris during antiquity."

The messy, high-stakes world of private equity's fossil-fuel dilemma

Story by rungarino@businessinsider.com (Rebecca Ungarino) • Yesterday 

Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/Insider

Giants like Blackstone and Carlyle are aiming to cut emissions. But states' intense ESG division complicate the backdrop — all while firms stay in fossil fuels.

Most major private-investment firms are working to cut down on emissions their portfolio companies send into the atmosphere. Private-equity executives know they need to make these changes to win investor commitments, especially from the $5.2 trillion public-pension sector.

Efforts are underway at Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, Apollo, and other private-equity heavyweights. They're moving quickly to profit from decarbonization as an investment theme, pushing into a crowded field of solar-panel suppliers and climate-data providers. The competition for seizing on these opportunities is fierce: annual global clean-energy investments need to triple to $4 trillion in the next few years to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency estimated.

This urgent, historic process is shaping up to be a messy undertaking. Private-equity firms, a growing, influential group flush with cash from investors allocating more money to private markets, risk angering a set of their clientele in Republican-led states if they see it as investing public-sector dollars through a lens that seems left-leaning.

Environmental advocates are meanwhile raising concerns that efforts by the industry, where firms sell companies after holding them for several years, may be in vain if they sell their assets to irresponsible buyers.

"The biggest challenges are directly coming from the different states," Josh Lichtenstein, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray who advises investors on pension regulation, told Insider.

"If you want to be able to manage money in red states and blue states and across the whole universe of institutional investors, then it can be pretty challenging to figure out how you thread the needle in describing what you are actually doing, what you've undertaken, and what you're willing to do for any particular investor — in a way that avoids any contradictions," he said.

Republicans have seized on anti-ESG rhetoric to rally their bases and frame climate-conscious investing as a boogeyman. Democrats are generally divided on whether to divest from oil and gas — or to focus on working with the oil-and-gas sector to reduce its emissions. Wall Street prefers the latter, prompting criticism from climate advocates pushing for divestment.

"We need to stay invested in conventional energy because that needs to be a part of the transition," Megan Starr, the global head of impact at Carlyle, which manages $373 billion in assets, told Insider. "One of the things we say a lot is that if you want to decarbonize the global economy, you have to go to where the carbon is."

Carlyle is in the process of collecting the first year's worth of data from its portfolio companies after the firm said in February 2022 that it would commit to reaching net-zero emissions across investments by 2050. It's also set targets to get three-quarters of its majority-owned power-and-energy portfolio companies' emissions that they generate directly and indirectly covered by Paris-aligned climate goals by 2025. Starr said that in the past year, about 20 additional portfolio companies, including the oil-and-gas companies Neptune and Varo, have set climate goals.

Last year, Apollo, which manages $548 billion in assets, committed to reducing median carbon intensity by 15% for new investments it controls in its flagship strategy. Meanwhile, KKR is working with some of its majority-owned businesses to implement plans to reach net zero by 2050, and Blackstone won't make new investments in companies involved in oil and gas production in two recently launched funds focused on the energy transition.

Characterizing the overall effectiveness of the private-equity industry's climate-crisis response relative to public-money managers is difficult because some firms have more robust decarbonization plans than others, with commitments all over the map, Andrew Howell, the director of investor influence at the Environmental Defense Fund, said.

"On one hand, private equity is in a very good position to put through action because they do have more influence," Howell said, pointing to advantages including board seats and a bigger say in business operations. "But the reality is that the private-equity industry has been slower to adopt a focus on these issues."

A growing number of private-equity firms' pension-fund limited partners are under pressure themselves to either invest around environmental, social, and governance matters or shun investing through those lenses altogether. States are drawing lines in the sand, complicating the way firms are communicating their strategies to investors

"Is there a strong risk-return case, standalone? Is it purely impact-oriented? Is it purely values-based or are they trying to hit two or three of those at the same time?" Rich Nuzum, the chief investment strategist at investment consultant Mercer, which advises pension plans and other large investors, said. "Because you don't want to get thrown out by a sophisticated investor in due diligence if they think you're one thing and they find out you're another."

As of mid-April, states have introduced 34 total divestment bills and actions overall, with six in effect, including some in New York, Maine, and Connecticut. According to Ropes & Gray, 23 are pending and in committee, and five have failed to pass.

But states have also introduced 85 total actions seeking to restrict ESG considerations from investment decisions. Currently, 24 are in effect in states including Florida, Arizona, and South Carolina; 49 are pending, and 12 failed to pass.


Campaigners held a rally in 2018 outside of then-New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's office to pressure him to divest a state pension fund from fossil fuels.

 Erik McGregor/Getty Images

New York City said this month that as part of its plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 across two of its public-sector employee-pension plans, it would request that all of their private markets managers exclude upstream fossil-fuel investments, or those involved in the exploration and production of new oil and gas.

The New York City Employees' Retirement System and the New York City Teachers' Retirement System manage some $77 billion and $90 billion, respectively, as of December, each with roughly $8 billion in private-equity allocation. The plans have already divested from some $4 billion of public securities tied to fossil-fuel-reserve owners after announcing plans to do so in 2018.

The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, New York City's top finance official who had advocated for a bill that allows for pension plans to increase their private-markets allocations, has championed the net-zero effort that counts divestment as a key step. New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed that bill in December.

Lander's team gathered extensive feedback from asset managers in advance of the net-zero implementation commitment and took into consideration variables including the period of several years that private-equity managers typically hold their investments and what they could feasibly achieve during that time.

"Because we are getting more prescriptive, we really did have a lot of conversations with our managers to say, 'Our goal is to hit this 2040 net-zero goal, and we're externally managed, so that's only going to work if our managers are working with us,'" Lander said in an interview.

Divestment efforts in Maine offer another window into how a big pension plan is seeking to wind down fossil-fuel holdings. The state's $18.2 billion public-employees' retirement system, which had a $10 billion private-markets portfolio as of December, is now working through how it will divest from fossil fuels by 2026 after a law requiring it took effect in 2021.

Each private-equity giant has its own approach to walking this new fine line of trying to make its portfolios more environmentally friendly — and more likely to generate better returns in the long run because of it, they say as fiduciaries — while not alienating investors who might accuse them of making political decisions with their funds.

Firms' plans with their upstream investments tend to draw the most attention because they're involved in drilling for new oil and gas. "If you're a bank, and you continue to lend on expansion projects, if you're a private-equity firm and you continue to make new upstream investments — I don't believe you have a Paris-aligned plan, and the International Energy Agency says you don't have one," Lander said.

The private-equity giant KKR, whose upstream investments are largely within Crescent Energy, is invested in conventional energy through its infrastructure and energy-real assets businesses, Ken Mehlman, the global head of public affairs and the co-head of global impact at KKR, said.

Mehlman told Insider that by responsibly operating traditional energy assets, KKR "can contribute to producing better outcomes than if we exited the space — and therefore transferred emissions — to other operators who may not share our commitment to stewardship." By 2027, Crescent Energy aims to halve emissions its operations have directly caused as of its 2021 figures.

If you're a private-equity firm and you continue to make new upstream investments, I don't believe you have a Paris-aligned plan. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander

Carlyle's relationship with NGP, a Dallas-based energy-focused private-equity firm that Carlyle invested in with a non-controlling stake a decade ago, has drawn scrutiny from environmental advocates partly because of NGP's upstream investments. After the Private Equity Stakeholder Project published a report that criticized Carlyle and NGP's energy holdings last year, Carlyle told the nonprofit group in a letter, which Insider viewed, that it does not have a say in NGP's portfolio companies or operations. NGP has its own ESG considerations that it factors into the investment processes, with a particular focus on reducing emissions from its upstream and midstream oil-and-gas assets.

At Blackstone, the world's largest private-equity firm with some $991 billion of assets under management, about 1% of the firm's overall portfolio was invested in upstream companies at the end of 2022. The firm controls two oil-and-gas producers and about half of a coal plant, the James M. Gavin Power Plant in Ohio, and it has continued to invest in infrastructure such as natural-gas pipelines. In 2021 Blackstone started working toward a goal of cutting emissions by 15% at new investments where it controls the energy usage within three years.

"As fiduciaries, we believe we can create more resilient, valuable companies through effective energy management and reduced emissions. We also believe global decarbonization goals create compelling investment opportunities for private capital," a Blackstone spokesperson said.

Investors and environmental advocates are scrutinizing not just firms' current oil-and-gas holdings, but where those holdings go once private-equity managers sell them off after their investment periods. What falls into focus is whether the buyer has sufficient decarbonization plans. In January the Environmental Defense Fund, and Ceres, another major climate-focused nonprofit, published climate-related guidance for oil-and-gas dealmaking.

"If you have a management plan or decarbonization plan for an oil-and-gas field which you're selling, it goes without saying that you should be handing those over to the buyer and really encourage them to follow those plans," Howell said.

That additional scrutiny on dealmaking — core to the private-equity model — is one of the myriad challenges firms are grappling with now. Lichtenstein said he is advising clients such as asset managers to watch out for broad statements about how ESG principles are core to everything the firm does. "Those can then have to be walked back, potentially," he said, if a firm is in talks with a pension plan in a Republican-led state.

KKR is a large shareholder in Insider parent company Axel Springer.

This article is part of "The Great Transition," a series covering the big changes across industries that are leading to a more sustainable future. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub.