Australia's fires have burned more than twice as much land as the summer's Amazon blazes. They're part of an ominous carbon-dioxide feedback loop.

Aylin Woodward
5 hours ago


 

Firefighters struggle against the strong wind in an effort

 to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town

 of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales, 

December 31, 2019. Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty


Since September, bushfires have razed 14.6 million acres in Australia — more than twice the area that burned in the Amazon rainforest in 2019.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate, and nearly half a billion animals have perished.

Drought conditions and record-breaking temperatures contributed to the fires' unprecedented scale and intensity.

The carbon dioxide the blazes send into the atmosphere raises the risk of more large fires in the future.

Australia has become an inferno.

Since the start of the country's bushfire season in September, 14.6 million acres have burned and at least 18 people have died. Half a billion animals have perished, and the country's eastern states and biggest cities have been hammered by smoke and walls of flame. An estimated 1,400 homes have been destroyed in New South Wales, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to evacuate.

Australia experiences fires every fall, but this year's crisis — which comes on the heels of a record-breaking heatwave and prolonged drought — is unprecedented. The fires that plagued the Brazilian Amazon over the summer, by comparison, burned through 7 million acres of rainforest, about half of the impacted area in Australia.

A satellite photo of Bateman Bay on the southern coast of New South Wales, Australia, on December 31, 2019. Copernicus EMS

Whereas most of the Amazon fires were deliberately set by ranchers and loggers looking to clear land, Australia's bushfires mostly started due to natural causes.

But they may be part of an ominous feedback loop. The more land burns, the more carbon dioxide (CO2) gets released into the atmosphere, and the more trees — which act as natural carbon sinks — disappear. Already, Australia's fires have released 350 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's roughly 1% of the total global carbon emissions from 2019. The more CO2 gets released, the warmer our planet gets; that raises the risk of more big and deadly fires.

An area twice the size of Belgium is burning

A fire fighter watches a bushfire as it burns near homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin on December 19, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. David Gray/Getty Images

It's hard to comprehend the size of the affected area in Australia. In total, the area of burned land (14.6 million acres) is twice the size of Belgium. Nearly six times more acres have burned in Australia than in California's devastating 2018 wildfire season, when the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise.

Melbourne and Sydney have been engulfed in smoke.

"I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background," Michael Mann, a US climate scientist who is on sabbatical in Sydney, wrote in the Guardian on Wednesday.

A man looks at the smoky skyline on December 19, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. Jenny Evans/Getty Images

In December, a state official said New South Wales was experiencing the "longest" and "most widespread" period of poor air quality in the state's history.


According to AirVisual, a service that provides a live ranking of air quality in the world's cities, Sydney had the 12th-worst air quality on the planet on December 11.
A dangerous feedback loop

A firefighter battles flames outside Sydney, Australia, December 10, 2019. SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Dry conditions in Australia's bushland, wooded areas, and Blue Mountain National Park have made the land ripe for sparks. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019. December 18 was the hottest day in the country's history, with average temperatures hitting 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit (40.9 degrees Celsius).

In the last 15 years, Australia saw eight of its 10 warmest years on record. Winter rains, which can help reduce the intensity of summer fires, have declined significantly, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. That meant that when the fire season started, it was savage and unstoppable.

"We used to see hundreds of thousands of hectares burned in bushfires, but now we are seeing millions on fire," Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, told the Herald.

A firefighter sprays water after a fire impacted Clovemont Way in Melbourne, Australia on December 30, 2019. AAP Image/Julian Smith via REUTERS

The more forests burn, the more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, and the more heat it traps on the planet. To make matters worse, when natural carbon sinks like the Amazon rainforest and woodlands in Australia burn down, that reduces the natural avenues by which CO2 can get absorbed.

It's a vicious cycle.

In 2019, wildfires across the globe released approximately 6.38 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the European Union's satellite observation program, Copernicus. That's about 17% of the global total for the year.

Until now, Australia's annual bushfires were pretty much net-zero in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions — the CO2 they emitted was balanced out by how much carbon-dioxide the country's forests sequestered. But in the last three months, Australia's fires have emitted roughly 350 million metric tons of CO2, according to the Herald. (By comparison, the Amazon fires produced less than half that: 140 million metric tons.)

Between 2013 and 2017, Australia's fires emitted 340 million metric tons of CO2 on average per year. This year's total has already blown past that, and Australia's dry season has another two months to go.

"Normally bushfires are thought of as 'carbon neutral,' but, in very simple terms, we're seeing climate extremes carry a double punch, with more frequent fire and drought," David Bowman, a fire science expert at the University of Tasmania, told the Herald.

A firefighter hoses down trees and flying embers in an effort to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales, December 31, 2019. Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty

Canadell said he thinks the country's forests will need 100 years to return to the point where they can act as carbon sinks for fires of this size and scale.
Climate change is linked to more intense fires

Last year was a year of fire. Blazes cut through the Siberian tundra over the summer. California was hit by three dozen fires that each burned more than 1,000 acres. More than 100,000 fires started over the course of 10 August days in the Amazon rainforest.

Climate change increases the likelihood, size, and frequency of wildfires, since warmer air sucks away moisture from trees and soil, leading to dryer land. Rising temperatures also make heat waves and droughts more frequent and severe, which exacerbates wildfire risk, since hot, parched forests are prone to burning.

The sky is filled with smoke, and ash on December 21, 2019 in Shoalhaven Heads, NSW, Australia. A catastrophic fire danger warning has been issued for the greater Sydney region, the Illawarra and southern ranges as hot, windy conditions continue to hamper firefighting efforts across NSW. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a state of emergency on Thursday, the second state of emergency declared in NSW since the start of the bushfire season. Cassie Spencer/Getty Images

"Climate change is exacerbating every risk factor for more frequent and intense bushfires," Dale Dominey-Howes, an expert on disaster risk at the University of Sydney, told Business Insider Australia. "Widespread drought conditions, higher than average temperatures — these are all made worse by climate change."


Earth has already warmed about 1 degree Celsius. July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded, and 2019 will likely be the third-hottest year on record globally, according to Climate Central. Only 2016, 2015, and 2017 were hotter (in that order).
 

A helicopter drops water on a bushfire in scrub behind houses in Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia, December 30, 2019. AAP Image/Ellen Smith via REUTERS

"The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change," Mann wrote in The Guardian.

He added: "Take record heat, combine it with unprecedented drought in already dry regions, and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the Blue Mountains and spreading across the continent. It's not complicated."

SEE ALSO: Photos from space reveal what climate change looks like, from melting Arctic ice to rampant California fires

Read Next: Stunning images from space reveal the shocking extent of Australia's bushfire crisis

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SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=AUSTRALIA

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=WILDFIRES

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BUSHFIRES 

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CLIMATE+CHANGE

A family bought a 20,000-square-foot Freemason temple in Indiana for $89,000, and they're now turning it into their home. Take a look inside.


The Masonic temple. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa and Atom Cannizzaro bought a former Masonic temple and are converting it into a home.
The second floor, their living space, has a large open-floor concept with five bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room.
When the Freemasons operated in the building, the basement was used for events, but the Cannizzaros are making it into an event space for the community.
The great room on the third floor, the largest room in the house, is now used as a movie theater.
Theresa said she thinks the house is haunted because she has heard what sounds like a janitor's keys jangling in the basement.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Older homes almost always come with a unique and charming history, but one family in Indiana moved into a house that has a particularly strange past.


Two years ago, Theresa and Atom Cannizzaro bought a former Masonic temple in the Midwest that acted as a meeting place for one of the world's most secretive organizations for almost 100 years. Now the couple and their three children — a 12-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy, and a 6-year-old girl — are renovating the building and turning it into their home.

From large open spaces to a haunted library, here's what it's like inside the Masonic temple that the Cannizzaro family now calls home.



In 2016, Theresa and Atom Cannizzaro were living in San Diego with their three children when they decided they wanted to move to the Midwest.


Atom and Theresa. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa and Atom had lived in San Diego their entire lives and planned on raising their children there, but they soon realized that they wanted something different: a big farm in the Midwest.

"We wanted to try a new place to raise our kids — somewhere where my husband wouldn't have to work 80 hours a week," Theresa said. " We wanted to spend more time with our kids."

After a family reunion in Indiana, Theresa and Atom drove around the state looking at farms for sale when they came across something that surprised them.


While driving around Indiana, they stumbled across a Masonic temple that was for sale.

The temple. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"We turned the corner, and there was the building, right in front of us, with a for-sale sign out front," Theresa said.

As someone who loves history and architecture, Theresa was fascinated, so they called the realtor just to see how much something like that would cost. Instead, the realtor offered to give the couple a tour of the 20,000-square-foot building.

"We spent two hours inside the building and absolutely fell in love with it," she said, adding that "slowly but surely" they realized that "there's so much we could do with this space."


They ended up buying the temple for $89,000 and moved in six months later, in 2017.

The temple. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"We went back to California, but it was still on our minds," Theresa said. "We started talking through it more and did a lot of research and crunching numbers. Every single thing we talked about and every single 'what if' worked out, so we put in an offer on the building."

They bought it in full for $89,000, so they do not have a mortgage and are debt-free after using the money they got from selling their San Diego home. The equity they earned from that sale funded most of the up-front remodel costs at the temple.

Theresa is a full-time respiratory specialist, while Atom stays at home to watch the children and work on remodeling the building. So far, they have spent an additional $40,000 on renovations. Since they refuse to take out loans, the remodeling process has been "slow going," Theresa said.


The first step in the renovation was going through the items left behind in the temple when the Freemasons moved locations.

An old photo of the temple. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Freemasonry dates back to medieval times and is considered the oldest male fraternity and social organization. Famous members included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, and Gerald Ford.

Through the years, Freemasons earned a reputation as being part of a secret organization, leading to conspiracy theories that the group is behind many of the world's biggest historical events.

The Masonic lodge in Indiana that Theresa and Atom bought was built in 1926 and remained the local headquarters for several years. When the Freemasons decided to move, they cleaned out most of the building but left behind a few relics.

"I knew nothing really about Freemasonry other than that it was a secret organization," Theresa said.


Upon entering the building, you walk into a foyer with a large Masonic symbol on the floor.

The crest in the foyer. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

The front door opens into a foyer with a large crest imprinted on the floor. The crest is a common Masonic symbol, and Theresa said she planned to keep it there.

"It's really cool," Theresa said. "You walk in and it's right there on the floor."

The symbol can be seen throughout the house.

From the main entrance, you can go downstairs into the basement, where the Freemasons held large events.

The basement before the remodel. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"You can easily fit several hundred people down there," Theresa said. She added that there is a large stage in the back of the basement, where the organization would put on shows or speeches.


Theresa said her children often ride their bikes down in the basement when it's too cold to go outside.


The basement during the remodel. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

They plan to turn the basement into a community space that people can rent for events and weddings.

"We would like to eventually have a business out of the building that can benefit us financially, but we are uncertain about when that will happen," Theresa said.

Behind the stage in the basement is a large commercial kitchen with six ovens, a 10-burner stove, and a deep fryer.


The commercial kitchen after it was restored. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa said they used this kitchen when they first moved into the building before they renovated the second floor. It will become useful again when they turn the basement into a community space for events, she said.


The second floor of the building was renovated to become the Cannizzaro family's main living space.


The doors that lead into the living space. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

This is the space the Cannizzaros have renovated the most, and it's where they spend most of their time. There are five bedrooms on this floor.


In the second-floor foyer, before you enter the living space, you can see a mural on the ceiling.


The mural on the ceiling. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa and her husband have tried to preserve the mural on the crossbeams of the ceiling.

"Unfortunately, a lot of the paint on the crossbeams is starting to peel and come off, so we have to figure out how to save it," she said.


Inside the living space is a large open area that the family uses as a living room.


The living space. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa described this space as an "open concept" and said they planned to fully remodel this room sometime in the future.


In one corner of the large open space, they built a kitchen.


The newly built kitchen. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"We built the kitchen from scratch," Theresa said. "We custom-built everything."

The kitchen has pull-out cabinets that move around on rollers, as well as a large island that has a concrete countertop with semiprecious stones inside.

"It's one of my favorite spaces that we've done so far," she added.


On this floor they installed a full bathroom with a bathtub.


The bathroom. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Before the Cannizzaros moved in, the six bathrooms in the building had no place to shower or bathe.

"Our first priority when we moved into the building was to put in the shower," Theresa said. "It was our very first project."

Meanwhile, the Freemasons' offices have been turned into the family's bedrooms.


The children's bedroom. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"These rooms are big," Theresa said. "They are very, very, very large."


On the second floor, there's also a billiards room.


The billiards room. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Inside are two pool tables that were built in the 1800s, Theresa said.

"They're absolutely gorgeous, and they were left with the building," she said.

The last room on this floor is the library — Theresa's favorite room in the entire house.


The library. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"The entire wall is beautiful bookcases with glass fronts," she said. The glass has the Masonic symbol etched into the surface, and the cases are filled with books that date back to the 1800s.


The third floor has a large empty room that the family calls the Egyptian room.

 

The Egyptian room. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

There is another small mural that wraps around the entire space. If you look closely, there are symbols that Theresa said remind her of Egypt, hence the name of the room.

She said this is the room where the Freemasons would store their clothing and garb that they would wear during their meetings.

The Cannizzaros, however, plan to turn this room into an Airbnb.

Also on this floor are five cedar-lined dressing rooms.

 

The hallway of dressing rooms. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

Theresa said these small closets were where the Freemasons would change into their clothing for meetings and events.


Double doors at the end of the hall lead to the Great Room, where the Freemasons held most of their meetings.

 

The Great Room. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

The room has 24-foot ceilings, a wrap-around mezzanine, stadium seating, an organ, and a stage.

"It is quite the magnificent space," Theresa said.


For now, the Cannizzaros use this space as a home movie theater.

The Great Room is now a movie theater. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

After painting one wall white, they set up a projector and now have movie nights in the Great Room. Other times, the children use the room to play hide and seek, and sometimes they invite the 15 to 20 other kids in the neighborhood over to have a Nerf-gun fight.

The family isn't sure what to do with the room in the future. Theresa said they would most likely turn it into another rental space.


Outside the Great Room is a secret staircase that leads to the fourth floor.

The secret staircase. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

On the fourth floor you can find storage and a room that stores the organ's pipes.


Along with the secret staircase, there are other parts of the house that some may find creepy. Theresa said she thinks the building is haunted.

The main staircase. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"There are things that have happened that we just cannot explain," she said. "We've had stuff fly off shelves."

Theresa said the library seemed to be the place with the most paranormal activity. She said she often walks into the room and notices the cabinets are wide open even though they are very heavy. Sometimes she can hear what sounds like a janitor's keys jingling in the basement.

"I'm never scared in the building, and my kids are never scared," Theresa said. "I don't think it's anything really bad that's here."


Despite the paranormal activity, Theresa said her family is focused on turning the building into a home and preserving its Masonic history.

The temple. Courtesy of Theresa Cannizzaro

"Taking on a building this size, it's not a quick-snap decision, because it very well could be a lifelong project for us," Theresa said. "I just hope that we continue on our path and with the goals that we set to turn this building into what it was originally built to be."

Exclusive: Unredacted Ukraine Documents Reveal Extent of Pentagon’s Legal Concerns

JUSTSECURITY.COM

Explosive new documents reveal the lengths to which the Justice Department went to conceal the Pentagon's concerns about Trump's Ukraine aid freeze

The Justice Department redacted explosive emails that show how concerned the Pentagon was about Trump's decision to freeze Ukraine's military aid.

“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”

This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public, despite congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. 

Earlier in the day on Aug. 30, President Donald Trump met with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the president’s hold on $391 million in military assistance for Ukraine. Inside the Trump administration, panic was reaching fever pitch about the president’s funding hold, which had stretched on for two months. Days earlier, POLITICO had broken the story and questions were starting to pile up. U.S. defense contractors were worried about delayed contracts and officials in Kyiv and lawmakers on Capitol Hill wanted to know what on earth was going on. While Trump’s national security team thought withholding the money went against U.S. national security interests, Trump still wouldn’t budge. 

Thanks to the testimony of several Trump administration officials, we now know what Trump was waiting on: a commitment from Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. 

But getting at that truth hasn’t been easy and the Trump administration continues to try to obscure it. It is blocking key officials from testifying and is keeping documentary evidence from lawmakers investigating the Ukraine story. For example, this note from Duffey to McCusker was never turned over to House investigators and the Trump administration is continuing to try to keep it secret. 

Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit. It released a first batch on Dec. 12, and then a second installment on Dec. 20, including Duffey’s email, but that document, along with several others, were partially or completely blacked out.

Since then, Just Security has viewed unredacted copies of these emails, which begin in June and end in early October. Together, they tell the behind-the-scenes story of the defense and budget officials who had to carry out the president’s unexplained hold on military aid to Ukraine. 

The documents reveal growing concern from Pentagon officials that the hold would violate the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend money as appropriated by Congress, and that the necessary steps to avoid this result weren’t being taken. Those steps would include notifying Congress that the funding was being held or shifted elsewhere, a step that was never taken. The emails also show that no rationale was ever given for why the hold was put in place or why it was eventually lifted. 

What is clear is that it all came down to the president and what he wanted; no one else appears to have supported his position. Although the pretext for the hold was that some sort of policy review was taking place, the emails make no mention of that actually happening. Instead, officials were anxiously waiting for the president to be convinced that the hold was a bad idea. And while the situation continued throughout the summer, senior defense officials were searching for legal guidance, worried they would be blamed should the hold be lifted too late to actually spend all of the money, which would violate the law. 

The emails also reveal key decision points, moments when senior officials hoped the hold might be lifted. This includes Vice President Mike Pence’s September meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which a senior defense official expected would resolve the funding issue, raising the question: Why? What was supposed to come out of that meeting that would pave the way for Trump to lift the hold? What was Pence expected to communicate? 

But, the hold wasn’t immediately lifted after Pence’s meeting with Zelenskyy. Instead, the president finally released the money on Sept. 11, just as the whistleblower complaint was about to break into the open.  

As for how the story begins, it was in mid-June when Defense Department officials first heard the president had questions about the Ukraine money. 

READ ON 

'The rich should pay more' — Bill Gates calls for higher taxes on the wealthy in New Year's Eve blog post

Business Insider•January 2, 2020

Bill Gates     Gus Ruelas/Reuters

Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person behind Amazon's Jeff Bezos, wants rich people to pay higher taxes.

"We've updated our tax system before to keep up with changing times, and we need to do it again, starting with raising taxes on people like me," Gates said.

The Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist made the comments in a blog post titled "What I'm thinking about this New Year's Eve."

Gates argued that taxes should be shifted toward investments instead of wages, called for loopholes to be closed and large fortunes to be taxed, and tackled topics such as voluntary taxes, philanthropy, and the impact on enterprise.

Bill Gates wants rich people to pay higher taxes.

"I've been disproportionately rewarded for the work I've done," the billionaire Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist said in a blog post titled "What I'm thinking about this New Year's Eve."

"The rich should pay more than they currently do, and that includes Melinda and me," Gates added, referring to his wife, who with him founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"We've updated our tax system before to keep up with changing times, and we need to do it again, starting with raising taxes on people like me," he said. The taxes should be spent smartly to "build a healthier, more equitable world for all," he added.

Gates is worth about $113 billion, making him the world's second-richest person behind Amazon's Jeff Bezos, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Gates' arguments for higher taxes on the rich:

The US government needs to levy higher taxes to fulfill its obligations, as it collects about 20% of gross domestic product in taxes but spends about 24%.

Taxing and redistributing the proceeds could help narrow the wealth gap between the richest and poorest Americans, which has widened over the past half-century.


The government primarily taxes labor, but it should tax capital more. It earns about 75% of its revenue by taxing wages and salaries at up to 37%, while taxing investments — which generate the bulk of rich people's incomes — at 20% if they're held for more than a year.


"That's the clearest evidence I've seen that the system isn't fair," Gates wrote. "I don't see any reason to favor wealth over work the way we do today."
His proposals for overhauling the US tax system:


Estate taxes should be higher and inheritance loopholes should be closed. "A dynastic system where you can pass vast wealth along to your children is not good for anyone; the next generation doesn't end up with the same incentive to work hard and contribute to the economy," Gates said.


The cap on the amount of income subject to Medicare taxes should be removed.


The carried-interest loophole, which allows fund managers to pay lower capital gains rates on their incomes, should be closed.


Large fortunes should be taxed after about a decade as investments can escape taxes if they're not sold or traded.


State and local taxes should be fairer.

Gates tackled several common criticisms of higher taxes in his blog post too.
Voluntary taxes

The Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway director addressed the frequent response to billionaires such as himself and Warren Buffett calling for higher taxes: They can pay more than required by law if they so wish.

"Simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution," Gates said. "People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not out of charity. Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do."
Philanthropy

Unsurprisingly, the world's best-known philanthropist defended private-sector giving.

"There's value to society in allowing the wealthy to put some money into private foundations, because foundations play an irreplaceable role that's distinct from what governments do well," Gates said.

He gave the example of high-risk initiatives, such as his foundation's experimentation with new ways to eradicate malaria.

"If a government tries an idea for improving global health that fails, someone wasn't doing their job," he said. "Whereas if we don't try some ideas that fail, we're not doing our jobs."
Enterprise

Finally, Gates addressed concerns that raising taxes would discourage entrepreneurship and innovation by cutting their rewards. He argued those weren't real worries at current tax rates.

"We shouldn't destroy those incentives, but we're a long way from that point now," he said. "Americans in the top 1% can afford to pay a lot more before they stop going to work or creating jobs."

Gates pointed out that higher taxes didn't dissuade him from founding and building a business.

"In the 1970s, when Paul Allen and I were starting Microsoft, marginal tax rates were almost twice the top rate today," he wrote. "It didn't hurt our incentive to build a great company."

Amazon employees say they were threatened for climate change criticism

Engadget•January 2, 2020 229

Two Amazon employees who spoke out against the company's environmental policies say they were threatened with termination if they continue to violate the company's external communications policy, The Washington Post reports.

In October, the employees, Maren Costa and Jamie Kowalski, told The Washington Post that Amazon contributes to climate change by supporting oil- and gas-company exploration with its cloud computing business. Both employees say they were subsequently called into meetings with human resources, where they were accused of violating the company's external communications policy. Costa says she then received an email from a company lawyer, who claimed future violations could "result in formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon." Kowlanski says she received a similar email.

In a statement provided to Engadget, an Amazon spokesperson said:

"Our policy regarding external communications is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies. We recently updated the policy and related approval process to make it easier for employees to participate in external activities such as speeches, media interviews, and use of the company's logo. As with any company policy, employees may receive a notification from our HR team if we learn of an instance where a policy is not being followed."

As part of its overall communications rules, Amazon tells employees they may speak out on social media, as long as they do not share confidential business information, The Washington Post notes.

The incident speaks to the growing trend of employees calling out large tech companies on everything from their environmental policies to workplace diversity, sexual misconduct, human rights policy and "retaliation culture."

It also speaks to the issue of Big Tech companies clamping down on employee criticism and protests. Most recently, the National Labor Relations Board instructed Google to remind employees that they can speak freely about workplace issues, after employees alleged they were fired for union organizing, a claim Google denies. As the tech labor movement continues to gain momentum, incidents like these will likely become more common.



Amazon employees say they won't stop pushing the company on climate change, despite fears of being fired

Julie Bort
11 hours ago

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the Amazon employee group that has publicly pushed the company to adopt aggressive climate change say they won't stop, despite fears of being fired.

The group issued a press release on Thursday saying a few of them were contacted by HR and legal last fall after two of them were named in a news article publicly criticising the company.

"Amazon's policy is not going to stop the momentum tech workers have built over the past year at Amazon," said Amazon data engineer Justin Campbell in a press release from the group.

Amazon said it has been supportive of climate change policies, promising to adopt the proposals of the Paris Accord a decade ahead of deadline.

But the employees have been calling on Amazon to do more, including to stop supporting oil and gas companies on its Amazon Web Services cloud.

The Amazon employees who have been publicly and vocally calling on the company to agree to their list of climate-related policies say they aren't giving up, despite what they say are the company's attempts to subdue them.

The group, which calls itself Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, issued a press release on Thursday and took to Twitter, shortly after a Washington Post report that human resources at Amazon had emailed warnings to two leaders in the group. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

The two employees in question were named in a Washington Post story in October after two members of the group criticized Amazon's cloud computing business for offering services that aid oil and gas companies in the process of extraction.

People associated with this group have been making these same criticisms over Amazon Web Services and its work with oil and gas companies for the better part of a year, since the group published an open letter in April 2019. That letter also included a list of other demands. The group has since pubished other letters, organized demonstrations, and made public statements and communicated with the press.
Amazon changes its policies

However, in September, Amazon changed its communications policy to require employees to get prior company approval to speak about Amazon in any public forum, including social media.

This policy came one day after the group publicly announced that it would be participating in the Global Climate Walkout on September 20. The walkout day was led by the 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, and saw millions of people around the world leave their jobs and classrooms to protest the lack of progress curtailing the earth's climate crises.

Also on September 19, a day before Thunberg's event, Amazon issued its Climate Pledge, in which the company agreed to be run on 100% renewable energy by 2030 and zero carbon emmissions across its businesses by 2040 — a decade ahead of the Paris Accords, which set a goal of 2050. The employees were demanding the company do that by 2030.

And then, in October 10, Amazon issued a public list of its policies including things like support for increasing the minimum wage, recapped its Climate Pledge and said it will continue to support its energy industry customers to help them move to renewable energy.
'False narrative'

Two employees and members of the Climate Justice group immediately shot back, accusing the company of a "false narrative" on its work with the oil industry, the Washington Post reported. They pointed to AWS marketing materials promising to help energy companies companies locate new oil reserves.

This was a risky move on the employees' parts — not just because of the new communications policy, but because Amazon's top leadership principle is "customer obsession," meaning that any criticism of Amazon's customers would likely be noticed. (The employees have pointed out that another leadership principle at Amazon is to "challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting.")

In November, the two employees named in the article were contacted by HR and Amazon's legal department and questioned over violating the communications policy, the group says. Others employees "received follow-up emails threatening termination if they continue to speak out about Amazon's business," the group also says.
Won't stop

And now, these employees are saying despite the risk of losing their jobs, they won't stop pressuring the company.

"Amazon's policy is not going to stop the momentum tech workers have built over the past year at Amazon," said Amazon data engineer Justin Campbell in the group's press release. "The climate crisis is the greatest challenge we face and the only way we can find solutions is by protecting people's right to speak freely and disrupting the status quo."

The group did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

"Our policy regarding external communications is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider, who also added that the policy was changed "to make it easier for employees to participate in external activities such as speeches, media interviews, and use of the company's logo" by giving them access to an internal website for such requests, the spokesperson said. The spokesperson also said that if HR learns a company has violated any policy, including this one, they may "receive notification" from the HR team.

Amazon isn't the only big tech company under scrutiny who is now trying to clamp down on employees who protest.

In November, Google fired four employees, at least two of them well known for their roles in protesting corporate leadership, over alleged violations of Google's data-security policies.

U.S.
PHOTOS: #MenToo: The hidden tragedy of male sexual abuse in the military

Yahoo News Photo Staff
•December 31, 2019
Military sexual trauma victim Ethan Hanson. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Award-winning photojournalist Mary F. Calvert has spent six years documenting the prevalence of rape in the military and the effects on victims. She began with a focus on female victims but more recently has examined the underreported incidence of sexual assaults on men and the lifelong trauma it can inflict.

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Last March, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a retired Air Force combat pilot, disclosed that she had been the victim of multiple sexual assaults by fellow officers, putting the issue of sexual assault in the military on the national agenda. Two months later, a required biannual Department of Defense report found that sexual assault within the ranks had increased by 38 percent over two years. Much less attention has been given to the problem of sexual assault against men in uniform. The report estimated that “20,500 Service members, representing about 13,000 women and 7,500 men, experienced some kind of contact or penetrative sexual assault in 2018, up from approximately 14,900 in 2016.”

Although the military has made efforts to encourage victims to come forward, most assaults are still not reported, and victims who do make reports sometimes still face retaliation. Although men are less likely to be victimized than women, the stigma and psychological trauma can be equally devastating. A DOD report released on Nov. 5 determined that military sexual assault might be more likely to cause PTSD than combat.
Arizona Sen. Martha McSally. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

“Male victims of sexual assault in [the military] remain in the shadows and are not receiving the care and support they need,” said retired Marine Corps Col. Scott Jensen, the vice chair of Protect Our Defenders, an organization that combats military rape and assault. “When it comes to actual reporting of sexual assaults, it is telling that male victims actually file a report at such a low rate [18 percent] when we know from DOD’s own 2016 survey that 42 percent of overall victims are male. A system that addresses men and women in the same way without sensitivity to the nuances and differences between survivors of different genders is destined to fail. Much more attention to both preventing and responding to male survivors is necessary to ensure that those who are suffering feel comfortable and supported enough to report.

“This can only happen when a cultural shift occurs that reduces the stigma of reporting a sexual assault in a hypermasculine culture. That type of change will not occur without focused, aggressive and demanding leadership on the part of the leadership of DOD.”

The effects of military sexual trauma (MST) in male victims include depression, substance abuse, paranoia, hypervigilance, anger and feelings of isolation. Victims may turn to alcohol or drugs or end up homeless, even suicidal.

There are few treatment programs in the U.S. military for male MST victims. Most men are lumped in with combat PTSD sufferers, who often resent the presence of rape victims and treat them as phonies and pariahs. The Department of Veterans Affairs has few beds reserved for MST victims nationwide, and most are assigned to women.

Here are a few of the male victims’ stories:
Jack Williams
(Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Jack Williams, 72, spends the night at a highway rest stop in Everett, Wash. Williams was raped by an instructor when he served in the U.S. Air Force in 1966. He reported the rape immediately but the response by his superiors was to threaten him with a homosexual discharge. “Back in 1966 if you admitted you'd been raped that was the same as saying you were a child molester,” he says. “My PTSD has been so bad for all these years. ... All those years I have not been able to sleep in a normal way like normal people do. I have to carry extra clothes with me because I soil myself. ... I feel that the government should have to bear the expense of repairing me even though I am old.”
Jack Williams. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)
Ethan Hanson
Katie Hanson with her husband, Ethan Hanson. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Six years after he was sexually hazed in a shower during Marine boot camp, Ethan Hanson still can’t shower, even at home. The assault, he says, was punishment by his drill instructor for talking and laughing with other recruits in the shower. “When I come into contact with steam, hot water, anything that makes my skin slippery, it's back to being in that shower again. ... It makes me want to vomit up every bit of bile I have.”
Ethan Hanson. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)
Paul Lloyd
Paul Lloyd. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Ten years ago, Paul Lloyd was raped by a fellow soldier in the shower during Army boot camp. After the attack he spent 14 days in the hospital but never reported the crime. A few months later he was given a general discharge from and went home to Salt Lake City to try to rebuild his life. He was comforted by his wife, Rachel, after a flashback in the grocery store.

“We were at the store. I was looking at some stuff and started smelling some candles and found a candle that triggered me back into a flashback. It's similar to the scent of the shampoo I was using at the time of the assault. When it happens, you're back there; you're back in that little three-by-three-square shower, cold tile and hot water and cold water running down. You do, you feel psychologically, not just physiologically, your mind goes back to the pain at the time of the assault being thrown up against the wall multiple times, being forced to do things, forced having your jaw open. It's hell, and there's no escape from it,” he said.
Paul Lloyd. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

To escape the nightmares that follow his flashbacks, Lloyd sometimes stays up late doing chores like cleaning the house. “The flashbacks keep me from sleeping and so I clean, I over clean, I’m obsessed because I have to get my mind off of what had happened. I think the worst I've ever gotten is four days without sleeping, like an actual good night's rest or even just a decent rest. I just obsess. It’s something that I have complete control over when I clean and that’s why I do it.”
Billy Joe Capshaw
(Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Billy Joe Capshaw was 17 years old when he joined the U.S. Army to help support his family in Hot Springs, Ark. His mother signed for him and he was shipped off to Germany where he spent the next 18 months being raped and tortured by his roommate — the notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who after his discharge committed at least 17 murders, dismembering and in some cases eating the victims. (Dahmer was killed in prison by another inmate in 1994.) Capshaw reported the abuse, but, he says, the Army did nothing to protect him. At one point he jumped out of a third-story window to get away from his rapist but was literally dragged back into the room. Dahmer was eventually discharged for alcohol abuse. Soon after, Capshaw was given an honorable discharge and sent home, where he stayed in his room for five years.

“I had to get 26 years of therapy because of this. I look like a leopard. I got spots all over me, I mean, just horrible scars and it’s just ruined my life. And just being attached to the name of Jeffrey Dahmer, I can never hold a job.”
Billy Joe Capshaw. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Capshaw stays up late drinking and watching music videos on his computer. The kitchen light is always on. “When I first got to Germany I was 17 years old and I think it was in February when I got there, in 1979 or 1980,” said Capshaw. “I met Jeff and we became roommates. I think the first or second night he started acting funny and by the third night I’d been raped and I didn’t know what to do, I really didn’t. I didn’t know who to go to or any of that stuff. He was drinking heavy and I told him what happened the next morning. He just looked at me like, ‘Who cares?’ Kind of a blank look.”
Billy Joe Capshaw. (Photo: Mary F. Calvert)

Capshaw sleeps on his living room couch with the kitchen light on. He says he cannot sleep in a dark room or a bed because he was raped in a bed. “If you knew how hard it is to admit your rape,” he says. “I’m getting stuck for words. It’s hard to admit. Wow. If you’re a man, it’s very hard to admit you get raped. It takes away from everything you were ever, ever, ever told in life by your mother, your father, everything. It takes away your sexuality; it takes away from you emotionally. You’re vulnerable in a lot of ways.

“You feel that way all the time. We feel like somebody knows it that’s the only way to get better is to admit it. I mean tell people and now there’s not such a stigma about it because it’s been going on so long.”

Text and photography by Mary F. Calvert

Jerry Adler/Yahoo News contributed to this report

#MENTOOMILITARYRAPE #MALERAPE #RAPEISRAPE #MENTOOHIGHSCHOOLHAZING #MENTOOPRISONRAPE