It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Rare footage shows 3 orcas killing a great white shark to eat its liver, supporting theory about why the species is fleeing South African waters
Kelsey Vlamis
Stunning drone footage shows an orca carrying a great white shark in its mouth as blood pooled.
A study published last month suggested orcas had driven great whites from South African waters.
The video supports the theory, which could involve major implications for the marine ecosystem.
Stunning drone footage captured earlier this year off the coast of South Africa shows three orcas in the midst of killing a great white shark — supporting a theory that says the shark has been driven out of its typical habitats.
The footage, which was captured for Discovery Channel's Shark Week and is set to air Thursday, was published by The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
The video begins by showing two orcas swimming near the surface in the bright teal water of South Africa's Mossel Bay, which is known for its great whites.
Suddenly, a third orca rises from the depths, carrying a 9-foot-long great white shark in its mouth. As the orca reaches the surface, blood pools around the dead shark. The orca carrying the shark dives back below the surface.
Alison Towner, a scientist in South Africa who studies great whites, told The Daily Beast it was "the world's first drone footage of killer whales predating on a white shark." She added it's the first "direct evidence" of the phenomenon to be documented in South Africa.
"It's probably one of the most beautiful pieces of natural history ever filmed," she said.
Great white sharks are considered apex predators, meaning they have no known predators; however, researchers have identified rare occurrences of them being preyed upon by orcas.
The researchers noted carcasses of dead great whites had been washing ashore with their livers ripped out and, for some, without their hearts. The wounds on the sharks suggested they had been made by the same pair of orcas, according to the study.
In the newly released drone footage, the orca is holding the shark near where its liver is.
The authors believed the attacks had prompted the migration of great whites out of the area.
"What we seem to be witnessing though is a large-scale avoidance strategy, mirroring what we see used by wild dogs in the Serengeti in Tanzania, in response to increased lion presence," Towner said at the time.
The study authors said the decrease in great whites in the area may have contributed to the increase in another predator, the bronze whaler shark, though they noted that species, too, was being hunted by the orcas.
"Predator-prey interactions between white sharks, other coastal sharks, and killer whales are increasing in South Africa and are expected to have pronounced impacts on the ecosystem," the study said.
The drone footage is expected to air Thursday during the special "Shark House" on Discovery and Discovery+.
UK
The public relations and ad firms refusing fossil fuel clients
Suzanne Bearne - BBC Business reporter Thu, July 28, 2022 Marian Ventura gave up all fossil fuel clients last year
Up until three years ago, PR and advertising firm boss Marian Ventura was more than happy to work on projects for oil and gas companies.
"I felt I was pushing change from the inside, collaborating to enhance their transparency and accountability," says the founder of Done!, which is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
She says that in Latin America the fossil fuels industry is considered "prestigious". "They sponsor every sustainability event or prize in the region, and of course they are the 'best clients to have, for their big budgets."
Then in 2019, Ms Ventura's feelings started to shift when she decided to certify her business as a so-called "B Corp" organisation. This is a global certification scheme whereby firms aim to meet the best possible social and environmental standards.
"As a B company, we know that in order to fulfil our corporate purpose we cannot turn a blind eye to these questions: Who am I selling to? What am I selling? Will I be proud of what I am selling in 10 years?," says Ms Ventura.
While a small but growing number of advertising and PR firms now won't work with fossil fuel firms it is important to remember that many others still do so
As a result, she started to reduce her oil clients, but in 2021 she went one step further.
Last year, she decided that Done! would become one of the now 350 advertising and PR firms who have joined a movement called Clean Creatives. Joining the movement means they pledge to refuse any future work for fossil fuel firms, or their trade associations.
"We dropped off at least four active clients related to oil and gas, and refused a dozen quotation requests, that actually keep coming," says Ms Ventura.
She adds that her decision has come in for criticism. "People with whom we have stronger relationships, told me that they don't agree with our position, because they believe oil and gas are irreplaceable resources for society, and they assure it can be developed in a responsible way."
Duncan Meisel, director at US-based Clean Creatives, says he sees a shift happening. "We know there's agencies not taking the pledge who have told us privately that they are no longer pitching to fossil fuel clients. It's a step forward." Duncan Meisal, left, and his organisation Clean Creatives have seen 350 ad and PR firms sign up
He adds: "The fossil fuel industry uses advertising agencies and PR agencies to make it harder for governments to hold them accountable. And ads are misleading and make companies seem more committed to climate action than they really are."
Some advertising firms are, however, continuing with fossil fuel clients, such as the UK's WPP, whose subsidiaries have worked with the likes of BP, Shell and Exxon Mobile.
"Our clients have an important role to play in the transition to a low carbon economy and how they communicate their actions must be accurate," says a WPP spokesman. "We apply rigorous standards to the content we produce for our clients, and seek to fairly represent their environmental commitments and investments.
"We will not take on any client, or work, whose objective is to frustrate the policies required by the Paris Agreement [on climate change]."
Fossil fuel firms have been big earners for advertising and PR firms since the early 20th Century
The US headquartered firm subsequently carried out a 60-day review of its climate strategy, and boss Richard Edelman said in a company blog post in January that it might have to "part ways" with clients not committed to net zero emissions.
Edelman declined to give a subsequent comment to BBC News for this article.
Oil and gas trade association, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), says it is wrong to criticise PR and advertising firms that work with the energy sector.
"Pressuring agencies to avoid working with companies involved oil and gas is counter-productive to combatting climate change, as they're also the ones with the decades of energy expertise that are developing and rolling out the cleaner technologies that are needed," says OEUK external relations director, Jenny Stanning.
New Economy is a new series exploring how businesses, trade, economies and working life are changing fast.
A spokesperson for the Advertising Association says that it does not believe the fossil fuel industry should be banned from advertising "but we do recognise the right for individual companies to decide who they do and don't work with".
"Accuracy and honesty in all advertising is paramount," he adds. "This is an area carefully regulated by both the CMA [Competition and Markets Authority] and ASA [Advertising Standards Authority], which expects advertisers to be able to show evidence for any claims they make on the environmental impact of the products and services they feature.
"We believe in the freedom of speech, and Clean Creatives are exercising that right. Our end goals are the same i.e. net zero, but we think a more nuanced approach is required."
Solitaire Townsend, boss of UK advertising agency and PR firm Futurra, gave up working with oil and gas clients some 15 years ago.
She says that more and more firms in her industry will have to follow suit - if they wish to attract the best staff.
"A lot of agencies will come to the point where they have to make the decision if they want to be able to recruit the brightest," says Ms Townsend. "The young ones don't want to work with oil and gas [clients]."
UK's 40C heatwave 'basically impossible' without climate change
Georgina Rannard - BBC News Climate & Science Thu, July 28, 2022 The UK is not adapted to the high temperatures seen last week, experts say
The record temperatures in the UK last week would have been "almost impossible" without human-induced climate change, leading scientists have concluded.
The UK recorded temperatures above 40C for the first time on 19 July.
Without human-caused climate change these would have been 2C to 4C cooler, the experts say.
It is a taste of what is to come, they say, with more heatwaves, fires and droughts predicted in coming years.
The extreme heat caused significant disruption to the UK, with experts warning that excess deaths related to temperatures will be high. Wildfires also destroyed homes and nature in some places.
The world has warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. Greenhouse gases have been pumped into the atmosphere by activities like burning fuels, which have heated up the Earth's atmosphere.
The findings are released by the World Weather Attribution group - a collection of leading climate scientists who meet after an extreme weather event to determine whether climate change made it more likely.
They looked at three individual weather stations that recorded very high temperatures - Cranwell, Lincolnshire, St James Park in London, and Durham.
Dr Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, who leads the World Weather Attribution group, told BBC News that even in today's climate, having such temperatures was still rare and that we would expect them between once every 500 years and once every 1,500 years.
But she said that as global temperatures rose, the likelihood of this heat happening more regularly would increase.
"We would not have had last week's temperatures without climate change, that's for sure," she said. These temperatures are at least 2C higher but the real number is probably closer to 4C higher than a world without human-caused climate change, she explained.
The scientists use a combination of looking at temperature records dating back through time, and complex mathematical models that assess how human-caused climate change affects the weather.
"Because we know very well how many greenhouse gases have been put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we can take these things out of the model and simulate a world that might have been without climate change," Dr Otto says.
That allows the scientists to compare the two different scenarios - a world with 1.1C of warming and a world without that temperature increase.
Dr Otto says if we want to keep this type of a heat a rare event, the UK must reach net zero "very soon". That is the point at which we stop adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The government's target is to reach net zero by 2050.
"Every little bit of warming really makes these types of events more likely and even hotter. Heatwaves are much more deadly than other extreme weather like floods and climate change is a game-changer for heatwaves," she explained.
The scientists also say it demonstrates that the UK is not adapted to warming temperatures, with our homes, hospitals, schools and travel networks unable to withstand the high temperatures.
Climate change is affecting all parts of the globe, with extreme heat this year affecting countries including India, the US, Australia, Spain and Germany.
Politicians globally are committed to keeping global temperature rises below 1.5C but environmentalists say progress is much too slow.
"The climate has already changed - we are and will continue to suffer the consequences of government inaction," Greenpeace UK's head of climate, Rosie Rogers, told BBC News. "How bad things get depends on how much or little governments now decide to do to get off fossil fuels."
"As one of the world's biggest historical emitters, the UK has an obligation to step up and rapidly slash emissions to zero," she said. "The new prime minister needs to act on these warnings from the climate, and set an example for others to follow."
To tackle climate change, scientists say we must make steep cuts to our emissions, changing how we produce and use energy, as well as protect nature that helps to soak up greenhouse gases.
Climate migration growing but not fully recognized by world
- Workers walk to work at an export processing zone early in the morning after crossing the Mongla river in Mongla, Bangladesh, March 3, 2022. This Bangladeshi town stands alone to offer new life to thousands of climate migrants. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)
A firefighter passes a burning home as the Dixie Fire flares in Plumas County, Calif., July 24, 2021. Tens of millions of people are being uprooted by natural disasters due to the impact of climate change, though the world has yet to fully recognize climate migrants or come up with a formalized mechanism to assess their needs and help them.
(AP Photo/Noah Berge, File)
FILE - Members of a family visit their home devastated by a landslide triggered by hurricanes Eta and Iota in the village of La Reina, Honduras, June 25, 2021.
The Boca reservoir, that supplies water to the northern city of Monterrey, is almost dry as the northern part of Mexico is affected by an intense drought, in Santiago, Mexico, July 9, 2022.
Somalis who fled drought-stricken areas carry their belongings as they arrive at a makeshift camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, June 30, 2022. Tens of millions of people are being uprooted by natural disasters due to the impact of climate change, though the world has yet to fully recognize climate migrants or come up with a formalized mechanism to assess their needs and help them.
(AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File) JULIE WATSON Thu, July 28, 2022
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Worsening climate largely from the burning of coal and gas is uprooting millions of people, with wildfires overrunning towns in California, rising seas overtaking island nations and drought exacerbating conflicts in various parts of the world.
Each year, natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. And scientists predict migration will grow as the planet gets hotter. Over the next 30 years, 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, according to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this year.
Still, the world has yet to officially recognize climate migrants or come up with formalized ways to assess their needs and help them. Here’s a look at climate migration today.
WHO ARE CLIMATE MIGRANTS?
Most climate migrants move within the borders of their homelands, usually from rural areas to cities after losing their home or livelihood because of drought, rising seas or another weather calamity. Because cities also are facing their own climate-related problems, including soaring temperatures and water scarcity, people are increasingly being forced to flee across international borders to seek refuge.
Yet climate migrants are not afforded refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which provides legal protection only to people fleeing persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group.
While worsening weather conditions are exacerbating poverty, crime and political instability, and fueling tensions over dwindling resources from Africa to Latin America, often climate change is overlooked as a contributing factor to people fleeing their homelands. According to the UNHCR, 90% of refugees under its mandate are from countries “on the front lines of the climate emergency.”
In El Salvador, for example, scores each year leave villages because of crop failure from drought or flooding, and end up in cities where they become victims of gang violence and ultimately flee their countries because of those attacks.
“It’s hard to say that someone moves just because of climate change. Is everyone who leaves Honduras after a hurricane a climate migrant?” Elizabeth Ferris, a research professor at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “And then there are non-climate related environmental hazards - people flee earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis - should they be treated differently than those displaced by weather-related phenomena?"
Despite the challenges, it's vital that governments identify climate-displaced people, Ferris added.
“The whole definitional issue isn’t a trivial question - how can you develop a policy for people if you aren’t clear on who it applies to?” she wrote.
INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS
While no nation offers asylum to climate migrants, UNHCR published legal guidance in October 2020 that opens the door for offering protection to people displaced by the effects of global warming. It said that climate change should be taken into consideration in certain scenarios when it intersects with violence, though it stopped short of redefining the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The commission acknowledged that temporary protection may be insufficient if a country cannot remedy the situation from natural disasters, such as rising seas, suggesting that certain climate displaced people could be eligible for resettlement if their place of origin is considered uninhabitable.
An increasing number of countries are laying the groundwork to become safe havens for climate migrants. In May, Argentina created a special humanitarian visa for people from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean displaced by natural disasters to let them stay for three years.
Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden ordered his national security adviser to conduct a months-long study that included looking at the “options for protection and resettlement of individuals displaced directly or indirectly from climate change.” A task force was set up, but so far the administration has not adopted such a program.
Low-lying Bangladesh, which is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, has been among the first to try to adapt to the new reality of migration. Efforts are underway to identify climate-resilient towns where people displaced by sea level rise, river erosion, cyclonic storms and intrusion of saline water can move to work, and in return help their new locations economically.
TRANSFORMING DEBATES ON MIGRATION
Policy debates on migration have long centered on locking down borders. Climate change is changing that.
With hundreds of millions of people expected to be uprooted by natural disasters, there is growing discussion about how to manage migration flows rather than stop them, as for many people migration will become a survival tool, according to advocates.
“One problem is just the complete lack of understanding as to how climate is forcing people to move," said Amali Tower, founder and executive director of Climate Refugees, an advocacy group focused on raising awareness about people displaced because of climate change. “There is still this idea in the Global North (industrialized nations) that people come here because they are fleeing poverty and seeking a better life, the American Dream. In Europe, it's the same spin of the same story. But no one wants to leave their home. We've got to approach climate displacement as a human security issue and not a border security issue."
____
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
ECOCIDE Congo basin peatland rainforest oil leases up for auction
This Dec. 11, 2016, photo shows the Virunga National Park, taken from the rim of the crater of the Nyiragongo volcano and looking over the crater of another, extinct volcano, in North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Several oil and gas fields in the DRC, including some in the park, are being put up for auction starting Thursday, July 28, 2022, prompting outrage from environmental groups.
(Juergen Baetz/dpa via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More WANJOHI KABUKURU Thu, July 28, 2022
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) — Sections of a renowned peatland tropical forest in the Congo Basin that plays a crucial role in Africa's climate system go up for oil and gas auction in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday.
The DRC government will auction 30 oil and gas blocks in the Cuvette-Centrale Peatlands in the Congo Basin forest — the world’s largest tropical peatland. Peatland soils are known as ‘carbon sinks’ because packed into them are immense stores of carbon that get released into the atmosphere when the ecosystem is disturbed.
Some of the areas, or blocs, marked for oil leasing lie within Africa’s iconic first conservation area, the Virunga National Park, created in 1925 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to the last bastion of mountain gorillas.
The Congo basin covers 530 million hectares (1.3 billion acres) in central Africa and represents 70% of the continent's forested land. It hosts over a thousand bird species and more primates than any other place in the world, including the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees and Bonobos.
People are at risk, too. Members of the Mbuti and Baka people could be displaced or evicted.
The move by the Congo-Kinshasa Ministry of Hydrocarbons has angered environmentalists and climate activists who say that oil drilling will pose significant risks to a continent already inundated by harsh climate effects. The Centre for International Forest Research puts the massive Cuvette-Centrale carbon sink at 145,000 square kilometers (56,000 square miles) and said it stores up to 20 years' equivalent of the carbon emissions emitted by the United States.
Other blocs the DRC plans to auction include some located on Lake Kivu, Lake Tanganyika, and one in a coastal region alongside the Albertine-Grabben region, the western side of the Eastern African Rift Valley system.
"These are the last refuges of nature biodiversity," and our last carbon sinks, said Ken Mwathe, of BirdLife International in Africa. "We must not sacrifice these valuable natural assets for damaging development.”
The auction of part of the Congo Basin rainforest, which represents 5% of the global tropical forests, comes barely a week after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature hosted the inaugural Africa Protected Areas Congress in Kigali, Rwanda. There, attendees resolved to strengthen protection of Africa’s key biodiversity hotspots.
The DRC is one of 17 nations in the world classified as “megadiverse.” In September last year, at the World Conservation Congress meeting in France, 137 resolutions dubbed the “Marseille Manifesto” highlighted the significant role the Congo Basin is expected to play in the global commitment to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030.
Last year at the U.N. climate conference COP26, a dozen donors dubbed the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, pledged some $1.5 billion “to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.”
The Democratic Republic's carbon sponge is also at risk from large-scale logging, expansion of agriculture and the planned diversion of the Congo River’s waters into the shrinking Lake Chad.
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
BBC OBITUARY
James Lovelock: Influential green thinker dies aged 103
James Lovelock
British scientist James Lovelock, who devoted his life to the global green movement, has died on his 103rd birthday, his family has said.
His 1960s Gaia theory found that Earth, from rocks to air, was one huge interconnected and self-regulating system.
His work formed the basis of much of climate science.
And he had warned climate change could be a tipping point for the planet.
But his support for nuclear energy and for fracking attracted criticism from other environmentalists.
Working for Nasa in the 1960s, Lovelock had what he called a Eureka moment when he realised living things had a profound impact on the environment around them.
This led to the radical idea everything on Earth, from oceans to every living organism, was a living, connected system.
Some scientists saw the idea as too "new age". But the theory spread and formed the basis of the growing green movement.
Lovelock, who lived in Dorset, also revealed chemicals were destroying the ozone layer.
He later became an independent scientist and was driven to reveal the huge threat posed to life by a warming world.
"We're playing a very dangerous game," Lovelock told BBC News in 2020. "It's direct interference with one of the major regulating mechanisms of Gaia."
Met Office Hadley Centre climate-impacts research head Prof Richard Betts said: "I am devastated by Jim's death. He was a source of inspiration to me for my entire career. Jim's influence is widespread, profound and long-lasting."
"He will be remembered for his warm, fun-loving personality, his truly innovative thinking, his clarity of communication, his willingness to take bold risks in developing his ideas, and his abilities to bring people together and learn from them."
Science Museum Group science director Dr Roger Highfield said: "Jim was a nonconformist who had a unique vantage point that came from being, as he put it, half scientist and half inventor.
"Endless ideas bubbled forth from this synergy between making and thinking."
Lovelock's dedication to warning the world about climate change meant he carried on working past retirement age.
"My main reason for not relaxing into contented retirement is that, like most of you, I am deeply concerned about the probability of massively harmful climate change and the need to do something about it now," he said in 2011.
And two years ago, he said the biosphere - all systems of life on Earth - was on its last 1% of life.
His family said: "Our beloved James Lovelock died yesterday in his home surrounded by his family on his 103rd birthday.
"To the world he was best known as a scientific pioneer, climate prophet and conceiver of the Gaia theory.
"To us, he was a loving husband and wonderful father with a boundless sense of curiosity, a mischievous sense of humour and a passion for nature."
Climate scientist says total climate breakdown is now inevitable: 'It is already a different world out there, soon it will be unrecognizable to every one of us'
Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert Sat, July 30, 2022 Rich nations are likely to delay action on climate change
.peepo/Getty Images In his new book, Bill McGuire argues it's too late to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The Earth science professor says lethal heatwaves and extreme weather events are just the beginning.
Many climate scientists, he said, are more scared about the future than they are willing to admit in public.
In his new book published Thursday, "Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant's Guide," Bill McGuire argues that, after years of ignoring warnings from scientists, it is too late to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
The University College London Earth sciences professor pointed to a record-breaking heatwave across the UK this month and dangerous wildfires that destroyed 16 homes in East London as evidence of the rapidly changing climate. McGuire says weather will begin to regularly surpass current extremes, despite government goals to lower carbon emissions.
"And as we head further into 2022, it is already a different world out there," McGuire told The Guardian. "Soon it will be unrecognizable to every one of us."
His perspective — that severe climate change is now inevitable and irreversible — is more extreme than many scientists who believe that, with lowered emissions, the most severe potential impacts can still be avoided.
McGuire did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Many climate scientists, McGuire said, are much more scared about the future than they are willing to admit in public. He calls their reluctance to acknowledge the futility of current climate action "climate appeasement" and says it only makes things worse.
Instead of focusing on net-zero emission goals, which McGuire says won't reverse the current course of climate change, he argues we need to adapt to the "hothouse world" that lies ahead and start taking action to try to stop material conditions from deteriorating further.
"This is a call to arms," McGuire told The Guardian: "So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it."
Richer nations fall short on climate finance pledge
Climate activist Vanessa Nakate, second right, and other activists engage in a 'Show US The Money' protest at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 8, 2021. Richer countries failed to keep a $100 billion-a-year pledge to developing nations to help them achieve their climate goals, according to an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, released Friday, July 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File) WANJOHI KABUKURU Fri, July 29, 2022 at 11:46 AM·2 min read
Richer countries failed to keep a $100 billion-a-year pledge to developing nations to help them achieve their climate goals, according to an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.
$83.3 billion in climate financing was given to poorer countries in 2020, a 4% increase from the previous year, but still short of the proposed goal. The United Nations-backed payment plan was first agreed in 2009 to help poorer nations adapt to the effects of climate change and reduce emissions.
The pledge, which was originally set up as an annual commitment from its inception until 2020, has never been fulfilled.
“We know that more needs to be done" to address the shortfall, admitted OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann.
Who pays for tackling and adapting to climate change has been a key sticking point between richer nations and poorer ones since international climate negotiations began 30 years ago.
Harsen Nyambe, who heads the African Union climate change and environment division, told the Associated Press the continent will continue to put pressure on richer nations to ensure the $100 billion-a-year agreement is fulfilled. He added that the funds will give the continent better access to required technology and will help nations transition to green energy in a fair way.
But others believe that after decades of unmet promises, it's unlikely that richer countries will start to step up.
"They do not have the money. They are over-committed with issues such as Ukrainian crisis and that is why they have been unable to meet any of their pledges,” said Godwell Nhamo, a climate research professor at the University of South Africa.
“Africa should move on and find other sources of funding,” he added.
A report released by the British charity Oxfam in 2020 warned that the recent increase in funding came in the form of loans, not grants, with climate-related loans increasing from $13.5 billion in 2015 to $24 billion in 2018. The charity said at the time that reaching the $100 billion goal in this way “would be cause for concern, not celebration.” It’s unclear whether the latest year-on-year increase in climate funding came in the form of loans or grants.
In recent years, climate financing has helped fund greener energy and transport sectors for poorer nations, as well as adaptation measures for the agriculture and forestry industries which are threatened by land degradation, according to the OECD. ___ Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Amazon Shrinks Staff by 100,000, Joining Netflix and Google in Hiring Slowdown
Martine Paris Fri, July 29, 2022
(Bloomberg) -- With recession fears mounting—and inflation, the war in Ukraine and the lingering pandemic taking a toll—many tech companies are rethinking their staffing needs, with some of them instituting hiring freezes, rescinding offers and making rounds of layoffs.
Amazon.com Inc. was the latest company to discuss its belt-tightening efforts this week. During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, the e-commerce giant said it’s been adding jobs at the slowest rate since 2019. After relying on attrition to winnow its staff, Amazon now has about 100,000 fewer employees than in the previous quarter. Here’s a look at the companies tapping the brakes.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, has been decelerating its recruiting efforts. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told employees this month that—although the business added 10,000 Googlers in the second quarter—it will be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year and prioritizing engineering and technical talent. “Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds,” he said. The hiring pause is part of that slowdown, Google said, “to enable teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the rest of the year.” It had nearly 164,000 employees at the end of March.
Amazon said in April that it was overstaffed after ramping up during the pandemic and needed to cut back. “As the variant subsided in the second half of the quarter and employees returned from leave, we quickly transitioned from being understaffed to being overstaffed, resulting in lower productivity,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said at the time. Amazon has been subleasing some warehouse space and paused development of facilities meant for office workers, saying it needed more time to figure out how much space employees will require for hybrid work. The company now has 1.52 million full- and part-time workers and is still the largest employer in the tech world, despite the reduction in headcount.
Apple Inc. is planning to slow hiring and spending at some divisions next year to cope with a potential economic slump, according to people familiar with the matter. But it’s not a companywide policy, and the iPhone maker is still moving forward with an aggressive product-release schedule. Apple had 154,000 employees in September, when its last fiscal year ended.
Carvana Co., an online used car retailer, laid off 2,500 people in May, about 12% of its workforce. In an unusual move, the executive team will forego salaries for the rest of the year to pay severance to those who were let go, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company had more than 21,000 full-time and part-time employees at the end of last year.
Coinbase Global Inc., a cryptocurrency exchange, told employees it was cutting 18% of staff in June to prepare for an economic downturn. It also rescinded job offers. “We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom,” CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post. “While it’s hard to predict the economy or the markets, we always plan for the worst so we can operate the business through any environment,” he said. The company ended the quarter with about 5,000 employees.
Compass Inc., a real estate brokerage platform, is eliminating 450 positions, about 10% of its staff, according to a filing last month. The company had nearly 5,000 employees at the end of 2021.
Gemini Trust Co., a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, announced a 10% staff reduction in June. TechCrunch reported that the company laid off another 7% on July 18 and said a leaked plan showed it was seeking to cut a total of 15%, bringing it from 950 employees to 800 employees.
GoPuff, a grocery delivery app, is laying off 10% of its workforce and closing dozens of warehouses. The cuts will affect about 1,500 staff members—a mix of corporate and warehouse employees.
Lyft Inc. told employees it was reining in hiring in May after its stock dropped precipitously. The company went further on July 20, announcing plans to shutter its car-rental business and cut about 60 jobs. Lyft had about 4,500 employees in 2021. Archrival Uber Technologies Inc., meanwhile, has been more upbeat. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg in June that his company was “recession resistant” and had no plans for layoffs.
Meta Platforms Inc., the parent of Facebook, slashed plans to hire engineers by at least 30%. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that he’s anticipating one of the worst downturns in recent history. The company had more than 77,800 employees at the end of March.
Microsoft Corp. told workers in May that it was slowing down hiring in the Windows, Office and Teams groups as it braces for economic volatility. The company had 181,000 employees in 2021. More recently, the software maker cut some jobs—less than 1% of its total—as part of a reorganization. On July 20, the company said it began eliminating many job openings—a freeze that will last indefinitely.
Netflix Inc., the streaming giant, has had several rounds of highly publicized layoffs since it reported the loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter. In April, it began scaling back some marketing initiatives, then cut 150 employees in May and 300 in June. Last quarter, it reported $70 million in expenses from severance and shed an additional 970,000 subscribers. Netflix had 11,300 employees in 2021.
Niantic Inc., maker of the Pokemon Go video game, fired 8% of its team in June. It was an effort to streamline operations and position the company to weather economic storms, CEO John Hanke told staff in an email. Niantic had around 800 employees at the end of last year.
OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, laid off 20% of its staff on July 14. CEO Devin Finzer tweeted, “We have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn.”
Peloton Interactive Inc. announced plans to cut about 2,800 jobs globally, roughly 20% of its corporate roles, as part of a surprise shake-up in February that saw its CEO John Foley and several executive team members step down. In 2021, the company reported having nearly 9,000 employees.
Redfin Corp., another real estate brokerage, cut 8% of its staff in June. “We don’t have enough work for our agents and support staff,” CEO Glenn Kelman wrote in a blog post, saying that May demand was 17% below projections and that he expected the company to grow more slowly during a housing downturn. Redfin had about 6,500 employees at the end of last year.
Robinhood Markets Inc., the online brokerage, terminated 9% of its workforce in April. It had about 3,800 employees at the end of last year and racked up more than $2 billion of losses since going public last July.
Rivian Automotive Inc. is planning to cut hundreds of non-manufacturing jobs and teams with duplicate functions. The Southern California electric-vehicle maker, which has more than 14,000 employees, could make an overall reduction of around 5%. In a memo to employees, CEO RJ Scaringe said, “We will always be focused on growth; however, Rivian is not immune to the current economic circumstances and we need to make sure we can grow sustainably.”
Salesforce Inc., the cloud computing platform, has been slowing hiring and reducing travel expenses, according to a leaked memo reported in May by Insider. It had nearly 78,000 employees as of the end of April.
Shutterfly, a maker of personalized photo items, laid off 100 staffers in June, CEO Hilary Schneider told Bloomberg. The company, which has 7,000 employees, is making hiring adjustments to weather the economic uncertainty. “Clearly we’re going through a period of economic choppiness on a global level,” she said. “When you look at the supply chain, it certainly is driving inflation and impacting consumer confidence.”
Shopify Inc., an e-commerce platform, is laying off 1,000 employees, 10% of its workforce, CEO Tobi Lutke said in a letter to employees on July 26. The affected jobs included recruiting, support and sales. The company is offering 16 weeks of severance, career coaching, a laptop and internet allowance, home-office furniture and a free Shopify account for those who want to launch their own storefront. Shopify has 10,000 employees, according to its website.
Spotify Technology SA, the audio service, is cutting employee growth by about 25% to adjust for macroeconomic factors, CEO Daniel Ek said in a note to staff in June. “I do believe only the paranoid survive,” he said on a conference call this week. “And we are preparing as if things could get worse, but it’s hard to be anything but optimistic given what I am currently seeing.” Spotify has more than 6,500 employees, according to its website.
Stitch Fix, an online personalized styling service, said in June that it was pursuing a 15% reduction in salaried positions—about 4% of its workforce—with the majority coming from non-technology corporate jobs and styling leadership roles. It’s coping with higher expenses and weaker demand. According to its website, the company has 8,900 employees.
Tesla Inc., the electric-vehicle maker, cut 200 autopilot workers as it closed a facility in San Mateo, California, in June. CEO Elon Musk said earlier that layoffs would be necessary in an increasingly shaky economic environment. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that about 10% of salaried employees would lose their jobs over the next three months, though the overall headcount could be higher in a year. The company had 100,000 employees globally at the end of last year.
Tonal Systems Inc., the home fitness startup backed by sports celebrities Steph Curry and Serena Williams, laid off 35% of its 750 employees on July 13, according to CNBC.
Twitter Inc. initiated a hiring freeze and began rescinding job offers in May, amid uncertainty surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. More recently, it said it would be paring back office space, but without job cuts. The company had 7,500 employees in 2021.
Unity Software Inc., which makes a video-game engine, surprised employees in June when it sent pink slips to 200 of its 5,900 workers, amounting to 4% of its workforce. Its CEO had assured staff there would be no layoffs, according to Kotaku.
Vimeo, a video sharing platform, cut 6% of the company in July. CEO Anjali Sud said in a blog post that it had slowed hiring since the beginning of the year. “The reality is that the challenging economic conditions around us have impacted our business. We must assume that these conditions will remain challenged for the foreseeable future, and that we aren’t immune. So while we’ve intentionally taken action across other expense areas first, it’s become clear that we also have to look at our largest area of investment, our team,” Sud said.
Wayfair Inc., the online furniture retailer, initiated a 90-day hiring freeze in May. The company had 18,000 employees as of March.
Whoop Inc., a fitness wearable startup, laid off 15% on July 22 and now has about 550 employees, according to a company statement reported by the Boston Globe.
(Updates with more on Amazon starting in second paragraph.)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
If the Economy Is Shaky, Why Are Company Profits Still Strong?
Builders have been able to sell homes at ever higher prices, even though demand is falling. (Philip Cheung/The New York Times)
Consumers are gloomy, the economy is shrinking, the Federal Reserve wants it to keep slowing and economists now say the whole world could be sliding toward recession.
At the same time, a lot of strong numbers are still coming out of many large American companies, which have been releasing their quarterly earnings reports and discussing their outlooks with Wall Street.
“We had an outstanding quarter,” American Express CEO Stephen Squeri said after the company reported record revenue. “As our second-quarter results demonstrate, we have a lot to be proud of,” Hilton Worldwide CEO Christopher Nassetta said, noting that revenue per room in most major regions of the world was now above 2019 levels.
The blustery corporate optimism may seem at odds with the Fed’s grim determination to hold back the economy to get inflation down. But the economy is both what the Fed does and how companies and consumers are behaving. And the full picture of this strange economic moment is perhaps better captured by considering both sides together, central bankers and CEOs, no matter how divergent they seem.
Some big companies — Meta, for example — have reported disappointing numbers, and their CEOs are downbeat about the future. Other tech giants, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft included, all released results that, though hardly stellar, were enough to persuade investors that their businesses were not falling off a cliff.
Indeed, so far, with roughly half of all large companies having reported their numbers, this earnings season has not provided much evidence that the economy is entering a big crackup, and almost no CEOs talked about doing mass layoffs on earnings calls.
The lack of really bad news in earnings in part explains why the S&P 500 stock index has bounced about 12% from its low point in June and why Wall Street analysts still predict that earnings for the companies in the S&P 500 will grow 10% this year, according to data from FactSet. Although much of that growth is expected to come from energy companies, which have benefited from higher oil and gas prices, analysts expect profits to rise in eight of the 11 industries represented in the index.
It’s an awfully rosy picture when “recession” is on people’s minds. That’s why for some on Wall Street, that optimism is absurd. Michael Burry, an investor who foresaw the 2008 mortgage meltdown, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that the earnings reports coming in felt like a “last hurrah.”
Not done with fighting inflation, central banks are expected to continue pushing up the cost of borrowing, which would make corporate investments more expensive and dampen demand for companies’ products and services. Europe, a big market for U.S. corporations, could have a nightmare winter if natural gas prices continue rising. And supply chains are still dysfunctional for many companies, meaning they can’t even make and sell products for which there is demand.
“All those headwinds that created the downturn, they’re still intact and arguably getting worse,” said Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading.
Things could go into reverse quickly, the pessimists say. Many companies have for some time lived in a sort of nirvana in which they could keep hoisting their prices and customers would keep paying them, creating blowout profits.
Now there are signs that consumers are balking at what companies charge, and if they pull back hard, their sales and earnings could take a big hit and lead CEOs to lay off workers and slash investments to protect profit margins and balance sheets. Early signs of this dynamic are emerging, according to some analysts.
Homebuilding companies, for instance, have been able to sell homes at ever-higher prices over the past two years, but as the Fed has raised interest rates, their senior executives say demand has fallen.
PulteGroup, a large homebuilder that reported earnings this past week, said the average price of its homes in the second quarter was $531,000, a 19% increase from a year earlier. The company forecast that the average would keep rising this year. At the same time, Pulte said, net new orders plunged 23% from a year earlier, which the company blamed on the increase in mortgage rates.
“We’ll have to see how well the sector is able to hold on to those price increases that they’ve accumulated over the last couple of years,” said Brian Barnhurst, co-head of credit research for PGIM Fixed Income, a division of Prudential, referring to homebuilders.
Pulte did not respond to requests for comment.
Although well-off consumers show few signs of cutting back, the second-quarter earnings contain plenty of evidence that some households are getting squeezed as inflation pushes up their bills.
AT&T said its customers were taking two days longer on average to pay their bills, which caused a hit to the phone company’s second-quarter cash flow of almost $1 billion. AT&T CEO John Stankey said on the earnings call that bad-debt levels were slightly higher than before the pandemic. But, he added, “We view this cycle no differently and still expect customers will pay their bills, albeit a little less timely.”
On the earnings call for McDonald’s, the company’s chief financial officer said some of its customers were choosing “value” offerings over others. On Chipotle’s earnings call, CEO Brian Niccol said: “The low-income consumer definitely has pulled back their purchase frequency. Fortunately, for Chipotle, that is not the majority of our customers.”
Big retailers such as Walmart have said their customers are spending so much on must-have items such as food and fuel that they’re eschewing higher-cost merchandise, including clothes and home goods. Since shoppers are still spending at Walmart for the staples, the company — and to a certain extent, the economy — still benefits from their purchases, although the shift has hit its profit margins and helped pummel its stock.
Banks earnings are a good place to get an early read on how consumers are faring. Overall, there are few signs at lenders that borrowers are having trouble repaying their loans, analysts say.
“You would have come away from the quarterly earnings thinking that the consumer was generally in good shape,” said Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst who covers finance companies at Credit Suisse.
Because of pandemic stimulus payments, low unemployment and rising wages, the levels of past-due loans and bad debt fell to historical lows, but lenders have expected them to rise as borrowers reduce cash holdings and their balance sheets look more like they did before the pandemic. The finance industry has started calling that process “normalization.”
It appears to have begun among lower-income borrowers.
Richard Fairbank, CEO of Capital One, a big credit-card lender, said on the company’s earnings call that this normalization was more evident in the bank’s subprime loans than in those made to borrowers with stronger credit. But Capital One declined to provide past-due loan numbers for its subprime loans, making it impossible to chart the extent of any deterioration.
In its earnings report, Ally Bank, a big auto-loan maker, provided data on past-due auto loans in the second quarter for borrowers at a range of income levels. Past-due loans were either at or close to pre-pandemic levels for borrowers with lower incomes.
Ally declined to provide the same data for earlier quarters, making it impossible to know how quickly past-due loans might have risen. On its earnings call, Jenn LaClair, Ally’s chief financial officer, said, “We have continued to invest in talent and technology to enhance our servicing and collection capabilities and remain confident in our ability to effectively manage credit in a variety of environments.”
Some analysts think the pullback in spending could spread to wealthier households.
“You’re going to see it go up the income scale as the year unfolds with people sitting there, saying, ‘I’ll go without rather than spend this much on that’ or ‘I’ll trade down to something more affordable,’” said O’Rourke, the JonesTrading strategist. He added that he was waiting for earnings from Macy’s and Nordstrom, which are scheduled to report in August, to see if that was happening.
The concern is that the heavy summer spending that has recently bolstered the earnings of the hospitality industries and the airlines is not sustainable. “There’s a faction of the market that’s quite convinced that when we get to the fall and the bills from the summer spending come home to roost, the consumer will be in a much trickier spot,” said PGIM’s Barnhurst.
An exchange this earnings season reveals how CEOs and companies can keep the economy going, even when they fear that a downturn may be at hand.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned in May that storm clouds were gathering over the economy. On JPMorgan’s second-quarter earnings call, Mike Mayo, an analyst at Wells Fargo, asked Dimon why the bank had committed to investing such large sums this year if things could turn dire.
“It’s like you’re acting like there’s sunny skies ahead,” Mayo said, “You’re out buying kayaks, surfboards, wave runners just before the storm. So is it tough times or not?”
Dimon’s response: “We’ve always run the company consistently, investing, doing this stuff through storms.”
