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Javier E

Opinion | The Year the Millennials Handed the Internet Over to Zoomers - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...internet-aging-gen-z.html

internet millennials genZ culture

shared by Javier E on 22 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • recently I find the task of wasting time online increasingly onerous. The websites I used to depend on have gotten worse, and it seems as if there’s nowhere else to look. Twitter has been transformed under new management into an increasingly untenable social experiment called X. Instagram is evolving into a somehow-even-lower-rent TikTok, while TikTok itself continues to baffle and alienate me.
  • Something is changing about the internet, and I am not the only person to have noticed
  • the main complaint I have heard is was put best, and most bluntly, in The New Yorker: “The Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore.”
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  • it may simply be because it’s not our internet anymore. It belongs to zoomers now.
  • we’ve grown used to an internet whose form and culture was significantly shaped by and molded to our preferences. The American internet of the 2010s was an often stupid and almost always embarrassing internet — but it was a millennial internet. There were no social networks on which we felt uncomfortable; no culture developments we didn’t engender; no image macros we didn’t understand.
  • There was a time in my life when it was trivial to sign up to a new social network and pick up its patterns and mores on the fly. Now, I feel exhausted by the prospect.
  • millennials’ screen time has been on a steady decline for years. Only 42 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds say they’re online “almost constantly,” compared to 49 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds. We’re no longer the earliest adopters, even: 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely to have used ChatGPT than 30- to 49-year-olds — though maybe only because we’re no longer being assigned homework.
  • The heaviest users and most engaged American audience on the internet are no longer millennials but our successors in Generation Z
  • Frankly, that should be freeing. Being extremely online, on an internet geared to your interests (in the same way that heroin is geared to your brain), is not exactly a quality conducive to personal happiness
  • I suspect there is another factor driving the alienation and discomfort felt by many of the people who feel as though the internet is dying before our eyes: We’re getting old.
  • The celebrities are unrecognizable (Kai Cenat???); the slang is impenetrable (gyatt???); the formats are new (GRWM???). Austerely tasteful overhead shots of meticulously arranged food posted on Instagram have been replaced with garishly lit minute-long videos of elaborate restaurant meals posted on TikTok. Glibly chatty blog posts about the news have been replaced with videos of recording sessions for podcasts
  • the creative expression and exuberant sociality that made the internet so “fun” to me a decade ago are booming among 20- somethings on TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Twitch and even X. “Skibidi Toilet,” “Fanum tax,” “the rizzler”
  • True, the fun I’m talking about is co-opted and exploited by a small handful of powerful and wealthy platform businesses
  • When you drill down, what mostly seems to have changed about the web over the last few years isn’t the structural dynamics but the cultural signifiers.
  • Perhaps what frustrated, alienated and aging internet users like me are experiencing here is not only the fruits of an enjunkified internet but also the loss of the cognitive elasticity, sense of humor and copious amounts of free time necessary to navigate all that confusing junk nimbly and cheerfully.
  • Zoomer internet is, at least on the surface, quite different than ours.
  • The more alienating the mass internet is to me, the more likely I will put to good use the hours I previously spent messing around
  • Or, at least, the more likely it is I will find corners — group chats, message boards and elsewhere — geared to my specific interests rather than the general engagement bait that otherwise dominates.
lilyrashkind

How Educators Around the World Are Teaching the Russia-Ukraine War - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-the-russia-ukraine-war.html

educators world teaching war

shared by lilyrashkind on 31 May 22 - No Cached
  • Please note: This is a special Lesson of the Day that brings together many different sources and ideas. Unlike our usual format, this is written to teachers, not students.
  • Then, in an extensive Going Further section, we have rounded up many contributions from teachers in the United States across subjects and levels who describe ways they are helping their students understand this conflict and its roots and effects.We hope that no matter what you teach, there is something here you can use.
  • Do Volodymyr’s actions surprise you? Why do you think The Times might have included this specific detail of this family’s story? What do you think it says about the power and importance of education, and the role it plays in young people’s lives, even amidst an ongoing war?
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  • Now, students will participate in a jigsaw activity. Below are three articles about three different student populations that have been affected by the war in Ukraine. Assign each student, or have them choose, one of the articles to become an “expert” in. Make sure there are about an even number of students reading each article.
  • 5. What are some of the fears or challenges teachers themselves are facing because of the war?6. You’ve read one of three articles about what education is like for a specific group of students. What role is school serving for the group you read about? Is there anything more schools could be doing to support these young people? If so, what and why?
  • What role can schools serve, even during war? How important do you think education is in a time like this? Do you believe educators should teach about what is happening in Ukraine? How do you think they should handle this sensitive subject?
  • Many teachers answered our call in mid-March to tell us how they were addressing the war in their classrooms. Here are some responses that show the many ways, large and small, that educators have sought to help their students understand the conflict and its roots, the plight of the Ukrainian people, the role of the United States and more. They have been edited for length and clarity.
  • I was shocked at how hungrily they soaked up the information, especially once Russia officially invaded Ukraine. These 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds wanted to learn more about what was happening in their world in the “right way” — via vetted news sources, exactly as you mentioned. After each episode, we discussed positives that we heard, we shared “wonders” (the things that we want to find more information on), and we shared one word to summarize the new information.
  • That day, my students’ remarks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine fit into five categories: empathy for the people of Ukraine, fear of World War III, criticism of Putin, criticism of memes that treat the invasion as a joke, and geopolitical curiosity.
  • Students then created infographics on Canva to illustrate their learning. Synthesizing that learning into smaller, digestible data bites helped them to make sense of such large, challenging concepts. Here are four examples of their work.
  • When discussing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that consisted of orienting everyone to where this conflict is happening geographically and what cities and countries are involved. We spoke about the history of NATO, key leaders, the concept of trade and supply chains — basically defining the common vocabulary and giving everyone the same tools for discussion.
  • That’s how I realized that my students needed to talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result, I took the following steps the next day, with positive results.
  • As part of a larger project on the theme of “nostalgia,” students were asked to think of a family recipe that made them nostalgic. But we also talked about the food that brings us comfort no matter where we find ourselves. To help students connect to the Ukrainian people, we talked about the comforts of borscht with information from this article about a chef who is leading a drive to recognize the soup as a Ukrainian cultural heritage.
  • Teaching about Russia and Ukraine this spring encompassed history, vocabulary, maps, graphs, and photo analysis. We began with a brainstorm about what students had heard about what was happening with Ukraine and Russia. Then students moved on to define terms like Soviet Union, Cold War and NATO, and worked together to combine their definitions into one “best definition.” This vocabulary work set them up to read the Times article about what was happening in Ukraine as Russia invaded, annotating in the
  • Part of what has made the coverage of the war in Ukraine compelling is my students seeing visual inversions of their own lives. There’s a photo of a grandmother, but she’s holding an assault rifle. There are teenagers, not much older than they are, running drills. There’s a teacher, but instead of trying to manage a class, she’s barely managing to hold it together.
  • What do you notice about how the person is framed in the photograph?What is the posture? Where is their gaze?Imagine what they might be thinking as they gaze out of the frame.
  • This is an excellent piece to use when considering primary and secondary audiences, purpose, appeals, and overall effectiveness. It is also a story we can track to see if the speech moves anyone in Congress to change their position on the type of support to provide Ukraine.
  • Does the American government favor any countries over other countries? What is the policy that guides the American government when dealing with other countries?How does the American government handle disagreements with other countries?Which countries are American allies, or friends?Which are America’s traditional enemies? How is this determined? Does that history matter?
  • How does President Biden “create the enemy?” Why should America follow this course of action? What is he suggesting will happen if America does not? What does America stand to gain from this plan? Are potential losses discussed?Note patterns in rhetorical appeals, diction, values and themes. What assumptions does President Biden make about the American character or national identity? In what ways do American mythologies seem to bolster a “single story” of foreign policy?
  • Begins.” Students took notes on the use of ethos, pathos and logos in the construction of the podcast. They also responded to the importance of having free and independent journalists report on the war.
  • “We Lived Happily During the War,” “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Dancing.”
  • E.I.H.R. cultivates partnerships among educators globally to create materials and deliver training based on best practices in Holocaust and human rights education. Together we deliver content and strategies for teaching conflict history and prevention, and sustainable peace. They have been building resources for teachers about Ukraine since Feb. 24, including this webinar on Understanding the Crisis in Ukraine from March 19.
criscimagnael

Afghanistan Tries to Stamp Out Opium Again - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...afghanistan-opium-taliban.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • For years, opium has been the monster too big to slay. One Afghan government after another has pledged to stamp out opium production and trafficking, only to prove unable to resist billions of dollars in illicit profits.
  • But after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, opium taxes and smuggling helped fuel the Taliban’s own 20-year insurgency.
  • The Taliban announced on April 3 that poppy cultivation had been outlawed, with violators to be punished under Shariah law.
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  • Water pumps powered by cheap and highly efficient solar panels are able to drill deep down into rapidly dwindling desert aquifers. The solar panels have helped generate bumper opium harvests year after year since farmers in southern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing belt began installing them around 2014.
  • The opium trade earned about $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion last year, the United Nations has estimated. Opium sales have provided 9 to 14 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, compared with 9 percent provided by legal exports of goods and services.
  • The solar arrays have been central to ensuring Afghanistan’s status as the global leader in opium.
  • The Taliban, for their part, have condemned opium as anti-Islamic, as Afghanistan’s poppy crop sustains addicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as a huge number inside Afghanistan. But given their own deep ties to opium smuggling during the insurgency, Taliban leaders are walking a fine line between hypocrisy and holiness.
  • Now, solar power is a defining feature of southern Afghan life. Tiny solar panels power light bulbs in mud huts, and solar-driven pumps irrigate cash crops like wheat and pomegranates, as well as subsistence farmers’ vegetable plots.
  • Opium farmers now rely on at least 67,000 solar-power-fed water reservoirs across Afghanistan’s desert southwest, according to a European Union-funded research project by David Mansfield, a consultant who has studied illicit economies and rural livelihoods in Afghanistan for two decades.
  • The panels, which supplanted more expensive and less reliable diesel to run water pumps, have helped turn the desert green.
  • “For many opium farmers, abundant water is now a given,” he said. “No one perceives it to have a cost.”
  • “Do not destroy the fields, but make the fields dry out,” Gov. Maulave Talib Akhund said in a statement. He added, “We are committed to fulfilling the opium decree.”
  • The opium ban was met with a collective shrug this spring by southern farmers, many of whom were already harvesting their spring crops. Opium prices surged almost immediately, several farmers said, to roughly $180 per kilogram from $60 per kilogram.
  • But the Taliban have vowed to crack down on farmers who try to cultivate any new crops.
  • Dr. Mansfield said that determining how long the aquifers could continue to supply water was uncharted territory because no one had been able to conduct a rigorous scientific study of the desert groundwater.
  • “We have to continue to dig our wells deeper and deeper,” Mr. Armani said.
  • Even when prices are high, many poppy farmers say, they earn only about $2 a day for each family member. They are at the very bottom of a narcotic trafficking system in which profits increase exponentially from growers to middlemen to processing labs to major cross-border traffickers.
  • Farmers whose poppy fields were plowed under by the previous government could send their sons to paying jobs as soldiers or police officers — or to the constellation of unskilled jobs provided by the United States and NATO. But those options are gone, and unemployment has soared under the Taliban.
  • “Growing poppies is the only option to survive right now,” he said.
lilyrashkind

Europe's Russian Oil Ban Could Mean a New World Order for Energy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-russia-oil-global-energy.html

russian oil ban

shared by lilyrashkind on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • HOUSTON — The European Union’s embargo on most Russian oil imports could deliver a fresh jolt to the world economy, propelling a realignment of global energy trading that leaves Russia economically weaker, gives China and India bargaining power and enriches producers like Saudi Arabia.
  • Europe’s hunt for new oil supplies — and Russia’s quest to find new buyers of its oil — will leave no part of the world untouched, energy experts said. But figuring out the impact on each country or business is difficult because leaders, energy executives and traders will respond in varying ways.
  • China and India could be protected from some of the burden of higher oil prices because Russia is offering them discounted oil. In the last couple of months, Russia has become the second-biggest oil supplier to India, leapfrogging other big producers like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. India has several large refineries that could earn rich profits by refining Russian oil into diesel and other fuels in high demand around the world.
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  • “It’s a historic, big deal,” said Robert McNally, an energy adviser to President George W. Bush. “This will reshape not only commercial relationships but political and geopolitical ones as well.”E.U. officials have yet to release all the details of their effort to squelch Russian oil exports but have said those policies will go into effect over months. That is meant to give Europeans time to prepare, but it will also give Russia and its partners time to devise workarounds. Who will adapt
  • Russian natural gas for some time, possibly years. That could preserve some of Mr. Putin’s leverage, especially if gas demand spikes during a cold winter. European leaders have fewer alternatives to Russian gas because the world’s other major suppliers of that fuel — the United States, Australia and Qatar — can’t quickly expand exports substantially.Russia also has other cards to play, which could undermine the effectiveness of the European embargo.
  • Another hope of Western leaders is that their moves will reduce Russia’s position in the global energy industry. The idea is that despite its efforts to find new buyers in China, India and elsewhere, Russia will export less oil overall. As a result, Russian producers will need to shut wells, which they will not be able to easily restart because of the difficulties of drilling and producing oil in inhospitable Arctic fields.
  • “Why wait six months?” asked David Goldwyn, a top State Department energy official in the Obama administration. “As the sanctions are configured now, all that will happen is you will see more Russian crude and product flow to other destinations,” he said. But he added, “It’s a necessary first step.”
  • In addition, Germany and Poland have pledged to stop importing oil from Russia by pipeline, which means Europeans could reduce Russian imports by 3.3 million barrels a day by the end of the year.And the union has said European companies will no longer be allowed to insure tankers carrying Russian oil anywhere. That ban will also be phased in over several months. Because many of the world’s largest insurers are based in Europe, that move could significantly raise the cost of shipping Russian energy, though insurers in China, India and Russia itself might now pick up some of that business.Before the invasion of Ukraine, roughly half of Russia’s oil exports went to Europe, representing $10 billion in transactions a month. Sales of Russian oil to E.U. members have declined somewhat in the last few months, and those to the United States and Britain have been eliminated.
  • India is getting about 600,000 barrels a day from Russia, up from 90,000 a day last year, when Russia was a relatively minor supplier. It is now India’s second-biggest supplier after Iraq.But India could find it difficult to keep buying from Russia if the European Union’s restrictions on European companies insuring Russian oil shipments raise costs too much.“India is a winner,” said Helima Croft, RBC’s head of commodity strategy, “as long as they are not hit with secondary sanctions.”
criscimagnael

Biden Administration to Cut Costs for Wind and Solar Energy Projects - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-solar-wind-fees-cut.html

shared by criscimagnael on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration said on Wednesday it would cut in half the amount it charges companies to build wind and solar projects on federal lands, a move designed to encourage development of renewable energy.
  • “Clean energy projects on public lands have an important role to play in reducing our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and lowering costs for families,”
  • The new policy would cut those costs by about 50 percent,
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  • The federal Bureau of Land Management also announced that it would strengthen its ability to handle a growing number of applications by wind, solar and geothermal developers by creating five new offices across the West to review proposed projects.
  • The decision comes as the Biden administration also seeks to raise the royalty fees it charges oil and gas companies to drill on federal land and in federal waters. Last month, the administration canceled three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, prompting Republican lawmakers to criticize the new renewable energy policies as harmful to energy producing states.
  • “Here is Biden‘s energy policy: wind, solar and wishful thinking,”
  • President Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gases generated by the United States roughly in half by 2030.
  • Last year, for example, the administration gave a green light to two major solar projects on federal lands in California that it said would generate about 1,000 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 132,000 homes.
  • The reduction in fees and rental rates comes at a challenging time for the solar industry. A Commerce Department investigation into whether Chinese companies are circumventing U.S. tariffs by moving components for solar panels through four Southeast Asian countries has held up hundreds of new solar projects across the country.
Javier E

Opinion | American teens are unwell because American society is unwell - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...en-girls-mental-health-suicide

mental health mental illness teens adults society sick

shared by Javier E on 16 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • Kids are unwell. Worse than ever recorded, according to two new reports tracing depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in teens.
  • if we want to make any lasting difference, it is us, the adults, who need an intervention.
  • Another new study based on pre-pandemic data from Iowa raises alarm
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  • The systems and social media making teenagers sad, angry and afraid today were shaped in part by adults who grew up sad, angry and afraid themselves.
  • Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they had seriously considered suicide
  • Teen girls reported the highest ever levels of sexual violence, sadness and hopelessnes
  • Rates of bullying were increasing in the state even in 2018, and researchers at Drake University found some forms of it significantly correlated with feeling sad or hopeless and attempting suicide.
  • One in 5 — nearly 53 million people — had a mental illness in 2020, ranging from anxiety to depression to bipolar disorder.
  • Yes, social media delivers concentrated, addictive stress to developing minds that were held captive by the pandemic. No, logging off TikTok and returning to school will not fix the problem — because each teen’s life ricochets off family, friends and neighbors with struggles of their own in a polity with troubles of its own.
  • “Increasing the sense among all students that they are cared for, supported, and belong at school” is one, as is growing access to mental health and substance use prevention services for kids and their families and health education classes to teach teens to manage their boundaries and emotions and to ask for help. These positive practices build resilience.
  • can we acknowledge the weight this puts on underpaid teachers and part-time counselors and nurses? People who, if they haven’t already burned out, are practicing active-shooter drills, catching students up on 18 months of lost learning and ensuring kids have enough food to concentrate in class.
  • A school’s four walls cannot hold back the trauma of society as well as, perhaps, the personal nightmare waiting for kids at home.
  • Which brings us to the adults
  • Solutions start with compassionate, radical honesty: American kids are unwell because American society is unwell.
  • Nearly 28 million adults had an alcohol use disorder.
  • As many as 3 in 100 people will have a psychotic episode in their lives
  • we, too, need a sense that we are cared for, supported and belong.
  • As kids, 61 percent of adults in the United States experienced abuse or neglect, grew up with poverty, hunger, violence or substance abuse, experienced gender-based discrimination and racism or lost a parent to divorce or death.
  • If not you, then someone you know is doing their best to stitch up those invisible wounds.
  • Here’s more hope: Brains wired by toxic stress, such as the sexual violence that 1 in 10 teen girls are facing today, have the ability to essentially heal when exposed to positive experiences.
  • Good nutrition, adequate sleep, mindfulness practices all help. Adults as well as children have neuroplasticity, and family resilience and connection are positive influences.
Javier E

There's a New Menace Stalking Suburbia. Meet the McBasement. - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...eet-the-mcbasement-11665497875

rich house construction size excess culture

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • One solution? Go low. “The possibilities are endless,” says Stephen Cheney, owner of Cheney Custom Homes, who is currently constructing a roughly 16,000-square-foot home and guest home with a 5,600-square-foot “bunker” below for a bowling alley, 3-D golf simulator, and spa..origami-wrapper *{margin:0;padding:0;border:0}.origami-top-border{border-top:1px solid #dadada;padding-top:10px}.origami-headline{font-family:Retina,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:500;color:#333;font-size:18px;line-height:20px;margin-bottom:8px}.origami-image-wrapper{display:flex;margin-bottom:10px;gap:10px}.origami-image-wrapper:last-of-type{margin-bottom:8px}.origami-image{flex:1 1}.origami-image img{max-width:100%;width:100%;height:100%;display:block;max-inline-size:100%}.origami-image figcaption{display:none}.origami-caption{display:block;font-family:Retina,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:300;color:#555;line-height:18.6667px;margin-bottom:4px}.origami-credit{display:block;font-family:Retina,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:300;color:#555;line-height:20px;text-transform:uppercase}@media (min-width:640px){#origami-dac13529-1203-4200-8bb3-a2147cdf655f .origami-hide-on-desktop{display:none}}@media (max-width:639px){#origami-dac13529-1203-4200-8bb3-a2147cdf655f .origami-hide-on-mobile{display:none}}
  • Basements can dwarf homes above. Designer Andrew Kotchen, a principal at Workshop/APD, is working on a 5,000-square-foot Nantucket abode that will have a 10,000-square-foot basement with a basketball court, garage, bedrooms and a wellness space.
  • For the 10,000-square-foot grotto, workers are using the same waterproofing technique as Boston’s Big Dig highway project, Mr. Kotchen says. An emergency pump system and thick concrete slab underneath will prevent the foundation from floating up should water levels rise, he says.
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  • In Aspen, a 5,000-square-foot basement at the confluence of two rivers required “dewatering,” says Ryan Walterscheid, a partner at architecture firm Forum Phi. Workers drilled wells around the site and pumped out almost a billion gallons of water before pouring the foundation. (The water was poured back into the river.)
  • r David Taban, who is trying to build a 23,144-square-foot house, of which 9,829 would be a basement. (He wants to dig down to appease neighbors who worried his home would hurt their views.) But getting a basement of that size required removing 5,346 cubic yards of dirt, which one city planner said would amount to 594 truckloads.
  • Spec developers know the more livable space, the bigger the price tag, says Brett Loehmann, a project manager at McClean Design. “If you don’t have great amenities, you’re not going to be the coolest person on the block.”
Javier E

Order and Calm Eased Evacuation from Burning Japan Airlines Jet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...japan-airlines-fire.html

discipline order panic airplane fire japan culture history

shared by Javier E on 03 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • While a number of factors aided what many have called a miracle at Haneda Airport — a well trained crew of 12; a veteran pilot with 12,000 hours of flight experience; advanced aircraft design and materials — the relative absence of panic onboard during the emergency procedure perhaps helped the most.
  • “Even though I heard screams, mostly people were calm and didn’t stand up from their seats but kept sitting and waiting,” said Aruto Iwama, a passenger who gave a video interview to the newspaper The Guardian. “That’s why I think we were able to escape smoothly.”
  • Experts said that while crews are trained — and passenger jets are tested — for cabin evacuations within 90 seconds in an emergency landing, technical specifications on the 2-year-old Airbus A350-900 most likely gave those on the flight a bit more time to escape.
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  • Firewalls around the engines, nitrogen pumps in fuel tanks that help prevent immediate burning, and fire-resistant materials on seats and flooring most likely helped to keep the rising flames at bay, said Sonya A. Brown, a senior lecturer in aerospace design at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
  • “Really, the Japan Airlines crew in this case performed extremely well,” Dr. Brown said. The fact that passengers did not stop to retrieve carry-on luggage or otherwise slow down the exit was “really critical,” she added.
  • Tadayuki Tsutsumi, an official at Japan Airlines, said the most important component of crew performance during an emergency was “panic control” and determining which exit doors were safe to use.
  • Former flight attendants described the rigorous training and drills that crew members undergo to prepare for emergencies. “When training for evacuation procedures, we repeatedly used smoke/fire simulation to make sure we could be mentally ready when situations like those occurred in reality,” Yoko Chang, a former cabin attendant and an instructor of aspiring crew members, wrote in an Instagram message.
  • Ms. Chang, who did not work for JAL, added that airlines require cabin crew members to pass evacuation exams every six months.
Javier E

More Wall Street Firms Are Flip-Flopping on Climate. Here's Why. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ate-street-jpmorgan-pimco.html

wall street climate crisis history financial

shared by Javier E on 19 Feb 24 - No Cached
  • In recent days, giants of the financial world including JPMorgan, State Street and Pimco all pulled out of a group called Climate Action 100+, an international coalition of money managers that was pushing big companies to address climate issues.
  • Wall Street’s retreat from earlier environmental pledges has been on a slow, steady glide path for months, particularly as Republicans began withering political attacks, saying the investment firms were engaging in “woke capitalism.”
  • But in the past few weeks, things accelerated significantly. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, scaled back its involvement in the group. Bank of America reneged on a commitment to stop financing new coal mines, coal-burning power plants and Arctic drilling projects
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  • Republican politicians, sensing momentum, called on other firms to follow suit.
  • “This was always cosmetic,” said Shivaram Rajgopal, a professor at Columbia Business School. “If signing a piece of paper was getting these companies into trouble, it’s no surprise they’re getting the hell out.
  • American asset managers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their clients, and the financial firms were worried that a new strategy by Climate Action 100+ could expose them to legal risks.
  • Since its founding in 2017, the group focused on getting publicly traded companies to increase how much information they shared about their emissions and identify climate-related risks to their businesses.
  • In addition to the risk that some clients might disapprove, and potentially sue, there were other concerns. Among them: that acting in concert to shape the behaviors of other companies could fall afoul of antitrust regulations.
  • The new plan called on asset-management firms to begin pressuring companies like Exxon Mobil and Walmart to adopt policies that could entail, for example, using fewer fossil fuels
  • last year, Climate Action 100+ said it would shift its focus toward getting companies to reduce emissions with what it called phase two of its strategy
  • BlackRock also said that one of its subsidiaries, BlackRock International, would continue to participate in the group — a tacit acknowledgment of the different regulatory environment in Europe. BlackRock also said it was initiating new features that would let clients choose if they wanted to pressure companies to reduce their emissions.
  • Pimco, another big asset manager, followed suit. “We have concluded that our Climate Action 100+ participation is no longer aligned with PIMCO’s approach to sustainability,” a firm spokesman said in a statement.
  • JPMorgan said it was pulling out of the group in recognition of the fact that, over the past few years, the firm had developed its own framework for engaging on climate risk
  • The fracturing of Climate Action 100+ was a victory for Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who has led a campaign against companies pursuing E.S.G. goals, shorthand for environmental, social and governance factors.
  • Embracing E.S.G. principles and speaking up on climate issues has become commonplace across corporate America in recent years. Chief executives warned about the dangers of climate change. Banks and asset managers formed alliances to phase out fossil fuels. Trillions of dollars were allocated for sustainable investing.
  • “Phase two is not that different,” she said. “It’s basically investors working with companies and saying: ‘OK, you’ve disclosed the risk. We just want to know how you’re going to address it.’ Because that’s what the investors want. How are you dealing with risk?”
  • Mindy Lubber, the chief executive of Ceres and a member of the steering committee of Climate Action 100+, disputed the notion that the new strategy represented a change from the focus on enhanced disclosure.
  • “The political cost has heightened, the legal risk has heightened,” he said. “That said, these corporations are not doing U-turns,” he added. “They continue to consider climate. That’s not going away. It’s adapting to the current environment.”
  • Aron Cramer, chief executive for BSR, a sustainable-business consultancy, said the Wall Street firms were responding to political pressure, but not abandoning their climate commitments altogether.
  • Several of the firms that backed out of Climate Action 100+ said they remained committed to the issue. JPMorgan said that it had a team of 40 people working on sustainable investing and that it believed “climate change continues to present material economic risks and opportunities to our clients.”
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