Business

(NEW YORK) — Dubbed a “code red for humanity” by the head of the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its most-recent report that the impacts of human-induced climate change are already being seen in “every region across the globe” and urgent action must be taken immediately, not decades into the future, to mitigate the devastation.

As scientists sound the alarms, it has become near-impossible for business leaders to ignore the research — or the global, youth-led protests spurred by activists like Greta Thunberg, who view climate change as an intergenerational justice issue — as a new generation of consumers accuse major greenhouse gas-emitting corporations of robbing the young of their future.

In recent years, a slew of high-profile announcements have followed from hundreds of major U.S. companies, pledging to achieve “net-zero” emissions by a date often decades in the future. Some have welcomed these public-facing commitments as positive indicators that the private sector is heeding to public pressure, but the scientific community says a lack of universal accounting standards results in most of these promises being ineffective, unjust and the latest form of “greenwashing” from corporate America.

Scientists are urging that at this point, with the impacts of climate change already manifesting, the “net” part of these “net-zero” announcements are coming too late and have shifted the focus from reducing emissions to simply “offsetting” them with nature- or tech-based solutions that simply don’t yet exist at the scale necessary to meet the need. Some researchers have used the analogy that if your house is flooding, you would likely focus on turning off the faucet spewing the water rather than on trying to mop the floodwaters up.

“The word ‘net’ is really the key to the zero,” Rahul Tongia, a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, told ABC News of these recent pledges from major companies.

“What that means is relying on offsets, where I don’t actually ‘zero’ my emissions, I don’t stop completely, but I compensate for them, I adjust for them, I offset them,” Tongia added. “And this is really a very long, complex challenge of understanding what these mean.”

With businesses and industry contributing to an outsized share of greenhouse gas emissions, it’s going to take more than individual lifestyle changes to tackle the crisis. Here is how scientists say the private sector’s “net-zero” emissions pledges could end up having “net-zero” impact.

Already decades off track to meet climate goals, ‘offset’ commitments don’t cut it

Data directly ties greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions — the largest source of which in the U.S. comes from humans burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation — to the rising average surface temperature on our planet. This research led to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, which sought to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees, compared to pre-industrial levels by drastically reducing emissions.

In a subsequent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the world must bring its carbon dioxide emissions to “net zero” by 2050 in order to keep global warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark.

More recent data from the U.N., however, suggests that at the current rate of emissions (if the world continued emitting the same amount of carbon dioxide as it did in the pre-COVID year of 2019), we would surpass our carbon budget necessary to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in approximately eight years. This means that on our current trajectory, the plans for “net-zero” by 2050 as outlined in the Paris accord likely won’t cut it anymore as the planet could surpass the dire 1.5 degrees Celsius mark around 2030.

A world warmed by just the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark would already look vastly different than today, the IPCC has warned, with some 70 to 90% of coral reefs projected to be gone at that temperature (and 99% disappearing at the 2 degrees Celsius mark). Moreover, a warming of just 1.5 degrees Celsius “is not considered ‘safe’ for most nations, communities, ecosystems and sectors and poses significant risks to natural and human systems,” the IPCC has stated, saying some of the worst impacts are expected to be felt among agricultural and coastal-dependent communities.

With the consequences dire, experts say the stakes are too high to rely on vague promises of “net-zero” emissions — with the emphasis on “net” — or offsetting in the future. Over 350 climate-focused nongovernmental organizations recently released a statement directed toward the Biden administration and lawmakers decrying “net-zero” as a “dangerous distraction.”

“Net-zero pledges delay the action that needs to happen,” Diana Ruiz, a senior campaigner at the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace USA, one of the statement’s signatories, told ABC News. “What we’ve seen is more of the abuse of these pledges by corporations to allow them to continue to pollute and and continue business as usual.”

Ultimately, net-zero emissions pledges “can mean a very wide variety of things,” Joeri Rogelj, the director of research at the Grantham Institute and a reader in climate science and policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, told ABC News.

“There are lots of net zero targets out there today,” Rogelj added. “What do they mean? It’s not always equally clear.”

In a recent commentary published in the scientific journal Nature, Rogelj and his team of researchers argue that net-zero targets are too vague, and while they are welcome signs of intent, they are fraught with difficulties that impede their effectiveness at reaching climate change goals, and the stakes of climate change are too high to take comfort with mere announcements.

“First of all, a net-zero target can be applied to either carbon dioxide or all greenhouse gases. Very often, that’s not really clearly specified,” he told ABC News, adding the scope of the pledges can also refer to just the tail-end emissions versus the sum of all the activities along the supply chain and distribution of products or services a company delivers.

Greenpeace’s Ruiz, said they ultimately view net-zero pledges as a way for corporations “to greenwash their pollution by using carbon offsets and other false climate solutions.”

“It allows the corporations to continue to pollute while claiming to reduce their emissions somewhere else,” Ruiz told ABC News. “The key here is that net zero doesn’t mean companies will stop polluting.”

Swedish teen activist Thunberg summed up what net-zero pledges mean to her on Twitter as the COP26 conference commenced, writing: “I am pleased to announce that I’ve decided to go net-zero on swear words and bad language. In the event that I should say something inappropriate I pledge to compensate that by saying something nice.”

How a computer model ‘opened Pandora’s box’: Where does ‘net-zero’ come from?

Climate scientist Wolfgang Knorr, a senior researcher at Sweden’s University of Lund, has said he now feels remorse over how some of his earlier climate research, built by computer models, was coopted by policymakers and the private sector to contribute to the rise of net-zero pledges.

“Basically, what happened is the Paris Agreement was signed, but then nobody actually knew what it meant,” he said. “And then the scientific community, the IPCC tasked to actually figure out what 1.5 meant in two ways — what’s the difference between climate impacts with 1.5 versus 2 degrees of warming? And the other question is what needs to be done and/or what can we still emit to stay within 1.5 degrees?”

To solve for the latter, Knorr said he was running integrated assessment computer models that looked at how the economy works and calculating in emissions from industrial activity, the agricultural sector and more to figure out the best pathway to keep the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably within 1.5 degrees Celsius, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.

“Personally, my job was and has been for most of the time to devise mathematical models,” he said, adding that in these models, “the ‘net’ exists as an abstract idea, but what it means in reality, that didn’t actually affect these models at all by the way they were constructed.”

The models they ran, he said, found “it’s just not possible” to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius with all of the other variables, and he wrote in his research that in the end, “any remaining emissions would have to be offset.”

“We actually really wrote, then, by some ‘artificial means,'” he added of offsets, but stressed that this was still “just existing in a computer model and their lines of code.”

“By bringing that offsetting on the table, we have basically opened Pandora’s box,” Knorr says now. “We should have been really cautious about bring it on the table.”

“That ‘zero’ has sort of disappeared from sight, and it’s all about the ‘net,'” he added. “I think that I might have contributed to this.”

In its most-recent 2021 report, the IPCC simply defines “net-zero” as a “condition in which anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are balanced by anthropogenic CO2 removals over a specified period,” though details on this “removals” process remain sparse.

“Originally, when I was working on this topic like 10 years ago or more, we were thinking about, ‘OK, I mean, maybe a few percent of what we emit, CO2, will have to be offset,’ because for example, cement production is very difficult without producing CO2, or certain forms of agriculture might be still be emitting greenhouse gases.”

“But we were not thinking of entire sectors carrying on, like the fossil fuel sectors, for example,” he said.

Unpacking the ‘offsets’ on which ‘net-zero’ pledges are based

At the core of net-zero emission pledges is the concept of offsetting emissions, but scientists warn that the nature-based proposals are limited and fraught with potential environmental justice issues and the technology-based proposals haven’t nearly caught up with the scale and pace of emissions. The myriad of net-zero pledges are likely betting the planet’s future on the possible development of carbon removal technology emerging at some point.

“The potential for that carbon dioxide removal is very limited,” Rogelj, who has been a lead author for multiple annual Emissions Gap Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme, said. “First of all, because it’s expensive, because we have limited land and because we can’t scale those technologies up quick.”

Rogelj said ultimately, the science shows that rather than offsetting, the focus should be on deep reductions of emissions in the first place. What has emerged, however, is “companies that basically are not focusing on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, but rather are buying very cheap offset credits, not all of which are very reliable or trustworthy.”

“For a very small cost, they just continue polluting while giving the impression of trying to achieve ‘net-zero,'” he said.

There is no universal standard for offsetting or offsetting credits, Rogelj added, which is why it is important for the public to unpack what a company or even country means when they say their emissions are “net-zero” versus “zero.”

Knorr said there have been offsetting proposals “that basically allow a company or country to emit more than pledged for when another entity does less of that.”

“That’s often called avoidance offsetting, and it’s really important to stress because it’s often not very clear,” he said, arguing that this system needs to be entirely done away with. Among the worst net-zero pledges he’s seen emanating from Eastern Europe simply counted the nation’s existing forest lands as an “offset” that then by their calculations meant they essentially had to take no action on reducing emissions while claiming a goal of “net-zero.”

The second two forms of offsets, according to Knorr, are “nature-based solutions” (like planting trees) and “technological solutions” (that use emerging tech to remove carbon from the atmosphere and often store it underground).

Nature-based solutions often rely on land in poorer or developing nations to make up for the carbon emitted by wealthier countries, Knorr said, adding, “We currently have far too many tree-planting pledges for there being places, and there are also people living in these areas that might actually be then claimed for that.”

Thunberg said in a tweet that these nature-based offsets are also often fraught with human rights and environmental justice issues.

“Nature-based offsetting that relies heavily on land use in the Global South and in Indigenous lands risks shifting responsibility for emissions made by Global North countries to those already struggling with the impacts of the climate crisis and are least responsible for it,” she wrote from COP26.

While technology is rapidly improving in carbon capture and removal techniques, it has been hard for them to keep up with the amount of emissions being spewed.

The world’s biggest carbon capture facility opened in Iceland just last month to much fanfare. According to the calculations posted to Twitter by climate scientist Peter Kalmus, however, “If it works, in one year it will capture three seconds worth of humanity’s CO2 emissions.”

Echoing the questions of fairness raised by Thunberg and others, Tongia said that the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions on the globe are indiscriminate — highlighting the need for wealthier nations and corporations to take actions beyond just exploiting the land or lack of carbon coming from poorer nations.

“It doesn’t matter if a rich person or a poor person emits or cuts down, carbon is a global externality or pollutant,” he said. “So by saying all carbon is equal, that’s what offsets are intellectually driven by, that lets someone richer pay for the offset in a poor country.”

The real, capital-intensive challenges require changing industrial processes and the infrastructure that relies on fossil fuels, according to Tongia, which can take decades before seeing a return on investments.

“Instead of doing all of that, if you have an offset mechanism, the rich are able to say, ‘Oh, I’ll take an offset through low-hanging fruit that happens to be with a developing country,'” he added, such as a forestation project, which is a relatively cheap endeavor. “But that doesn’t actually reduce their emissions, it’s just a zero-sum game at one level.”

“The problem becomes, now let’s say some years later, the poor country needs to reduce its emissions as well, there’s nothing for them to offset against,” Tongia said. “And at that point we’ll be such far along this trajectory of total emissions, that we can’t rely on offsets anymore.”

Ultimately, with the damage already done, Knorr said this “net” or “offset” faze is “quite tangential in the current debate,” admitting that “to a large degree we have failed, also as scientists for example, for not calling that out.”

Looking beyond net-zero pledges

Tongia said that in his research, these offsets seem to have emerged in the private sector as short-term solutions while tackling the climate crisis needs to have a much broader approach.

“What I worry about is we’re taking too simplistic of an approach; we’re ‘financializing’ a lot of this space,” he said. “What these companies want is just tell me how to do it today, I’ll write a check.”

“People are stepping up and saying I’m willing to write a check, but now translating that instrument, that writing-a-check into what action on the ground is needed to actually offset those emissions, that is still not figured out,” he said. “And the problem is everyone looks for quick fixes.”

“It’s not that people are inherently evil,” he added of those looking for offsets. “But in general, it’s that people are looking for things that they’re familiar with, comfortable with, that are visible and achievable. This is a long-haul problem, and so just looking for short-term wins isn’t going to be enough.”

Rogelj and his colleagues established a “checklist” for how consumers can hold leaders accountable with their net-zero plans.

The threefold checklist includes examining the scope, fairness and road map of these plans.

The scope asks what global temperature goal does the plan contribute to, what is the target date for net-zero, which greenhouse gases are considered, what is the extent of the emissions, what are the relative contributions of offsets and how will risks around offsets be managed.

The fairness arm asks what principles are being applied, what the consequences for others are if these principles are applied universally, how will the individual target affect others’ capacity to achieve net zero and more.

“Net-zero targets globally are a zero-sum game,” Rogelj said. “If one country or company reduces emissions more slowly, then another country or company needs to do more for the same global net-zero target to be met. And that is really where this question of adequacy and fairness comes into play.”

“So, based on whether one operates in a sector that has a lot of mitigation potential, that has a lot of carbon dioxide removal potential, that has really large profit margins, it can be considered more or less fair to go slow or on the other hand to go particularly fast on carbon dioxide mitigation,” he said.

Finally, the roadmap asks for milestones and policies, monitoring and review systems to assess progress, and if net zero will be maintained or if it is a step toward net negative.

“Besides net-zero pledges, it is absolutely essential that the private sector sets targets that are measurable over the near term, and targets that really show the trajectory on which a company or a sector is evolving towards a long-term pledge,” Rogelj said. “Setting pledges for three decades in the future, and not working towards them, is simply greenwash.”

Tongia similarly said there needs to be a clearer set of standards among the slew of net-zero pledges that can mean so many different things.

“There’s so many layers at which accounting gets very, very tricky and messy,” Tongia said of emissions and offsets. “So, what we need is far better accounting norms, and then we can figure out, ‘Well, these will get full [offset] credit, these will get partial credit, these will share the credit and these should just be thrown out the window.'”

Tongia also argued that in order to be conducted humanely and fairly, more onus on high emitters to reduce emissions immediately is absolutely necessary.

Knorr said he now recommends a global body dishes out strict “carbon budgets” that limit the total amount of emissions without relying on offsets.

“‘Net-zero’ allows you to reliably at least carry on your business model for quite a long time,” Knorr said. “I don’t want to say that people who come up with these pledges aren’t acting responsibly … but it is very clear that they are buying time, and that kind of rapid reduction immediately right now hasn’t happened.”

“The impact of these pledges being in the future is negative,” Knorr said, equating it to somebody battling addiction who continues to binge a substance now, but promises by a far-off date they will quit. “Everybody knows that doesn’t work.”

He added, “Without honesty and going a bit deeper into ourselves and admitting our dependence on cheap energy … I think there’s a big risk that net-zero pledges will have actually even a perverse incentive to just carry on.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Nearly 100 million U.S. workers will be required to get the COVID vaccine by Jan. 4, with some workers allowed to test weekly instead, under sweeping federal rules released Thursday by the Biden administration that identifies COVID-19 as an occupational hazard.

The regulations are aimed at health care workers and businesses with 100 or more employees, covering two-thirds of the nation’s workforce. Businesses that don’t comply could be fined $14,000 per infraction, and hospitals could lose access to Medicare and Medicaid dollars.

It’s part of President Joe Biden’s aggressive new plan to try quell a pandemic that’s overshadowed his presidency and hobbled the economy. At the same time, the Jan. 4 date is a nod to industry groups that insisted the administration wait until after the holidays to impose mandates in the midst of a worker shortage.

“This is good for the economy,” a senior administration official told reporters late Wednesday on the rationale for the plan.

Since taking office, the Biden administration had avoided imposing nationwide vaccine mandates, focusing instead on incentives for businesses and individuals. But with the arrival of the delta variant, a surge in pediatric cases and pockets of the country remaining hesitant to get a shot, Biden’s COVID strategy shifted in recent weeks.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said of unvaccinated Americans on Sept. 9 when announcing his plan to draft the rule.

Biden’s plan also gives federal contractors an extra month to comply, sliding a previous Dec. 8 deadline set by the administration. Federal workers are still required to be vaccinated by Nov. 22.

Like health care workers, federal contractors and federal workers aren’t given the option to test instead of getting vaccinated. In other businesses, employees could be given the option to test weekly and would be required to wear a mask in the workplace.

When asked whether the worker shortage was a factor in the decision, administration officials said the primary focus was on making compliance easier for workers and aligning deadlines across the private sector.

Once divided on how to address the pandemic, Republican governors have united against the plan, insisting it represents dangerous federal overreach and would cripple business owners already dealing with worker shortages.

“Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian,” tweeted the South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster last September following Biden’s announcement.

Supporters counter that many large businesses have already embraced vaccine mandates to both entice employees who want a safe workplace and end a pandemic that has hobbled the economy. They argue too that whenever employees have enacted mandates, the vast majority of workers comply.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Warehouses in and around U.S. ports are running out of room, experts say, adding another challenge to the country’s already crippled supply chain.

“We are either at or over capacity, and demand for space is the greatest I have ever seen,” said Michael Sarcona, president of Sarcona Management Inc. He operates several warehouses in the Newark area, the third-largest port in North America.

Hundreds of thousands of shipping containers faced record backlog at U.S. ports over the past several weeks. Now that some have made landfall, the goods stored in those containers may soon outpace warehouse capacity.

Warehouse vacancy in the country has reached 3.6%, a record low, according to recent data from Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE), an American commercial real estate services and investment firm.

“Three-and-a-half percent is effectively zero,” said John Morris, executive managing director lead for CBRE’s industrial and logistics business in the Americas. “For the year, we have basically an effective shortage of space of about 300 million square feet.”

Even if retailers can get more products shipped to the U.S., Morris explained, they will struggle to find places to store them and move them along the supply chain.

“In an efficient supply chain, you want about 15% availability of warehouse capacity in these markets and across the country,” said Craig Fuller, CEO and founder of FreightWaves, a global logistics industry data and analytics company. “At 3.6%, these warehouses are operating beyond their available capacity to even function properly.”

Warehouses in the port of Los Angeles, the largest port in North America, have a record low vacancy of 1% , according to CBRE’s analysis. This is the lowest vacancy CBRE has ever recorded for the port.

“That vacancy rate is down by more than half over the last year,” said Chris Caton, the global head of strategy and analytics at Prologis, the world’s largest logistics real estate developer. “So there is extreme scarcity in these port markets.”

Warehouse vacancy at ports in central and northern New Jersey sit around 2%. Sarcona operates eight warehouse locations in Newark with a combined capacity of almost 2 million square feet, but has a team of employees and real estate agents urgently searching for more space.

How will this impact consumers?

Consumers likely won’t be able to rely on online shopping the way they once did, according to experts.

“I’m worried that the inability of the supply chain to keep up, ends up having an impact on the wonderful growth we’ve seen in this omni-channel retail economy,” said Morris, referring to online shopping platforms that allow consumers easy and timely access to big and small brand items.

“I think we’ve lost the predictability of when products are going to be delivered to consumers,” said Fuller, explaining that sellers likely won’t be able to guarantee delivery times this holiday season. “I’ve been ordering Christmas items since mid-October — [because] if anyone tells you they can tell you when something’s going to be delivered, they’re either not truthful or they’re misinformed.”

Fuller believes the uncertainty could push consumers back into stores.

“I think people are going to find that as we get closer and closer to the Christmas holiday, that the items that they normally would be able to buy online, they’re going to have to go into stores to get it,” Fuller said.

How did this happen?

Rebounding consumer demand has led to record imports through U.S. ports on both coasts. Warehouses at those ports are the first stop for items coming into the U.S., and they’re overwhelmed.

“Are we out of space? The answer is not yet,” Morris said. “Is supply and construction keeping up with demand? Just barely… like… just barely.”

One factor: Land around these ports is becoming increasingly in demand.

“In the most sought after locations, pricing is spiking — we’ve never seen rents rise like they have,” Caton said, explaining the challenges facing warehouse creation and development.

The issues relate to the physics and scarcity of land in these key locations, per Caton.

“If you want to build a 500,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey, you need 30 to 35 acres of land that’s relatively flat and well served by infrastructure, and that is just increasingly scarce,” Caton said.

Adding to the congestion, these warehouses often send goods to distribution centers, which in turn send those items out to consumers or to brick and mortar businesses. These centers “are also at capacity or overcapacity,” Sarcona, the warehouse owner, said.

When does this all get fixed?

“Perhaps in Q3 of next year” this will all be fixed, Morris said.

The U.S. will use over 1 billion square feet of storage space this year, compared to 800 million last year. And there are already 500 million square feet of storage in development, per CBRE.

But even with more storage locations being built, supply chain issues continue.

“It’s hard to get the materials to finish that construction,” Morris said. “With a broken supply chain for construction materials, cement roofing trusses, the pins that hold the roof to the wall, they’re short on all of that.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Meta, the newly named parent company of Facebook, announced Tuesday that it was shutting down its use of a facial recognition system on its social media platform.

The announcement comes after mounting pressure from advocacy groups concerned about privacy issues, allegations of racial bias in algorithms and additional concerns related to how artificial intelligence technology identifies people’s faces in pictures. It also notably comes amid renewed scrutiny of the tech giant from lawmakers and beyond.

“We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules,” Jerome Pesenti, the vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, said in a company blogpost Tuesday. “In the coming weeks, we will shut down the Face Recognition system on Facebook as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.”

“As part of this change, people who have opted in to our Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will delete the facial recognition template used to identify them,” Pesenti added.

Pesenti said that more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to use facial recognition, and its removal “will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates.”

Looking ahead, Pesenti said Meta still sees facial recognition technology as a tool that could be used for people needing to verify their identity or to prevent fraud or impersonation, and said the company will continue to work on these technologies while “engaging outside experts.”

“But the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole,” Pesenti added. “There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”

Removing the Facebook’s facial recognition system will lead to a number of changes for users, Pesenti noted, including that the platform will no longer automatically recognize if people’s faces appear in photos or videos, and people will no longer be able to turn it on for suggestions on whom to tag in photos. The company also intends to delete the template used to identify users who have employed the setting.

The change will affect the automatic alt text feature, which creates image descriptions for blind and visually impaired people, Pesenti added, saying the descriptions will no longer include the names of people recognized in photos but will function normally otherwise.

The announcement comes amid mounting controversies for the tech giant. A company whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified before lawmakers just weeks ago, alleging blatant disregard from Facebook executives when they learned their platform could have harmful effects on democracy and the mental health of young people.

Some digital rights advocacy groups welcomed Facebook’s recognition of the pitfalls of facial recognition technology, though still urged for an all-out ban.

“Facial recognition is one of the most dangerous and politically toxic technologies ever created. Even Facebook knows that,” Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director for the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, told ABC News in a statement shortly after the announcement was made.

“From misidentifying Black and Brown people (which has already led to wrongful arrests) to making it impossible to move through our lives without being constantly surveilled, we cannot trust governments, law enforcement, or private companies with this kind of invasive surveillance,” she added. “And even as algorithms improve, facial recognition will only be more dangerous.”

The tech could allow governments to target and crack down on religious minorities or political dissenters, create new tools for stalking or identity theft and more, Seeley George added, saying simply: “It should be banned.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — As climate change takes center stage with global leaders, it’s a perfect time to take a look around our own homes to see what small changes can help reduce one’s carbon footprint.

ABC News’ technology and consumer correspondent Becky Worley kicked off “This Green House” on Monday to share tips to help the planet and cut costs on energy bills.

Home Swaps by Room

Swap a gas range for an electric option. Gas cooking can waste 34% more energy than cooking with electricity.

Opt for an energy star-certified fridge that cuts the energy use down by nearly 50%.

Change out old incandescent light bulbs in favor of LED bulbs that cost less and use 90% less energy.

Water heaters can make up 30% of a household’s total energy cost, more than all other major appliances like the fridge, dryer and dishwasher combined, so seek out a new energy-efficient model made with new technology.

Worley spoke with a contractor who recommended a budget and planet-friendly project like adding weather stripping around windows to keep the draft out and heat inside the house.

Especially with older windows, weather stripping can help with energy savings as a whole.

“If you don’t weatherstrip, with all the leaks, it can be, like, having a window open all winter long,” Worley explained. “Home heating is one of the highest costs and the biggest energy sucks in a home.”

Other Energy-Efficient Swaps and Hacks

In order to save without swapping out each appliance, Worley shared some additional tips to save on electricity with larger appliances.

First, if replacing any appliance from a dishwasher or refrigerator to a television, Energy Star media manager Brittney Gordon told GMA to look for the blue energy star label “to get those savings that you’re looking for.”

There are also yellow energy guide labels on appliances that Worley said list the FTC’s annual cost of running that particular appliance so you know what you should be spending.

Another important swap is the hot water heater, which Worley said “cost about $600 a year to operate” and according to Lowe’s, the average life span is just 10 years.

When a hot water heater needs replacing, Gordon recommends switching to a heat pump, which she said “is the best-kept secret” and “the number one most efficient way to heat water.” Plus, homeowners with the heat pump will receive a rebate upwards of $1,000 to save even more on their home.

For folks not ready or not looking to immediately upgrade their refrigerator, Worley shared a trick to reduce the energy consumption by 30%.

“Cleaning the coils at the back. All you need is a screwdriver and vacuum cleaner and you are good to go,” Worley said. “That’s a tip for those at home who aren’t planning to upgrade.”

Worley also suggested adding a smart thermostat to the house to help regulate heat use and cut down over 20% on heating costs.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers Union are set to vote Tuesday on a tentative agreement that would end the ongoing strike of more than 10,000 John Deere workers.

News of the tentative deal, which would give approximately double the wage increase compared the previously rejected offer that kicked off the strike on Oct. 14, comes as unique labor market conditions have resulted in workers wielding new power as the pandemic wanes.

An apparent shortage of workers accepting low-wage jobs has left many major companies reeling for staff and has been linked to the spate of strikes that have rocked the private sector in recent weeks. The labor crunch — combined with recent record-high rates of people quitting their jobs and record-high job openings, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data — have resulted in workers gaining new leverage as they seek to bargain for better pay or working conditions.

UAW leadership and John Deere announced a tentative agreement had been reached between the union’s elected national bargaining team and officials at the agricultural machinery giant Saturday, but workers remain on strike until the ratification vote Tuesday.

The terms of the new agreement would guarantee a 10% wage increase for all union employees in the first year of the contract, and 5% each in the third and fifth year of the deal, as well as 3% lump sum payments in the second, fourth and fifth years of the deal, according to a contract breakdown document shared with ABC News by the union. Moreover, employees would receive an $8,500 ratification bonus.

There would also be improved retirement benefit options and no changes to the cost of their health insurance.

The UAW on Oct. 14 rejected a contract offer that would have offered a ratification bonus of $3,500 and immediate raises of 5% to 6%.

“Our UAW John Deere national bargaining team went back to our local members after the previous tentative agreement and canvassed the concerns and priorities of membership,” UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement announcing news of the new tentative agreement.

“We want to thank the UAW bargaining team and striking UAW members and their families for the sacrifices they have made to achieve these gains,” Curry added. “Our members have enjoyed the support of our communities and the entire labor movement nationwide as they have stood together in support and solidarity these past few weeks.”

John Deere, meanwhile, confirmed in a statement on its website that a second tentative agreement on a labor contract had been reached with the union and that the “UAW will call for a vote on the new tentative agreement.”

The striking John Deere workers have received well-wishes and support from lawmakers and the public, as new employee activism during so-called “Striketober” has fueled momentum for the post-pandemic labor movement.

A GoFundMe set up to support the striking Deere workers has raised more than $135,000 from over 3,000 donors.

The first strike in more than three decades at John Deere comes after the company reported earning a record-high $4.68 billion during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year, more than double the $1.993 billion reported during the same time last year.

John Deere’s chairman and CEO John May, meanwhile, earned compensation of some $15.58 million in fiscal year 2020, according to a company SEC filing. This would make the ratio of the CEO’s total compensation to a median employee’s total compensation in 2020 approximately 220 to 1, the SEC filing states.

The recent bout of employee activism that has manifested in work stoppages and strikes in recent weeks comes after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic that took an inordinate toll on workers deemed “essential,” but also after decades of soaring income inequality in the U.S., experts have said.

“I think workers have reached a tipping point,” Tim Schlittner, the communications director of the coalition of labor unions AFL-CIO, told ABC News last month shortly after the Deere strike commenced. “For too long they’ve been called essential, but treated as expendable, and workers have decided that enough is enough.”

Schlittner said the pandemic also exposed some deep “imbalances of power in the economy.”

“The pandemic has made clear what’s important and what’s not, and workers are looking at work in a new way, and demanding more of a return on their labor and demanding things like basic respect, dignity and safety on the job,” he said. “The pandemic has put on display for everyone to see how important workers are to this country, and you can’t call workers essential for 18 months and then treat them like crap when they all come back on the job.”

 

 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers Union are set to vote Tuesday on a tentative agreement that would end the ongoing strike of more than 10,000 John Deere workers.

News of the tentative deal, which would give approximately double the wage increase compared the previously rejected offer that kicked off the strike on Oct. 14, comes as unique labor market conditions have resulted in workers wielding new power as the pandemic wanes.

An apparent shortage of workers accepting low-wage jobs has left many major companies reeling for staff and has been linked to the spate of strikes that have rocked the private sector in recent weeks. The labor crunch — combined with recent record-high rates of people quitting their jobs and record-high job openings, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data — have resulted in workers gaining new leverage as they seek to bargain for better pay or working conditions.

UAW leadership and John Deere announced a tentative agreement had been reached between the union’s elected national bargaining team and officials at the agricultural machinery giant Saturday, but workers remain on strike until the ratification vote Tuesday.

The terms of the new agreement would guarantee a 10% wage increase for all union employees in the first year of the contract, and 5% each in the third and fifth year of the deal, as well as 3% lump sum payments in the second, fourth and fifth years of the deal, according to a contract breakdown document shared with ABC News by the union. Moreover, employees would receive an $8,500 ratification bonus.

There would also be improved retirement benefit options and no changes to the cost of their health insurance.

The UAW on Oct. 14 rejected a contract offer that would have offered a ratification bonus of $3,500 and immediate raises of 5% to 6%.

“Our UAW John Deere national bargaining team went back to our local members after the previous tentative agreement and canvassed the concerns and priorities of membership,” UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement announcing news of the new tentative agreement.

“We want to thank the UAW bargaining team and striking UAW members and their families for the sacrifices they have made to achieve these gains,” Curry added. “Our members have enjoyed the support of our communities and the entire labor movement nationwide as they have stood together in support and solidarity these past few weeks.”

John Deere, meanwhile, confirmed in a statement on its website that a second tentative agreement on a labor contract had been reached with the union and that the “UAW will call for a vote on the new tentative agreement.”

The striking John Deere workers have received well-wishes and support from lawmakers and the public, as new employee activism during so-called “Striketober” has fueled momentum for the post-pandemic labor movement.

A GoFundMe set up to support the striking Deere workers has raised more than $135,000 from over 3,000 donors.

The first strike in more than three decades at John Deere comes after the company reported earning a record-high $4.68 billion during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year, more than double the $1.993 billion reported during the same time last year.

John Deere’s chairman and CEO John May, meanwhile, earned compensation of some $15.58 million in fiscal year 2020, according to a company SEC filing. This would make the ratio of the CEO’s total compensation to a median employee’s total compensation in 2020 approximately 220 to 1, the SEC filing states.

The recent bout of employee activism that has manifested in work stoppages and strikes in recent weeks comes after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic that took an inordinate toll on workers deemed “essential,” but also after decades of soaring income inequality in the U.S., experts have said.

“I think workers have reached a tipping point,” Tim Schlittner, the communications director of the coalition of labor unions AFL-CIO, told ABC News last month shortly after the Deere strike commenced. “For too long they’ve been called essential, but treated as expendable, and workers have decided that enough is enough.”

Schlittner said the pandemic also exposed some deep “imbalances of power in the economy.”

“The pandemic has made clear what’s important and what’s not, and workers are looking at work in a new way, and demanding more of a return on their labor and demanding things like basic respect, dignity and safety on the job,” he said. “The pandemic has put on display for everyone to see how important workers are to this country, and you can’t call workers essential for 18 months and then treat them like crap when they all come back on the job.”

 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up to send a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station for the fourth time.

The mission, dubbed Crew-3, will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, to the ISS for a six-month stay in orbit.

The spaceflight, moved to Wednesday from Sunday because of weather, will be the first for three of the four crew members.

The veteran on the mission is Marshburn. The doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, making his third trip to space, said this research could one day answer bigger questions about human existence.

“It’s every one of us who has looked into the night sky and wondered, ‘How does the universe work, and how did life come to our planet Earth?'” Marshburn told ABC News.

Barron, an astronaut who has experience on submarines, said her time in Navy has helped prepare her for this moment — and that she made a playlist for the ride out.

“There are some strong millennial favorites on my playlist and throwbacks to the ’90s,” she joked.

They will launch aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.

The crew is scheduled to spend 22 hours in the capsule before docking with the ISS. The team decided to call the new capsule “Endurance” — a tribute to the human spirit and a historic sailing vessel used by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.

SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the ISS successfully for the first time in June 2020, which cleared them to continue conducting flights with their rocket and Crew Dragon. It was the first crewed launch to depart from American soil in nearly a decade.

Last month SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission made history as civilians traveled the greatest distance away from Earth — 367 miles — even farther than the International Space Station.

But on that flight they discovered an issue with the toilet inside the Crew Dragon that almost hampered the Crew-3 launch. A tube became unglued and spilled urine onto fans beneath the floor.

“It had no impact on Inspiration4 at all,” William Gerstenmair, SpaceX’s vice president, said during a press conference. “We didn’t really even notice it, the crew didn’t notice it, until we got the vehicle back and we looked under the floor and we saw the fact that there was contamination.”

Engineers eventually fixed the problem.

SpaceX is contracted to launch up to six crewed flights for NASA, with two more scheduled for 2022.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — American Airlines has canceled more than 2,000 flights since Friday — stranding tens of thousands of passengers temporarily at U.S. airports across the country. American is just the latest airline to suffer crippling logistical failures amid staffing shortages.

The airline said high winds at its Dallas-Fort Worth hub on Thursday left flight crews out of their regular position and sparked the dayslong cancellations.

“The problem with most of the large airlines is if they if one hub sneezes, the other hubs catch colds,” aviation expert Henry Harteveldt told ABC News. “The airlines’ networks are all interconnected.”

American COO David Seymour said in an internal memo that in order to provide scheduling certainty for their crews, they were forced to proactively cancel some flights “for the last few days this month.”

American has already canceled 300 flights Monday morning, but anticipates they will get through “the brief irregular ops period quickly with the start of a new month.”

“Unfortunately, when bad weather hits an airline at the end of the month, the problems are exacerbated because often crews are out of the legal amount of time they’re allowed to work,” Harteveldt said.

A staffing boost from the 1,800 American flight attendants set to return from leave Monday should help American re-stabilize this week, experts said.

Southwest had a similar operational meltdown three weeks ago when the airline canceled 2,000 flights over three days.

The airline blamed the multi-day mess on air traffic control issues, bad weather and “other external constraints.”

In response, Southwest said it’s going to hire more than 5,000 employees by the end of the year to mitigate future issues and has 50% of the goal met.

Experts are worried American and Southwest’s inability to stabilize their schedules quickly is a potential warning of what’s to come this winter.

With airlines booking their flights to 100% capacity, experts are concerned there is no wiggle room left in the system to recover if a major airline suffers any logistical failure during the busy travel season.

“The chaos that is the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel season will be even more chaotic this year,” Harteveldt said.

ABC News’ Annie Ochitwa and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Earlier this year, multiple Facebook employees questioned the apparent restrictions on well-known Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd’s Instagram account, according to internal Facebook documents shared with ABC News and a group of other news organizations.

The document, titled “Concerns with added restrictions/demotions on content pertaining to Palestine,” shows concern among some employees over content moderation decisions during the May escalation of violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

The documents were disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee, and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. They were provided to ABC News by a congressional staffer.

Facebook’s independent Oversight Board called for an investigation into whether moderation disproportionately targeted Palestinians last month.

The document also points to frustration by employees who were, in the moment, unable to pin down exactly why an activist’s online reach was being limited.

In the post, the Facebook employee, whose name was redacted, warned the Instagram Stories of El-Kurd, a prominent activist in the East Jerusalem area of Sheikh Jarrah, were apparently being “demoted” in error. Demotion refers to the practice of limiting the reach of a post judged to violate Facebook’s rules.

And El-Kurd’s account wasn’t the only one facing apparent restrictions, according to the document’s author.

“Can we investigate the reasons why posts and stories pertaining to Palestine lately have had limited reach and engagement, especially when more people than ever from around the world are watching the situation unfold?” the author wrote.

While the employee’s post is not dated, it includes an unredacted link to a May 12 tweet by El-Kurd, which includes a photo of an Instagram error message.

“I keep getting messages like this one. My Instagram story views went down from 150k to like 50k. So much of what I post is disappearing. Why are you silencing Palestinians?” his tweet read.

At the time of El-Kurd’s May 12 tweet, violence had already broken out over the forced evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. In the resulting crisis, according to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, around 245 Palestinians, including 63 children, were “seemingly killed by Israeli Defense Forces.” Rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups resulted in 13 deaths in Israel, including two children, according to Human Rights Watch.

A Facebook spokesperson noted that in May, Instagram experienced a technical glitch affecting the Stories of millions of users, including many Palestinians. The issue was quickly fixed, the company said. Facebook also acknowledged reports that users felt Stories about the conflict were having an unexpectedly limited reach, which the company said was due to a change to the way stories are prioritized that privileged original posts over re-shares. That change was later reversed, the company said Thursday.

According to the internal document about El-Kurd, the activist had previously been the subject of “false positives,” the mistaken removal or limiting of a piece of content.

This ran counter to a new effort within Facebook, according to the document.

“There have been false positive[s] reported against his account in the past and now that we (FB) have taken a stance to minimize our over-enforcing on content from Palestine — due to the necessity of allowing folks on the ground to share what’s going on — there should be no reason his content is getting removed or restricted,” the document read.

A follow-up comment added to the undated post points to confusion and delays in resolving the problem.

“I’d really like to understand what exactly is breaking down here and why. What is being done to fix it given that this is an issue that was brought up a week ago?” the unidentified commenter wrote.

Another commenter chimed in, reporting that they had investigated the issue and not found any restrictions put in place by the “Inauthentic Behavior” team. Inauthentic Behavior is a term used within Facebook for a range of violations, including the use of false identities and the artificial boosting of a post’s popularity.

As employees continued to look for a cause of the possible crackdown on El-Kurd’s account, other comments expressed frustration.

“Also getting reports about this from friends and the conversations are harder and harder as days pass without a root cause being found and tackled internally,” another comment read.

It’s not clear, according to the document, whether a cause was ever found.

“We’re sorry to anyone who felt they couldn’t bring attention to important events,” Facebook spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to ABC News Thursday.

El-Kurd has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.

In the wake of that crisis, nearly 200 Facebook employees signed an open letter calling on Facebook to address claims of censorship against pro-Palestinian voices on the platform, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Facebook’s Oversight Board called for an independent review into “allegations that Facebook has disproportionately removed or demoted content from Palestinian users and content in Arabic,” in a Sept. 14 statement. The board also called for a probe into whether Facebook was “not doing enough to remove content that incites violence against Israeli civilians.”

The Oversight Board said Facebook had wrongfully taken down a post, which mentioned a Palestinian militant group but which did not contain any incitement to violence.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.