News – Page 2978 – 105.7 WDNY

Decadeslong gap in gun violence research funding has lasting impact

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.

Gun violence is an endemic problem in the United States — once again getting worse in some areas after many years of declines and persistent at high levels in others.

Despite being one of the leading causes of death, one thing that’s difficult to know is the scope of the problem, fueled in part by a more than a two-decade-long prohibition — recently changed — on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control.”

It wasn’t always this way — the CDC in 1983 adopted a public health approach to gun violence.

“At that point in time in 1983, there were two types of frequent injury deaths. One was motor vehicle crashes, and the other was gun violence,” Dr. Mark Rosenberg, CEO of the Task Force for Global Health and former member of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told ABC News.

During the 1990s, public and private programs conducted gun-related research — among them was the CDC’s Injury Prevention Program, where Rosenberg worked, and the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

But in 1996, Congress passed an amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill. The bill modification, commonly known as the Dickey Amendment, prohibited the use of federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control,” leading to the elimination of all CDC funding to conduct firearm-related research — having a lasting impact still limiting what we know today about gun violence.

Even though the funding spigot has recently been turned back on, researchers are still feeling the effects of the lack of data to study gun violence. Researchers say the gun violence problem is urgent and requires an outsized solution detached from politics.

Watch ABC News Live on Mondays at 3 p.m. to hear more about gun violence from experts during roundtable discussions. And check back next week, when we look into what some gun owners say could solve the gun violence issue.

“If we can understand the causes, we can change the effects and we can change the effects for the better, so science is a way to understand the causes and the effects and the way to link them,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

Here’s what to know about the data issue around gun violence and what advocates say can be done:

Impact of the Dickey Amendment

In the early 1990s, the CDC had a $2.6 million budget dedicated to gun violence research both for internal research and for external studies.

“We started looking at, what’s the problem,” Rosenberg told ABC News. The agency studied the number of people dying from gun violence, the weapons used and the causes behind it.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, says the program received two grants at the time to conduct much-needed research on firearms.

“All of these grants made use of unique data that are collected in California,” said Wintemute, who explained to ABC News that the organization was linking gun purchases with criminal records as part of its prevention research.

But everything changed when the Dickey Amendment was introduced by former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark.

Four years before the Dickey Amendment was enacted, the CDC had published its first study on gun violence. The report looked at the correlation between safety and guns, finding that having a weapon in a household didn’t necessarily result in safer outcomes, Rosenberg said.

“These results weren’t pleasing to the NRA. And so they stepped up their attack on our research program,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

ABC News reached out to the National Rifle Association requesting comment on the allegations made by Dr. Rosenberg but has not heard back.

The Dickey Amendment reallocated the $2.6 million away from gun research to other health research on subjects like traumatic brain injury, according to Wintemute.

Researchers fought the effects of the amendment, which prohibited advocacy for gun control — but which had an impact beyond advocacy because experts said they viewed vague language in the amendment as a “threat.”

“This Dickey Amendment had a real chilling effect,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “It was enough to discourage individual researchers and, at the same time, Congress took away the money we were using for the research we were doing.”

The CDC sent ABC News a statement saying it was “subject to appropriations language that states that none of the funds made available to CDC may be used to ‘advocate or promote gun control.”

“The lack of dedicated and sustained research funding for firearm injury… limited our ability to conduct research to gain understanding of how best to prevent firearm-related injuries and deaths relative to other public health problems,” it said.

Shortage of funds

Wintemute’s program suffered from a shortage of federal funds after the amendment passed. Although it was able to continue doing some research through private funding, that work was limited. He originally had around 12 people on his team but says he was left with only four, including himself, limiting the program’s reach.

While The Department of Justice still allocated some funds to firearm research under the National Institute of Justice (the DOJ’s research arm), Wintemute said it was insufficient.

For example, in 2004, a total of $461,759 was granted by the agency to three different institutes for gun-related research — a far cry from the millions normally required for extensive study.

“We had to revert to simpler, more descriptive studies that made use of available data. There wasn’t money to go out and collect data writ large,” Wintemute said.

Other institutions conducting research were also affected.

“Because of the Dickey Amendment, we had dropped firearm injuries from our portfolio,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Washington, who was conducting research on injury prevention, including firearm-related injuries.

“It really discouraged any serious firearm research,” Rivara said.

This gap in gun research led to a shortage of people familiar with the subject and a lack of data still felt by today’s experts.

“It’ll be another five to 10 years before we have anything like an adequate number of experienced researchers on the case,” Wintemute said.

Research resumes

The need for research and data collection was finally re-addressed by the federal government after the Parkland mass shooting in 2018 that left 17 dead.

After the mass shooting, an omnibus bill was signed by President Donald Trump clarifying that restricting the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control doesn’t ban research.

In 2019, Congress began to again allocate funds for research and data collection on gun violence and injuries.

Although the Dickey Amendment remains in place, Dickey, its author who died in 2017, saw the consequences of it on gun-related research and changed his mind, according to Rosenberg — who later became Dickey’s friend.

“Jay Dickey eventually saw the disastrous consequences of gun violence…with mass shootings with rising numbers of gun homicides and gun suicides,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “He switched his position.”

In an op-ed co-authored with Rosenberg in 2012, Dickey says he “served as the NRA’s point person in Congress” to cut the gun violence research budget.

“We were on opposite sides of the heated battle 16 years ago, but we are in strong agreement now that scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners,” reads a section of the piece published in The Washington Post.

More funds needed

Federal funds are now available to study gun violence, but organizations working on policy recommendations are still struggling to conduct it.

“There is more money for research now. But what is missing is datasets,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, referring to datasets at the federal level that could help in the research on firearms. “We destroy background check records at the federal level in 24 hours… how do you suppose to understand who’s purchasing firearms and what the implications are, if you can’t examine that data,” he added.

The nonprofit, affiliated with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence located in Washington D.C., focuses on looking for evidence-based policy solutions and programs that can reduce gun-related violence.

“The data deficit has hurt us because we don’t understand all the solutions,” Horwitz told ABC News.

Despite the lack of research, experts say there is still a path forward for finding solutions to the high levels of gun violence plaguing the country.

“This is a solvable problem,” Rosenberg said. “We can find out what are the patterns, what’s the problem, we can find out the causes, we can find out what works to both reduce gun violence and protect gun rights.”

The key to finding possible solutions is focusing on science as opposed to politics, researchers say.

“Science is not advocacy, science is understanding things as they are,” Wintemute said.

While the landscape for gun-related research has improved, there is still a long way to go, Wintemute said.

For fiscal year 2022, Congress approved at least $25 million to fund gun violence research, according to the CDC. And although that represents an increase of $12.5 million compared with the last fiscal year, more resources are needed, according to Wintemude.

“Congress has not followed through,” he said.

He believes the budget for gun-related research has to match the extent of the problem and also help make up for the Dickey Amendment’s toll, including the gaps in data and expertise it created.

“To help get history out of the way and let us attack the problem with a program of research that’s adequate to the size of the problem itself we need to do away with the Dickey Amendment, even as amended,” he added.

‘Happy Face Killer’s’ daughter believes he would kill again if released

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, better known by the “Happy Face Killer” nickname he was given in the ’90s, has spent decades behind bars but his daughter believes he would kill again if released from prison today.

“I sometimes now wonder, if he was freed now, if he was released, would he kill again? And I believe he would,” Melissa Moore told “20/20” in a new interview. “I don’t believe my dad is sorry at all … what he is sorry about, though, is that he got caught.”

Jesperson, now 66, is serving five non-consecutive life sentences in Oregon’s state penitentiary.

A Canadian-born long-haul truck driver and divorced father of three, Jesperson claimed to have killed eight women in five states: Washington, California, Florida, Wyoming and Oregon.

Watch the full story on “20/20” TONIGHT at 9 p.m. ET on ABC

His killing spree spanned from 1990 until 1995, when he turned himself into authorities. At the time, he was being investigated for the murder of his last known victim, 41-year-old Julie Winningham, who some described as his girlfriend.

In a 2010 interview with ABC News, Jesperson equated committing murder to “shoplifting.” When ABC News’ Juju Chang challenged him on that framing, Jesperson doubled down, saying his killings were “everything like shoplifting.”

“It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it,” he continued. “It is everything like shoplifting. You’re breaking the law but you’re getting away with it. And so, there’s a thrill of getting away with it.”

He was dubbed the “Happy Face Killer” for the smiley face drawings he included on a letter he sent to a Portland, Oregon, newspaper, in which he bragged about his crimes.

“It’s just a moment in time when situations present themselves, and you become what you are,” Jesperson told ABC News in a previous interview. “I’m sorry it happened, [I] wish it never happened … it’s done, it’s over with.”

After Jesperson came forward in March 1995, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges for his first known victim, 23-year-old Taunja Bennett, and Winningham. Both women’s bodies were found on opposite sides of the Columbia River from each other.

“What really stood out to me about my father is that once he killed Taunja Bennett, it’s like he got a taste for blood and power and control that he’s probably never had in his life and that excited him. So much so that he seemed to start killing very rapidly again after Taunja,” Moore said.

Jesperson was linked to murdering six other women, some of which remain unknown to this day: an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Claudia” in August 1992 near Blythe, California; Cynthia Lynn Rose in September 1992 in Turlock, California; Lori Ann Pentland in November 1992 in Salem, Oregon; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Carla” in June 1993 in Santa Nella, California; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Suzanne” in September 1994 in Crestview, Florida; and Angela Subrize in January 1995 in Laramie County, Wyoming.

Moore believes her father has no remorse. Even now, she said, if her father could go back in time to change anything, it would be to have never turned himself in so he could keep killing.

“I believe he would be killing more women” if he were a free man, she said.

Growing up, Moore said the father she knew as a young child wasn’t violent. He was a man who carried her on his shoulders and made her feel “on top of the world,” she said, someone who made up bedtime stories about a princess and tucked her in at night.

One of the last things he bought her, Moore said, was a karaoke and music recording system for her 10th birthday. Shortly after that, her parents got divorced and that’s when she said her father changed.

Dr. Robert Schug, a forensic psychologist, has spoken to Jesperson multiple times. He said that Jesperson’s violent outbursts may have stemmed from his divorce.

“Keith mentions this period of his marriage when things really went south, so all of this really starts creating a very turbulent emotional period for the entire family,” Schug said. “But, particularly for Keith.”

Moore said she thought her father unleashed his anger over the divorce into his killing of Bennett.

“Then after that release and that excitement and the thought that he got away with it, plus two other people getting the blame, he was free to kill again, and he did very quickly,” she said.

A jury first convicted a Portland, Oregon, woman named Laverne Pavlinac for Bennett’s murder in 1990, largely based on her detailed confession to police in which she falsely claimed she helped her boyfriend John Sosnovske rape and kill the young woman.

Sosnovske later pleaded no contest to the murder charge.

In reality, neither had anything to do with the crime. Jesperson told investigators one of the reasons he wanted to come forward was he wanted credit for Bennett’s murder and to get Pavlinac and Sosnovske out of prison. The two were released in 1995.

It had been more than 15 years since Moore spoke to her father until she said he called her this past Father’s Day. With all the time that had passed, she decided to accept the call.

“It was interesting to hear his voice again, and just that old, familiar voice. It’s aged … He sounds more like my grandfather,” Moore said. “As we signed off, he said, ‘Goodbye, my daughter,’ and it definitely asserted that he wanted to control that I would have a relationship with him.”

Now a parent herself, Moore said her children are curious about their grandfather. They had visited him in prison when they were young, but they have no memory of the meeting. In letters to ABC News, Jesperson expressed how much he would like to reunite with his family.

“For years, I have reached out to my children to be a part of their lives,” Jesperson wrote in one of these letters. “They’re in my thoughts daily and I love them and am proud of them.”

Still, Moore said she doesn’t want her children to have a relationship with her father.

“I don’t want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath. He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words,” she said.

Moore’s 21-year-old daughter Aspen Moore, who said she learned the truth about her grandfather when she was about 10 years old, agrees that she doesn’t want to meet him.

“I think that he has excuses for his actions,” she said. “I don’t feel that his actions can be just brushed off.”

Melissa Moore maintains she doesn’t want to have a relationship with her father and said there was nothing he could offer her to bring her “any kind of closure.”

“There isn’t going to be closure,” she said. “But I’m okay with that. I’m content with my life, and I don’t need him to say sorry. I don’t need him to ask for forgiveness, and I frankly wouldn’t believe in his request for forgiveness.”

Employers add 531,000 jobs last month as recovery gains steam, unemployment rate falls to 4.6%

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Hiring gained steam in October, with U.S. employers adding 531,000 jobs and the unemployment rate edging down by a fraction of a percentage point to 4.6%, the Department of Labor said Friday.

Job growth was widespread and beat economists’ expectations — with major gains in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, manufacturing, and in the transportation and warehousing sectors — the DOL said, indicative of the the post-pandemic recovery rebounding in the labor market after months of disappointing hiring figures. In September, employers added some 312,000 jobs, according to revised figures released Friday.

Employment has increased by 18.2 million since the recent low seen in April 2020, when the pandemic raged, but remains down by some 4.2 million, or 2.8%, from its pre-pandemic levels. The unemployment rate in February 2020 was at a historic low of 3.5%.

Notable job growth was seen in the hard-hit leisure and hospitality industry last month, which saw some 164,000 jobs added. Employment in this sector is still down by 8.2%, however, compared to February 2020 levels.

Other notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, which added 100,000 jobs in October, including a gain of 41,000 in temporary help services, the DOL said. Manufacturing added 60,000 jobs last month, and the transportation and warehousing sector saw employment increase by 54,000 jobs.

Moreover, the average hourly earnings for all employees last month increased by 11 cents to $30.96. A shortage of workers accepting low-wage jobs in the wake of the pandemic shock has been linked to the rising wages seen in recent months, as many major companies have struggled to hire back staff let go in the early days of the pandemic.

Disparities still lurk in the recovery. The unemployment rate for Black workers last month was nearly double that of white workers at 7.9% compared to 4%. The unemployment rate for Hispanic workers was 5.9% in October, and 4.2% for Asian workers.

Finally, the DOL data indicates some companies are recalling workers back to the office after the vaccine rollout. The DOL said that some 11.6% of employed persons teleworked because of the pandemic last month, down from 13.2% the month prior.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Opening statements in Ahmaud Arbery trial set to begin

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — The murder trial of three white Georgia men charged in the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man prosecutors allege was “hunted down” and shot to death while out for a Sunday jog, is set to begin on Friday with opening statements.

The evidence portion of the high-profile case will kick off around 9 a.m. in Glynn County Superior Court in Brunswick, Georgia.

“I do feel like we’re getting closer to justice for Ahmaud day by day,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said in an interview scheduled to be broadcast Friday night on ABC’s Nightline.

The trial will begin under a cloud of controversy after a jury comprised of 11 white people and one Black person was selected on Wednesday, prompting an objection from prosecutors that the selection process, which took nearly three weeks, ended up racially biased.

On Thursday afternoon, one of the seated jurors, a white woman in her 40s or 50s, was dismissed from the panel for undisclosed medical issues. One of the alternate jurors, a white person, replaced her, bringing the number of alternates to three. All of the alternates are white.

The three defendants are Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer; his son, Travis McMichael, 35; and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52.

The men have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.

Arbery was out jogging on Feb. 23, 2020, through the Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick when he was killed.

Colin Powell to be remembered as statesman and warrior at Friday funeral

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Retired Gen. Colin Powell, the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and later as the first Black secretary of state, will be remembered and celebrated as a statesman, a warrior and a trailblazer Friday at the Washington National Cathedral.

While attendance is by invitation only, the private service at noon will be nationally televised. ABC News and ABC News Live will present special coverage beginning at approximately 12 p.m. EDT.

1152021-Colin Powell RI by ABC News Politics

Powell died last month at 84 from complications of COVID-19. Though he was fully vaccinated, his immune system was comprised from cancer treatments, his spokesperson said.

“It’s really hard to overstate the respect Colin Powell had,” said ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, who covered Powell’s career for decades. “When traveling around the world with him, it was almost like traveling with a king — but Colin Powell, of course, never acted like one.”

President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are scheduled to attend. Former President Bill Clinton, who was recently hospitalized with an infection, will not attend, an aide saying, “Under any other circumstances, he would have been there, but he’s taking the advice of his doctors to rest and not travel for a month very seriously. So Secretary Clinton will be there representing them.”

The iconic cathedral is where four presidents have had funeral services: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Tributes will be given by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, as well as Powell’s son, Michael.

Powell broke barriers serving under four presidents — Reagan, Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — at the very top of the national security establishment, first as deputy national security adviser and then as national security adviser. Later, he was nominated to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior ranking member of the U.S. armed forces and top military adviser to the president, and after that, secretary of state — the first African American to hold both posts.

As secretary of state, it was Powell who told the world that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat, assertions that later proved to be false. He told ABC News’ Barbara Walters in Sept. 2005 that he felt “terrible” about the claims he made in a now-infamous address to the U.N. Security Council arguing for a U.S. invasion.

When asked if he feels it has tarnished his reputation, he said, “Of course it will. It’s a blot. I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”

“To be that example of someone who admitted mistakes,” Raddatz said. “What an example for today’s youth — not only to have someone who rose to such a powerful position — but who looked at himself and reflected on what he had done right and what he had done wrong.”

Throughout his 35-years of service in the military, Powell, a decorated war hero who deployed twice to Vietnam, never made his political leanings known. Although he served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, it wasn’t until 1995 that Powell announced that he had registered as a Republican. He formally supported the candidacy of Democratic presidential candidates Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden.

The reelection campaign of former President Donald Trump brought out Powell’s political side in the last years of his life, when he called on voters not to support the incumbent, Republican president, calling him dangerous to democracy.

In many ways, Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants who grew up in the Bronx, was the embodiment of the American Dream. He left behind his wife, Alma Powell, and his three children, Michael, Linda and Annemarie.

In a statement Oct. 18 announcing his death, his family said, “We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”

ABC News and ABC News Live will present special coverage of the memorial service beginning at approximately noon EDT.

Why some experts say corporate ‘net-zero’ emissions pledges could have net-zero impact on climate crisis

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(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.”

Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill reduces risk of being hospitalized or dying by 89%, company says

November 5, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A course of pills developed by Pfizer can slash the risk of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 by 89% if taken within three days of developing symptoms, according to results released Friday by the pharmaceutical company.

In a study of more than 1,200 COVID-19 patients with a higher risk of developing serious illness, people who took Pfizer’s pills were far less likely to end up in the hospital compared to people who got placebo pills.

None of the people who got the real pills died, but 10 people who got placebo pills died, according to results summarized in a Pfizer press release.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in prepared remarks that the data suggest the pill-based treatment, if authorized, could “eliminate up to nine out of ten hospitalizations.”

Infectious disease experts cautioned these results are preliminary — only described in a press release and not in a peer-reviewed medical journal — but they represent another promising development in the search for effective and easy-to-administer COVID-19 pills.

Right now, the only authorized treatments are given via intravenous infusion.

“Having an oral therapy is critically important,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, the executive associate dean and a global health expert at the Emory School of Medicine.

“If we can get patients to start treatment early before they progress to severe illness and unfortunately death, everyone wins in the fight against COVID,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, a board-certified infectious disease physician at South Shore Health and an ABC News contributor.

Infectious disease specialists stressed that these pills are not a replacement for a vaccine — by far the safest and most effective way to reduce the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19.

But they may make a big difference if given quickly to people after getting COVID-19, especially the immune compromised, or in places where a vaccine is not available.

Pfizer’s pill-based treatment “would be a good drug for patient with COVID and high risk of progression, vaccinated or not,” said Del Rio, “although the vaccinated were not included in this study.”

Another company — Merck — is ahead of Pfizer on developing a COVID pill treatment, having already applied with the Food and Drug Administration for authorization. Emergency use authorization for the Merck treatment may come before the end of the year.

Merck’s treatment reduced the risk of hospitalizations and deaths by 50%. This could indicate Pfizer’s treatment has an edge on efficacy, but experts cautioned against comparing the studies directly because they were designed in different ways, and measured different so-called “primary endpoints.”

“We need to be cautious comparing studies,” said Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health and an ABC News Medical Contributor.

The FDA analyzes safety and efficacy before authorizing any medication.

The FDA’s advisory committee is set to review Merck’s application on Nov. 30. Merck CEO told CNBC at the end of October that the company is ready to distribute 10 million courses of treatment by the end of the year.

Pfizer, meanwhile, plans to start sharing the data with the FDA “as soon as possible.”

This Pfizer data is from one of three clinical trials that the company is running. The results from the other two trials are expected by the end of the year. Pfizer then plans to submit all the data and seek authorization at that time, meaning the new medication may be available in early 2022.

Using lessons learned from other infectious diseases, experts said it might one day prove beneficial to combine different antiviral treatments.

“Pfizer oral drug is an investigational SARS-COV-2 protease inhibitor antiviral therapy,” Wildes said. “We have used protease inhibitors drugs in our HIV patients with and they have worked well.”

“Big picture is this is similar to HIV and [hepatitis C] where we have different antivirals,” Ellerin added. “There may be opportunity for combination therapy in the future.”

Tied city council race in Portland, Maine, decided by drawing name out of a bowl

November 4, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(PORTLAND, Maine) — Hundreds of people in Portland, Maine, turned up Thursday to watch an unprecedented event unfold in local election history: The winner of an open city council seat was chosen by chance, by drawing a name out of a wooden bowl.

None of the four candidates in the race for the city’s at-large council seat won a majority of the vote in Tuesday’s municipal election. The ranked-choice instant runoff determined that two of the candidates — Brandon Mazer and Roberto Rodriguez — were tied with exactly 8,529 votes each.

In the event of a tie, the city’s charter, which was amended in 2011 to adopt rules for administering ranked-choice voting, governs that “the City Clerk shall determine the winner in public by lot” — meaning the winner is selected at random.

So on Thursday morning, City Clerk Katherine Jones brought an antique wooden bowl from home as people gathered on the plaza outside Portland’s City Hall for the public drawing to determine the winner.

Mazer and Rodriguez, who both agreed to the unique process in advance, verified that their names were printed on identical pieces of cardstock paper. They folded the cards in half and placed them in the bowl, at which point Elections Administrator Paul Riley swirled them around while averting his eyes.

He then held the bowl above Jones’ eye line so she could pull out a card. After displaying it to the candidates, she announced the winner into a microphone — Brandon Mazer. Cheers erupted from the crowd, and the two candidates shook hands and embraced.

“I’m incredibly proud of the campaign we ran, and I really appreciate everyone who came out, and this truly shows that every vote matters,” Mazer, an attorney, told ABC Portland, Maine, affiliate WMTW after the drawing.

Rodriguez promptly submitted an official request for a manual recount, which has been scheduled for Nov. 9. If needed, it will continue on Nov. 10. If the outcome changes from the drawing, Rodriguez will be the winner.

“After such a grueling campaign season, to have it come down to chance was a little bit of a shock,” Rodriguez, a member of the Portland School Board, told WMTW. “But, again, you know, this is what the policy says. This is what we’re governed by, and so here we are today.”

“There is going to be a recount. We’re going to make sure every vote is counted,” he added.

Mazer told the station he supports a recount.

The new councilor will be sworn in on Dec. 6 in what is a historic event for the city.

“This is the first time anyone here can remember having a tie in an election,” Portland spokesperson Jessica Grondin told ABC News. “It is certainly the first time ever having a tie since we’ve used ranked choice voting, which was adopted in 2011.”

The unusual process sparked some criticism on Facebook, with commenters on a video post of the drawing mockingly suggesting using a dartboard, a coin toss or Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine the winner.

Portland isn’t the only place to decide ties by lot. The winner of a hotly contested Virginia House of Delegates seat in a 2017 race was determined by drawing a name out of a ceramic bowl.

Newly released FBI tapes show white supremacist members of ‘The Base’ plotting terror attacks

November 4, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(RICHMOND, Va.) — For a month, FBI agents listened in as two members of a white supremacist group discussed their sinister plans: a plot to use a pro-gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, to engage in mass murder and attacks on critical infrastructure, which they believed would mark the start of a racial civil war.

Patrik Mathews, a former Canadian Army reservist illegally in the U.S., and Brian Lemley, a Maryland resident and self-described white nationalist, fantasized about the brutal murders they’d soon carry out against law enforcement and Black people, all with the goal of bringing about the “Boogaloo,” or the collapse of the U.S. government in order to prop up a white ethno-state, according to recordings of the pair’s discussions.

“We need to go back to the days of … decimating Blacks and getting rid of them where they stand,” Mathews said in one recording. “If you see a bunch of Blacks sitting on some corner you f***ing shoot them.”

“I need to claim my first victim,” Lemley said in another recording. “It’s just that we can’t live with ourselves if we don’t get somebody’s blood on our hands.”

The two men were each sentenced in late October to nine years in prison, and ABC News has now obtained newly released audio from the FBI’s secret recording of Mathews and Lemley at their Delaware residence in late 2019.

The tapes offer a chilling look into the private plotting of the two members of “The Base,” a white supremacist extremist group that the FBI says has, since 2018, recruited members both in the U.S. and abroad through a combination of online chat rooms, private meetings, and military-style training camps. In their plea agreements and at sentencing, Mathews and Lemley both acknowledged their membership in the group.

After the two men were arrested in January 2020, just days before the Richmond rally was set to take place, law enforcement found tactical gear, 1,500 rounds of ammunition, and packed cases of food and supplies in their residence.

In the course of their investigation they also found that Lemley and Mathews had both attended military-style training camps with other members of The Base, and had built a functioning assault rifle that they tested out at a gun range in Maryland.

The recordings captured by the FBI included Mathews and Lemley discussing potential acts of terror they could carry out around the Richmond rally that would lead authorities and, eventually, the U.S. government, to capitulate to the chaos and bloodshed taking place.

“You wanna create f***ing some instability while the Virginia situation is happening, make other things happen,” Mathews said. “Derail some rail lines … shut down the highways … shut down the rest of the roads … kick off the economic collapse of the U.S. within a week after the [Boogaloo] starts.”

“I mean, even if we don’t win, I would still be satisfied with a defeat of the system … and whatever was to come in its place would be preferable than what there is now,” Lemley said. “And if it’s not us, then you know what, we still did what we had to do.”

Prior to their sentencing, Mathews and Lemley had pleaded guilty to firearms and immigration violation-related charges. At their Oct. 28 sentencing hearing, U.S. district judge Theodore Chuang went above the sentencing guidelines in applying a terrorism enhancement to each charge, sentencing both men to nine years in federal prison.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified earlier this year that the number of domestic terrorism investigations into white supremacist individuals and groups has tripled since he joined the bureau in 2017.

2 dead after shootout between alleged drug gangs near Cancun resorts

November 4, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(PUERTO MORELOS, Mexico) — Two people are dead after a shooting involving alleged drug gangs in a Mexico resort zone Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

The shooting occurred on a beach in Puerto Morelos, south of Cancun, during a confrontation between alleged members of rival groups of drug dealers, according to a statement from the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office. Two of the alleged gang members died, and there were no additional injuries, the office said. Armed suspects escaped in a stolen motorboat, authorities said.

The stretch of beach is near two resorts, and the shooting sent vacationers running to their hotel rooms.

An American vacationing in Cancun confirmed to ABC News that he heard shots fired while at the Hyatt Ziva Hotel in Puerto Morelos.

Shortly after 2 p.m. local time, Jim Wildermuth, of Atlanta, said he was at the pool outside his room with other guests when they heard “cracks.”

“We kind of looked at each other funny,” Wildermuth said.

They then ran up to their rooms and were told to stay there because there was an active shooter on the property, according to Wildermuth, who said he saw military personnel directing people in front of the hotel.

A Hyatt spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that they are “aware of a developing situation at Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun.”

“We understand the hotel team immediately engaged local authorities who are on the scene investigating the situation,” the company said, adding that it is “taking steps in an effort to ensure the safety of guests and colleagues.”

Guests at the hotel were deemed safe after the shooting, authorities said.

A spokesperson for the Azul Beach Resort Riviera Cancun, which is located near the Hyatt Ziva Cancun, told ABC News it has no comment at this time.

The shooting comes nearly two weeks after two female tourists were killed during an apparent drug gang shootout in the Mexico resort destination of Tulum. Three tourists were wounded in the Oct. 23 shooting.

ABC News’ Josh Margolin and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

+ More