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How Putin and Friends Stalled Climate Progress A handful of powerful world leaders rallied around Russia and undercut global cooperation. Mr. Putin has gained from this as the increasingly autocratic Mr. Xi finds common cause with the Kremlin. “Much depends on whether authoritarian leaders perceive climate action to be in their self-interest.”Though their actions help Mr. Putin, their track records on climate are mixed. Mr. Xi called Mr. Putin his “best friend.”He was returning the favor from a year earlier, when Mr. Putin hosted Mr. Xi at the Grand Kremlin Palace and awarded him one of Russia’s highest medals for foreign dignitaries. At a news conference with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bolsonaro thanked his “dear friend,” saying that Mr. Putin had offered him support when other world leaders were criticizing his Amazon policy.

☆ The least stressful job that pays over $100K, according to data—and how to get it
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( Gili Malinsky | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

And some of those relatively low stress jobs also pay handsomely. The least stressful job on the list that pays more than $100,000 per year is environmental economist, with a ranking of 52 out of 100. In terms of why the job might be comparatively lower stress, "They're not working in very competitive conditions," says Sinem Buber, lead economist at ZipRecruiter. Plus, "it's really a fulfilling job," says Buber, "knowing that you are doing something good for the environment, that you're doing something good for humanity. If you're considering doing the work to become an environmental economist yourself, keep in mind, all job experiences are relative, and no job is stress-free altogether.

☆ Starbucks says it doesn't add potassium to its Dark French Roast coffee after another coffee company accused it of mislabeling the product
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A coffee company filed a complaint claiming Starbucks adds potassium to its Dark French Roast coffee. "We do not add potassium to Starbucks Dark French Roast coffee. Further, we are confident that the labeling for our Dark French Roast coffee is fully compliant with all U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeling requirements." In March 2022, Sachs said a test showed an "abnormally" high level of pH in the Starbucks coffee. While coffee usually has a pH balance around 5, the Starbucks coffee was allegedly showing a pH of 5.7 to 5.8, or about 70% less acid than regular coffee, Sachs said.

☆ What it feels like to visit a fusion company lab on a day when wildfire smoke cloaks the horizon
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

The Helion Energy building under construction to house their next generation fusion machine. For the employees of Helion Energy, building a fusion device is their job. Helion Energy's building under construction to house the seventh generation fusion machine on a day when wildfire smoke was not restricting visibility. On the one hand, I had a newfound sense of hope about the possibility of fusion energy. This is the Polaris Injector Test, where Helion Energy is building a component piece of the seventh generation fusion machine.

☆ Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan avoids talking about Trump on the trail as he paints GOP opponent JD Vance as extreme
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Insider spent a day following Rep. Tim Ryan across Ohio as campaigned for US Senate. He's running a tight race against GOP nominee JD Vance, despite Trump winning Ohio twice. "You are grounded, go to your room," Ryan mock-replies, before drawing his story back to the reality of his Senate campaign. Republican Senate candidate JD Vance at a GOP unity event in Canton, OH on October 27, 2022. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio at a rally for Ryan in Cleveland, OH on October 27, 2022.

☆ Premarket stocks: Did Jerome Powell just bust the market rally?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Julia Horowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

London CNN Business —Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has the power to make or break markets these days. “Essentially, it killed the pivot dreams.”Economic data, particularly for the labor market, still looks relatively strong. “Big advertisers that we traditionally get spend from are not spending this quarter,” Roku (ROKU) CEO Anthony Wood told analysts after the company reported earnings on Wednesday. Ford saw its October US sales slump 10% over the last year as the company continued to battle supply chain difficulties. In March, the company said it would ship some vehicles without some less crucial computer chips and add them later.

☆ Factbox: Highlights from Canada government's fall economic statement
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

OTTAWA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Below are some of the key proposals and takeaways from the annual fall economic statement unveiled by Canada's Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday. LOWER CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION FEES FOR SMALL BUSINESSTo lower credit card transaction fees for small businesses by negotiating with payment card networks, financial institutions, payment processors, and businesses. To introduce legislation in 2023 to regulate credit card transaction fees if an agreement is not reached with the industry. SUPPORT FOR LOW-EARNERSTo provide C$4 billion over six years starting 2022-23 tolow-income earners by way of advance payment. SUPPORT FOR HURRICANE FIONA-IMPACTED PROVINCESTo set aside C$1 billion in 2022-23 to help provinces hit by Hurricane Fiona under the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements.

☆ China pledges high-tech support for climate, environmental problems
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SHANGHAI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - China will seek high-tech solutions to resolve its complex environmental challenges and make use of innovations in big data, biotech and artificial intelligence to tackle pollution, habitat loss and climate change, it said on Wednesday. The system will be backed by tax incentives and new "green technology banks", and China will also encourage enterprises and financial institutions to provide more support to innovative green technologies, the plan said. China has cut CO2 emissions per unit of economic growth by a third in the last decade, but overall volumes continue to rise. It promised more research to support large-scale demonstration projects and the use of aquifers and oil-bearing formations to contain sequestered CO2. The government will also support research into "deep decarbonisation technologies" in a variety of industrial sectors, including steel, cement, thermal power and agriculture, it said.

☆ Factbox: COP26 a year later: Where do last year's climate pledges stand?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Nov 1 (Reuters) - A year ago at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, countries, banks and business leaders announced a slew of climate plans and pledges. METHANE PLEDGETo date, 119 countries and blocs including the United States and the European Union have joined the COP26 pledge to slash methane emissions 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. And China could also give an update on its plan to begin monitoring methane emissions - a promise made under the U.S.-China agreement announced in Glasgow. The group now counts more than 550 members, including most of the world's leading banks, insurers and asset managers, with collective assets of more than $150 trillion. read more And last week, climate activists criticized GFANZ for dropping a requirement that its members sign onto a U.N. emissions reduction campaign.

☆ Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro loses tight election to leftist 2-time former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after contentious campaigning
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Taiyler Simone Mitchell | Isabella Zavarise | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Brazil elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president following Jair Bolsonaro's rocky presidency. Lula's victory marks his third win as president, despite serving time in jail for corruption, per NYT. In a remarkably close race, da Silva, also known as"Lula," received 50.83% of the votes, compared to Bolsonaro's 49.17%, according to CNN. During an October 2 election, neither candidate received a majority of votes, prompting the run-off election on Sunday, CNN explained. Throughout his campaign, Lula promised to crack down on illegal deforestation and rebuild the country's environmental protection agency.

☆ What our Big Tech holdings signaled on expenses and hiring this earnings season
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

We want to see that happen with the Club's holdings, so we paid close attention to what management teams at our Big Tech stocks signaled on costs during this mixed earnings season. Head count grew by 22% on an annual basis, 6 percentage points of which was due to acquisitions that closed in the prior two quarters. "Our sequential head count growth from Q1 to Q2 will be minimal. ... We've added a lot of head count over the past 12 months, and we want to make sure we use those head count in the most productive way possible," Hood said this week. "We are holding some teams flat in terms of head count, shrinking others, and investing head count growth only in our highest priorities," Wehner said.

"Brazil is ready to retake its leadership in the fight against the climate crisis," Lula told a crowd of supporters in Sao Paulo. Silva said that Brazil would demand rich countries provide financing to poor countries to respond to climate change and give compensation for permanent "loss and damage" from climate change. Under Lula, Brazil will also discuss expanding its national targets for cutting climate-related emissions, said Silva, his former environment minister from 2003 to 2008. The firm, with roughly 237 billion euros ($234 billion) in assets under management, only owned about 100 million euros in Brazilian sovereign bonds when the prohibition took effect. Environmental advocates also cheered Lula's proposals for the Amazon, but cautioned that his agenda would face enormous political resistance.

☆ Climate protesters campaign by throwing food at art, but does that work?
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Leila Sackur | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

From cake smeared over the “Mona Lisa" to soup splashed over “Sunflowers,” recent climate protests at art galleries have grabbed international headlines but also raise questions about the effectiveness of these high-profile guerrilla tactics. But he said that war in Ukraine, the cost of living and energy crises had added urgency to the protests. While politicians have taken note of the protests, they have tended to criticize the way they have been carried out. Attacking defenseless works of art is not the right way,” Gunay Uslu, the Dutch culture and media minister tweeted Thursday. “What we’ve seen from Extinction Rebellion and other climate activist groups is that they’re very prepared to go to prison,” he said.

☆ A potentially cancer-causing chemical is sprayed on much of America’s farmland. Here is where it is used the most.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Danica Jefferies | Danica Jefferies Is An Intern With The Data Graphics Team For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +9 min

For those only exposed through food, the EPA says that glyphosate residues on food are safe up to certain thresholds. The chemical giant Monsanto introduced glyphosate in its product Roundup in 1974. “Glyphosate is the most widely used chemical weedkiller in human history because of genetic engineering,” said Dave Murphy, the founder of Food Democracy Now, an advocacy group that tests glyphosate in food. “It’s sprayed ubiquitously and Monsanto has, for decades, just maintained that it’s the safest agricultural chemical ever made.”The EPA’s safety limits for glyphosate exposure from food are twice the levels allowed in the European Union. The company pointed NBC News to other studies — including some that it has sponsored — that either refuted a link to cancer or challenged the relationship between acres sprayed and exposure levels.

☆ Climate Change Is Real. Markets, Not Governments, Offer the Cure. - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Bret Stephens | Mr. Stephens Is An Opinion Columnist. Mr. Winter Is A Staff Photographer On Assignment In Opinion. | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +32 min

worse-case, highest-carbon-emission scenario.” (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the U.N. body that assesses climate change.) How do we weigh the risks of underreacting to climate change against the risks of overreacting to it? While he’s not an expert on climate change, he has spent decades thinking deeply about every manner of risk. That’s particularly true if climate change is akin to cancer — manageable or curable in its earlier stages, disastrous in its later ones. Maybe, I realized, in assessing my newfound concerns about climate change, my long-held beliefs might provide a solution — look to the market.

☆ Twitter staff enjoy a flexible work culture. Self-described nano-manager Elon Musk will change that.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Elon Musk is close his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter by Friday and staff are worried. Musk's 'autocratic' leadership style is likely to clash with a flexible work culture, one workplace expert says. Elon Musk is set to buy Twitter for $44 billion by Friday and, as the deadline looms, staff are anticipating a big vibe shift in its work culture. Here are some of the perks Twitter staff enjoy now that may change under Musk. Flexible working policiesTwitter is famed for generous, flexible working policies.

☆ Sure, Twitter and Facebook have deepened polarization — just not in the way you think
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The conventional wisdom blames social media for the widening divide because the timing lines up. Maybe the problem isn't that social media has driven us all into like-minded bubbles. Maybe it's that social media has obliterated the bubbles we've all lived in for centuries. On top of that, Törnberg adds, there's the way people react to all the new ideas that social media exposes them to. And as one leading social media and polarization researcher told me, the model is not empirical, which makes it hard to test.

Although Lula's 2003-2010 presidency effectively reduced destruction of the rainforest, he embraced traditional industrial development with little regard for emissions. In the United States, the progressive Green New Deal languished in Congress, while President Joe Biden adapted some of the ideas for his climate agenda. Marcio Astrini, the head of environmental lobby group Climate Observatory, said Lula's proposals were a promising blueprint, but added: "Whether it will happen in practice is another matter." By contrast, Bolsonaro's campaign has said little about his environmental proposals for a second term. [1/3] Macaws sit on a tree at the Amazon rainforest in Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil October 26, 2022.

☆ Toyota slashes leasing fee for troubled EV to rekindle orders
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] A worker prepares 2023 Toyota Electric bZ4X at the 2022 New York International Auto Show, in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., April 13, 2022. Starting Wednesday, the application fee is 385,000 yen while the monthly cost is 1,100 yen cheaper. Those who signed up beforehand are eligible for a discount, said Shinya Kotera, president of KINTO, the Toyota unit offering the leases. Just a year into its $38 billion EV plan, Toyota is already considering starting again to better compete in a market growing beyond the automaker's projections, Reuters reported on Monday. ($1 = 148.7900 yen)Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama and Maki Shiraki; Editing by Christopher CushingOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ The era of quiet quitting is already over
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Aki Ito | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

One of the first documented cases of quiet quitting was a recruiter I'll call Justin. It was Justin, in fact, who helped spark the national debate that's been raging over quiet quitting. When a popular career coach on TikTok riffed on my story, the phrase "quiet quitting" became something of a new cultural dividing line. But by the time the US was furiously debating his new approach to work, Justin was already shifting gears. "Reading the tea leaves, we could be in for a difficult 2023," Bryan Creely, the career coach who coined the term quiet quitting, told me.

☆ Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( David Wallace-Wells | Photographs Devin Oktar Yalkin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +53 min

Beyond Catastrophe A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View By David Wallace-WellsYou can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. There were climate-change skeptics in some very conspicuous positions of global power. New emissions peaks are expected both this year and next, which means that more damage is being done to the future climate of the planet right now than at any previous point in history.

REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File PhotoCompanies L'Oreal SA FollowOct 24 (Reuters) - L'Oreal SA (OREP.PA) has been sued by a Missouri woman who alleges she developed uterine cancer as a result of using the French cosmetic company's hair-straightening products. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Chicago, came days after a study from the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Safety (NIEHS) finding that hair-straightening products may significantly increase the risk of uterine cancer among frequent users. The plaintiff, Jennifer Mitchell, said she was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2018, after using L'Oreal's products since about 2000, when she was 10. Uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to federal government data, with rates rising, particularly among Black women. The company "profited, significantly" from "unethical and illegal conduct that caused plaintiff to purchase and habitually use a dangerous and defective product," the lawsuit said.

☆ UK financial watchdog proposes rules to stamp out 'greenwashing'
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Huw Jones | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Trillions of dollars have flowed globally into investments touting their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, but rules on what constitutes ESG are patchy. The market for UK-listed responsible investment funds grew 64% in 2021 to reach 79 billion pounds ($89.34 billion), the Financial Conduct Authority said. "Greenwashing misleads consumers and erodes trust in all ESG products," said Sacha Sadan, director of environment, social and governance at the FCA. "This places the UK at the forefront of sustainable investment internationally." It said it was stepping up checks on sustainable products and enhancing enforcement.

☆ Bolsonaro versus Lula: Ahead of Brazil's high-stakes elections, here's what to know
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

His adversary, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has sought to kindle nostalgia for his years presiding over an economic boom and social inclusion. Here’s what you need to know about the Brazilian presidential runoff, which is on Oct. 30. That is why da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010, can run this year. Most polls 2 1/2 weeks after the first round show da Silva retaining a slight lead over Bolsonaro. Da Silva, known universally as Lula, has focused on his prior terms, during which commodities exports surged and tens of millions of Brazilians joined the middle class.

☆ Exclusive: Toyota scrambles for EV reboot with eye on Tesla
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Norihiko Shirouzu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

As part of the review, Toyota is considering a successor to its EV-underpinning technology called e-TNGA, unveiled in 2019. TESLA AS BENCHMARKThe review was triggered in part by the realisation by some Toyota engineers and executives that Toyota was losing the factory cost war to Tesla on EVs, the sources said. Toyota designed e-TNGA so that EVs could be produced on the same assembly line with gasoline cars and hybrids. The person leading Toyota's EV review is Shigeki Terashi, former chief competitive officer, according to six people with knowledge of the work, including two people close to Toyota. The recognition within Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, that Tesla has set a new benchmark for EV manufacturing costs marks a major reversal.

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