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Post by Prince Namor on Dec 1, 2023 15:16:10 GMT -8
From Project Censored's Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2021-2022
#1 Fossil Fuel Industry Subsidized at Rate of $11 Million per Minute Published: November 23, 2022Last Updated on May 22, 2023 A comprehensive study of 191 nations, published by the International Monetary Fund in September 2021, found that globally the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies of $11 million per minute, the Guardian and Treehugger reported in October 2021. Fossil fuel companies received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020, with support projected to rise to $6.4 trillion by 2025, according to the IMF report. Some of these subsidies are direct, including government policies that reduce prices (representing 8 percent of total fossil fuel subsidies) and provide tax exemptions (6 percent). But the biggest benefits to fossil fuel companies include what the IMF report calculated as indirect subsidies, including lack of liability for the health costs of deadly air pollution (42 percent), damages caused by extreme weather events linked to global warming (29 percent), and costs resulting from traffic collisions and congestion (15 percent). In effect, fossil fuel companies do not cover the damages their products cause, thereby artificially reducing the costs of fuels and leaving governments and taxpayers to pay the indirect costs. [Note: For one report on the deadly consequences of air pollution in the United States, much of which is driven by reliance on fossil fuels, see Lylla Younes, Ava Kofman, Al Shaw, Lisa Song, and Maya Miller, “Poison in the Air,” ProPublica, November 2, 2021.] As Eduardo Garcia reported for Treehugger, when government taxes on fossil fuels produce inadequate revenues, the consequences include a combination of higher taxes in other areas, increased government deficits, and decreased spending on public goods. Pricing fossil fuels to cover both their supply and environmental costs would result in what the IMF study called the “efficient price” for fossil fuels. However, as the IMF found, not one national government currently prices fossil fuels at their efficient price. Instead, an estimated 99 percent of coal, 52 percent of road diesel, 47 percent of natural gas, and 18 percent of gasoline are priced at less than half their efficient price. These subsidies are not evenly distributed across the globe. Just five countries—the United States, Russia, India, China, and Japan—are responsible for two-thirds of global fossil fuel subsidies. In the United States, the IMF estimated that the US government provided $730 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuel companies in 2020. According to a July 2021 study by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Earth Track, continued US subsidies and exemptions “could increase the profitability of new oil and gas fields by more than 50% over the next decade,” with nearly all of the subsidies serving to increase companies’ profits. If Congress were to stop providing tax breaks to the industry, the drilling of new oil wells in the US would decrease by about 25 percent, according to a September 2021 E&E News report citing an estimate by the industry’s American Exploration & Production Council. The IMF study behind this independent reporting explained that “underpricing of fossil fuels is still pervasive across countries and is often substantial.” As the Guardian reported, ending fossil fuel subsidies would “prevent nearly a million deaths a year from dirty air and raise trillions of dollars for governments.” “It’s critical that governments stop propping up an industry that is in decline,” Mike Coffin, a senior analyst at Carbon Tracker, told the Guardian. Necessary change “could start happening now, if not for government’s entanglement with the fossil fuels industry in so many major economies,” added Maria Pastukhova of E3G, a climate change think tank. In September 2021, Oil Change International announced that more than 200 civil society organizations from more than forty countries called on international leaders to end public finance for coal, oil, and gas. Laurie van der Burg of Oil Change International noted, “It’s an utter disgrace that rich countries are still spending more public money on fossil fuels than on climate [protection] finance.” Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies could lead to higher energy prices and, ultimately, political protests and social unrest. But, as the Guardian and Treehugger each reported, the IMF recommended a “comprehensive strategy” to protect consumers—especially low-income households—impacted by rising energy costs, and workers in displaced industries. As Ipek Gençsü told the Guardian, public information campaigns would be essential to counter popular opposition to subsidy reforms. He said ending fossil fuel subsidies could allow governments to redistribute savings “in the form of healthcare, education and other social services.” As of May 2022, no corporate news outlets had reported on the IMF’s report, though a few industry publications such as Power Technology have done so. In November 2021, the New York Times published an opinion piece focused on the claim by John Kerry, US special envoy for climate change, that government fossil fuel subsidies that artificially lower the price of coal, oil, and gas are “a definition of insanity.” But the Times’ coverage was framed as opinion, and the editorial did not address the significant indirect subsidies identified in the IMF study, as reported by the Guardian and Treehugger. In January 2022, CNN published an article that all but defended fossil fuel subsidies. CNN’s coverage emphasized the potential for unrest caused by rollbacks of government subsidies, citing “protests that occasionally turned violent.” |
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Post by Prince Namor on Dec 1, 2023 15:17:03 GMT -8
#2 Wage Theft: US Businesses Suffer Few Consequences for Stealing Millions from Workers Every Year Published: November 26, 2022Last Updated on May 22, 2023 Thousands of US companies illegally underpay workers yet are seldom punished for doing so, Alexia Fernández Campbell and Joe Yerardi reported for the Center for Public Integrity in May 2021. Since its initial report, the Center has documented extensively that employers who “illegally underpay workers face few repercussions, even when they do so repeatedly. This widespread practice perpetuates income inequality, hitting lowest-paid workers hardest.” Wage theft includes a range of illegal practices, such as paying less than minimum wage, withholding tips, not paying overtime, or requiring workers to work through breaks or off the clock. It impacts service workers, low-income workers, immigrant and guest workers, and communities of color the most, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s “Cheated at Work” series, published from May 2021 to March 2022. An Economic Policy Institute study from 2017 found that just one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations—costs US workers an estimated $15 billion annually and impacts an estimated 17 percent of low-wage workers. Based on their independent analysis of fifteen years of reports from the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, Campbell and Yerardi concluded that companies engaging in wage theft “have little incentive to follow the law.” In 2019 alone, the Department of Labor cited more than 8,500 employers for stealing approximately $287 million from workers. Major US corporations—including Halliburton, G4S Wackenhut and Circle K Stores—are among “the worst offenders,” Campbell and Yerardi reported. The labor department’s Wage and Hour Division, which is charged with investigating federal wage-theft complaints, “rarely penalizes repeat offenders,” Campbell and Yerardi explained. Between October 2005 and September 2020, the agency fined “only about one in four repeat offenders.” In just 14 percent of the documented cases, companies were ordered to pay workers cash damages, and since 2005, the agency has allowed more than 16,000 employers to avoid paying more than $20 million owed in back wages. Lack of resources at the federal level is blamed for lax enforcement. As of February 2021, the Wage and Hour Division employed only 787 investigators, a proportion of just one investigator per 182,000 workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, Campbell and Yerardi noted. For comparison, in 1948 the division employed one investigator per 22,600 workers, or eight times the current proportion. Insufficient federal enforcement is “especially problematic” for workers in states that lack their own enforcement agencies: some fourteen states “lack the capacity to investigate wage theft claims or lack the ability to file lawsuits on behalf of victims,” according to the 2017 Economic Policy Institute report. Strong state and local laws can help to protect workers and could offset weak federal enforcement. Campbell and Yerardi’s report mentioned local successes in Chicago (2013), Philadelphia (2016), and Minneapolis (2019), for example. But, as the reporters also noted, workers’ rights advocates continue to seek federal reforms, appealing to Congress to allocate funding to double the number of federal investigators. Terri Gerstein observed in May 2021, writing for the Economic Policy Institute, that in lieu of federal enforcement, and in response to “widespread, entrenched, and often egregious violations of workplace laws, an increasing number of district attorneys and state attorneys general have been bringing criminal prosecutions against law-breaking employers.” Nonetheless, wage theft appears to be on the rise. A September 2021 study by One Fair Wage and the University of California, Berkeley, Food Labor Research Center found that 34 percent of workers in the service sector reported experiencing more violations of their rights—including wage theft—in 2021, compared to 2020. Some 35 percent of surveyed service workers reported that tips plus additional wages did not bring them up to their state’s minimum wage, and 46 percent reported that employers did not compensate “time and a half” for working overtime. Since May 2021, a handful of corporate news outlets, including CBS News, covered or republished the Center for Public Integrity’s report on wage theft. Corporate coverage tends to focus on specific instances involving individual employers, but otherwise pays little attention to wage theft as a systemic social problem or to anemic federal enforcement. For example, a September 2021 NBC News report framed wage theft cases as “disputes” involving “dueling claims that are difficult to verify.” Verifying systemic wage theft has become easier, however, thanks to the Center for Public Integrity’s March 2022 decision to make the data and code used in their yearlong “Cheated at Work” investigation available to the public. The story may gain more traction now that Congress is starting to pay attention. In May 2022, US House lawmakers introduced H.R. 3712, known as the “Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act of 2022,” which would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to protect workers from wage theft, according to Ariana Figueroa of the Virginia Mercury. Minnesota congressperson Ilhan Omar said, “It is clear more DOL [Department of Labor] funding and additional federal reforms are needed in our localities in order to protect our most vulnerable workers.” |
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Post by Prince Namor on Dec 1, 2023 15:18:05 GMT -8
#3 EPA Withheld Reports on Dangerous Chemicals Published: November 26, 2022Last Updated on May 22, 2023 Since January 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has received more than 1,200 legally required disclosures about chemicals that present a “substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” All but one of EPA’s reports on these chemicals have been withheld from the public, as reported by Sharon Lerner in a November 2021 Intercept article. According to Lerner, EPA received at least 1,240 substantial risk reports since January 2019, but only one was publicly available. The undisclosed reports documented “serious harms, including eye corrosion, damage to the brain and nervous system, chronic toxicity to honeybees, and cancer in both people and animals” as well as environmental risks. The reports include notifications about highly toxic polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), chemical compounds that are known as “forever chemicals” because they build up in our bodies and never break down in the environment. The Environmental Working Group explains that “very small doses of PFAS have been linked to cancer, reproductive and immune system harm, and other diseases. For decades, chemical companies covered up evidence of PFAS’ health hazards.” Chemical companies are required by law to provide EPA with any evidence that a chemical may pose a “substantial risk” to public health or the environment. It had been EPA’s regular practice to publish these “section 8(e)” reports, named for a section of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), in a searchable public database called ChemView. EPA typically posted hundreds of these reports per year but quietly discontinued this practice in early 2019. In response to questions from the Intercept, EPA blamed its inaction on resource and staffing constraints initiated during the Trump administration. Even internally, EPA’s own staff had difficulty accessing the substantial risk reports, according to two EPA scientists, because they had not been uploaded to the databases most used by chemical risk assessors. “As a result, little—and perhaps none—of the information about these serious risks to health and the environment has been incorporated into the chemical assessments completed during this period,” Lerner reported. “Basically, they are just going into a black hole,” according to one EPA whistleblower Lerner interviewed. “We don’t look at them. We don’t evaluate them. And we don’t check to see if they change our understanding of the chemical.” Claiming confidential trade secrets and intellectual property rights, chemical companies have long resisted policies that promote public disclosure. Lerner conveyed that “close observers of the industry believe that pressure from companies that held this [stance] was likely what led the Trump EPA to decide to stop publicly posting the reports.” As Eve Gartner, an Earthjustice attorney quoted in the Intercept article, stated, “It is not easy to keep selling your chemicals when people know they likely cause cancer or other serious disease.” A few legal and industry-related publications have focused on a lawsuit filed in January 2022 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) to compel EPA to disclose TCSA section 8(e) reports. E. A. Crunden of E&E News first reported that PEER filed the complaint after EPA failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about the missing reports. However, Crunden reported, “EPA has committed to posting real-time information for industry members regarding the chemical approval process for their products, even as sharing the 8(e) reports has fallen by the wayside.” Kyla Bennett, PEER’s science policy director, who previously worked for EPA, told Crunden, “It is incredible that EPA has funds to post real-time data about the regulatory status of new chemicals for industry’s convenience but does not have funds to alert workers and consumers about substantial health and environmental hazards of these same chemicals.” Despite the concerns expressed by the EPA whistleblowers, the concealment of 8(e) substantial risk reports to appease chemical industry pressure has been mostly ignored by the corporate media. Apart from “EPA Exposed,” the Intercept’s extensive nine-part investigation of EPA’s dangerous conduct, toxic culture, and tendency to yield to industry pushback, only a handful of niche publications have reported on the matter. Bloomberg Law covered the story in December 2021, citing the Intercept’s reporting. However, the article downplayed the role of chemical industry pressure, instead pointing out that “businesses might need the information to decide whether to purchase a chemical, design an alternative, or improve its health and safety measures.” Notably, the National Law Review reported on January 8, 2022, that PEER’s original Freedom of Information Act request was “built upon information reported in a November 2021 article in The Intercept.” PEER’s subsequent lawsuit asked the court “to enter an order declaring that EPA wrongfully withheld requested documents and to issue a permanent injunction directing EPA to disclose all wrongfully withheld documents.” Just weeks after PEER’s complaint was filed, EPA announced in a press release on February 3, 2022, that it would resume publishing 8(e) substantial risk reports in ChemView. Clearly, independent journalism contributed significantly to this outcome. Had it not been for the work of investigative journalist Sharon Lerner at the Intercept, EPA whistleblowers would not have had a platform to share concerns that ultimately led the agency to resume these critical public disclosures. Sharon Lerner, “EPA Withheld Reports of Substantial Risk Posed by 1,240 Chemicals,” The Intercept, November 1, 2021. E. A. Crunden, “EPA’s Failure to Disclose Chemical Health Risks Draws Ire,” E&E News, January 5, 2022. |
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