Just Science & Health News: octubre 2021

jueves, 7 de octubre de 2021

New story in Science and Health from Time: NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Found Some Boulders. That’s a Much Bigger Deal Than it Seems NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Found Some Boulders. That’s a Much Bigger Deal Than it Seems

The rule for most Mars missions, or at least those looking for signs of life? Follow the water. Choose a place that was once wet—and Mars’s now-dry riverbeds, sea basins and ocean floors offer plenty of those—and do your spelunking there. With limited missions and a multitude of promising sites, however, the trick is to choose just the right landing zone. Now, a new paper in Science suggests that when it comes to NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet in February, mission planners chose right indeed.

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater, a 45 km (28 mile) wide depression in Isidis Planitia, which is itself a 1,200 km (750 mi) plain in the northern Martian hemisphere. About 3.7 billion years ago, Jezero Crater was Jezero Lake—a standing body of water up to 2,500 m (1.5 mi.) deep. Pictures taken from orbit by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a fan-shaped formation along the crater’s western rim, which was once a broad delta fed by an inflowing river that helped fill the basin. But when the rover touched down, researchers got a closer look—and what they found was stunning indeed.
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For the new study, a team of 39 investigators led by planetary geologist Nicolas Mangold of France’s University of Nantes, analyzed images taken within Jezero by two of the Perseverance rover’s suite of 19 cameras. The team initially focused on a formation dubbed Kodiak butte, a flat-topped hill at the western edge of the crater, about one kilometer (.62 mi.) south of the main fan.

Earthly buttes in the American desert Southwest are formed principally by erosion and weathering. Kodiak, by contrast, was built layer upon layer, as sediment was carried in by periodic rushes of flowing water. Like similar sedimentary formations on Earth, Kodiak features three kinds of layering: A so called bottomset (horizontal layers at the floor of the crater caused by grains slowly settling out of the water), a foreset layer (loosely sloping sedimentary layers atop the bottomset, transported in by roiling water) and a smooth top set (which, like the bottomset, is caused by a slow settling of grains).

Of all of the layers, researchers are most interested in the bottomset, made of sandstone and mudstone—and for good reason: as on Earth, any biology that emerged in the Jezero waters would most likely have settled into the mud and sand at the base. “What we observed at Kodiak was our key observation,” says Mangold. “If there are signs of ancient life in a formation like this it would typically be in sandstone, which is the bottomset.”

Read more: Mars was always destined to die

Just as intriguing is the main, western fan north of Kodiak, though less for what it says about Martian biology than geology. Like Kodiak, the western fan was built slowly over time by the deposition of sedimentary layers transported by water. Unlike Kodiak, the fan appears to have had a violent history, as evidenced by two dozen large boulders and hundreds of smaller cobbles embedded in the fan walls high above the crater floor. These were not slowly, gently sedimented into place. Rather, they were hoisted and tossed by periodic flash flooding powerful enough to move such heavy objects.

“The placement of the boulders was probably our most surprising discovery,” says Mangold. “Delta fans typically consist of sand and gravel, not boulders. Here the river is only 30 to 40 meters wide and a few meters deep, but it was still enough to move the boulders.”

The presence of the flooding, the researchers wrote, suggests a warm and even humid Mars, one on which floods could have been caused by rains or snowmelt—though Mangold concedes that, for now, is mere speculation.

“We have no proof on Mars of the origin of these floods,” he says. “That is something we want to be able to answer.”

We may yet get that answer. If Perseverance is anything like the surprisingly durable Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers that preceded it, it should have a decade or more of life left. Kodiak butte, the western fan and many other sites should be studied not just via orbital photographs, but with onboard instruments that can drill into rocks, blast them with lasers to analyze their composition, and scoop them into sample tubes to be brought back to Earth by a sample return mission that is now in development. Mars’s best and wettest days might be behind it, but if there is evidence of ancient—or even extant life—somewhere on that distant world, the work that Perseverance is doing may one day reveal it.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The World’s First Malaria Vaccine—and What it Means for the Future of Pandemic Response The World’s First Malaria Vaccine—and What it Means for the Future of Pandemic Response

On Oct. 6, the World Health Organization recommended use of the first vaccine to fight malaria. The decision is momentous and highly anticipated for many reasons: among them is that this is the first vaccine to help reduce the risk of deadly severe malaria in young children in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease remains a leading killer.

The vaccine offers hope that there can be a circle of learning from one pandemic to the next. Malaria, our oldest pandemic, may offer insights on how we can survive contemporary scourges like COVID-19. Malaria evolved at least 2.5 million years ago and first infected humans in rural parts of Africa. It then spread to all continents save Antarctica—notably, killing off armies ranging from those trying to conquer ancient Rome to those battling to control the Pacific in World War II. Malaria, according to historians, may have killed more people than any other pandemic.
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Malaria changed history. The fight against it is changing the world.

When I first fell sick with malaria as an infant in Liberia in 1981, about a million children were dying every year from this disease. But in the early 2000s, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), which President Joe Biden appointed me to lead in February of this year, was created. With sustained global funding, many more children and their families with malaria now get tested and treated, and have nets cast over their beds at night to prevent them from contracting it. Between 2000 and 2019, national governments working with local health workers saved an estimated 7.5 million lives and prevented an estimated 1.5 billion cases of malaria.

Forty countries have now eliminated malaria. And though much remains to be done, the fight against our oldest pandemic offers lessons for combating our newest pandemic and the next one.

Medical breakthroughs are not enough

Over the last two decades, innovations, including rapid diagnostic tests, novel medicines, and new insecticides to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes, all raised hopes. PMI, through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, partners with malaria-affected countries to purchase hundreds of millions of these lifesaving products. The WHO’s recommendation of the first malaria vaccine for children in sub-Saharan Africa is the latest tool in the toolkit to fight the disease.

But as with vaccines, masks, tests and medicines against COVID-19, medical breakthroughs on their own can’t defeat malaria. Millions of people, largely in rural and poor communities, remain out of reach of these innovations. Malaria still causes more than 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths worldwide every year. Another child will have died from malaria in the two minutes you take to read this article.

Vaccines, tests and treatments don’t deliver themselves. Health workers do. A study published in September 2021 showed that in parts of Mali and Burkina Faso where malaria infections surge in the rainy season, health workers equipped with nets, medicines to prevent malaria‑and the new WHO-recommended malaria vaccine—were able to help cut malaria deaths in young children by over 70%.

Pandemics worsen health inequities. But combining investments in the fruits of modern science with investments in health workers who can deliver them can close the gap and save lives in marginalized communities.

Bring care to people—don’t wait for people to come to care

Countries succeeding in beating malaria recognize outbreaks start and stop in communities. They’ve prioritized reaching the unreached through community health workers—people often without a high school degree, hired directly from the communities they serve, and trained and equipped to go door-to-door to test and treat their neighbors with malaria among other diseases.

In Liberia, community health workers first trained to find and refer neighbors with symptoms of Ebola during a 2013-16 outbreak were later equipped to test and treat children with malaria. Today, one of every two children in rural Liberia with malaria is treated by a community health worker—expanding access and contributing to a dramatic decline in malaria deaths. Senegal, Zambia, and Ethiopia have deployed similar strategies with similar results. Our partners in Thailand have cut malaria cases by 90% by training a million community health workers over the last decade and El Salvador used community health workers to rid the country of malaria altogether.

A recent scientific review of 28 countries’ response to COVID-19 found those with the lower COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people made greater investments in community health workers—finding them essential for rapidly finding patients and tracking, isolating, and providing social support to those exposed to the virus. Because these trusted outreach workers share the lived experience of their own communities, they are more effective in persuading and supporting their neighbors to get the shot, helping improve vaccination coverage in cities like Chelsea, Massachusetts and New York City.

To build muscle, use it

In his 2020 book Rules of Contagion, Adam Kucharski wrote, “If you’ve seen one pandemic then you’ve seen…one pandemic.” Every pandemic is different, but we use the same muscles—or systems—to fight it. Community health workers in Nigeria who’ve gone door-to-door to detect and test people with fevers for malaria are now being equipped with rapid antigen tests to detect COVID-19, which also presents with a fever (as novel pathogens with pandemic potential tend to do).

PMI has partnered with labs in countries like Rwanda to conduct molecular surveillance to detect drug-resistant malaria parasites; these facilities have, in recent months, been leveraged to characterize COVID-19 variants. And the outbreak rapid-response systems once built to stop SARS in the early 2000s were then used by Cambodia and other southeast Asia countries to bring them to the cusp of eliminating malaria over the next decade, only then to be re-used to control COVID-19.

We build muscles by using them. Building and using systems to fight today’s pandemics may be the most effective—and efficient—way to prepare for the pandemics of tomorrow.

A pandemic may take our loved ones, steal our jobs, and destroy our communities. It’s no wonder the question of whether we can end them is met with despair. But there is some reassuring news today: the end of our oldest pandemic, malaria, is now within reach. Ending malaria would pay for itself many times over—creating $2 trillion in savings, according to a report from End Malaria 2040. But more importantly, it would save millions of lives.

If COVID-19 reminds us we live in an age of pandemics, then heeding the lessons from fighting malaria, a pandemic of the ages, offers us insights on how we can keep ourselves safe against the next one.

miércoles, 6 de octubre de 2021

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Storytelling Genius of Jane Goodall and Why Intellectual Arguments Don’t Change Behavior The Storytelling Genius of Jane Goodall and Why Intellectual Arguments Don’t Change Behavior

<strong>You’ve just got to be calm, and tell stories and try and get people to change from within.</strong>A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter. Sign up to get a new edition from Susanna Schrobsdorff every Saturday.

—Dr. Jane Goodall

Facts never did change hearts. But until the era of alternative Facebook-style facts, it was a bit easier to pretend that we humans were logical creatures.

Our inability to ingest inconvenient truths is not news to Dr. Jane Goodall, the legendary naturalist. She has spent decades persuading us to change the way we treat animals and the planet, and she does it by talking about her experiences, not with terrifying U.N. climate reports. “If one wants to change attitudes, you have to reach the heart. You can reach the heart by telling stories, not by arguing with people’s intellects,” she says on her new podcast, or as she calls it, her “Hopecast ,” and this week’s edition of TIME.
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The science backs up her approach (of course). A recent study out of Princeton University using brain imaging showed how while hearing a story our brain waves start to synchronize with those of the storyteller. And the better the listener understood, the more closely the brain wave patterns mirrored those of the storyteller. And that narrative connection allows us to better see a situation from another’s viewpoint, and stories with an emotional bent, engage the affective empathy network of the brain. And that empathy, that ability to see beyond one’s self, is the key to delivering a message that asks us to change our behavior. Research has shown that cultivating empathy has been effective in the campaign to get more Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Goodall is a master storyteller, people often cry in her presence without knowing why, and it’s part of the reason she’s such an effective ambassador for the Earth. She doesn’t just tell her audiences, “we can regenerate nature in a place where we’ve destroyed it.” she talks about the beavers whose return to the U.K. has mitigated flooding that was destroying homes and lives. Or she describes beautiful private moments when she found herself alone in nature and forgot she was human, she felt “part of the natural world.”

And the point of all these stories, and her seven-day-a-week speaking schedule at age 87, is to keep audiences from being so overwhelmed by the torrent of bad news that they stop trying. “We are living through such dark times, I mean everywhere you look, the climate the politics, it’s pretty grim|. And if people lose hope then we may as well give up.” Goodall believes hope to be an essential human “evolutionary force,” asking what would have happened if stone age man hadn’t believed that a tool he was carving could help him hunt dinner, he’d never start carving.

To that end, Goodall has gathered many of her most powerful stories in The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, which she co-authored with Douglas Abrams and Gail Hudson. In the book and on her podcast, she talks about her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees in Africa, but also her childhood in Britain during World War II and how it seemed dire then too. Everything was rationed, bombs were falling on the country.

“I learned to take nothing for granted,” she says. She credits Winston Churchill for giving people the will to keep going back then. “He made mistakes, but his speeches that gave us hope,” she says. “He was basically saying what I’m always saying. We can do it. We must believe that we can do it.”

Read (and watch) TIME’s profile of Jane Goodall. And check out the Hopecast podcast where you can leave a voice message or question for Dr. Goodall.

Subscribe here to get an essay from Susanna Schrobsdorff every Saturday.

GALLERY

An image from the week that was.

I took a gloriously long walk with a friend in the Berkshires of upstate New York. We got a peek at Steepletop , the former home of Pulitzer prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (from the outside, as it wasn’t open to the public). The campus of Millay Arts, one of the world’s longest-running artist residencies is nearby and it looks like a divine spot for making art.

Afternoon On A Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!—Edna St. Vincent Millay

THE ROUND-UP

“The Liking Gap” and Why You Make Better Impressions Than You Think. New research suggests we underestimate our social performance. Or, in the immortal words of Sally Field, “You like me!”

Should You Resume In-Person Therapy? Virtual counseling has become the norm during the pandemic. Here’s how to decide whether it’s still working for you.

How to make one of poet Maya Angelou’s beloved family recipes, “Momma’s caramel cake .” Perfect for fall. “Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication,” she wrote after publishing one of her two cookbooks.

“How to Build a Happy Life:” a new podcast hosted by Harvard economist and thinker the Atlantic’s Arthur Brooks, advises us on understanding emotions and developing practical skills to make the journey to happiness a little bit easier.

In the good news department: 5 Midwestern governors agree to create a network to charge electric vehicles. First, multiple politicians agreed! Second, car country is embracing EVs.

COMFORT CREATURE

Meet Millie, who, like so many other hipsters, abandoned Brooklyn for the countryside during the pandemic. Submitted by Pam and Jim who keep her in treats.

Write to me at: Susanna.notjustyou@gmail.com, or via Instagram: @SusannaSchrobs. And, subscribe here to get an essay from Susanna every weekend.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Duo Share Nobel Chemistry Prize for Work on Solar Cell Advances Duo Share Nobel Chemistry Prize for Work on Solar Cell Advances

Two scientists, working independently of each other, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work into molecular construction and its impact on a range of uses from solar cells to battery storage.

Benjamin List, from the Max-Planck-Institut in Germany, and David MacMillan, a professor at Princeton University, won the award for developing “an ingenious tool” for building molecules, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“Researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells,” the academy said.

The two recipients will share the 10 million-krona ($1.1 million) award.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

martes, 5 de octubre de 2021

New story in Science and Health from Time: Men Are Now More Likely to Be Single Than Women. It’s Not a Good Sign Men Are Now More Likely to Be Single Than Women. It’s Not a Good Sign

Almost a third of adult single men live with a parent. Single men are much more likely to be unemployed, financially fragile and to lack a college degree than those with a partner. They’re also likely to have lower median earnings; single men earned less in 2019 than in 1990, even adjusting for inflation. Single women, meanwhile, earn the same as they did 30 years ago, but those with partners have increased their earnings by 50%.

These are the some of the findings of a new Pew Research analysis of 2019 data on the growing gap between American adults who live with a partner and those who do not. While the study is less about the effect of marriage and more about the effect that changing economic circumstances have had on marriage, it sheds light on some unexpected outcomes of shifts in the labor market.
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Over the same time period that the fortunes of single people have fallen, the study shows, the proportion of American adults who live with a significant other, be it spouse or unmarried partner, also declined substantially. In 1990, about 71% of folks from the age of 25 to 54, which are considered the prime working years, had a partner they were married to or lived with. In 2019, only 62% did.

Partly, this is because people are taking longer to establish that relationship. The median age of marriage is creeping up, and while now more people live together than before, that has not matched the numbers of people who are staying single. But it’s not just an age shift: the number of older single people is also much higher than it was in 1990; from a quarter of 40 to 54-year-olds to almost a third by 2019. And among those 40 to 54-year-olds, one in five men live with a parent.

The trend has not had an equal impact across all sectors of society. The Pew study, which uses information from the 2019 American Community Survey, notes that men are now more likely to be single than women, which was not the case 30 years ago. Black people are much more likely to be single (59%) than any other race, and Black women (62%) are the most likely to be single of any sector. Asian people (29%) are the least likely to be single, followed by whites (33%) and Hispanics (38%).

Most researchers agree that the trendlines showing that fewer people are getting married and that those who do are increasingly better off financially have a lot more to do with the effect of wealth and education on marriage than vice versa. People who are financially stable are just much more likely to find and attract a partner.

“It’s not that marriage is making people be richer than it used to, it’s that marriage is becoming an increasingly elite institution, so that people are are increasingly only getting married if they already have economic advantages,” says Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Marriage does not make people change their social class, it doesn’t make people change their race, and those things are very big predictors of economic outcomes.”

This reframing of the issue may explain why fewer men than women find partners, even though men are more likely to be looking for one. The economic pressures on men are stronger. Research has shown that an ability to provide financially is still a more prized asset in men than in women, although the trend is shifting. Some studies go so far as to suggest that the 30-year decrease in the rate of coupling can be attributed largely to global trade and the 30-year decrease in the number of stable and well-paying jobs for American men that it brought with it.

When manufacturing moved overseas, non-college educated men found it more difficult to make a living and thus more difficult to attract a partner and raise a family.

But there is also evidence that coupling up improves the economic fortunes of couples, both men and women. It’s not that they only have to pay one rent or buy one fridge, say some sociologists who study marriage, it’s that having a partner suggests having a future.

“There’s a way in which marriage makes men more responsible, and that makes them better workers,” says University of Virginia sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, pointing to a Harvard study that suggests single men are more likely than married men to leave a job before finding another. The Pew report points to a Duke University study that suggests that after marriage men work longer hours and earn more.

There’s also evidence that the decline in marriage is not just all about being wealthy enough to afford it. Since 1990, women have graduated college in far higher numbers than men.

“The B.A. vs. non B.A. gap has grown tremendously on lots of things — in terms of income, in terms of marital status, in terms of cultural markers and tastes,” says Cohen. “It’s become a sharper demarcation over time and I think that’s part of what we see with regard to marriage. If you want to lock yourself in a room with somebody for 50 years, you might want to have the same level of education, and just have more in common with them.”

Wilcox agrees: “You get women who are relatively liberal, having gone to college, and men who are relatively conservative, still living in a working class world, and that can create a kind of political and cultural divide that makes it harder for people to connect romantically as well.”

What seems to be clear is that the path to marriage increasingly runs through college. While the figures on single men’s declining economic fortunes are the most sobering, they are not what surprised the report’s authors the most. “It’s quite startling how much the partnered women have now outpaced single women,” says Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “About 43% of partnered women have completed at least a bachelor’s degree compared to a third of single women.” He speculates that women may be going to college in greater numbers because it helps them attract a partner in the same way it helps men. “Not only are they rewarded in the labor market with higher earnings, but increasingly, partnership also depends on educational attainment.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: Climate Pressure Mounts for Biden As a Major Conference Looms Climate Pressure Mounts for Biden As a Major Conference Looms

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here.

Anyone who has followed U.S. climate policy is familiar with the cycle of bold attempts to enact climate rules that eventually sputter, followed by years of inaction. President Bill Clinton proposed an energy tax before backing away under industry pressure. President Barack Obama pursued cap-and-trade legislation before it stalled in Congress. Obama tried again using regulatory authority, but much of his moves were undone by a combination of the courts and the Trump administration. In short, every time the U.S. has tried to get its domestic house in order on climate in recent years, the world has instead been left waiting for the next opportunity: a new term, a new president or a new Congress.
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Now, it’s President Joe Biden’s turn to go big. At the core of his climate agenda is a proposed $3.5 trillion package that would, among other things, create a new incentive program to wean the country off fossil fuels in the electricity sector, catalyze electric vehicle adoption and invest in using energy more efficiently. This time, the stakes couldn’t be higher—the world simply doesn’t have time to wait for the U.S. to go through another political cycle before it takes big action on climate.

The first and most obvious reason for this comes down to simple math. In the Paris Agreement, the world set a goal of keeping temperature rise “well below 2°C” and ideally to 1.5°C. Temperatures have already warmed 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution, with most of that warming coming in recent decades. Models suggest that emissions need to start declining rapidly now to have any hope of meeting the goal. The U.S., which dumps 14% of the annual carbon emitted globally, ranks second only to China in its yearly carbon footprint.

Biden has promised to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. He has pursued a slew of policies—from strengthening car regulations to tightening methane emissions rules—that would help put the country on that path, but this legislation would up the ante. Critically, it includes a program that would phase out fossil fuels in the electricity sector, which accounts for a quarter of U.S. emissions. An estimate from the Rhodium Group, an independent energy research firm, shows that U.S. annual emissions could be about 1 gigaton lower by 2030 if the package becomes law. That’s the equivalent of removing emissions from all the light-duty passenger vehicles in the country. An analysis released by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggests the overall package would reduce emissions 45% by 2030.

It’s also important to consider the international implications of passing a domestic climate spending package. Immediately upon taking office, Biden brought the U.S. back to the global stage on climate, reentering the Paris Agreement and promising to help lead the world to net zero. There’s widespread international support for that message, but the rhetoric needs to be underpinned with substance for the message to be credible.

“People’s worst fear is that while President Biden is well intentioned and means it when he says that America is back, the political system in the United States can’t deliver,” says Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a longtime climate policy expert.

Not delivering the infrastructure package would have a ripple effect—and with climate talks set to take place in Glasgow next month, the clock is ticking. International climate talks are structured around voluntary commitments combined with diplomatic pressure campaigns. Countries are supposed to look around at their counterparts and see the world moving in the direction of decarbonization. That observation, combined with some nudging, is in turn supposed to give these countries the confidence to be more ambitious themselves. Empty promises from the U.S. could lead to inaction elsewhere.

I’ve been hearing that message delivered gently from U.S. allies all year. Frans Timmermans, who heads climate policy in the European Union, told me a few weeks ago that his message to his “American friends” is to “make a plan.” Emily Haber, the German Ambassador to the U.S., told me in June that while Germany and the U.S. are aligned about climate goals, the U.S. still needs “to underpin the goals with projects, with policies, with specific strategies.”

The message has been received by those who care about climate in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cited the upcoming Glasgow talks as a reason to quickly pass the infrastructure legislation. And, without mentioning the summit, Schumer is now also pushing for a resolution by the end of the month. Biden “will go to Glasgow,” says Pelosi. “And we want to do so with legislation that is passed.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: How to Invest in Companies That Are Actually Helping the Environment How to Invest in Companies That Are Actually Helping the Environment

ESG funds—investment funds that are supposed to include companies that score the highest marks in environmental, social and governance factors—have become increasingly popular as more people look to put their money where their environmental concerns are. When BlackRock debuted a new ESG-aligned fund in April, investors couldn’t get enough. They poured $1.25 billion into the U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF (stock ticker LCTU) on its first day. No ESG fund, or any type of exchange-traded fund (ETF) for that matter, had ever received that much investment so quickly.

But this wasn’t entirely a feel good story about investors betting on a more environmentally-sound future. BlackRock’s ETF included the pipeline company Kinder Morgan and oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron.
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It wasn’t all that unusual for an ESG. The story of LCTU and the companies within it is representative of both the immense popularity and the confusing and controversial nature of ESG funds. The amount handled by money managers in these funds has risen from roughly $569 billion in 2010 to $16.5 trillion last year, according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. Yet ESG funds have risen to prominence without much regulation or requirements from the SEC, which has only recently started to develop a framework for handling ESG funds. So a company’s presence in an ESG fund does not guarantee it is a top steward of the environment, just as a fund being billed as an ESG does not guarantee it is filled with environmentally sound companies.

“There’s a fundamental problem, which is the SEC allows you to name funds that don’t necessarily reflect what’s inside the fund,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit shareholder advocacy group.

So how can you tell whether you’re truly making a sustainable, green investment? TIME spoke with a variety of investment fund managers and presidents to get a sense of how they operate. Here’s a guide to help you learn the different ways various funds define ESG, how companies get vetted, and which companies are reaching the highest standards.

The limits of ESG funds

ESG generally entails “investing in the best of everything,” according to Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century Funds. Asset managers attempt to package a few dozen companies that rate better than their peers in various characteristics, ranging from greenhouse gas emissions to environmental racism, and have trustworthy corporate governance. Many funds use ESG ratings from MSCI to make determinations.

ESG does not automatically mean certain types of companies are excluded even if, Samuelrich adds, they are “what you would sort of think of as ‘oh those are dangerous companies.’” That’s why companies like ExxonMobil, which engages in activities like flaring and emits loads of greenhouse gases but is working to reduce its carbon footprint, can be found in BlackRock’s LCTU fund. BlackRock has specific funds that eliminate fossil fuel companies, but its general ESG-aligned funds contain fossil fuel companies it believes will most benefit from a transition to a low carbon economy. Funds with ESG or sustainability in the name from State Street, Fidelity, Vanguard, and other asset managers, also feature fossil fuel companies or utilities powered by fossil fuels.

It’s up to the asset managers to determine whether they want to screen out companies involved in fossil fuels, tobacco, guns, or other investment areas generally considered harmful to people or the environment. Green Century Funds, for instance, does not allow any fossil fuel companies in its funds, and Trillium Asset Management and Parnassus Investments have the same prohibition.

While ESG funds are based on relativity, Matthew Patsky, CEO and lead portfolio manager of Trillium, doesn’t believe companies like ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum should ever be included in funds billed as being good for the environment, regardless of how they stack up against competitors.

“The small independent is likely the dirtiest,” Matt said. “ExxonMobil is going to be cleaner than that.”

But, he added, “You can see they funded more of the misinformation campaign to declare that climate change was a hoax than any other corporate entity globally. Well, for me, that’s a non-starter. I don’t want to ever see it in a portfolio.”

How companies get vetted by ESG fund managers

Although standards for environmental care differ across industries, there are a few benchmarks ESG fund managers typically consider when vetting companies for the environment. For carbon emissions, for instance, they seek companies that have science based targets vetted by outside experts. They look for absolute goals because relative goals — such as reducing emissions on a per customer basis — don’t give a full picture.

And when it comes to net zero emissions promises, Julie Gorte, senior vice president for sustainable investing at Impax Asset Management, says there is “a ton of fairy dust,” referring to companies that claim they will eliminate carbon based on technologies that don’t exist yet. Gorte says companies that are the most serious about reducing emissions lay out specific plans for cutting not just their own direct and indirect emissions but for emissions created by other companies along its value chain, which are known as Scope 3 emissions.

“And if a target doesn’t say that then they’re probably just blowing smoke and hoping no one will notice,” Gorte said.

Gorte added that emission reductions were most important for a company trying to reach net zero, before carbon offsets, which can sometimes be used as a cover for keeping harmful environmental practices.

Fund managers typically delve deeper than the numbers available on public reports.

Before Parnassus invested in Digital Realty Trust, director of research Lori Keith visited some of their data centers with a few of her colleagues. The company, which has around 300 data centers worldwide, has set the goal of reducing its direct and indirect emissions by 68% by 2030 and increased their usage of renewable energy. At the data centers, Keith inspected Digital Realty Trust’s operations for herself and interviewed executives and frontline employees to validate whether the company was truly making progress and came away satisfied.

“Those (visits and interviews) are really important for us to make sure that anything that they’re putting out there is of serious intent and that they are genuinely moving towards those targets,” said Keith, who is also portfolio manager of Parnassus’s $8 billion Mid Cap Fund.

At Vanguard, Yolanda Courtines, portfolio manager of the Vanguard Global ESG Select Stock Fund, says she tries to meet with the executive team and board of every company on her fund at least once a year and sometimes five or six times.

“It’s asking simple questions. ‘Are you working with your supply chain? How are you helping them reduce their environmental footprint? Are you putting solar panels on the roofs of your suppliers?,’” she said. “That’s the sort of questioning level that you kind of really want to get into to understand what’s happening.”

Relying purely on data, according to Patsky, does not always provide an adequate portrayal of a company. And he admits that Trillium’s vetting process, which involves everything from talking to current and former employees to checking with NGOs familiar with companies’ labor conditions in China, still can’t uncover everything.

“I don’t want to lead you to believe that we have perfect insight, because if we had perfect insight, we’d have the equivalent of inside information that we don’t,” Patsky said.

The companies that stand out to fund managers

There are no perfect companies in ESG funds, either. Fund managers think of them as leaders and laggards, with plenty of space in the middle. Investors who are conscious about the environment will likely find their best choices in leaders who are making environmental gains beyond most of their peers but still have flaws.

Behar, the CEO of As You Sow, gave Kellogg’s as an example of a leader on the food supply chain. Like most companies, it used wheat and oat crops that had been treated with the herbicide glyphosate, a known carcinogen. After being pressured by lawsuits and activists that included As You Sow, Kellogg’s made a plan in 2020 to phase out glyphosate by 2025. Companies like General Mills and PepsiCo have also recently made regenerative agriculture plans.

“A company like Kellogg’s is being a leader. General Mills is also being a leader,” Behar said. “And now the whole industry has to follow because of competitive pressure.”

Courtines highlights Michelin, the tire company. “That’s a tough industry to be in,” she said, “but they are very, very responsible owners of managing the rubber supply chain and in helping build the tires that are going to be the best tires for electric vehicles that will help reduce carbon footprint on the roads in the future.”

Two companies that came up in conversations with multiple fund managers were Microsoft and Google. Both are already carbon neutral. Google has eliminated legacy carbon, and Microsoft has a plan to do the same by 2050. “Their initiative is to remove everything that they’ve emitted since they started, and hopefully that leads to other companies taking a similar approach,” said Iyassu Essayas, director of ESG at Parnassus.

But, as Patsky points out, Google is being investigated for anti competitive practices. Still, he believes its environmental record outweighs those concerns enough to include in Trillium’s funds, highlighting Google’s 100% usage of renewable energy and even its purchase of the smart thermostat company Nest.

“That’s just one of their many products, but it’s one of the products where I’m like, ‘All right, that’s just brilliant,’” he said. “It’s like a self learning device that’s trying to improve environmental outcomes by moving people toward recognizing that they can be comfortable with the temperature being a little warmer in the summer and colder in the winter.”

How to examine companies and ESG funds yourself

Retail investors can investigate specific funds by reading through their prospectuses. Of course, that involves lots of fine print. As You Sow has an online tool that provides more digestible information on where dozens of ESG funds stand on fossil fuels, guns, gender equality, and other issues.

To study individual companies, fund managers recommend average investors research annual sustainability reports, which you can usually find by searching the internet for a company’s name and “sustainability report.” Companies with legitimate environmental progress will have reports with absolute goals and statistics and not just anecdotes. (Look for concrete numbers with specific deadlines.) Average investors could also check whether the corporate governance structure has enough people concerned with the environment, by searching for whether board members and upper level executives have ever talked about prioritizing the environment or come from previous jobs and companies concerned with the environment.

It can get complicated, so Samuelrich, from Green Century, recommends investors first consider a company’s core business.

“What is the company sort of set up to do, and is it doing something this harmful? Is it doing something that’s neutral? Or is it doing something that’s inherently positive?” Samuelrich said.

From there she said investors should hone in on one or two issues most important to them and search for information in news articles or on companies’ websites and in their sustainability reports.

“What you’re looking for is things like, are they trying to reduce their carbon emissions? Do they say that on their website? Are they trying to reduce their plastics use? Are they trying to minimize their water use? Do they have a policy around supply chain labor standards, for example?…Do they have women or people from diverse backgrounds on their board?”

lunes, 4 de octubre de 2021

New story in Science and Health from Time: What We Have In Common With Humans Of 23,000 Years Ago What We Have In Common With Humans Of 23,000 Years Ago

A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter. Sign up to get a new edition from Susanna every Saturday.

Recently, researchers reported that they’d found the oldest human footprints in North America. These fossilized tracks were made more than 21,000 years ago in what is now the White Sands National Park in New Mexico.

It’s hard to comprehend that span of years and how many generations of humanity have come and gone since then. These were the slighted impressions on the earth—trace markings made by bare human feet pressing into the pliant mud of ancient lake. Yet they survived the Ice Age and everything since to represent people who left hardly any indications that they existed.
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I think about the mountain of documentation we each have of our lives in comparison to those ancient footprints. We’re sure we’ll leave acres of personal history when we go—thousands of photos on dozens of platforms capturing our lives minute to minute. Plus millions of words in emails and texts spooling out every minor thought.

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Yet, our modern platforms will become extinct faster than a Pleistocene-era giant sloth. Digital media ages badly—technology leaping ahead so quickly that our pixelated past will be rendered unreadable before we get a chance to transfer it to a new system. Our memories and playlists are trapped in iPods, like uncrackable amber. And we have so, so much stuff, a vast record of us. I fear the meaning of what we leave behind is diluted by its volume, the sublime, and the ridiculous all stored on the obsolete devices.

Meanwhile, those ancient footprints tell their own tales without any cloud storage. Based on height and walking speed, this new research published in the journal Science suggests that the newly found tracks were from about 16 people, mostly teenagers, and children. Scientists theorize that adults handled skilled tasks while ‘fetching and carrying’ were delegated to teens, so the young left more imprints than adults.

And because White Sands National Park is such a rich site for archeology, there are other stories, only slightly less ancient and perhaps even more moving. The Park’s website describes a previous discovery of the tracks of a prehistoric woman, writing:

“Footprints show her walking for almost a mile, with a toddler’s footprints occasionally showing up beside hers. The footprints broadened and slipped in the mud with additional weight. This suggests that she carried the child, shifting them from side to side and setting them down as they walked.”

Oh, that hip-to-hip shift of a heavy, soggy kid. Is there anything more viscerally familiar? When I read that woman’s imagined history, I could feel the weight of my daughter as we slogged down along wet sand shore at the end of the day. For all of our 21st-century trappings, our human paths align across the millennia, and we all carry the primal memories of skin contact with the earth and each other.

Photograph by Dan Odess, courtesy of the National Park Service.

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GALLERY

A few images from the week.

Fall in the Berkshires includes these crazy trees.

Look at this tiny restaurant I found in the mountains of New Lebanon, NY. The KShack is indeed a funky little seasonal food shack in the mountains serving up dishes sourced from local farms and some staggeringly good all-natural soft-serve ice cream.

Kelly Hagan, owner and top chef of the KShack with her mesmerizing dog Ojas who is part huskie and boxer.

THE ROUND-UP

Take the Kindness Test: The BBC just launched a global online public science survey in collaboration with the University of Sussex in the UK. The project builds on existing research showing that kindness is contagious—just hearing about someone else’s kindness motivates us to do the same. (Unfortunately, the reverse is true too, greed can beget more greed.)

Good COVID News (maybe, probably, hopefully): Modelers predict a steady decline in COVID cases through March. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots for people 65 and older and others at risk for severe COVID-19, which may include those with conditions like diabetes or COPD.

The Pandemic Reminded Us: We Exist to Do More Than Just Work: In an essay adapted from a forthcoming book by Jonathan Malesic, he writes:

“As it is, work sits at the heart of Americans’ vision of human flourishing. It’s much more than how we earn a living. It’s how we earn dignity… In our dissent from this vision and our creation of a better one, we ought to begin with the idea that each one of us has dignity whether we work or not. Your job, or lack of one, doesn’t define your human worth.”

Can you detect your child’s emotional distress before the school’s AI does? Many school districts use software to scan students’ email and web searches for signs of self-harm, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other mental health issues, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal . School administrators say these tools are more important than ever in the wake of the pandemic.

Tabitha Brown Is the Gentlest Person on the Internet: Check out this profile of the unlikely social media star whose memoir Feeding the Soul (Because It’s My Business), is out on Sept. 28.

When someone you love falls down the conspiracy rabbit hole: This piece from The Prospect asks whether it’s possible to save someone from online disinformation when they believe they are battling to save you.

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EVIDENCE OF HUMAN KINDNESS

Here’s your reminder that creating a community of generosity elevates us all.

Back in April 2020, Heather Dechman, a resident of New Orleans, reached out to Shelly Tygielski, founder of Pandemic of Love to inquire about opening up a Louisiana chapter of the mutual-aid nonprofit after she heard about the organization on the news. Since then, Heather has been at the helm of the chapter, supporting her community—from lockdowns to storms.

When Hurricane Ida passed through devastating parts of the state earlier this month, Heather and her family evacuated their home and fled to Arkansas. Since then Heather and her team have been mobilizing to help families, with microgrants of between $250 to $750 per family to assist with gas, travel costs for those looking to leave the area for the short term, and food and essentials for those who are remaining in place. And thousands of families in the state were still without power three weeks after the hurricane hit.

“Even before the storm hit, the struggles we have seen in our communities due to the pandemic and now the most recent surge of the virus, we’re challenging to address.” Still Heather remains hopefully saying, “What I learned in the past year and a half by being involved with Pandemic of Love is that I have the power to do something and be the change in my own community. Through this experience, I’ve learned that we all need to rely on each other to not just survive, but to thrive. We can only do that together.”

Story courtesy of Shelly Tygielski, author of “Sit Down to Rise Up” and founder of Pandemic of Love, a grassroots organization that matches volunteers, donors, and those in need.

COMFORT DOG

Our regular acknowledgment of the animals that help us make it through the storm.

Kathleen wrote to us in March about her accidental pandemic comfort animal, Buddy the cat: “Buddy’s mother went to California [last] August to visit her children and grandchildren. She had a heart attack while there. I was caring for Buddy while she was away for a few weeks that turned into months. He was my companion and love!”

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