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Implicit Bias: Peanut Butter, Jelly and Racism

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This article previously covered aspects of clean water and sanitation access; you can now find this material in our topic pages on Clean Water and Sanitation.

Other research and writing on water use and stress on Our World in Data:

Global freshwater use

A growing global population and economic shift towards more resource-intensive consumption patterns means that global freshwater use has increased approximately six-fold since 1900. Freshwater use includes freshwater withdrawals for agriculture, industry, and municipal uses. This is shown in the chart. Rates of global freshwater use increased sharply from the 1950s onwards but since 2000 appear to be plateauing, or at least slowing.

Freshwater withdrawals by country

This breakdown of total freshwater withdrawals is shown by country in the chart. In recent years, India, China, and the United States are the three countries with the largest freshwater withdrawals.

Water withdrawals per capita

Levels of water use vary significantly across the world. The visualization shows the average level of water withdrawal per person per year. As described in detail in our Data Quality & Definitions section, water withdrawal is defined as the quantity of freshwater taken from groundwater or surface water sources (such as lakes or rivers) for use in agricultural, industrial, or domestic purposes.

As shown, there is a large variance in levels of water withdrawal rates across the world - this can depend on a range of factors, including climate and the importance of a country's agricultural or industrial sector, as explored in the sections below.

Renewable freshwater resources per capita

To maintain sustainable levels of water resources, rates of water withdrawals must be below rates of freshwater replenishment. 'Renewable internal freshwater flows' refer to internal renewable resources (internal river flows and groundwater from rainfall) in a country.

Renewable internal flows are, therefore, an important indicator of water security or scarcity. If rates of freshwater withdrawal begin to exceed the renewable flows, resources begin to decline. The chart shows the level of renewable internal freshwater resources per capita.

Per capita renewable resources depend on two factors: the total quantity of renewable flows and the size of the population. If renewable resources decline - as can happen frequently in countries with large annual variability in rainfall, such as monsoon seasons - then per capita renewable withdrawals will also fall. Similarly, if total renewable sources remain constant, per capita levels can fall if a country's population grows.

As we see, per capita renewable resources are declining in many countries, mainly as a result of population increases.

Per capita renewable water resources by region

The chart shows the average per capita renewable freshwater resources across geographical regions, measured in cubic meters per person per year.

Quantity of renewable freshwater resources by region

The chart shows the total internal renewable freshwater resources by region.

Freshwater use in agriculture

Water is an essential input to global agriculture, whether in the form of rainfed sources or pumped irrigation. The visualization shows the total quantity of freshwater withdrawals that are used in agriculture, whether in the form of food crops, livestock, biofuels, or other non-food crop production.

India's agricultural water consumption has been growing rapidly - almost doubling between 1975 and 2010 - as its population and total food demand continue to increase.

Share of freshwater withdrawals used in agriculture

How do agricultural freshwater withdrawals compare to industrial and domestic sources? Globally, we use approximately 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals for agriculture.

However, this share varies significantly by country - as shown in the chart, which measures the percentage of total freshwater withdrawals used for agriculture. Here, we see large variations geographically and by income level. The average agricultural water use for low-income countries is much higher than it is for high-income countries.

There are a number of countries across South Asia, Africa, and Latin America that use more than 80 percent of water withdrawals for agriculture. Many countries in Europe tend to use a much lower share of water for agriculture; Germany and the Netherlands use less than one percent.

Irrigation

What share of agricultural land is irrigated?

Irrigation - the deliberate supply of agricultural land with water - has been an important input factor in the observed increase of crop yields across many countries in recent decades. It has also been a strong driver in the quantity of water used for agriculture.

The share of the total agricultural area (the combination of arable and grazing land) that is irrigated is shown in the chart. As we can see, irrigation is particularly prevalent across South Asia and the Middle East, with many countries irrigating more than a fifth of their agricultural area.

Slower progress in increasing crop yields in recent decades in Sub-Saharan Africa has been partly attributed (among other factors including fertilizer application rates and crop varieties) to lower uptake of irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Water use in industry

Water is used for a range of industrial applications, including dilution, steam generation, washing, and cooling of manufacturing equipment. Industrial water is also used as cooling water for energy generation in fossil fuel and nuclear power plants (hydropower generation is not included in this category) or as wastewater from certain industrial processes.

The visualization shows the total annual water withdrawals which are used for industrial purposes. The United States and China are two countries that withdraw the most water for industrial uses.

Many countries across the Americas, Europe, and East Asia & Pacific regions use more than one billion m³ for industrial uses per year. Freshwater withdrawal for industrial uses is typically much lower across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Share of freshwater withdrawals used in industry

The visualization provides an overview of industrial water withdrawals measured as the share of total water withdrawals (which is the sum of agricultural, industrial, and domestic uses).

In contrast to the global distribution of agricultural water withdrawals, industrial water usage tends to dominate in high-income countries and is small in low-income countries.

The regions with the greatest share are Central and Eastern Europe. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, these industrial water withdrawals contribute to a very small share of total withdrawals.

Freshwater use for households and public services

Municipal water is defined as the water we use for domestic, household purposes, or public services. This is typically the most 'visible' form of water: the water we use for drinking, cleaning, washing, and cooking.

Municipal water withdrawals are shown in the chart. China, India, and the United States have the highest domestic water demands. This is partly down to the large populations of these countries and higher per capita water demands in the United States.

Share of freshwater withdrawals used in households

Despite being the most visible use of freshwater, domestic demands for most countries are small relative to agricultural and industrial applications. Globally, around 10 percent of withdrawals are used for municipal purposes.

Municipal uses as a share of total water withdrawals across the world are shown in the chart. The majority of countries use less than 30 percent of withdrawals for domestic purposes.

The share of municipal water in some countries across Sub-Saharan Africa can be high as a result of very low demands for agricultural and industrial withdrawals. Domestic uses of water withdrawals can also dominate in some countries across Europe with high rainfall, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, where agricultural production is often largely rainfed and industrial output is low.

As the global population grows (increasing agricultural, industrial, and domestic demands for water) and water demand increases, water stress and the risk of water scarcity are now a common concern. This is even more applicable for particular regions with lower water resources and/or larger population pressures.

Water stress is defined based on the ratio of freshwater withdrawals to renewable freshwater resources. Water stress does not insinuate that a country has water shortages, but it does give an indication of how close it may be to exceeding a water basin's renewable resources. If water withdrawals exceed available resources (i.e., greater than 100 percent), then a country is either extracting beyond the rate at which aquifers can be replenished or has very high levels of desalinization water generation (the conversion of seawater to freshwater using osmosis processes).

What share of freshwater resources do we use?

The visualization provides a measure of levels of water stress across the world. This is measured based on freshwater withdrawals as a share of internal (renewable) resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations categorizes water stress in the following ways: if withdrawals are less than 25 percent of resources, then a country has no water stress; 25-50 percent is low stress; 50-75 percent is medium; 75-100 percent high stress; and greater than 100 percent is critical stress.

Several countries across the Middle East & North Africa have extremely high levels of water stress. Many have withdrawal rates well in excess of 100 percent - this means they are either extracting unsustainably from existing aquifer sources or producing a large share of water from desalinization.

Water stress in Northern Europe, Canada, much of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania is typically low or low to medium.

Water use of food products

Globally, 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture. However, water requirements vary significantly depending on food type. The charts show the global average freshwater withdrawals in liters per kilogram of food product, per 1000 kilocalories, and 100 grams of protein.

Freshwater withdrawals per kilogram of food product

Freshwater withdrawals per 1000 kilocalories

Freshwater withdrawals per 100 grams of protein

Water withdrawals

Water withdrawal: Water withdrawals (also sometimes known as 'water abstractions') are defined as freshwater taken from ground or surface water sources (such as rivers or lakes), either permanently or temporarily, and used for agricultural, industrial, or municipal (domestic) uses.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) AQUASTAT Database defines total water withdrawal as: "Annual quantity of water withdrawn for agricultural, industrial and municipal purposes. It can include water from primary renewable and secondary freshwater resources, as well as water from over-abstraction of renewable groundwater or withdrawal from fossil groundwater, direct use of agricultural drainage water, direct use of (treated) wastewater, and desalinated water. It does not include in-stream uses, which are characterized by a very low net consumption rate, such as recreation, navigation, hydropower, inland capture fisheries, etc."

Total withdrawal is equal to: [withdrawals for agriculture] + [withdrawals for industry] + [withdrawals for municipal/domestic uses].

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) AQUASTAT Database gives the following definitions for agricultural, industrial, and municipal withdrawals:

Agricultural water withdrawal: "Annual quantity of self-supplied water withdrawn for irrigation, livestock and aquaculture purposes. It can include water from primary renewable and secondary freshwater resources, as well as water from over-abstraction of renewable groundwater or withdrawal from fossil groundwater, direct use of agricultural drainage water, direct use of (treated) wastewater, and desalinated water. Water for the dairy and meat industries and industrial processing of harvested agricultural products is included under industrial water withdrawal."

Industrial water withdrawal: "Annual quantity of self-supplied water withdrawn for industrial uses. It can include water from primary renewable and secondary freshwater resources, as well as water from over-abstraction of renewable groundwater or withdrawal from fossil groundwater, direct use of agricultural drainage water, direct use of (treated) wastewater, and desalinated water. This sector refers to self-supplied industries not connected to the public distribution network. The ratio between net consumption and withdrawal is estimated at less than 5%. It includes water for the cooling of thermoelectric and nuclear power plants, but it does not include hydropower. Water withdrawn by industries that are connected to the public supply network is generally included in municipal water withdrawal."

Municipal water withdrawal: "Annual quantity of water withdrawn primarily for the direct use by the population. It can include water from primary renewable and secondary freshwater resources, as well as water from over-abstraction of renewable groundwater or withdrawal from fossil groundwater, direct use of agricultural drainage water, direct use of (treated) wastewater, and desalinated water. It is usually computed as the total water withdrawn by the public distribution network. It can include part of the industries and urban agriculture, which is connected to the municipal network. The ratio between the net consumption and the water withdrawn can vary from 5 to 15% in urban areas and 10 to 50% in rural areas."

Water stress levels

Renewable internal freshwater resources refer to the quantity of internal freshwater from inflowing river basins and recharging groundwater aquifers. Data on renewable resources should be treated with caution; since this data is gathered intermittently, it fails to capture seasonal and annual variance in water resources, which can be significant in some nations. Data at a national level also fails to capture variability at more local levels, which can be important when analyzing the sustainability of particular groundwater aquifers or surface water basins.

Water stress is defined in its simplest terms as occurring when total freshwater withdrawal substantiates a large share of available renewable freshwater resources.

UN-Water defines water stress categories based on this percentage (% of withdrawals to renewable resources) as follows:

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How much water do we use? How did it change over time?

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The Well That Changed Her Life - Water-JS-LL.pdf

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Crash Course Navigating Digital Information

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Crash Course Navigating Digital Information

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Social Media: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #10

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The world witnessed the worst example of the impact digital platforms can have on society with the debacle at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Not only did supporters of Donald Trump try to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College votes, but this deplorable incident was, in large part, fomented over social media.

In the past, Twitter and Facebook have been reluctant to censor posts about conspiracy theories and fake news. Digital platforms also have benefitted from a 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that grants them immunity from liabilities related to third-party hosted content. Nevertheless, prompted by false accusations of rigged elections and other fake news, the leading digital platforms in social media recently began tagging some posts as unreliable or untrue and removing some videos. Following the January 6th insurrection attempt, Twitter and Facebook also banned Trump from using their platforms because promotion of violence and criminal acts violates their terms of service. For similar reasons, Apple and Google removed the alternative Parler social media platform from their app stores, and Amazon stopped hosting the service.

How did we get into this mess?

Digital platforms can be highly profitable businesses that connect users and other market actors in ways not possible before the internet. When they are successful, they generate powerful feedback loops called network effects and then monetize them by selling advertisements. But what happened at the U.S. Capitol illustrates how digital platforms can be double-edged swords. Yes, they have generated trillions of dollars in wealth. But they have also enabled the distribution of fake news and fake products, manipulation of digital content for political purposes, and promotion of dangerous misinformation on elections, vaccines, and other public health matters.

The social dilemma is clear: Digital platforms can be used for evil as well as good.

What's the solution? Should platform companies wait for governments to impose potentially intrusive controls and respond defensively? Or should they act pre-emptively?

Governments will inevitably get more engaged in oversight. However, we believe that platforms should become more aggressive at self-regulation now. To explore the feasibility of self-regulation, we researched the history of self-regulation before and after the widespread adoption of the internet. We found that companies have often risked creating a "tragedy of the commons" when they put their short-term, individual self-interests ahead of the good of the consuming public or the industry overall, and, in the long term, destroy the environment that made them successful in the first place.

Before the internet era, several industries, such as movies, video games, broadcasting content, television advertising, and computerized airline reservation systems, faced similar issues and managed to self-regulate with some success. At the same time, these historical examples suggest that self-regulation worked best when there were credible threats of government regulation. The bottom line: Self-regulation may be the key to avoiding a potential tragedy of the commons scenario for digital platforms.

What is "self-regulation"? This refers to the steps companies or industry associations take to preempt or supplement governmental rules and guidelines. For an individual company, self-regulation ranges from self-monitoring for regulatory violations to proactive "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) initiatives. Leaving it up to companies to monitor and restrain themselves can sometimes devolve into a self-regulatory or regulatory "charade." But that doesn't need to be the case.

For many decades, companies in the business of producing movies, video games, and television shows and commercials all have faced issues around the appropriateness of "content" in a way that resembles today's social media platforms. To keep regulators at bay, the movie and video games industries resorted to a self-imposed and self-monitored rating system, still in operation today. The broadcasting and advertisement sectors in the 1950s and 1960s faced pushback on the appropriateness of advertisements, with issues resembling what we see today in online advertising. Launched in 1960, the airline reservation industry, led by American Airlines' Sabre system, introduced self-preferencing in search results, similar to complaints made against Google and Amazon. Self-regulation in these cases often delivered effective and inexpensive guidelines for company operations as well as forestalled more intrusive government intervention.

History provides several lessons for today's digital platforms.

First, our leading technology companies need to anticipate when government regulation is likely to become a key factor in their businesses. In movies, radio and television broadcasting, airline reservations via computers, and other new industries, there often occurs a vacuum in regulation in the early years. Then, after a kind of "wild west" environment, governments step in to regulate or pressure firms to curb abuses. To avoid problematic government regulation, platform companies need to introduce their own controls on behavior and usage before the government revokes all Section 230 protections, which is currently under debate in Congress. Technology that exploits big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, with some human editing, will increasingly give digital platforms the ability to curate what happens on their platforms. The issue is really to what extent the big platforms have the will to self-regulate. The decisions by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and Google during the first week in January 2021 were steps in the right direction.

Second, we find that firms in new industries tend to eschew self-regulation when the perceived costs imply a significant reduction in revenues or profits. Managers rarely like industry regulations that appear "bad for business." However, this strategy can be self-defeating. If bad behavior undermines consumer trust, then digital platforms will not continue to thrive. Look closely at Section 230. It states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This act gave online intermediaries broad immunity from liability for user-generated content posted on their sites. Executives and company lawyers should have felt comfortable making reasonable curation decisions under Section 230. However, they generally resisted and argued that their legal and political positions would be more secure if they avoided potentially controversial curation. Internal debates ranging from free speech versus censorship to how much curation can the firm perform before it crosses the line from platform to "publisher" led most social media companies to resist aggressive curation until very recently. However, Section 230 also included a "good Samaritan" exception. This allowed platforms to remove or moderate content deemed obscene or offensive, as long as it was done in good faith. There have been growing calls from both Democrats and Republicans to repeal Section 230 because of accusations of bias (i.e., not acting in good faith) and very little curation over the prior decade by Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, and other platforms. More explicit and transparent self-regulation, like we observed after the U.S. Capitol debacle, might well produce a better outcome for social media platforms, at least compared to leaving their fate up to Congress.

Third, proactive self-regulation was often more successful when coalitions of firms in the same sector worked together. We saw this coalition-type of activity in movie and video-game rating systems limiting violent, profane, or sexual content; television advertisements rules curbing unhealthy products like alcohol and tobacco; and computerized online airline reservations giving equal treatment to airlines, without favoring the system owners. Similarly, social media companies implemented codes of conduct on terrorist activity. Since individual firms may hesitate to enact self-regulation if they incur added costs that their competitors do not, industry coalitions have the benefit of reducing free-riding. Now is the ideal time for more "coopetition," where platforms compete as well as cooperate with rivals.

Fourth, we found that firms or industry coalitions get serious about self-regulation primarily when they see a credible threat of government regulation, even if it may hurt short-term sales and profits. This pattern occurred with tobacco and cigarette ads, airline reservations, social media ads for terrorist group recruitment, and pornographic material. That threat should be clear and obvious to digital platforms in 2021.

In sum, history suggests that modern digital platforms should not wait for governments to impose controls; they should act decisively and pro-actively now. While the costs of government action in the internet era have been modest so far, the regulatory environment is changing fast. Given the increasing likelihood of government action, the goal of self-regulation should be to avoid a tragedy of the commons, where a lack of trust destroys the environment that has allowed digital platforms to thrive. Going forward, governments and digital platforms will also need to work together more closely. Since more government oversight over Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other platforms seems inevitable, new institutional mechanisms for more participative forms of regulation may be critical to their long-term survival and success.

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Social Media Companies Should Self-Regulate. Now.

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Tech companies face the real threat of government regulation in reaction to socially harmful content they are publishing. To avoid this, tech companies should form an industry coalition and take proactive steps to self-regulate now. Our research into industries including television, movies, and video games suggests effective self-regulation can benefit both society and companies, and keep government regulators at bay.

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Whether you've posted information on a social media site about an upcoming event, driven readership by posting a link to a blog, or simply shared a photo of you and your team, you've leveraged social media for the good of your brand.

Use of social media sites - both on the part of consumers and businesses - has increased sharply in recent years.

And with more capabilities and advancements being added to top platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, it's safe to say that social networking and social media marketing aren't going anywhere.

Social media networks can offer huge advantages for your business, helping you to make connections with your target audience.

Here, we've created an extensive list of (nearly) all the benefits that social media platforms can bring for your brand. Use these to inform your internal decision-makers, craft and improve your social media marketing strategy, and empower your business:

1. Use of Social Platforms Is on the Rise.

2. There's More Opportunity to Branch Out Among Social Media Networks.

3. Direct Connections With Users and Brand Partners.

4. Better Support for Your Brand Image.

5. Create a Path of Least Resistance to the Website.

6. Eliminate Roadblocks on the Path to Purchase.

7. Open, Honest Customer Feedback.

8. Uncover Deeper Conversations with Social Listening.

9. A Window into the Competition.

10. User-Generated Content.

11. Tap into the Power of Influencer Marketing.

12. Tie it all Together with Social Storytelling.

1. Use of Social Platforms Is on the Rise Among Consumers ...

A staggering 4.62 billion people currently use a social media platform, making social media use a recurring activity of nearly half the world.

While not every social media account is an active, engaged user (or a potential customer), the mere ubiquity of a social media strategy's reach is reason enough to consolidate resources and marketing effort around a cohesive social media presence.

2. There's More Opportunity to Branch Out Among Social Media Networks

While some brands keep their social contained to a select number of platforms, typically hitting the big ones like Facebook and Instagram, there is now more opportunity than ever before to branch out.

Each social media network is different, and thus provides an opportunity to share different content and messages on different networks.

Right now, most companies have anywhere between four and 10 social profiles that they maintain. A strategy like this enables you to reach out to an older audience on Facebook, use an interesting image to connect with younger users on Instagram, and foster professional relationships and thought leadership through LinkedIn posts, for example.

3. Direct Connections with Users and Brand Partners

Speaking of more opportunity, this isn't just true of the number of available networks.

Brands can also leverage social to directly connect with their target audience, and enable fast and easy communication. In this way, customers don't have to jump through hoops in order to contact someone at the brand - all it takes is a well-placed direct message and timely response to valuably contribute to the customer experience.

Supermarket chain Tesco takes this to the next level in their consumer social media interactions. When users send a direct message through the company's Twitter, the company's response includes different options for them to choose from:

This brand's interactions are super efficient, enabling customers to quickly get the info they need.

4. Better Support for Your Brand Image

In the past, brands had limited outlets to create and foster their image.

Now, however, social media enables brands to truly showcase their brand style and voice in all types of different ways.

This helps make the brand more personable and real for its audience. What's more, there's always opportunities to further build out the brand image and style with a video post announcement, a link to a blog, a post to your social story and beyond.

Take fashion retailer ASOS, for example. The brand's strategy includes a separate Twitter account just for its customer service requests, providing a place for consumers to turn, other than the company's regular profile.

This way, customers get a faster response, and ASOS can showcase its laid-back and casual image through the tone of its social media messages:

5. Create a Path of Least Resistance to the Website

One of the biggest obstacles that many companies face is the challenge of leading potential customers through the sales funnel, and ensuring that they have access to the right pieces of content and collateral along the way.

Your social media advertising and online presence can not only serve to help support your sales funnel, but posting strategic links on your profile can also create a path of least resistance to your website. This way, current and potential customers won't just find you through organic searches - you'll also pop-up in their newsfeed and timeline, with just the right link to your site.

Clothing brand Free People provides a good example on its Facebook page. The brand provides a link (Shop Now) directly at the top which leads users to the company's main e-commerce site:

The brand also uses posts to showcase its latest merch, alongside links that lead shoppers directly to the product pages for the items featured:

To top it all off, Free People includes a Products page, where shoppers can peruse through merchandise, select the items they like, and head directly to checkout on the brand's main site. Now that's truly a path of least resistance:

6. Eliminate Roadblocks on the Path to Purchase

Building on this last point, social isn't just about leading the horse to water - it can also eliminate anything standing in the way of making it drink.

Now, brands can leverage buy buttons and shoppable posts to enable users to view and buy directly from their timelines, just as they would on the brand's full website. This can help eliminate the necessary touch points between "I'm just looking," and "Ooo, I must have this today!"

The above example comes from premium fashion brand Ted Baker, and is actually an interactive video that includes shoppable touch points directly within the video. Talk about advanced shopping!

7. Open, Honest Customer Feedback

Social platforms also offer an outlet for customers to share their honest feedback with companies.

While comments can sometimes feel like a segment of Jimmy Kimmel's "Mean Tweets," it also allows marketers to get a true - and often unfiltered - sense of customers' feelings about the brand and its offerings. And hey, there could be some truth buried even within the seemingly harshest of consumer social media posts.

8. Uncover Deeper Conversations With Social Listening

You can also take social media monitoring to the next level with social listening, which doesn't just focus on your own social page for feedback, but helps you run an audit of all your social media channels to get the best sense of the direct feedback, brand mentions and overarching conversations taking place in your industry.

Using these insights, you can better craft your future social media campaigns, improve your brand messaging and speak to your audience in a way that will encourage them to actually listen.

Many brands, like FitBit, have leveraged social media listening to improve their product line. The company's new Reminder to Move feature came directly from users' feedback on social media.

9. A Window into the Competition

In addition to getting a look at the true feelings and opinions of your customers and followers, social media is also a fantastic tool for checking up on your competition.

For instance, did your top competitor recently go viral by getting in on a brand-aligned social challenge? Did a call for user-generated content (which we'll get into more below) go particularly well for them?

Take these lessons and insights back to your company, and build on them to up your own social clout.

10. User-Generated Content

One of the best things about social media is the fact that conversations and touch points don't just go one way.

Now, everyone is more accessible through social media than ever before, including brand leaders, politicians, celebrities and beyond. Consumers (including members of your own target audience) are happy to take advantage, and reach out to high profile businesses and people.
Destination Canada's call for content brought them thousands of photos and videos to use.
You can capitalize on this by putting out a call for user-generated content.

This content can come along with a specific direction, like for a viral challenge. Other times, brands will announce a specific hashtag and ask their audience to use it in upcoming social media posts.

In this way, content isn't just siloed within the brand's own social page - its reach extends further through individual user timelines and beyond.

User content helps to vary the types of posts that your followers see on your social platforms. Since 60% of consumers place a higher trust in posts, photos and recommendations made by other customers, well-placed user-generated content can be just the thing your sales funnel needs to encourage conversion.

A fantastic example comes from Apple, which leveraged its #shotoniphone social media campaign to showcase the camera capabilities of its new model.

Starbucks gave us another great user-generated content success back in 2014 with its "WhiteCupContest. This campaign asked users to submit their own cup designs, and when coffee collides with art, fantastic things can happen - in just three short weeks, the coffee giant saw a whopping 4,000 responses from artists across the globe.

The social media campaign generated so much buzz that the brand spearheaded a similar challenge in 2016 with its #RedCupArt challenge.

11. Tap Into the Power of Influencer Marketing

In addition to crowdsourcing content from your follower audience, social also provides you the opportunity to join forces with certain influencers in your industry.

Influencers are social media users with considerable relevance and reach, and they use this influence to spread messages that resonate with their audience.

Selecting and partnering with the right influencer can help you reach a wider audience, strengthen your image, grow brand awareness and build trust.

In other words, an influencer is like a megaphone for your brand's unique messaging, enabling your company to make better connections while improving engagement and lead generation.

Learn more about the pros and cons of influencer marketing here.

12. Tie It All Together With Social Storytelling

One of the greatest advantages of social media is that you don't have to pigeon-hole your brand into solely salesy social media advertising posts - you can also use your social pages for brand storytelling.

Sure, a post about an upcoming sale will get certain users' attention, but using your social channel to tell a story about something that's truly important to your audience will help you make a greater impact.

Take Always' #LikeAGirl campaign, for instance.

The feminine products brand took a common phrase and turned it on its head by sharing uplifting stories of female empowerment. The campaign was perfectly aligned with the company's brand image, but didn't push its products - instead, it helped showcase the strength, confidence and abilities of girls and women across the globe.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that can enable your brand to connect with your audience in engaging and relevant ways. Your social media channels and overall online presence let you add to meaningful conversations happening in your industry, and make a real impact in your brand's field.
Editor's Note: Updated June 2022.

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12 Benefits of Social Media, and All the Ways It Can Impact Your Business for Good

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Whether you've posted information on a social media site about an upcoming event, driven readership by posting a link to a blog, or simply shared a photo of you and your team, you've leveraged social media for the good of your brand.

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Sign into your school account to access this PDF.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy #42

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What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

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World Animal Protection is an animal welfare organisation. Let's break down what that means.

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Originally adopted by the AZA Board of Directors September 1976, amended March 2017

Preamble to the Code of Professional Ethics

Our profession is based on respect for the dignity of the animals in our care, the people we serve, and our fellow professionals and volunteers. Members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums ("AZA") have an important role in the preservation of the species on our planet. To fulfill this evolving role, we must have strong relationships with the public, the animals under our care, and with each other. A consequent obligation of membership is to maintain the highest degree of ethical conduct. Members must display at all times the courage and foresight to act with professionalism in dealing with animals in their care and with their fellow human beings.

With actions guided by these principles, ours will continue to be a highly respected profession.

Code of Professional Ethics

The following Code of Professional Ethics of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) shall form the basis for all disciplinary actions of the Association.

Deviation by a member from the AZA Code of Professional Ethics or from any of the rules officially adopted by the Board of Directors supplemental thereto, or any action by a member that is detrimental to the best interest of the zoo and aquarium profession and the AZA, shall be considered unethical conduct. The member shall be subject to investigation by the AZA Ethics Board and, if warranted, to disciplinary action by the Ethics Board and/or the AZA Board of Directors. The Code is intended as an inspirational guide for members and as a basis for disciplinary action.

This Code cannot apply to nonmembers, except as they have agreed to follow the Code in a signed agreement to participate in an AZA program. This Code defines the type of ethical conduct the public has a right to expect, not only of staff members of an institution but also of their nonprofessional employees and associates in all matters pertaining to professional zoological park and aquarium employment. The director and/or governing authority of a member institution should ultimately be responsible for the conduct of their employees and others affiliated with the member institution.

The Obligations of Professional Ethics set forth are aspirational in character and represent the objectives towards which every member should strive.

The Code's Mandatory Standards, unlike the Obligations of Professional Ethics, are mandatory in character and, if violated, may result in disciplinary action. The Mandatory Standards, to be uniformly applied to all members, establish a level of conduct below which no member may fall without being subject to disciplinary action. The Code makes no attempt to prescribe either disciplinary procedures or penalties for violation of Mandatory Standards. The severity of judgment against a member found to be in violation of a Mandatory Standard shall be determined by the character of the offense and the attendant circumstances. The Ethics Board, in applying the Mandatory Standards, may find interpretive guidance in the basic principles embodied in the standards and objectives reflected in the Obligations of Professional Ethics.

The Board of Directors and Ethics Board shall be responsible for interpreting the Code of Professional Ethics, subject to all provisions of the Charter and Bylaws. The Ethics Board shall investigate allegations, render decisions, and prescribe subsequent actions and/or penalties. An appeal may be made to the AZA Executive Committee within thirty (30) days of the date of transmitting the Ethics Board decision to the complainant and defendant. Appeals may be granted if the Executive Committee concludes that the complainant or defendant appealing the Ethics Board decision has demonstrated that (1) there are new facts, not known at the time of the Ethics Board investigation, which the Executive Committee believes may have changed the outcome; or (2) the Ethics Board did not follow relevant AZA procedures; or (3) the penalty recommended by the Ethics Board was excessive under the circumstances. An appeal shall be granted upon a majority vote of the AZA Executive Committee. If the request for an appeal is granted, the Board of Directors shall hear the appeal at its next regularly scheduled meeting. The appellate decision of the Board of Directors shall be final and cannot be appealed.

I. Obligations of Professional Ethics

In order to promote high standards of conduct in our profession, the AZA has formulated the following basic principles for the guidance of its members:

A member of the AZA must:

Recognize the moral responsibilities of the individual and the institution not only to our professional associates, fellow employees and volunteers, and the public, but also to the animals under our care.

Display the highest integrity, the best judgment or ethics possible, and use of professional skills to the best interests of all.

Deal fairly with members in the dissemination of professional information and advice.

Use only legal and ethical means when seeking to influence governmental legislation or regulations.

Promote the interests of wildlife conservation, biodiversity, and animal welfare to the public and to colleagues.

Maintain high standards of personal, professional, and business conduct and behavior.

Promote the interests of AZA and fully share in the work in support of the concepts and ideals of AZA.

Cooperate with qualified zoos/aquariums and other qualified persons/organizations in breeding programs of endangered and other species.

Aid the professional development of those who enter the zoological park and aquarium profession by assisting them to understand the functions, duties, and responsibilities of the profession.

Seek opportunities to be of constructive service in civic affairs and, advance the understanding of all nature to the community.

Encourage publication of significant achievements in breeding husbandry, medical technology, architecture, etc., in the appropriate publications generally familiar to members.

Endeavor at all times to improve zoos and aquariums.

II. Mandatory Standards
1. Maintaining Integrity and Competence of the Zoological Park and Aquarium Profession

A member shall make no materially false statement or deliberately fail to disclose a material fact in connection with an application for membership or accreditation in AZA.
2. Misconduct

1. A member shall not violate a Mandatory Standard.

2. A member shall not solicit the aid of another individual to circumvent, or assist another to violate, a Mandatory Standard.

3. A member shall not knowingly engage in activities contrary to local, state, federal, or international laws as such laws relate to our profession; and a member will, to the best of his or her ability, cooperate with governmental agencies regulating animal welfare and animal transactions.

4. A member shall not engage in conduct that adversely affects, or is prejudicial to, the concepts and ideals of the AZA.

5. A member shall make every effort to assure that all animals in his/her collection and under his/her care are disposed of in a manner which meets the current disposition standards of the Association and do not find their way into the hands of those not qualified to care for them properly.

3. Disclosure of Information

1. A member shall not knowingly misinform others regarding animal records or specimen disposition, professional information, and advice.

2. A member shall not alter animal records or alter the facts concerning age, condition, or other material information about any animal in order to affect the sale, trade, loan, or other transaction with respect to such animal.

3. A member shall immediately bring to the attention of the Ethics Board of the AZA any information concerning a clear violation of a Mandatory Standard.

4. A member shall issue no statement to the public which he/she knows (or should know) to be false or misleading.

General Advisories

The policies outlined below have been previously adopted by the AZA Board of Directors and are considered to expand the interpretation of the AZA Code of Professional Ethics that was developed to guide ethical conduct of all members. Amendments can be proposed by the AZA Board of Directors, the Ethics Board, and/or AZA members. Any proposed changes shall be reviewed by the Ethics Board and, as appropriate, by legal counsel. Proposed changes shall be submitted to the AZA Board of Directors for action.
Animal Auctions (1981)
AZA members offering wildlife for sale at auctions attended by the general public are in violation of the AZA Code of Professional Ethics, specifically Mandatory Standards, 2-e, which states, "As a member of AZA, I pledge to...make every effort to assure that all animals...do not find their way into the hands of those not qualified to care for them properly."
Use of Animal Exchange (1984)
Individuals may utilize Animal Exchange to purchase specimens if the following criteria are followed: the individual should, during the initial contact, identify his or her intentions and make the seller aware if the specimen(s) will go to the purchaser's private collection and not the zoo in question (adopted by the Ethics Board at the direction of the AZA Board).
Notification of Ethics Code Violations (1986; revised 1993)
Copies of all final actions (the denial of an appeal to the Executive Committee or notification to the complainant and defendant of the appellate decision) regarding violations of the Code of Professional Ethics shall be sent to the Director, Chief Executive Officer, or Governing Authority of the institution of the defendant(s) involved. Such final actions shall be published in Communique, including a brief and factual statement of the action, including the name(s) of the defendant(s) involved in the violation and a listing of the sections of the Code which were violated to provide guidance for AZA members.
Procurement of SSP Animals (1986; modified 1990: revised 1993)
Attempts by members to circumvent AZA conservation programs in the procurement and/or disposition of specimens of SSP animals are detrimental to the Association and its conservation programs. Such action may be detrimental to the species involved and could be construed as a violation of the Association's Code of Professional Ethics. All Association members should work through SSP coordinators and appropriate propagation groups in efforts to procure or dispose of specimens of SSP species.

Ethics Board

The Ethics Board, elected by the membership, has separate duties from the AZA Board of Directors. The Ethics Board shall consist of nine (9) members. The Ethics Board proposed guidelines on the function of the Ethics Board for consideration during the San Diego Annual Conference in 1977. The AZA Board of Directors unanimously adopted these guidelines and revised them in 1993:

1. All Ethics Board matters shall be handled in accordance with the objectives and standards of the Association's Code of Professional Ethics.

2. Matters called to the attention of the Ethics Board must be in writing and addressed to the Chair or any member of the Ethics Board. The ethics charge must be signed by the complainant and must contain a full statement of the matter to be reviewed by the Ethics Board.

3. An individual filing an ethics complaint shall be advised that full disclosure of the complaint shall be made available to all parties concerned. At this time, the complainant has the right to withdraw the complaint; and thus, the matter will be closed.

4. The Ethics Board, the complainant, and the defendant shall at all times during the investigation maintain strict confidentiality regarding the case.

5. The initial responsibility of the Ethics Board is to determine the validity of the charge(s). If the charge(s) appears to be valid, the Ethics Board shall initiate a full investigation. Once a full investigation is initiated, the Ethics Board must determine if an Ethics Code violation has occurred and what action and/or penalty is necessary. In making its determination, the Ethics Board shall consult, where necessary or appropriate, with AZA legal counsel. The Ethics Board has the responsibility and authority to issue a judgment and determine disciplinary actions. The AZA Board of Directors serves as an appellate board.

6. The AZA Board of Directors may also direct the Ethics Board to perform additional duties as needed.

The following procedures are hereby established:

1. The Chair of the Ethics Board will distribute copies of all duly received ethics complaints to members of the Ethics Board, the Chair of the AZA Board of Directors, the AZA President/CEO, Executive Director, and the AZA Board Liaison to the Ethics Board. All correspondence pertaining to the case shall be marked "Confidential." The Chair shall request each Ethics Board member to render an opinion as to the validity of the complaint and make a recommendation on how to proceed and action to be taken.

2. The Chair shall review all recommendations, suggest an Ethics Board action and, if necessary, arrange an appearance before the Ethics Board and/or a site visitation.

3. The Ethics Board may dismiss any charge for which there is insufficient evidence to pursue the investigation or for which there is no apparent violation of the Ethics Code. The complainant, defendant, and the Board of Directors shall be notified by the Ethics Board of the decision, for which there is no appeal.

The Ethics Board may determine that there is no clear violation or proof of a violation but that there is concern about the conduct of a member. The Ethics Board may issue a letter of concern.

If the Ethics Board determines that a violation of the Code has occurred, the following options shall be considered: (A) Letter of Reprimand from the Ethics Board. (B) Letter of Reprimand from the Ethics Board and the AZA Board of Directors. (C) Censorship and suspension of certain membership privileges (up to 2 years), to be determined on a case-by-case basis. (D) Expulsion from AZA membership for a minimum of two years. The Ethics Board may function as an investigative body as it determines whether or not a violation has occurred. The Ethics Board shall make its determination based upon the greater weight of the evidence presented to it. Ethics matters often do not involve legal matters but are founded on moral values and industry standards and practices. Where necessary or appropriate, the Ethics Board shall consult with AZA legal counsel.

4. The Ethics Board shall deliberate, during a meeting or conference call, on the final determination and action to be taken. Actions by the Ethics Board shall require a two-thirds (2/3) vote of its members. When a two-thirds (2/3) majority vote of guilty is not received the issue shall be dropped.

The Chair of the Ethics Board shall submit a report to the Chair of the AZA Board of Directors, AZA President/CEO, AZA Executive Director, and the AZA Board Liaison to the Ethics Board, and legal counsel, if necessary, with the Ethics Board's findings and course of disciplinary action to be taken prior to advising the complainant and defendant.

The Chair of the Ethics Board shall advise the complainant and the defendant in writing of the findings and action taken by the Ethics Board. If the complaint is filed against an AZA-accredited Institution of against the Director of the Institution the Chair shall send a written copy of the substance of the findings and action to the principal officer of the Institution's governing board. If the complaint is filed against a member of the staff, other than the Director, a written copy of the substance of the findings and action will be sent to the Director of the Institution.

An appeal may be made to the AZA Executive Committee within thirty (30) days of the date of mailing the Ethics Board decision to the complainant and defendant. The Executive Committee must decide whether or not to grant the appeal within forty-five (45) days of its receipt and so advise the appellant. Appeals may be granted if the Executive Committee concludes that the complainant or defendant appealing the Ethics Board decision has demonstrated that (1) there are new facts, not known at the time of the Ethics Board investigation, which the Executive Committee believes may have changed the outcome; or (2) the Ethics Board did not follow relevant AZA procedures; or (3) the penalty recommended by the Ethics Board was excessive under the circumstances.

Appeals shall be granted upon a majority vote of the AZA Executive Committee. The AZA Board of Directors shall hear the appeal at its next regularly scheduled meeting. The appellate decision of the Board of Directors shall be final and cannot be appealed.

At least one member of the Ethics Board shall be present during the appeal.

The Ethics Board shall notify the complainant and the defendant of the final action of the AZA Board of Directors once the appellate decision has been rendered.

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Code of Ethics: Association of Zoos & Aquariums

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Originally adopted by the AZA Board of Directors September 1976, amended March 2017

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How Zoos and Aquariums Protect Endangered Species

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From advocating for funding and research for conservation and science to working with government agencies to promote research initiatives, zoos and aquariums to quite a bit of work behind the scenes to help endangered species.

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Every year, an estimated one tenth of the world's population passes through the gates of zoos and aquariums. Aquariums, zoos, and other conservation institutions are uniquely poised to influence our capacity for concern, empathy, affection, and, ultimately, care for others. Join Senior Scholars Jeanne Gang and Sylvia Earle and our other contributors as they consider how zoos and aquariums can foster a culture in which people care for both each other and for the rest of nature.

This series was made possible in part through the generous support of the South Carolina Aquarium.
Image credit: South Carolina Aquarium

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Ethics of Zoos & Aquariums | Animal Rights Articles | Center for Humans and Nature

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Every year, an estimated one tenth of the world's population passes through the gates of zoos and aquariums. Aquariums, zoos, and other conservation institutions are uniquely poised to influence our capacity for concern, empathy, affection, and, ultimately, care for others.

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Play up until 1:40, then skip to 2:01

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New data has revealed over the past year, the number of anti-Asian hate incidents - which can include shunning, slurs and physical attacks - is greater than previously reported. And a disproportionate number of attacks have been directed at women.

The research released by reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate on Tuesday revealed nearly 3,800 incidents were reported over the course of roughly a year during the pandemic. It's a significantly higher number than last year's count of about 2,600 hate incidents nationwide over the span of five months. Women made up a far higher share of the reports, at 68 percent, compared to men, who made up 29 percent of respondents. The nonprofit does not report incidents to police.

Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and the forum's founder, told NBC Asian America that the coalescence of racism and sexism, including the stereotype that Asian women are meek and subservient, likely factors into this disparity.

"There is an intersectional dynamic going on that others may perceive both Asians and women and Asian women as easier targets," he said.

The data, which includes incidents that occurred between March 19 of last year and Feb. 28 of this year, shows that roughly 503 incidents took place in 2021 alone. Verbal harassment and shunning were the most common types of discrimination, making up 68.1 percent and 20.5 percent of the reports respectively. The third most common category, physical assault, made up 11.1 percent of the total incidents. More than a third of incidents occurred at businesses, the primary site of discrimination, while a quarter took place in public streets.

According to the data, Asian women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. A further examination of the submitted reports showed that in many cases, the verbal harassment that women received reflected the very intersection of racism and sexism.

One Chinese American woman reported that a "man on the subway slapped my hands, threatened to throw his lighter at me, then called me a 'c---- b----.' He then said to 'get the f--- out of NYC.'" Another woman, who's Filipino American, reported that while in a Washington, D.C., metro station with her boyfriend, a man shouted "Chinese b----" at her, coughed at the couple and physically threatened them.

Jeung emphasized that women have always dealt with harassment from men and public safety issues more broadly. But the pandemic, he said, has provided another "excuse" for people to target Asian women.

"We've noticed that from the very beginning, it's been a real consistent pattern," Jeung said. "Bullies attack who they think are vulnerable, and we see this in our elderly and youth populations."

Jeung cautioned against describing the latest numbers as a sudden "surge" in hate incidents because many of the 2020 incidents were reported retroactively in 2021, according to the report, and there has always been a "clear" issue of underreporting in the community.

"We thought we had a lull or it seemed like there was a lull over the summer, but I think people were just reporting less and that it became sort of normalized," he explained. "But now with increased attention, I think people are reporting again. I think that there's been a continued harassment of Asians and now we're continuing to see that reported."

The wave of violence directed at Asian American seniors at the beginning of the year, particularly the graphic attacks that have been captured on video, have likely prompted more attention from both the community and mainstream media, Jeung said. And it's galvanized a vocal response that's likely led to more reporting.

While these attacks on elders have catalyzed calls for action, Jeung made a distinction between this particular violence, most of which has not been found to be explicitly racially motivated, and the racism those in the community have been facing due to the problematic link between the virus and Asian Americans.

"I think there are separate trends, the violence that we're seeing now and the racism we saw last year, but they are related," Jeung said. "We're really careful to note that this violence against Asian Americans in high-crime neighborhoods has always been high. And so the combination of both the racism from last year and crimes against Asian elderly are now significant enough to get national attention."

The scholar noted that this doesn't negate the possibility of implicit bias in these attacks on elders, but he cautioned against grouping the two trends as one issue.

"That's the problem - people conflate it," he said. "So decoupling them then helps diagnose different solutions."

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of demographic data and policy research nonprofit AAPI Data, previously also warned against defaulting to a "simplistic understanding of what's going on," adding that the violence cannot be neatly summed up by solely the heightened anti-Asian sentiment witnessed throughout the pandemic. He said a confluence of factors, including the effects of poverty and financial struggle exacerbated by the pandemic, as well as opportunity, could have played into it.

"There's a complex variety of factors, but the fundamental reality is that there's an increase in the number of Asian Americans who feel unsafe," he said.

Such issues have been elevated to the executive branch as President Joe Biden has addressed the issue of anti-Asian attacks. In addition to referencing the violence in his first national prime-time address Thursday night, he also signed a memorandum earlier this year that in part issued guidance on how the Justice Department should respond to the heightened number of anti-Asian bias incidents.

Jeung said addressing the root cause of the violence requires more education, more expanded civil rights protections and more restorative justice models. The memorandum - which focuses on hate incidents, rather than hate crimes - allows for a more holistic approach to combating racism against Asian Americans in public streets, transit, private businesses and other settings, he said.

"If you just narrowly focus on hate crimes, you only address a sliver of the racism that Asian Americans are experiencing," Jeung said. "Biden's memo that actually addresses hate incidents rather than hate crimes is actually helpful, because that gives us the opportunity to frame the issue comprehensively."

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There were 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents, mostly against women, in past year

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"There is an intersectional dynamic going on that others may perceive both Asians and women and Asian women as easier targets," one professor said.

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State and local governments have removed at least 110 publicly supported monuments and other tributes to the Confederacy since the 2015 white supremacist massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, but more than 1,700 remain, many of them protected by state laws in the former Confederate states, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has found.

The SPLC today released an updated version of its 2016 report Whose Heritage?, which catalogued 1,503 monuments, place names, state holidays and other symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces across the South and the nation. The data set is available for download.

The new report identifies 1,728 Confederate symbols, an increase that reflects new information obtained after government entities, journalists and others reexamined the symbols in their locales. It does not include thousands of markers, monuments or other tributes on or within battlefields, museums, cemeteries and other places that are largely historical in nature.

"We've seen a remarkable effort to remove Confederate monuments from the public square, yet the impact has been limited by a strong backlash among many white Southerners who still cling to the myth of the 'Lost Cause' and the revisionist history that these monuments represent," said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project.

The new study found:

772 monuments in 23 states and the District of Columbia; more than 300 are in Georgia, Virginia or North Carolina;

100 public schools named for Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis or other Confederate icons;

80 counties and cities named for Confederates;

9 paid holidays for state employees in five states; and

10 U.S. military bases named for Confederate military heroes.

The Confederate holidays include Jefferson Davis' Birthday, which is being celebrated today in Alabama.

The report also identifies two distinct periods that saw a significant rise in the dedication of monuments and other symbols. The first began around 1900, amid the period in which Southern states were enacting Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise the newly freed African Americans and re-segregate society. The second began in the early 1950s and lasted through the 1960s, as the civil rights movement led to a backlash among segregationists.

The report also identifies the sponsors of monuments, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which has been responsible for erecting hundreds of statues at courthouses and other venues since the Civil War.

The 110 removals since the Charleston attack include 47 monuments and four flags, and name changes for 37 schools, seven parks, three buildings and seven roads. Eighty-two removals were in former Confederate states. Texas led the way (31), followed by Virginia (14), Florida (9), Tennessee (8), Georgia (6), Maryland (6), North Carolina (5) and Oklahoma (5).

In 2017, then New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu powerfully defended the city's removal of three prominent monuments and denounced the "false narrative" promoted by the "Cult of the Lost Cause."

"The SPLC is providing an important resource to show the pervasiveness of Confederate monuments and markers across the country," said Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans and author of In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. "Each community has to make their own decision about what to do with them or how to place them in context, but we cannot continue to ignore the pain that these statues and markers have for many in our country. The key questions I went through when deciding what to do in New Orleans were: When was it put up? By whom? For what purpose? Thanks to the SPLC's research, local leaders and residents will have a better understanding of many of those questions, which will help in charting a better path forward."

Some removals were highly contentious, such as in Charlottesville, Virginia, where hundreds of white supremacists staged a deadly rally last August to protest the planned removal of a prominent statue of Robert E. Lee.

"People across the country are waking up to the reality that these tributes to the Confederacy perpetuate the idea of white supremacy and glorify a regime that supported the torture, murder and enslavement of black people," Beirich said. "That's why white supremacists today continue to wave the Confederate flag. It's time for courageous political leaders to say enough is enough."

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SPLC report: More than 1,700 monuments, place names and other symbols honoring the Confederacy remain in public spaces

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State and local governments have removed at least 110 publicly supported monuments and other tributes to the Confederacy since the 2015 white supremacist massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, but more than 1,700 remain, many of them protected by state laws in the former Confederate states, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has found.

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Article about the Confederate Flag from The Guardian

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Article about the Confederate Flag from The Guardian

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t was 1957 when little Lindy Luby's great-uncle showed up at her house near Benton, Mississippi, where the family had lived for generations. He was a justice of the peace in Yazoo City, the gateway to the fertile, brutal lands of the Delta.

"Effie, it's just been a bad day," the lawman said to his sister, as the six-year-old listened. "I just had to go cut a black boy down off that hanging tree and take him to his mama."

The infamous tree, used for lynching,was bending over a bridge on Highway 433 toward Lexington.

"What did he do?" Effie Luby asked.

"He raped and killed a white woman."

Lindy, now 66, has shifted her stance on the death penalty. After she sat on a jury that condemned a man to death, she now campaigns for alternatives to execution and stars in a new documentary about her experience.

The first cut of the film also showed Lindy and husband, Ira Isonhood, flying the Confederate battle flag on a 20ft pole in the backyard of one of their homes.

To many white people in the south and beyond, the Confederate flag is a sign of historic pride and defiance to whatever is currently called "liberalism"; to most black Americans, the flag stands for white supremacy and racial violence. Today, the symbol often appears at "pro-white" rallies and is a lightning rod in America's calcifying racial divides.

The flag's history is fraught and complicated, as was the bloody civil war that erupted in 1861 between the US south - where America's slave trade had relocated and expanded by the mid-1800s - and the north. After the north won, it imposed a harsh Reconstruction on the south that still fuels white resentment today.

The post-war white south embraced the Confederate battle flag, making it their sentimental symbol of the "lost cause" of the war. By the time Mississippi embedded it into its new state flag in 1894, the flag was used to both honor the Confederate dead as well as a romanticized version of the war's purpose.

By the mid-20th century, the flag symbolized white resistance to ending segregation laws. The Ku Klux Klan flew it at lynching parties and angry mobs waved it outside public schools as black children enrolled; in front of white "segregation academies" and next to leering dogs unleashed on black protesters wanting the right to vote. (Today, its supporters say the KKK co-opted it.)

In April 2001, Mississippians voted along race lines to keep the flag as it was. The debate reignited in 2015 after Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. A photo soon emerged of him holding a Confederate flag.

The matter is especially raw in Mississippi, a state that suffered tremendous Confederate casualties and went from being the richest state from slavery before the civil war to one of the poorest.

The Isonhoods were the first stop of my May 2018 listening tour of Mississippi with photographer Kate Medley to ask flag supporters in our home state why they still support a symbol that represents so much pain, division and difficult history - even as they urge black Americans to get over their resistance to it.

Yazoo County, west-central Mississippi

Ira Isonhood, 71, remembers his father inviting black people to sit in his yard to watch a basketball game through the window when he got the area's first television - a progressive move in the mid-20th century south. But he was still a product of his time.

"Yes, he was. [My father] was prejudiced," Ira says.

One day, a black boy came to his dad's store with a shopping list his mother had signed with "Mrs". His father sent a note back with no groceries. When her husband came later, the storekeeper admonished him in front of young Ira. "Don't ever allow your wife to sign 'Mrs' again!" he warned.

Still, Ira flies the flag, which his own high school and college used as an emblem.

"The Confederate flag played a big, big part in our history," Ira says. "... Why are these minorities pushing to do away with this flag? Look at what's happening to our statues!" he says.

Neither Ira nor Lindy has asked black acquaintances why the flag is offensive, or asked why many believe it belongs in museums, but not part of a state emblem. "I don't think the black people around here care," Lindy says.

She wonders why the flag is once again becoming a big deal. "Is it their feelings? ... Mississippi has bent over backwards to say I'm sorry. How much more do we need to do?"

I later relay Lindy's questions to Genesis Be, a 31-year-old hip-hop artist, public speaker and anti-Confederate flag activist from Biloxi. I met Be after reporting that her grandfather, Pastor Clyde Briggs, was a target of the Klan in the 1960s for trying to organize and arm black people against white supremacy. I have stuck my finger into a bullet hole in her family home where the Klan fired into the wall above where her aunt, then a child, slept.

"What has Mississippi done to say that it is sorry for the rape, torturing and killings of scores of its black citizens in order to create a white majority?" Be says. "Open a museum?"

"I've never heard of an apology from the Klan in Franklin County for harassing and assaulting my family while flying that flag. All I've heard is a downplaying and whitewashing of history in an attempt to gaslight its population."

Ongoing inequities, Be reminds, are bolstered by a kinder, gentler version of Confederate history rewritten after the south lost the civil war and its rights to maintain and extend slavery.

Greenwood, north-west Mississippi

After driving north along the lonely stretch of Highway 49 through Delta plantation lands, we end up in Larry McCluney Jr's attic in Greenwood.

The room is a shrine to the Confederacy with a rebel-flag-themed cushion, curtains and even a mousepad. There's also a civil war chess set. The closet is packed with battle re-enactment costumes and weapon replicas.

McCluney, 53, is a national officer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which accepts male descendants of southern soldiers. SCV was created in 1896 for the "vindication of the cause for which we fought" and to ensure "that a true history of the 1861-1865 period is preserved." SCV members worked with the United Confederate Veterans and other groups in the early 20th century to demand school textbooks supporting the revisionist view that the south fought for a just " lost cause" that was decidedly not slavery.

McCluneyhas taught history and government for 25 years to mostly black Delta students.

"People like me ... it's in our blood. We know about our family, their sacrifices," he says of his 20 ancestors who fought for the Confederacy.

"Slavery was an issue, but not the cause," the teacher tells me. He repeats SCV's selective semantics with precision: the south seceded over "states' rights" to financial independence; the north and Abraham Lincoln weren't against slavery at the outset; northern tariffs were killing the south; few southerners and soldiers owned humans; slavery was fading anyway; and it wasn't about white supremacy.

The facts are more complicated.

Despite decades of efforts to renovate history, Mississippi's Declaration of Secession still begins by clarifying that the state left the union in 1861 for a cause "thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery," adding for posterity that "none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun" that enables cotton to flourish.

By 1861, the south was demanding slavery expansion into western territories, which Lincoln's " Black Republicans" adamantly opposed. The SCV is correct, though, that Lincoln did not initially call for emancipation. In fact, Frederick Douglass called Lincoln "preeminently the white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men."

The south was demanding a federal slavery cod e to force all states to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and return runaways to owners, even as northern states were passing " personal liberty laws " to circumvent what abolitionists called the "bloodhound law".

In his attic, McCluney downplays slavery ownership - saying "elite" planters, not soldiers, owned most slaves. "Most (southerners) did not have a dog in the hunt," he says.

He is right, but only to a point. Most of the soldiers were young - a fifth were under 18 - and few owned any of the 4 million slaves in the US. But many of their households owned at least one, or they aspired to ascend to slave ownership. The 1860 census shows 49% of families in Mississippi - one in two - owned at least one slave. Mississippi had 436,631, the most in the nation and 55% of the state's population.

But slavery was waning, McCluney insists, and the north should have let it fade naturally. After I mention that Mississippi outlawed freeing slaves in 1857, he said that the south wouldn't have seceded if the federal government had allowed (white, male) voters to decide slavery per state or territory.

McCluney teaches his black students his Confederate history. "I try to be sensitive. I'm a pointblank person. Don't ask if you don't want to know." But, he adds, "they know me as a teacher who cares about them".

The educator points to Roof's "horrible, horrible" 2015 massacre of black worshippers - and his viral photo holding the Confederate flag - as inciting a war on the emblem.

"Politically correct groups seized that opportunity to make it seem like that flag came down that pole, walked down into that church and killed those people," he says. "... That was horrific to my organization (SCV) when that took place."

I later share those words with Derrick Johnson, the national president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who previously led the Mississippi chapter.

"Wow," he says, then pauses.

"Just a point of history ... Prior to Roof's massacre, the South Carolina NAACP had waged a 15-year boycott against the state for its [Confederate] flag display," Johnson says. "And I was one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Mississippi in 1993 to have the flag taken down." The SCV intervened in that lawsuit and won.

Then Johnson turns to Roof: "All of the views and racial hatred symbols that informed his opinion walked into that church with him. He's more than enough reason that the symbols of the Confederacy should be removed from the public square."

Pearl, Rankin County, central Mississippi

Thomasa Massey, 49, jumps out of her car at Pearl Park in a majority-white Jackson suburb wearing a T-shirt with Confederate butterflies she designed with "Pride, Not Prejudice" underneath.

When I had interviewed her about being in a white gang, I saw her defending the flag on Facebook. Her friend Evangela Hentz, who is black, opens the passenger door, and we all run through the rain to a pavilion. The two single mothers finish each other's sentences, laughing about that time Hentz went into labor where they worked and Massey put her in an office chair to wheel her downstairs to go to the hospital.

"I have struggled. She's helped me. She's struggled. I've been there for her," Massey, the child's godmother, says.

Massey, who identifies as more " Blackfoot-Cherokee " than white, isn't interested in military history, saying the flag celebrates her heritage as a southerner, period. She grew up in Red Bay, Alabama, in a former slave region that the last census showed as 93% white and 1% black.

"We just didn't believe in racism. Nobody, my whole town," she says.

The Confederate flag represents pride in the face of poverty to Massey, who came to Mississippi in 2001, the same year voters decided against changing the state flag. She supports Mississippians' right to keep it as is.

"It was there when our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, were struggling to feed their six, eight, 10 kids. It flew for all colors, black, white, whatever," she says.

Hentz, 41, is from Missouri, once a violent slave state, but calls the flag just an "inanimate object," adding: "Stop letting it control you."

"If you don't breathe life into something, it will die," Massey adds.

The friends reject being offended over what Hentz calls "just a piece of cloth".

Be, who discusses the flag respectfully with friends who like it, challenges Massey, Hentz and others to probe deeper.

"It was poor white southerners who fought in these battles, being strung along by rich, property-owning whites who banked on the ignorance and arrogance of the poor whites to fight and die in the war," Be says.

"They gave their life, but for what?"

Simpson County, south-central Mississippi

Gentlemanly Kevin Davis is surprised when we show up at his large white antebellum-style house in Simpson County. We are stopping by homes with flags, but owners keep pointing us on down the road to him.

Davis - no relation to Jeff - has taught history in public and private schools, and also turned out to be an SCV member. Thirteen of hisancestors fought for the south, but most didn't own slaves. Three died in battle, and one in a makeshift hospital in the Lyceum at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi - one of numerous buildings built by slaves.

"To me, the flag is not a racist thing. It's a piece of our heritage that should be left there to honor sacrifices," Davis says in a cozy parlor, adding that most soldiers were "dirt-poor farmers" with no slaves.

Davis, 47, also believes the institution might have died out due to "modernization ... if they were able to compromise another 20 years. That's what state's rights were about: protecting slavery," he says. "... There would not have been a war over tariffs."

Most Confederacy fans may cherry-pick their side's history, but many are more precise about the chinks in the Yankees' armor - including that not everyone up north was hip to slavery ending, either.

Even as the institution had shrunk outside the south for a century, its riches continued to drive the US economy, including Wall Street and early capitalism, up to the 1860s. As the practice waned up north, white men rushed to the south, bringing slaves. By the civil war, cotton investment had made New York City the country's financial center due to receiving up to 40% of all cotton revenues, representing $200m in annual trade with the south.

And, as McCluney points out, New York-financed slave ships kept sailing to West Africa for people to be sold in the Caribbean and South America.

Davis is circumspect on the complicated history: "I can say it was wrong, and I hope I wouldn't have participated in (slavery), but how can we know for sure?"

Still, Davis balks at the need to exorcise the emblem from the state flag today out of respect to Mississippians who descended from slaves. His own ancestors' sacrifice is paramount. "It's so we don't forget," he says.

The history teacher could handle it if the state flag changed, though. "I would be sad about it, not violently upset. I would not be up around the last flag making a chain gang to keep somebody from taking it down," Davis says.

Seminary, Covington County, south-east Mississippi

We're on Highway 49 south when it pops up: Flag Heads, which sells "adult novelties" and Confederate tchotchkes.

"You won't find it at Wal*Mart," a large sign proclaims, reminding shoppers that the retailer dropped Confederate merchandise within a week of Roof's massacre.

If you can put a rebel flag on it, they do: beach towels, BBQ aprons, windshield dice, coasters, flip-flops, polar fleeces, bikinis, umbrellas and more. Pipes fill a glass case, and we avoid the curtained adult room.

Petite Roslyn Stuart is behind the counter with a swagger like she has seen it all more than once. She immediately brings up Roof.

"Until that kid went in that church in Charleston, people never thought anything about the Confederate or Mississippi flag," she says. "... The flag not gon' change the hate."

Stuart blames detractors. "It's not us that's racial; it's them that's racial. Most of 'em don't know what it means," she says. "It's a symbol of our state; it's who we are."

She continues: "Northern people were down here trying to burn all our stuff" - true; the Yankees torched Jackson three times - "and we were trying to stop them ... They didn't think it was right we had slaves. It turned into one big heckuva mess. It's lingering still out there."

She worries that young people now think the flag stands for the KKK. "Eventually, they will take the state flag; they will change it. What's next? The Christian flag?" she asks.

A black FedEx man wouldn't come through the front door, she says, instead leaving heavy packages on the porch because "he thinks we're racial". So she asked for a new driver and got one.

Seminary, Mississippi

"Come on over!" Joe Barnes booms, describing his nearby Seminary home as the one with the US, Confederate and Mississippi flags out front, after I tell him Roslyn sent us.

Barnes, 66, beams as he hands us his SCV card with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the wealthy Memphis slave trader and first KKK grand wizard, pictured on the front.

Retired military, Barnes used to attend all the Ole Miss college football games, but he now watches on TV. He wrote the chancellor that he would never buy another ticket after the game ban of the rebel flag.

"Our ancestors fought under that flag," Barnes says. "It's not about hatred." He adds that blacks fought for the south, too. (True, but usually for their masters. Many defected to segregated union camps.)

"Schools are not teaching history the right way," he says. "... It's not whites that are the racists; it's mostly the blacks... What it boils down to is black people are just trying to overrule us."

"If we can't get white people to stand together, it's going to be another civil war," he adds.

Barnes has black friends, he says, and points out that African Americans use the N-word. "White folks can be that, too. There are trashy white people and trashy black people."

SCV is not racist or violent, he says. "The Klan is different from us. The SCV might fly the flag, but we don't associate with them. We're not a violent organization. We try to help people."

Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, says he wishes poor whites would recognize how powerful politicians have long played racial politics with Confederate emblems - a deliberate strategy to divide them from people with shared economic interests.

"The very same people that exploit the working class for cheap labor and create systems to undermine their development through poor education systems use issues of racial division to maintain economic control," the NAACP president says.

The flag could easily be honored or studied in museums, he adds.

"The NAACP respects the constitutional, first amendment right for private citizens to maintain symbols and monuments on private property," he says. "Enjoy."

Johnson would not censor individual ownership or display of Confederate regalia - but also not continue official approval to historic symbols of racial violence and oppression. "Everyone should have the right to purchase and display symbols for themselves on private property, but [not force the flag to] represent all citizens of any particular community," Johnson says, because they don't.

Copiah County, south-west Mississippi

"Can you tell me why?"

On the last day, I again sit with Lindy Isonhood, this time at Deer Hollow, their other home farther south where Ira's Confederate man cave, as Kate is calling the rooms we've seen, is packed with deer antlers, a boar's head trophy, and little rebel flags. Ira is in the backyard posing for pictures in front of his Confederate flag.

Lindy has thought about our first conversation overnight and wants to understand why I do not support the flag.

"The war really was about slavery, and they didn't hide it then," I say as she listens intently. "But I don't believe everyone who likes the flag is racist. Many people were taught certain things."

I add that the division most hurts poor whites and people of color.

Lindy nods, describing her childhood of poverty when the family's land was all they had left. Her sister would exchange clothes with a black friend, she says. "My family, we were poor. When I graduated from high school, we didn't have an indoor toilet."

"I am going to start researching this," she adds about the history as Kate calls for her. Knowing that Lindy now talks to other Mississippians after rethinking the death penalty, I feel a twinge of hope as I watch Ira's rebel flag flying outside the window of Deer Hollow.

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Pride and prejudice? The Americans who fly the Confederate flag

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t was 1957 when little Lindy Luby's great-uncle showed up at her house near Benton, Mississippi, where the family had lived for generations. He was a justice of the peace in Yazoo City, the gateway to the fertile, brutal lands of the Delta.

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Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it's Complicated.

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subscribe to Short Wave podcast

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration upgraded the computer model that forecasters use to predict the weather one to two weeks in the future, called the Global Forecast System. The new model is better at predicting where hurricanes will form and how intense they will be as well as where and when snowstorms and rainstorms will occur, and how much precipitation will fall.

"This is going to have a fundamental impact on the forecasts that are provided day to day," says Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service.

Climate change is driving more severe weather across the country. In recent years, Americans have experienced record-breaking hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and rainstorms. In many cases, federal weather forecasts have not provided accurate information.

The most striking example was in 2012 when the model was slow to predict that Hurricane Sandy was going to make landfall. During the 2019 hurricane season, the federal weather model underperformed the European Union's forecast model when it came to predicting where hurricanes would make landfall. And just this month the model incorrectly predicted how much precipitation would fall in a snowstorm that hit the Boulder, Colo., area.

Inaccurate federal forecasts are dangerous because most weather apps, websites and television weather reports rely on the government information.

In tests, the upgraded weather model performed better than its predecessor. "Improvements are pretty significant for this upgrade," says Vijay Tallapragada, the head of the Modeling and Data Assimilation Branch for NOAA's Environmental Modeling Center.

His team tested the new model against past weather events to see how it would have performed. The team found that the new model predicted the recent Colorado snowstorm nearly a day earlier and was more precise about where snow would be most intense.

When it comes to protecting lives and property, however, hurricane forecasts are particularly important. The new model appears to be noticeably better at predicting where hurricanes will make landfall. "We found about a 10[%] to 15% improvement in tropical cyclone track and intensity in the Atlantic Basin," Tallapragada says.

That adds up to about 36 hours of extra lead time for residents in the storm's path. "These improvements are pretty prominent," he says.

The upgraded model relies on supercomputers in Virginia and Florida as well as software upgrades that allow the model to use more information from satellites and aircraft.

It is also the first time federal weather forecasts will use data collected in the upper atmosphere. Until now, NOAA's weather model didn't include what is happening in the top layers of the atmosphere. That's a problem because the entire atmosphere is one continuous system, and what happens up high affects weather near the surface. For example, temperature changes in the stratosphere can affect the jet stream - the river of air that snakes across the United States and carries weather systems with it.

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NOAA Upgrades Forecasts As Climate Change Drives More Severe Storms

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subscribe to Short Wave podcast The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration upgraded the computer model that forecasters use to predict the weather one to two weeks in the future, called the Global Forecast System.

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President Trump has called climate change a hoax, and he’s not alone in that belief. Here’s why climate denialism is so persistent in American politics.

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ExxonKnew is a coordinated campaign perpetuated by activist groups with the aim of stigmatizing ExxonMobil. Funders of the "#ExxonKnew" campaign have placed "pay to play" news stories, released flawed academic reports and coordinated with public officials to launch investigations and litigation, creating the false appearance that ExxonMobil has misrepresented its company research and investor disclosures on climate change to the public.

Understanding the #ExxonKnew controversy

What is #ExxonKnew?

#ExxonKnew is an orchestrated campaign that seeks to delegitimize ExxonMobil by misrepresenting our position on climate change and related research to the public. For the past several years, activist organizations have sought to bring investigations, shareholder action, legal action and protests against ExxonMobil despite the fact that ExxonMobil is committed and actively working to reduce the risks posed by climate change.

What organizations were involved?

The #ExxonKnew campaign is the outgrowth of a plan devised by environmental activists and class-action lawyers at a conference in La Jolla, California in 2012, as activists themselves confirmed in The New York Times. The Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) held this workshop to brainstorm how they could use litigation to gain access to internal energy industry documents on climate change, in hopes of creating scandal that would force a settlement similar in scope to the one reached with Big Tobacco. They put their strategy into a report called, "Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control."

How was the campaign funded?

The #ExxonKnew campaign is extremely well-funded and includes paid media coverage, legal support, activist groups, and academic research. Foundations providing financial support for the campaign include: Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Philanthropy, Open Society Foundations, Energy Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

What was the outcome?

In 2015, environmental activists and class-action lawyers succeeded in securing an investigation of ExxonMobil by then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, as originally envisioned in the La Jolla report. The investigation was widely founded on claims that scientists and researchers from ExxonMobil knew that man-made emissions caused global climate change in the 1970s and 1980s, but that the company kept those findings secret. Contrary to their claims, ExxonMobil's understanding of climate change has tracked the scientific consensus on climate change, and its research on the issue has been published in publicly available peer-reviewed journals.

After over three years of investigation, during which ExxonMobil turned over four million pages of documents, the New York Attorney General's office settled on bringing charges against ExxonMobil - which were ultimately soundly dismissed in court. The charges were not related to what the company knew about climate change, but instead obscure questions around ExxonMobil's economic modeling and accounting practices, under New York's controversial Martin Act statute.

In his ruling, New York Justice Barry Ostrager wrote, "What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible....The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting."

While those involved in the #ExxonKnew campaign have tried to claim their effort is based on investigative reporting by InsideClimate News (ICN) and the Columbia School of Journalism (via the Los Angeles Times), those stories were bought and paid for by many of the organizations listed above.

ExxonMobil's continuous action on climate change

ExxonMobil continues to take action through research into technological innovation and by participating in constructive dialogue on policy options. We have pioneered research in advanced carbon capture and storage, cogeneration, methane emissions reduction and algae-based biofuels, all with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ExxonMobil supports a revenue-neutral tax on carbon and we urged the United States to remain in the Paris Climate Agreement. These actions demonstrate our commitment to reducing the risks of climate change.

June 14-15, 2012: Rockefeller-funded organizations hold conference in La Jolla, California to brainstorm how they could use racketeering laws against ExxonMobil.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) organize a conference for activists such as Naomi Oreskes (author of Merchants of Doubt), Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists and attorney Matt Pawa, who served on the board of CAI.

Fall 2014: Columbia University School of Journalism

Columbia University School of Journalism fellows, who were later reported to be sponsored by the Rockefellers, begins investigating ExxonMobil, looking into the company's internal documents on climate change. Following Schneiderman's subpoena against the company in 2015, a source discloses that the Columbia fellows' reporting made the issue "more ripe."

Fall 2014: Columbia University School of Journalism

Columbia University School of Journalism fellows, who were later reported to be sponsored by the Rockefellers, begins investigating ExxonMobil, looking into the company's internal documents on climate change. Following Schneiderman's subpoena against the company in 2015, a source discloses that the Columbia fellows' reporting made the issue "more ripe."

Sept. 16, 2015: InsideClimate News and Columbia School of Journalism publish #ExxonKnew series; Columbia fails to disclose Rockefeller funding

InsideClimate News publishes the first article in its #ExxonKnew series.

Oct. 9, 2015: The Columbia School of Journalism follows up with its first ExxonMobil article in the LA Times

The story did not initially disclose that the Columbia School of Journalism is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). Likewise, the website of the Columbia Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship did not originally disclose its Rockefeller funding.

Oct. 12, 2015: Rockefeller-funded Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies releases report suggesting ExxonMobil funds climate denial

The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies produced a report suggesting that "corporate funding" to "climate counter movement" institutions is responsible for skepticism about climate science. The report was f unded by the Rockefellers and other groups bankrolling the #ExxonKnew campaign.

Nov. 4, 2015: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announces subpoena of ExxonMobil.

InsideClimate News reports that this announcement followed a "year-long probe" by the attorney general's office.

November 2015: Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica emails Maryland Attorney General's office

Pica emails Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh's office, offering to brief the attorney general on "the potential consumer related complaints and other authorities re: ExxonMobil." Just days after the meeting, Frosh announces he is considering an investigation into ExxonMobil.

January 5, 2016: Environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr. sends a secret legal memo to Schneiderman, urging him to ban ExxonMobil from doing business in New York for allegedly misleading the public for decades about climate change

Jan. 8, 2016: #ExxonKnew activists meet behind closed doors at the Rockefeller Family Fund

A leaked memo reveals that a coalition of activists including Bill McKibben of 350.org and attorney Matt Pawa gathered for a secret, closed-door meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund offices. According to the memo, the coalition's goals were to establish "in the public's mind that ExxonMobil is a corrupt institution."

March 10, 2016: Schneiderman contacts Tom Steyer about ExxonMobil investigation and funding for gubernatorial race

As the New York Post reported, "In March 2016, four months after announcing the Exxon probe, the Democratic AG tried to arrange a phone meeting with hedge-fund mogul and environmental activist Tom Steyer. 'Eric Schneiderman would like to have a call with Tom regarding support for his race for governor. . . regarding Exxon case'," reads the March 10 email.

March 15, 2016: Virgin Islands Attorney General subpoenas ExxonMobil and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, uses law firm linked to #ExxonKnew activists

The subpoenas served by Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker were issued through a Washington, D.C. law firm, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, where Matt Pawa used to work.

March 24, 2016: Rockefellers admit to funding #ExxonKnew campaign

Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund told that funding the #ExxonKnew campaign is part of "our push to drive better public understanding and better climate policy."

March 28, 2016: Attorneys General draft common interest agreement to avoid transparency with the public

In an email to Lem Srolovic with the New York Attorney General's office, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Scott Kline expresses concerns about sharing documents related to the meeting, as they could be revealed to the public via a records request. Kline says " our office is okay with refusing to disclose covered documents. " The New York Attorney General's office then requests a "Common Interest Agreement" be signed to avoid having the public find out about their meetings.

March 29, 2016: #ExxonKnew activists brief attorneys general ahead of press conference with Al Gore

reports on emails between the offices of the state attorneys general, which reveal that Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Matt Pawa, an attorney then on the board of the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI), briefed the attorneys general ahead of their March 29 press conference with Al Gore. Later Frumhoff is forced to admit his attendance: "I was invited to brief the attorneys general that gathered on March 29 on my work, and that is what I did."

March 30, 2016: Attorneys General offices tell activist not to tell the press about their collusion

Matt Pawa sends an email to Lem Srolovic with the New York Attorney General's office, as well as Scott Kline in the Vermont Attorney General's office, explaining that "a WSJ reporter wants to talk to me. I may not even talk to her at all but if I do I obviously will have no comment on anything discussed at the meeting." Pawa then asks, "What should I say if she asks if I attended? No comment? Let me know." Srolovic responds that Pawa should effectively stonewall the WSJ reporter. "My ask is if you speak to the reporter," Srolovic writes, "to not confirm that you attended or otherwise discuss the event."

April 13, 2016: Attorneys General sign Common Interest Agreement to keep investigations secret

New emails confirm that Gregory Schultz of the Rhode Island Attorney General's office signed on to a Common Interest Agreement that was distributed to all the attorneys general offices involved by the New York Attorney General's office.

April 21, 2016: Emails show the Delaware Attorney General pulled out of common interest agreement

Emails released by Energy & Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) show that just a few weeks after Delaware Attorney General Matthew Denn (D) agreed to sign on to the Common Interest Agreement - which would keep their proceedings on the ExxonMobil investigations secret - he suddenly pulled out, telling the other attorneys general that he would no longer be participating.

May 20, 2016: Virgin Islands Attorney General withdraws its subpoena of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

The withdrawal comes after editorial boards across the country strongly push back on the #ExxonKnew campaign. For instance, the Financial Times say, "the legal basis for these actions seems flimsy...Beyond that, the implications of the investigations for free speech on public policy issues are alarming."

June 15, 2016: Thirteen state attorneys general call ExxonMobil investigation "a grave mistake"

The attorneys general of thirteen states send a letter to the attorneys general launching climate investigations warning that their efforts raise "substantial First Amendment concerns." They ask the attorneys general to "stop policing viewpoints."

June 22, 2016: Congressional Progressive Caucus holds #ExxonKnew forum on Capitol Hill

The Congressional Progressive Caucus holds a forum, which includes key #ExxonKnew activists. Kathy Mulvey of the Union of Concerned Scientists admits, "Yes, UCS has also been involved in providing information to attorneys general who are moving into the issue on whether these companies violated any state laws in providing this information to shareholders and the public...our chief scientist Peter Frumhoff who's actually here with me as well and he has briefed a number of the AGs..."

June 29, 2016: Virgin Islands Attorney General withdraws subpoena of ExxonMobil

This withdrawal comes as legal experts across the country criticized the #ExxonKnew campaign for being legally unsound. For instance, Harvey Silverglate of the ACLU says the ExxonMobil investigation is "pure harassment." Columbia Law Professor Merritt B. Fox notes that the investigations are "unlikely" to "be a winner."

July 13, 2016: House Science Chairman Lamar Smith subpoenas New York and Massachusetts attorneys general and eight activist groups in relation to their work on the #ExxonKnew campaign

Chairman Smith explains in the press release, "the Committee has a responsibility to protect First Amendment rights of companies, academic institutions, scientists, and nonprofit organizations. That is why the Committee is obligated to ask for information from the attorneys general and others."

August 2016: Schneiderman changes the justification for his investigation into ExxonMobil.

Schneiderman claims that rather than looking into whether ExxonMobil's internal climate research said something different than what the company had told investors, the NY OAG was looking into the company's accounting practices and how they could affect what the company had promised investors in the future.

September 20, 2016: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launches its own investigation into ExxonMobil to understand how the company values its assets in order to determine if ExxonMobil misled investors on the risks climate change poses to its business.

Dec. 2, 2016: Rockefellers admit to funding #ExxonKnew campaign on national TV

The Rockefeller family appeared CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose and owned up to the fact that they specifically paid the Columbia School of Journalism and InsideClimate News to write stories about ExxonMobil.

Dec. 22, 2016: Rockefellers forced to admit they directly lobbied Schneiderman to launch an ExxonMobil investigation

In a column published by the New York Review of Books, David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund admit: "It is up to government officials, not public interest advocates, to determine whether ExxonMobil's conduct has violated any state or federal laws within the relevant statutes of limitations. Recognizing this, the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) informed state attorneys general of our concern that ExxonMobil seemed to have failed to disclose to investors the business risks of climate change. We were particularly encouraged by Schneiderman's interest in this matter, because New York's Martin Act is arguably the most powerful tool in the nation for investigating possible schemes to defraud."

Feb. 13, 2017: New York Post reports that the Rockefellers and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were discussing the #ExxonKnew investigation before either the InsideClimate News (ICN) or Columbia School of Journalism #ExxonKnew pieces were published

As the New York Post revealed, "Documents show Schneiderman's top staffers were in correspondence with Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund going back to February 2015. Schneiderman launched his probe that November."

April 6, 2017: #ExxonKnew campaign claims global warming caused the Exxon Valdez spill

This was yet another article written by graduate students at the Rockefeller-funded Columbia Journalism School, which was published in the Los Angeles Times. The article claims that ExxonMobil had evidence that the Columbia Glacier was calving due to climate change, but allowed one of its tankers to put itself in the way of the icebergs anyway.

June 2, 2017: Schneiderman again changes the justification for his investigation into ExxonMobil

Schneiderman shifted from his original claim that the company was publicly trying to downplay the risks of global warming to a position that the company misrepresented how it was incorporating future climate policies into its business decisions, arguing that it may have inflated the risks climate change posed to its operations.

June 14, 2017: Court documents reveal Schneiderman used a private email address for official business while conducting #ExxonKnew investigation.

Court documents, submitted by lawyers for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), show that Schneiderman's personal email address was used for official business because it is contained within a privilege log of correspondence that he provided to the court. A judge only recognized that the personal email was used after an in camera review of this log.

Aug. 10, 2017: Vermont Judge orders Vermont Attorney General's office to disclose all email communications with Schneiderman's office - including Gmail correspondence

Superior Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout ordered the release of records between the attorneys general of New York and Vermont, specifically any discussions of sharing documents with "outside advisors" pursuant to a secrecy pact. She also granted access to Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell's private emails since both he and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman used private email accounts, specifically Gmail, in their ExxonMobil discussions.

Aug. 23, 2017: Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran publish a study conceding that #ExxonKnew was never really about what ExxonMobil "knew," but about punishing ExxonMobil for arguing against specific climate policy proposals

Of course, Oreskes is the activist that the New York Times has credited for helping kick off the #ExxonKnew campaign, whose goal was to convince "a single sympathetic state attorney general" to investigate the company for supposed climate fraud. If there's any doubt about her positions ahead of releasing this report, in 2015, Oreskes wrote: "Did Exxon deliberately mislead the public on climate change? Hello. Of course they did!"

October 17, 2017: State Impact Center announces that the NY OAG is one of seven state attorneys general offices selected to participate in the initial phase of its fellowship program.

May 3, 2018: The New York Supreme Court Appellate Division upholds the lower court's ruling in the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) lawsuit against Schneiderman.

CEI sued AG Schneiderman after his office refused to disclose documents relating to the Common Interest Agreement that he led. In the May 2018 ruling, the court rejected Schneiderman's claim that the common interest agreement contained confidential attorney work product, because the agreement did not contain any legal analysis and instead focused on global warming issues that were repeated from a press release issued by the NY Attorney General.

August 3, 2018: The SEC drops its investigation of ExxonMobil.

After reviewing more than 4.2 million company documents, the SEC does not find evidence warranting any enforcement action.

August 10, 2018: Multiple states file support ExxonMobil's 2nd Circuit appeal.

The states of Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin file an amicus brief supporting ExxonMobil's 2 nd Circuit appeal.

August 29, 2018: Justice Barry R. Ostrager urges the NY OAG to conclude its investigation.

At a hearing in the investigation, New York Supreme Court Justice Ostrager advised the NY OAG to end its investigation and either press charges against ExxonMobil or move on, saying, "This cannot go on interminably. It's not my place to tell you when an investigation ends, but it is my place to put an end date on the requests for information and the filing of a complaint."

October 24, 2018: Attorney General Barbara Underwood ends the state's investigation into ExxonMobil and files a lawsuit under the Martin Act.

The lawsuit, following the more than three-years long investigation, claims that ExxonMobil misled investors by underestimating the risks climate change posed to its business in its financial disclosures.

October 25, 2018: The Wall Street Journal editorial board calls the NY AG's lawsuit against ExxonMobil an "embarrassment."

The editorial board further writes that, "The reality is that nobody knows the future cost of carbon, and it will hinge as much on politics as on the evolving science and facts of climate change."

October 22, 2019: Trial begins in the NY AG lawsuit.

During opening statements, ExxonMobil counsel told the court that "the evidence will show that the allegations in the complaint are bizarre and twisted and not connected to the reality of the truth."
October 25, 2019: The MA AG sues ExxonMobil in Suffolk County Superior Court.
The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office files a complaint three years after announcing its investigation despite having never interviewed a single ExxonMobil employee or gathered any evidence from the company. The MA AG's complaint, which alleges that ExxonMobil misled investors and deceived consumers about its contribution to climate change, copies and pastes language directly from the NY AG's October 2018 lawsuit.
October 30, 2019: Former ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson testifies in NY AG trial.
Mr. Tillerson told the court that during his tenure, ExxonMobil took climate change seriously. "We knew, we knew it was a real issue," Tillerson said. "We knew it was a serious issue and we knew it was one that's going to be with us now, forevermore, and it's not something that was just suddenly going to disappear off of our concern list because it is going to be with us for certainly well beyond my lifetime."

May 15, 2020 - Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, sues ExxonMobil in D.C. Superior Court, alleging the company deceived consumers about the impacts its products had on climate change.

Beyond Pesticides, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit organization, files a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. Superior Court against ExxonMobil, alleging the company violated Washington, D.C.'s Consumer Protection Law.

May 28, 2020 - Judge rules MA AG case against ExxonMobil can proceed in state court.

U.S. District Judge William G. Young officially remands Massachusetts' case against ExxonMobil back to state court.

June 5, 2020 - The MA AG files amended complaint in its case against ExxonMobil, eliminating the claim featured in NY AG's failed lawsuit.

The Massachusetts Attorney General files an amended complaint in its lawsuit against ExxonMobil, narrowing its case to eliminate the investor deception claim that was tried in the New York Attorney General's failed lawsuit against the company.

June 18, 2020 - A panel of Texas judges calls California lawsuits targeting energy companies "lawfare."

A Texas appellate court dismisses ExxonMobil's petition seeking to depose Matt Pawa and the California public officials suing the company for public nuisance, but refers to those lawsuits as "an ugly tool" and deemed them " lawfare."

October 2, 2020 - ExxonMobil appeals its petition to depose California public officials and Matt Pawa to the Texas Supreme Court.

After a lower court in the state dismissed the company's petition in June, ExxonMobil filed a Petition for Review to the Texas Supreme Court in its case seeking to depose public officials from California municipalities that have sued the company for allegedly conducting its business operations in a way that worsened the impacts of climate change in their communities. In the petition, ExxonMobil also seeks to depose environmental attorney Matt Pawa, who initially represented two of the California municipalities in their litigation against the company.

October 14, 2020 - ExxonMobil removes Connecticut AG's lawsuit to federal court.

ExxonMobil removes the Connecticut Attorney General's lawsuit to federal court, arguing it seeks "to wade into complex federal statutory, regulatory, and constitutional issues and frameworks, and to substitute one state's judgment for that of longstanding decisions by the federal government about national and international energy policy and environmental protection."

December 4, 2020 - Texas Supreme Court directs respondents to file a response to ExxonMobil's petition for review.

The Texas Supreme Court requested that respondents file a response to ExxonMobil's Petition for Review in its case seeking to depose public officials from California municipalities that have sued the company, as well as their initial legal counsel. The response was initially due January 4, 2021. Respondents subsequently requested, and were granted, an extension until February 3, 2021.

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Understanding the #ExxonKnew controversy | ExxonMobil

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ExxonKnew is a coordinated campaign perpetuated by activist groups with the aim of stigmatizing ExxonMobil. Funders of the "#ExxonKnew" campaign have placed "pay to play" news stories, released flawed academic reports and coordinated with public officials to launch investigations and litigation, creating the false appearance that ExxonMobil has misrepresented its company research and investor disclosures on climate change to the public.

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What is agricultural water?

Agricultural water is water that is used to grow fresh produce and sustain livestock. The use of agricultural water makes it possible to grow fruits and vegetables and raise livestock, which is a main part of our diet. Agricultural water is used for irrigation, pesticideExternal and fertilizer applicationsExternal , crop cooling (for example, light irrigation), and frost control. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), water used for irrigation accounts for nearly 65 percent of the world's freshwater withdrawals excluding thermoelectric power (1). There are 330 million acres of land used for agricultural purposes in the United States that produce an abundance of food and other products (2).

When agricultural water is used effectively and safely, production and crop yield are positively affected. A decrease in applied water can cause production and yield to decrease. Management strategies are the most important way to improve agricultural water use and maintain optimal production and yield. The key is to implement management strategies that improve water use efficiency without decreasing yield. Some examples include improved irrigation scheduling and crop specific irrigation management. These strategies allow for the conservation of water and energy, and decrease grower's costs (3).

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Why should I be concerned about the agricultural water quality in my area?

Water quality can be affected by poor planning of industrial sites, animal farms, and barnyards and feedlots. Until recently, the type of water source has been indicative of the potential risks of contamination. Poor water quality can affect the quality of food crops and lead to illness in those who consume them. For example, the water may contain germs that cause human disease. Irrigating crops with contaminated water can then lead to contaminated food products which lead to illness when eaten. Groundwater, for example, has been considered one of the safest sources of water. However, depending on field location and field size, it may not be possible to use water from these sources for irrigation.

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Where does agricultural water come from?

Agricultural water comes from a variety of sources. Typical sources of agricultural water include:

Surface water

Rivers, streams, and irrigation ditches

Open canals

Impounded water such as ponds, reservoirs, and lakes

Groundwater from wells

Rainwater
Locally collected water such as cisterns and rain barrels

Municipal water systems such as city and rural water can also be used for agricultural purposes.

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centers for disease control and prevention

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Agricultural water is water that is used to grow fresh produce and sustain livestock. The use of agricultural water makes it possible to grow fruits and vegetables and raise livestock, which is a main part of our diet. Agricultural water is used for irrigation, pesticideExternal and fertilizer applicationsExternal , crop cooling (for example, light irrigation), and frost control.

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For many people who live in Guinea, a largely rural country on the west coast of Africa, life is a daily struggle to meet even the most basic needs - needs like safe water for drinking and cooking, and for handwashing to prevent the spread of disease.

Three out of four households in two regions in particular - Labé in the north-central part of the country and N'Zérékoré in the south - do not have access to safe drinking water at home, according to a 2018 survey by UNICEF. And the task of fetching water, often from faraway places, almost always falls to girls.

In most villages and communes in these two regions, the roads are poor, which makes building a new water system the conventional way difficult due to the heavy machinery that requires.

And so UNICEF and partners are working to solve the problem another way: by manually drilling boreholes to tap into natural resources underground.

The Water for Guinea project, which launched in 2014 with support from Andy Astrachan, founder of the AJA Foundation, has so far reached some 120,000 people with improved access to safe water, working with local partners. Over the next two years, the project aims to deliver to 160,000 more.

The new systems are life-changing for families - especially for the girls for whom collecting water would often mean dropping out of school and an early marriage - and particularly with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with safe water so fundamental to disease prevention. Project work has also been a boon for the local economy, creating jobs and income for small- and medium-sized enterprises that are contracted to do the bulk of it.

"Water for Guinea provides instant help," says Wendy Serrino, a former UNICEF USA Midwest Regional Board Chair and longtime champion of the initiative who recently traveled to Guinea with UNICEF to observe the work first-hand. "It's transformative."

A growing number of the new access points are connected to solar-powered water pumps - an upgrade from the more common hand pumps. For one thing, they can draw water from deeper depths; for another, they make the whole system more resilient. As an added benefit, the solar panels powering the water pumps can do double duty as a power source for community schools and health centers.

The project has gone so well that the national government has adopted the same approach for other areas in need.

In addition to making safe water more readily available to households and communities, the project is also building local capacity for manual drilling work, by providing the tools and training. Community-run water commitees are also being established, and local members trained in how to operate and maintain the new facilities. Local leaders are also being enlisted to help raise community awareness of environmental and climate change-related issues that could cause contamination of water sources or water scarcity.

UNICEF estimates that it costs roughly $13 to provide an individual with safe water for 10 years through Water for Guinea. It costs $5,000 to provide a sustainable source to a whole village for generations.
Support Water for Guinea. Learn more at waterforguinea.org. Top photo: A new community tap is open for business, one of hundreds of new safe water access points provided through UNICEF's Water for Guinea program. © UNICEF Guinea

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For many people who live in Guinea, a largely rural country on the west coast of Africa, life is a daily struggle to meet even the most basic needs - needs like safe water for drinking and cooking, and for handwashing to prevent the spread of disease.

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This mostly has reports, but you could use this to find other resources.

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The page or file you are trying to access cannot be found. This is because the web address is incorrect or the file has been moved or deleted.
In 2020, we migrated our web content to a new system so some older content may no longer be available online or at the same place.

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The term equity refers to just and fair inclusion-a condition in which everyone has an opportunity to participate and prosper. At the US Water Alliance we believe that water equity occurs when all communities:

Have access to safe, clean, affordable drinking water and wastewater services;

Share in the economic, social, and environmental benefits of water systems; and

Are resilient in the face of floods, drought, and other climate risks.

Below we describe these three pillars of water equity, and for a more in-depth discussion read our recently released national briefing paper here.

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The term equity refers to just and fair inclusion-a condition in which everyone has an opportunity to participate and prosper. At the US Water Alliance we believe that water equity occurs when all communities: Have access to safe, clean, affordable drinking water and wastewater services; Share in the economic, social, and environmental benefits of water systems; and Are resilient in the face of floods, drought, and other climate risks.