Russell Brand Denies Allegations of Sexual Assault Made by Four Women

LONDON — Three British news organizations reported Saturday that comedian and social influencer Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and abuse based on allegations from four women who knew him over a seven-year period at the height of his fame.

Brand denied the allegations and said that all of his relationships have been consensual.

The Sunday Times, The Times of London and Channel 4’s “Dispatches” said that one woman alleged she had been raped, while three others accused him of sexual assault. One of the women also said he had been physically and emotionally abusive.

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The women said that they only felt ready to tell their stories after being approached by reporters, with some citing Brand’s newfound prominence as an online wellness influencer as a factor in their decision to speak.

Before the stories were published, Brand posted a video online denying the allegations, which had been outlined in two “extremely disturbing letters” from a “mainstream media” television company and a newspaper. He didn’t identify the news organizations by name.

“Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” he said. “These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies and, as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.”

“Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual,” he added. “I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well.”

Brand also suggested that the reports were part of a coordinated attack designed to discredit him because of his views. Brand has been criticized for expressing skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines and interviewing contentious podcasters like Joe Rogan.

“To see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question is there another agenda at play,” Brand said.

Brand rose to fame as a stand-up comic in Britain in the early 2000s, which led to starring roles on Channel 4 and later BBC Radio, where he capitalized on a reputation for outrageous behavior and risque banter.

He later made the jump to Hollywood, appearing in films such as “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in 2008 and the remake of “Arthur” in 2011. Brand was married to U.S. pop star Katy Perry from 2010-2012.

In recent years, he transformed himself into a political commentator and influencer posting YouTube videos on subjects such as personal freedom and the COVID-19 pandemic.

source https://time.com/6315012/russell-brand-sexual-assault-allegations/

Starbucks Wants to Overhaul Its Iconic Cup in a Move Toward Sustainability

TEMPE, Arizona — Bethany Patton steps up to the counter and places her pink mug into a shoebox-sized dishwasher. It spins. It whirs. Water splashes inside. After 90 seconds, the door opens and steam emerges. A barista grabs the mug, dries it and prepares Patton’s order — a 16-ounce Starbucks double espresso on ice. For bringing her own cup, Patton gets $1 off her drink.

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“Saving the environment is important and all, but I probably come here more in knowing that I’m going to get a dollar off,” says Patton, 27, a cancer researcher at Arizona State University. Two friends who came on the afternoon coffee run nod as they hold the cups that they, too, brought along.

Just as noteworthy as what they’re carrying is what they are not: the disposable Starbucks cup, an icon in a world where the word is overused.

For a generation and more, it has been a cornerstone of consumer society, first in the United States and then globally — the throwaway cup with the emerald logo depicting a longhaired siren with locks like ocean waves. Ubiquitous to the point of being an accessory, it has carried a message: I am drinking the world’s most recognizable coffee brand.

Now, in an era where concern for sustainability can be good business, the Starbucks disposable cup may be on its way to extinction thanks to an unlikely force: Starbucks itself.

Convenience collides with virtue

By 2030, Starbucks wants to move away from disposable cups, which represent big portions of the company’s overall waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

The stated reason is that it’s the right thing to do for the environment, and Starbucks has a history of lofty sustainability goals around various aspects of their global operations. Some have been met, such as new stores being certified for energy efficiency; others have been revised or scrapped entirely. For example, in 2008 the company said that by 2015 it wanted 100% of its cups to be recyclable or reusable. Today, that’s still a long way away.

Today’s drive to overhaul the cup comes with an obvious business imperative. Producing disposable products like cups creates greenhouse gas emissions, which warm the planet and lead to extreme weather events and other manifestations of climate change. That goes against customers’ increasing expectations for companies to be part of the solution to climate change.

Still, while customers want companies to be environmentally conscious, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to give up convenience. And there’s this: Could eliminating the millions of paper and plastic cups used each year hurt Starbucks? After all, those cups, in the hands of customers, are advertising — a market penetration that makes Starbucks feel ubiquitous.

At the store where Patton gets her coffee, Starbucks already doesn’t serve any in disposable paper or plastic cups. Customers who don’t bring their own are given a reusable plastic one that can be dropped off in bins around campus. It’s one of two dozen pilots over the last two years, aimed at changing how the world’s largest coffee maker serves its java.

The goal: to cut the company’s waste, water use and carbon emissions in half by 2030. Pulling that off will be tricky and fraught with risks. It provides a window into how companies go from ambitious sustainability targets to actual results.

“Our vision for the cup of the future — and our Holy Grail, if you will — is that the cup still has the iconic symbol on it,” says Michael Kobori, head of sustainability at Starbucks. “It’s just as a reusable cup.”

Starbucks sees the change as an opportunity to cast the siren, and the company, in a different light. It also wants to push more suppliers in its production chain to provide recycled material and partners, such as universities and other locales that house stores, to be able to handle all that comes with reusable cups.

Erin Simon, vice president for plastic waste and business at World Wildlife Fund, says commitment from major companies can help. But ultimately, she says, major change can happen only with corporate collaboration and government regulation.

“Not one institution, not one organization, not even one sector can change it on its own,” Simon says.

At Starbucks, the changes will create ripple effects. Jon Solorzano, a Los Angeles lawyer who advises companies on developing climate-friendly operations and disclosures, (an area referred to as “environmental, social and governance”), says the company likely has hundreds of suppliers that help manufacture cups.

“It’s kind of like turning an aircraft carrier around,” Solorzano says. “Little tiny tweaks, which seem insignificant, can actually have big operational challenges for an organization.”

Starbucks is not the first company to push toward a reusable cup. From large companies in Europe, such as RECUP in Germany, which uses reusable cups and other food packaging, to local coffee houses in cities like San Francisco, the goal for years has been to shed disposable paper and plastic.

But as the largest coffee company in the world, with more than 37,000 stores in 86 countries and revenues of $32 billion last year, Starbucks could force change across the industry. At the same time, failure to adapt and lead could hurt the coffee giant in customers’ eyes.

“I’ll always choose the more sustainable company,” says Irene Linayao-Putman, a public health worker from San Diego who recently bought Starbucks while visiting Seattle.

The road to overhauling the container transcends just making a different choice or spending money. Improving sustainability requires navigating a web of technological developments, seeking out like-minded suppliers and testing how far customers can be pushed to change.

For Starbucks, it means doing two major things in parallel that seemingly conflict: Move toward only reusable cups while developing disposable cups that use less material and are more recyclable. And managing the optics along the way.

“They are just trying to get more buyers,” 10-year-old Aria June said with a laugh after buying Starbucks in Seattle. Then, prodded by her father, she added that sustainability and getting more business could co-exist.

The mechanics of reuse

At the Arizona State store, if customers don’t bring their own cup, they are given a reusable plastic one with a Starbucks logo. If they bring it back, they get $1 off, just like customers who bring their own. And if they don’t want to hold onto it? There are bins around campus, and the cups are washed by the university — part of a partnership with Starbucks — and returned to the store.

Cups too damaged to be reused, along with disposable Starbucks cold drink cups and other plastic found in the trash, are sent to the university’s Circular Living Lab. They’re shredded, melted and extruded into long, lumber-like pieces. Those pieces are cut, sanded and built into boxes, which become the return bins for the reusable cups.

“This obviously has some energy and production costs, but using recycled content is always going to be less energy intensive (and) emit less CO2 than using virgin plastics,” says Tyler Eglen, the lab’s project manager.

For several years, Starbucks has been increasing the amount of recycled material in disposable paper cups. In some markets last year, Starbucks began using single-use paper cups made with 30% recycled material, an increase from 10%. The plan is to have all cups at 30% recycled material in in all U.S. stores starting in early 2025.

That pushes the limits of what can be done with recycled paper material that holds hot liquids. Paper pulp from recycled cups has shorter fibers than virgin pulp, which means less rigidity, important particularly with hot coffee. How much recycled material can be used in manufacturing new cups depends on how equipped any particular area is to gather material and recycle it. Big cities have major recycling infrastructure, but many communities around the world have little to no recycling capacity.

Another barrier: the lining inside the cup, crucial to keeping a hot liquid from quickly breaking down the paper. Made of polyethylene, a heat-resistant plastic, the liner is about 5% of the total cup but a significant piece of its overall carbon footprint. There is also the plastic lid.

“Today, the reality is that for protection, as we put a hot beverage inside, we need a good seal on those cups,” says Jane Tsilas, Starbucks’ senior manager for packaging.

A similar testing and refining process is happening with disposable cold-drink cups. At the Tryer Center innovation lab in Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters, drinks with ice in plastic cups are placed in holders attached to a platform. It then shakes as technicians look for leaks and flaws.

For the last several years, Starbucks has been testing different kinds of plastics. In 2019, the company went to a strawless lid, eliminating a good amount of plastic. By the end of 2023, the goal is to reduce by 15% the amount of material in each cup.

To do that, technicians examine different parts of the cup to see where less material may be used without weakening it. For example, could reducing the thickness where many people hold the cup, about halfway between the middle and lid, mean the cup collapses and the drink spills on the customer?

“If it passes tests with baristas, then we would put it in the stores,” says Kyle Walker, a packaging engineer on Starbucks’ research and development team.

Not as easy as it might seem

Eventually, the endpoint is this outcome, which is more sustainable and good PR, too: No more disposables at Starbucks.

That’s because no matter the tests or technological innovations, there are limits to how much waste can be reduced with disposable paper and plastic cups. Long-term reductions in waste will come from reusable cups.

The company has a long way to go. Since the reintroduction of reusable cups in some stores in July 2021 — reusable cups were not used during much of the COVID-19 pandemic — only 1.2% of worldwide sales in fiscal year 2022 came from reusables. Starbucks refused to provide data on how many disposable cups it uses in any given year.

For all the talk of sustainability and increasing consciousness about climate change, it’s fair to assume that a significant number of Starbucks’ disposables end up in landfills. Even in Seattle, a progressive city with good recycling infrastructure, there are many cups in garbage cans outside Starbucks stores.

Valencia Villanueva, a barista at the Arizona State store, has noted a growing consciousness among customers about the cup-washing machine and the “borrowed” cup program. That gives her confidence that the future is reusable cups. After all, it’s not as if anyone is clamoring to be wasteful — even if what they’re giving up is an item that became something of a global status symbol.

“Nobody,” she says, “has complained and said they wanted a single-use cup.”

source https://time.com/6314978/sustainability-starbucks-cup-overhaul/

Activists Mark the Anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s Death in Iranian Police Custody

LONDON — Hundreds gathered in central London on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody in Iran last year, sparking worldwide protests against the country’s conservative Islamic theocracy.

Chanting “Women! Life! Freedom!,” the crowds held her portrait and rallied around the memory of a young woman who died on Sept. 16, 2022, after she was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory headscarf law. Similar protests took place in Rome and Berlin.

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In Iran, authorities sought to prevent the anniversary from reigniting the protests that gripped the country last year. Amini’s father was detained outside his home after the family indicated that they planned to gather at her grave for a traditional service of commemoration, the Kurdish rights group Hengaw said. People in downtown Tehran reported a heavy security presence, and security forces were seen in western Iran, where the Kurdish minority staged large protests last year.

Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman from the western region, died three days after she was arrested by morality police, allegedly for violating laws that require women to cover their hair in public. While authorities said that she suffered a heart attack, Amini’s supporters said she was beaten by police and died as a result of her injuries.

Her death triggered protests that spread across the country and rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s four-decade-old Islamic theocracy.

Authorities responded with a violent crackdown in which more than 500 people were killed and in excess of 22,000 others were detained, according to rights groups. The demonstrations largely died down early this year, but there are still widespread signs of discontent. For several months, women could be seen openly flaunting the headscarf rule in Tehran and other cities, prompting a renewed crackdown over the summer.

Activists around the world sought to renew the protests on the anniversary of Amini’s death.

On Saturday, about 100 protesters gathered in front of the Iranian Embassy in Rome under the “Women, life, freedom,” banner.

“Now it is important that all the world start again to demonstrate in the streets, because what we want is to isolate this regime and in particular we want to push all the states not to have political and economic agreements with Iran,” protester Lucia Massi said.

Iran blamed last year’s protests on the United States and other foreign powers, without providing evidence, and has since tried to downplay the unrest even as it moves to prevent any resurgence.

The protests were partly fueled by the widespread economic pain Iranians have suffered since then-President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran. But that suffering also may have made it difficult to sustain prolonged demonstrations, as many Iranians struggle to make ends meet.

President Joe Biden issued a lengthy statement on Friday acknowledging the anniversary of Amini’s death, and the United States announced new sanctions on Iranian officials and entities. U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also noted the anniversary and imposed new sanctions on Iranian officials.

Soheila Sokhanvari, an Iranian-British artist, moved to the U.K. to study a year before the 1979 revolution that brought Iran’s conservative Islamic leaders to power. She was in London preparing for a solo exhibition on pre-revolutionary feminist icons last year when she heard about Amini’s death.

The protests that followed marked the first time the world has seen “a revolution which is instigated by women,” she told The Associated Press earlier this month.

“But I think what’s really important about this protest is that Iranian men, for the first time in the history of Iran, they’re actually standing with women and they’re supporting the women and they’re showing respect for the women,” she said. “That’s very original and it’s never happened in the history of Iran.”

source https://time.com/6314944/anniversary-mahsa-amini-death-iran-police-custody/

Hollywood Strikes Enter a New Phase as Daytime Shows like Drew Barrymore’s Return

NEW YORK — “The Drew Barrymore Show” will begin airing fresh episodes on Monday but a lot of off-air controversy will be clinging to its typically bubbly host.

Barrymore — a daughter of a proud acting dynasty — is making new batches of her syndicated talk show despite picketers outside her studio, as daytime TV becomes the latest battlefield in the ongoing Hollywood labor strife.

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“We’re four months approximately into this strike and it’s not surprising that there are defectors,” said Michael H. LeRoy, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I couldn’t predict that this would happen on daytime TV, but everybody has a breaking point in a labor dispute.”

“The Drew Barrymore Show,” operating without its three union writers, isn’t the only daytime show to resume. “The View” has returned for its 27th season on ABC, while “Tamron Hall” and “Live With Kelly and Ryan” — neither are governed by writers guild rules — have also been producing fresh episodes. “The Jennifer Hudson Show” and “The Talk” are also restarting Monday.

As long as the hosts and guests don’t discuss or promote work covered by television, theatrical or streaming contracts, they’re not technically breaking the strike. That’s because talk shows are covered under a separate contract — the so-called Network Code — from the one actors and writers are striking. The Network Code also covers reality TV, sports, morning news shows, soap operas and game shows.

“I know there is just nothing I can do that will make this OK to those that it is not OK with. I fully accept that,” Barrymore said in a video posted Friday on Instagram that was later deleted. “I just want everyone to know my intentions have never been in a place to upset or hurt anymore. It’s not who I am.”

The ongoing strike pits Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artistsagainst the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Disney, Netflix, Amazon and others.

The return of daytime hosts, producers and studio crews will make for some awkward exchanges, predicted Zayd Ayers Dohrn, a writer, professor and director of the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage at Northwestern University.

“It’s kind of amazing that they’re going to go back to work with their own writers picketing outside the doors of the studios,” said Dohrn, a writers guild member. “They’re literally walking past the picket line of the workers who they say they’re supporting.”

Barrymore’s decision to return to the air was met with pushback on social media. “You have the heart and mind to be more tapped into the needs of the community than this,” wrote one viewer on Instagram. Another was more blunt: “You don’t get to play a generous and relatable character when it’s financially expedient for you and then scab when your pocketbook is at risk.”

Actor and activist Alyssa Milano, whose friendship with Barrymore stretches back years, also criticized the return, calling it “not a great move.”

“I love her very much — I grew up with her — but I’m not sure that this was the right move for the strike. I’m sure in her eyes it’s the right move for her and the show, but as far as the WGA and SAG and union strong — not a great move.”

Barrymore’s stance was also met with some puzzlement since she walked away as host of the MTV Movie & TV Awards in May, the first big awards show to air during the strike. Back then, she wrote: “I have listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”

She has since lost another hosting gig: the National Book Awards in November. The organization rescinded her invitation “in light of the announcement that ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’ will resume production.”

LeRoy, who has studied labor-employer struggles for 30 years, warned that TV shows like Barrymore’s may think they can get by without using union writers but may find long-term costs.

“No members of the Writers Guild will ever work with that show again,” he said. “It’s a short-term, feel-good moment or get-by moment for Drew Barrymore and maybe the others, but long term they really have, in my view, basically given themselves an early retirement.”

He noted other strikes in the past that left bitter feelings for decades, like when Major League Baseball umpires went on strike in 1999. New umpires were hired and integrated with veteran ones but tensions continued.

“For the next 25 years, those umpires would not talk to each other if they were assigned to work games together,” LeRoy said. “Twenty-five years of shunning. People do not forget it.”

Viewers who tune into new episodes of daytime talk shows these days will find a changed landscape. Guests aren’t always the A-listers with blockbuster TV shows or films to promote. Since the strike began, authors, musicians and comedians are filling the gaps.

This week, Neil deGrasse Tyson was on “Live With Kelly and Ryan” talking about the science behind the Hulk while Cedric The Entertainer was telling Hall about his debut novel. Matthew McConaughey was on “The View” to promote his book ”Just Because.”

Hosts like Barrymore may be caught in a lose-lose situation — contractually obligated to return to work but certain to anger colleagues when they do. Last week she noted “This is bigger than just me.”

Bill Maher, who also announced he would return to his late night talk show, couched his reasoning as wanting to help all his staff, saying writers “are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns.”

Dohrn isn’t buying it: “They talk about wanting to support the people who are just getting by. But Bill Maher and Drew Barrymore and the hosts of ‘The View’ are not just getting by. They could very easily stand with their fellow workers in the industry and say, ‘We’re not going to feed the studio pipeline until they make a fair offer,'” he said.

“They’re deciding for a whole host of complicated reasons to go back to work and to ultimately try to break the strike.”

source https://time.com/6314947/hollywood-strikes-new-phase-drew-barrymores/

TikTok Fined $368 Million in the E.U. for Putting Children’s Data at Risk

TikTok, the video-sharing social-media app that’s faced a global backlash over its links to China, was fined €345 million ($368 million) in the European Union for alleged lapses in the way it cares for children’s personal data.

The Irish Data Protection Commission found TikTok failed to protect minors against unnecessary data processing and didn’t act in a transparent manner, according to a decision made public on Friday.

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The agency, which oversees the company because its E.U. base is in Dublin, gave TikTok a three-month ultimatum to bring its data processing in line with the bloc’s strict General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR.

The fine follows intense scrutiny of child safeguarding practices at the company, best known for viral dance challenges and owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd. TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide, continues to face potential bans and earlier this month was added to a list of tech firms that have six months to comply strict new digital markets rules in the E.U.

“We respectfully disagree with the decision, particularly the level of the fine imposed,” TikTok said in a statement. It said the Irish authority’s “criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under 16 accounts to private by default.”

In addition to the scrutiny in the E.U., U.S. lawmakers have proposed multiple bills that could block the app. In the E.U. and the U.S., the company has established plans to wall off data on local servers and enlist domestic partners to oversee its data-access controls.

The Irish watchdog is the regulator for dozens of big technology companies. It opened two probes into TikTok in 2021, saying it was concerned that young users’ data wasn’t sufficiently protected and that it wanted to probe the risks of some TikTok user data being accessed by “maintenance and AI engineers in China.”

Last year, it fined Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram €405 million, for improperly handling children’s personal data.

source https://time.com/6314418/tiktok-fine-children-data-europe/

As Climate and Trade Become Intertwined, a Bipartisan Push for Carbon Tariffs is Emerging

(To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here.)

Last year, the U.S. enacted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—the most significant U.S. climate policy to date—without support from a single Republican in Congress. Today, Republicans on Capitol Hill are championing what some hope will be the next significant climate legislation.

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Over the past year, a mix of Republicans and Democrats has coalesced around a push to measure greenhouse gas emissions from certain products produced in the U.S. If all goes to plan, that data could underpin the creation of a tariff on imports of carbon-intensive goods from other countries. 

Supporters of the legislation have painted it as a win-win. It would incentivize manufacturers around the globe to decarbonize while also penalizing high-emitting geopolitical rivals like China and Russia. “The only way that you’re going to be able to drive global decarbonization at the scale that science suggests is through a type of trade policy,” says George David Banks, an energy and climate expert who served in the Trump Administration and on Capitol Hill and has been leading the push for a border carbon policy. 

The development is the latest indicator of a new dynamic emerging from the chaos of both a broken global trade system and an increasingly urgent climate challenge. The U.S. rattled nerves in Europe with the IRA’s subsidies for domestic clean technology manufacturing—a policy that was once a no-go because of its effects on international trade. Next month, the European Union will implement its own fee on high-carbon imports, a move once considered too politically disruptive to be feasible. Across the globe, friends and foes alike are complaining that this emerging climate-trade regime may hurt them.  

How this thorny dynamic plays out is far from settled. And, as in so many things in global affairs, what happens in the U.S. will ripple across the globe.  

For decades, the idea of linking climate and trade has been the subject of white papers and debate between policy wonks. The main advantage to such an approach was simple: trade policy provided a more practical route to push countries to take action on climate change than voluntary negotiations between countries. And, as some countries began to impose a fee for carbon pollution on their domestic industries, charging a similar fee for imports offered a way to level the playing field. But, despite the advantages, political leaders remained hesitant to propose anything that would disturb trade relations—and, by extension, the economy.  

The Trump presidency completely changed the dynamic. Trump broke with longstanding trade orthodoxy, wielding tariffs as a geopolitical weapon and blocking the World Trade Organization from settling disputes. In this fractured trade environment, the European Union proceeded with plans to levy the world’s first measure taxing carbon emissions at its border. 

Since taking office, Biden has employed a different tone toward allies than his predecessor, but he hasn’t sought to restore old-school trade norms. The result is an environment in which climate and trade seem poised to be increasingly linked. The question is what does the new climate-trade regime look like? 

Supporters of carbon tariffs argue that the U.S. can work with allies to create a global club of like-minded countries that tax carbon at their borders. This would push other countries—particularly emerging economies where emissions are rising rapidly—to decarbonize. But opponents worry such a policy is a road to messy geopolitics—not least because some Republican supporters have painted it as much as a cudgel for punishing enemies as a tool for addressing climate change. “In the Republican Party, we’re living in this America-first populism explosion,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, at a September event focused on such a carbon policy. “This speaks to that. Big polluters also happen to be our adversaries, in the case of China.”

At the core of the push for carbon tariffs is a convenient reality: industrial production in the U.S. is much cleaner than in the economies of geopolitical rivals, namely China and Russia. In 2020, the Climate Leadership Council, a group that advocates for conservative climate policies, released a report outlining what it called “America’s carbon advantage,” showing that on the whole U.S. manufacturing tends to be less emissions-intensive than that of its counterparts. (Even though the U.S. has lagged in climate policy, it has a relatively clean electric grid and decades of regulation targeting other pollutants have also reduced carbon emissions). 

A new report released Thursday from the Niskanen Center, a center-right think tank, and shared exclusively with TIME before publication, tells a slightly different picture. There is no debate that the U.S. is cleaner than Russia, China, or India. But Niskanen found the E.U., U.K., and Japan to be substantially cleaner. “I think it’s a fair question to ask: are we really the best?” says report author Shuting Pomerleau, deputy director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center.

Some on Capitol Hill want to answer that question before moving forward. A bill introduced in June known as the PROVE IT Act would mandate that the Department of Energy study the emissions intensity of U.S. industry. The results could then inform a future carbon tariff—though actually implementing such a policy would require additional legislation.   

There are other risks beyond how those numbers shake out. Experts debate whether a carbon tariff would survive scrutiny at the World Trade Organization. The E.U. is in better standing with WTO rules because the bloc requires industrial companies to pay a price on their carbon emissions.  This allows the E.U. to avoid allegations that it’s unfairly prioritizing its own companies over others. India also complicates the picture. The U.S. has sought to make India a key partner on the world stage, but the country’s industry is far more carbon intensive than in the U.S.

And some worry that an aggressive carbon tariff approach will just tie climate up in geopolitical conflicts, while helping bring back the futile trade wars of the 20th century. “It’s a roadblock to international collaboration,” says Pomerleau. “Retaliation is a big area of concern.” 

These debates will inevitably take years to play out. But the signal in all the noise is a clear one: in our fraught geopolitical environment trade and climate are poised to be increasingly linked.

source https://time.com/6314461/bipartisan-support-carbon-tariffs/

Success of MDMA in PTSD Study Could Pave the Way for U.S. Approval of the Psychedelic

The psychedelic drug MDMA can reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers reported in a new study published Thursday.

The company sponsoring the research said it plans later this year to seek U.S. approval to market the drug, also known as ecstasy, as a PTSD treatment when combined with talk therapy.

“It’s the first innovation in PTSD treatment in more than two decades. And it’s significant because I think it will also open up other innovation,” said Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, the research sponsor.

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Earlier this year, Australia became the first country to allow psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. The drugs are gaining wider cultural acceptance in the U.S. in part because of efforts by the nonprofit advocacy group Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Read more: Psychedelics May Be Part of U.S. Medicine Sooner Than You Think

For the new study, researchers measured symptoms in 104 people with PTSD who were randomly assigned to get either MDMA or a dummy pill during three sessions, one month apart. Both groups received talk therapy.

Common side effects in the MDMA group were muscle tightness, nausea, decreased appetite and sweating. But only one person in the MDMA group dropped out of the study.

After treatment, 86% of the MDMA group improved on a standard PTSD assessment compared to 69% of the placebo group. The assessment measures symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks and insomnia.

By the study’s end, 72% of people in the MDMA group no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, compared to about 48% of the placebo group.

Read more: Psychedelics Could Revolutionize Couples Therapy

“The results that they got are very exciting,” said Barbara Rothbaum, who directs the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program in Atlanta. She was not involved in the research, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine.

PTSD also can be treated with other medications or talk therapy.

“They are very effective, but nothing is 100% effective,” Rothbaum said. “So we absolutely need more options for treatment.”

Before MDMA could be prescribed in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration would need to approve it and the Drug Enforcement Administration would need to change its classification. MDMA is currently classified as Schedule 1, on par with heroin and deemed to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

source https://time.com/6314454/mdma-ptsd-psychedelic-treatment/