The historical range of the Bachman’s warbler included Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Twenty-one species, including birds, a bat and several mussels, have been labeled extinct, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday.
The species were previously on the national list of threatened and endangered species.
The extinct species include:
Eight Hawaiian honeycreeper birds
Bridled white-eye bird of Guam
Mariana fruit bat of Guam
San Marcos gambusia, a one-inch long fish from Texas
Scioto madtom, a small catfish found exclusively in the Big Darby Creek in Ohio
Bachman’s warbler, a black and yellow songbird found in several Southern states and Cuba
“Our determinations of whether the best available information indicates that a species is extinct included an analysis of the following criteria: detectability of the species, adequacy of survey efforts, and time since last detection,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife first proposed the species be taken off the endangered and threatened list in 2021, as they had not been seen since as early as 1899 and as late as 2004.
There are now 650 species that have gone extinct in the U.S., according to the Center for Biological Diversity, which says factors such as climate change, pollution and invasive species contribute to species loss.
Between 2004 and 2022, climate change effects contributed to 39% of amphibian species moving closer to extinction. About 3 billion birds have been decimated in North America since 1970, Fish and Wildlife said.
Still, 99% of the animals on the endangered and threatened list have not reached extinction. Fifty-four have been taken off the list due to recovery efforts, while 56 have been downgraded from endangered to threatened, Fish and Wildlife said.
“Federal protection came too late to reverse these species’ decline, and it’s a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it’s too late,” Fish and Wildlife Director Martha Williams said. “As we commemorate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act this year, we are reminded of the Act’s purpose to be a safety net that stops the journey toward extinction. The ultimate goal is to recover these species, so they no longer need the Act’s protection.”
The Hawaiian honeycreepers are now extinct due to their forest habitat being cut down for development and agriculture. Mosquitoes, which are not native to Hawaii, also spread avian pox and avian malaria.
Other Hawaiian birds, such as the ‘akikiki, are also on the brink of extinction, with as little as five known pairs in the wild, the Center for Biological Diversity said.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the Bachman’s warbler was also lost to habitat destruction and the bridled white-eye and Mariana fruit bat was lost to an invasive brown tree snake.
The Mariana fruit bat was also compromised by agriculture and overconsumption as food. The San Marcos gambusia suffered from water overuse that impacted groundwater supply and spring flow. The scioto madtom was lost to runoff and silt buildup from dams.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
A Scholastic Book Fair banner pictured outside a school in Queens, New York. (Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
It’s fall, which means it’s Scholastic Book Fair season. Schools across the country are setting up shelves in their libraries and gymnasiums to let students shop a vast selection of books provided by the educational and publishing company. It’s a highlight for many students, and a nostalgic memory for many adults.
But the events have also waded into controversy, after the company behind them changed its policy to help schools navigate the growing number of book bans in the U.S. — and was quickly accused of caving to censorship.
The accusations started swirling on TikTok and Reddit last month: Scholastic — the billion-dollar educational company that both publishes and distributes books — was allowing schools to opt out of providing diverse books at its nationwide book fairs, according to complaints by several school librarians.
They said Scholastic was putting most of the books focused on race and sexuality into a separate display and letting schools decide whether to order it.
Backlash was swift. Scores of writers and educators on social media accused the company of helping to enable book restrictions, and argued that the company was not taking a strong enough stand against them.
Scholastic acknowledged the change in a statement on Friday, but defended its decision. Enacted or pending legislation in more than 30 states prohibits certain kinds of books — mostly “LGBTQIA+ titles and books that engage with the presence of racism in our country” — from being in schools, the company said.
Because book fairs take place in schools and without parental supervision, it said, such laws create “an almost impossible dilemma: back away from these titles or risk making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted.”
Scholastic says it’s trying to help schools navigate a complicated landscape
The company said in order to continue offering diverse books, it created a new collection for its elementary school fairs called “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice.”
“We don’t pretend this solution is perfect — but the other option would be to not offer these books at all — which is not something we’d consider,” Scholastic said, adding that there are still diverse titles at all of its book fairs and that middle school fairs remain unchanged.
A Scholastic spokesperson told NPR that the company has been in touch with customers about the new policy since August.
They said many school districts had questions and concerns about how to navigate the new legislation, which in some cases took effect over the summer. Those conversations, they added, weren’t about how to eliminate certain books from their fairs, but how to safely hold a fair in the current climate.
According to a list shared with NPR, out of the more than 100 titles in this year’s book fair, most of the books dealing with issues of race, gender and sexuality are in the “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice” collection.
The case includes some 30 books, ranging from The ABCs of Black History to biographies of Rep. John Lewis, Ruby Bridges and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. There are picture books and graphic novels by poet Amanda Gorman, civil rights activist and football player Colin Kaepernick, and Jojo Siwa, a dancer and internet personality who came out as gay in 2021. A book based on the PBS animated show Alma’s Way features a Puerto Rican family hunting for a kid’s missing tooth.
The Scholastic spokesperson says moving those titles to a specific group made space to include more diverse books in their other collections and that the change has been largely well-received by school districts.
Book bans pose all sorts of risks
The movement to restrict books is “driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship,” says the free speech group PEN America, which said it found 3,362 cases of book bans in the 2022-’23 school year, up from 2,532 bans in the 2021-’22 school year. The group defines a ban as any move that restricts access to a book. A majority of Americans oppose book restrictions, according to an NPR/Ipsos poll.
It says such bans in schools and libraries are most prevalent in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina, but are being “modeled and replicated across the country.”
Many districts are still figuring out what new book bans mean for their classrooms and libraries.
The wording of the laws themselves — and the resulting legal back and forth — have created a lot of confusion, as is the case in Texas where one of those new laws temporarily takes effect this month after an appeals court blocked a judge’s injunction against it.
A fifth-grade teacher in Georgia was fired earlier this year for reading out loud from a book addressing gender stereotypes, which she said was chosen from the Scholastic book fair. (She appealed her termination to the State Board of Education last month.) A middle school teacher in Texas was fired for assigning her class an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
Other librarians and educators across the country have faced harassment, threats and termination in the face of book bans, anti-critical race theory protests and other culture war issues. Some have started to censor themselves, while others have resigned altogether.
Mychal Threets, a librarian in California with a large social media following, responded to the Scholastic change on TikTok.
Addressing the company, he said: “We are fighting for the freedom to read. We are celebrating the freedom to read. Join us. You are the powerhouse. Use your voice.”
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Cindy Marabito runs a pit bull rescue out of her house in Austin, Texas. “We’re the only raw-feeding, holistic, completely no-kill pit bull refuge and rescue in the United States,” she says. She currently has nine dogs that roam her big, mulched backyard by the banks of the Colorado River.
The philosophy of her rescue is to give “low to no vaccines.”
In most states – including Texas – dog owners are required to give their pets a rabies shot every three years. Health officials say the shots keep rabies – a disease with a 99% fatality rate for humans and animals – at bay.
But Marabito considers the current vaccination guidelines “excessive.” She’s one of many pet owners with “canine vaccine hesitancy,” a phrase coined in a recent study led by the Boston University School of Public Health and published in the journal Vaccine. The study found that 53% of U.S. dog owners surveyed question whether the rabies vaccine is safe, whether it works, or whether it’s useful.
The researchers sought to quantify a sentiment they were seeing in their work as veterinarians.
“It’s something I deal with on a day-to-day basis,” says Gabriella Motta, a veterinarian at an animal hospital in Glenolden, Pa., and a co-author on the paper. “We’re [often] dealing with an aggressive animal that’s not vaccinated where the staff is taking extra precautions, really making sure not to get bit.”
Motta’s survey focused on the rabies vaccine, considered by health officials and many veterinarians and health officials to be the most critical dog vaccine for public health – and one that’s required by law in almost every state.
That around half of all dog owners are skeptical about the rabies vaccine is “very disturbing” to Lori Teller, a veterinarian at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. “The rabies vaccine has been around for decades and it is so incredibly safe, especially when you consider the risk of death,” she says.
Rabies is nearly always fatal if it advances to the point where symptoms appear.
Understanding the risk and benefits of vaccination
Marabito hikes almost every day with the dogs in an area with “all kinds of wildlife – from raccoons to skunks to possums to deer,” she says.
Like most people today, Marabito has never seen a rabid animal, so she says she considers the risk of rabies to be low.
More than 10 years ago, however, she says she saw one of her foster dogs have a bad response to a set of vaccines, including the rabies shot – “reacting violently”, she says. That made her wary of the vaccines.
Serious side effects from the rabies vaccine are very, very rare, say Ryan Wallace, a veterinary epidemiologist and lead for the Rabies Team at CDC.
Of the approximately 24 million dogs that are vaccinated against rabies each year, “the vast majority … have no adverse reactions to the vaccine,” he wrote in an email, “There are only a very small number of severe adverse reactions per year (~2.4 per 1,000,000 vaccinated) and, even with those, it’s difficult to definitively attribute these reactions to vaccination.”
In comparison, Wallace sees great benefit to rabies vaccinations. He analyzed rabies data and estimated that they prevent nearly 300 dogs from getting infected with rabies per year, in turn preventing more than 100 human deaths and saving more than $3 million in treatment costs.
Not vaccinating against rabies could lead to your dog dying if they get infected – or in some cases – if they bite someone, Teller from Texas A&M says: “There is a real likelihood that animal control could euthanize your dog and test it for rabies because human health is going to supersede animal health at that point,” she says.
‘The most dreaded of all diseases’
A hundred years ago, rabies was arguably “one of the most important of health problems” in the U.S., according to public health researchers at the time.
“The suffering and fear caused by it are so great that they make this the most dreaded of all diseases,” wrote the authors of an article from 1928 in the American Journal of Public Health. In the early 1900s, thousands of pets and farm animals caught it each year, and dozens of people died from it.
After decades of concerted public health efforts, the rabies situation in the U.S. was brought under control in the 1960’s, and remains so — meaning most human deaths are prevented. Each year, a few hundred pet cases are reported, and one to three people die from it.
Most people in the U.S. aren’t vaccinated, and if a person is bitten by a rabid animal, they need immediate emergency prophylactic treatment.
In 2007 the specific variant that typically affects dogs was eliminated in the U.S., but other rabies strains continue to spread among wildlife, so pets remain at risk — and still need to be vaccinated.
CDC surveillance detects around 5,000 rabid animals – mostly wildlife – each year. Bats with rabies are found in every state except Hawaii; other mammals including raccoons, skunks, foxes, wolves and mongoose can also spread rabies in parts of the country.
Pets and people can get exposed through interactions with feral animals. “We have instances every year where a dog has tried to eat a bat,” says the CDC’s Wallace. There have also been reports of rabid skunks in doghouses and “rabid raccoons and skunks that, for some reason, really like cow pens,” leading to rabid cattle, horses and farm dogs.
Globally, rabies is still considered “one of the most feared infectious diseases worldwide,” according to health researchers. The disease kills around 59,000 people each year, mostly in countries in Asia and Africa where the disease is endemic in dogs.
From a bite to the brain
The rabies virus is usually transmitted by the bite of an infected animal. Virus in their saliva gets into the muscle. It travels slowly up the nerves, at a rate of about a centimeter a day, to the brain.
There, in the brain, the virus starts replicating rapidly. That’s when an animal or a human starts showing signs. “It’s almost impossible to come back after that,” Wallace says. “The virus’s goal is to make you act abnormal so it can spread to the next animal.”
It messes with the nervous system, throwing off the body’s ability to regulate heart rate and blood pressure, sometimes causing seizures and heart attacks. It can lead to severe swelling in the brain and spinal cord. It migrates to the salivary glands, shedding through saliva and drool. For a patient showing these symptoms, there’s no cure at this stage and most die.
The way to prevent this in humans is to not get bitten by a rabid animal; or to get a series of shots soon after, before symptoms appear, to stop the virus from getting to the brain.
The way to prevent this in pets is to vaccinate them before they get exposed.
Canine vaccine hesitancy ‘spillover’ from humans
“Vaccine skepticism towards pets does not necessarily come from a bad place,” says Matthew Motta, assistant professor of health law, policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health, and a co-author on the Vaccine paper with his sister Gabriella.
“If you’re a type of person who believes that vaccines are unsafe, then it is because you love your pet that you wouldn’t want to vaccinate them,” even though “this position is at odds with the best available scientific research” and evidence, he says.
Motta sees pet vaccine skepticism as a “spillover effect” from a rise in human vaccine hesitancy – related to the skepticism towards COVID vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement against childhood shots. “We see in our research that people who hold negative views toward human vaccinations are precisely the types of people who hold negative views toward vaccinating their pets.”
While many dog owners have some skepticism towards the rabies vaccine, the shot is required by law in most places and 84% of the Mottas’ survey respondents said they’re still giving it to their pets. That’s about the same as it was a decade ago, the CDC’s Wallace says, according to a separate study conducted then.
Health officials say the margin is slim. The World Health Organization and CDC both recommend maintaining at least a 70% dog vaccination rate, to prevent rabies outbreaks. If the rate dips below that, parts of the U.S. could start seeing more deadly rabies cases in people and pets, Wallace says.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Transcript :
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Many people treat their pet dogs like family and raise them in accordance with their own values. A recent paper finds that human vaccine skepticism – it’s making its way into the pet world. NPR’s Pien Huang reports.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Cindy Marabito runs a pit bull rescue out of her home in Austin, Texas.
CINDY MARABITO: We’re the only raw-feeding, holistic, completely no-kill, 100%, pit bull refuge and rescue in the United States.
HUANG: Right now, she has nine dogs roaming her big backyard near the banks of the Colorado River. Her philosophy is to give low to no vaccines.
MARABITO: Why are we giving all these dogs, horses, kittens, cats, excessive rabies shots?
HUANG: Health officials say those shots help keep a deadly disease away. In most states, dogs are required to get rabies shots every three years. But Marabito is one of many pet owners with canine vaccine hesitancy. According to a recent survey out of Boston University, 53% of U.S. dog owners question if the rabies vaccine is safe, if it works or if it’s useful. Lori Teller is a veterinarian at Texas A&M and former head of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
LORI TELLER: I find it very disturbing. The rabies vaccine has been around for decades, and it is so incredibly safe, especially when you consider the risk of death.
HUANG: Teller says skepticism towards human vaccines has risen with the politics around COVID and the anti-vaccine movement against childhood shots.
TELLER: And I am extremely concerned that we’re getting spillover into the veterinary space, particularly because a lot of these vaccines do prevent diseases that are potentially contagious to humans.
HUANG: The disease most worrying for human health is rabies. Ryan Wallace, head of the rabies team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explains the infection.
RYAN WALLACE: It’s usually, almost always, transmitted from saliva of an infected animal.
HUANG: The virus gets into the body through a bite wound. It travels slowly up the nerves to the brain, and then it starts replicating rapidly. That’s when an animal or a human start showing signs.
WALLACE: It’s almost impossible to come back after that. The virus – its goal is to make you act abnormal so it can spread to the next animal.
HUANG: Wallace says 99.9% of humans and animals that get rabies for the brain will die. A hundred years ago, rabies was considered one of the most important public health problems in the U.S. Now it’s largely under control.
WALLACE: We have shifted as a country from vaccinating dogs at a high rate to get rid of the virus, to now vaccinating our pets at a high rate, to keep the wildlife versions of this virus from getting into our pets and people.
HUANG: About 5,000 rabid animals get reported each year – mostly bats, raccoons, skunks and other wildlife. Cindy Marabito, from the pit bull rescue, says she’s never seen a rabid animal.
MARABITO: You know, I’m not careless. But I also really don’t overly concern myself with being fearful of things that rarely, rarely, rarely happen.
HUANG: But she says she has seen a dog act strangely after getting a rabies shot. Serious side effects from the rabies vaccine are very, very rare. But seeing that made her wary. Researchers say that while half of dog owners are skeptical of the rabies vaccine, most are still giving it to their pets. The vaccination rate is around 80% – about the same as it was 10 years ago. Still, health officials say the margin is slim. If that 80% rate drops to below 70%, pockets of the country could start seeing more deadly rabies in people in pets.
Pien Huang, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIC TUCKER SONG, “FWM”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
July 8: 128 Grazer is photographed before putting on hundreds of pounds of weight. (Naomi Boak/NPS)
She didn’t need to win to prove anything. She just needed to eat hundreds of pounds of salmon so she could survive hibernation. But the bear known as 128 Grazer chomped and she romped, and now she is a Fat Bear Week champion.
“She has been putting in the work,” ranger Felicia Jimenez said as the 2023 bracket was unveiled. “She was quite dainty in early summer, but now she is huge.”
A dominant bear, 128 Grazer brooked no nonsense at Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve this summer: “For example, a large adult male, 151 Walker, regularly avoided her approach,” the park noted.
Sept. 14: 128 Grazer is well-known as a tough bear, competing for the best fishing spots. Without cubs to care for, she grew to a huge size this summer. (Naomi Boak/NPS)
Grazer took care of business at the ballot box as well, trouncing rival bears at every stage of the tournament. She dispatched past champions 747 and Holly to reach the final and a faceoff with 32 Chunk, an enigmatic and immense bear. Grazer earned 108,321 votes to Chunk’s 23,134 to win her first championship.
Grazer, identified by her trademark big blonde ears, was a fan favorite coming into the competition, both for the staggering transformation she pulled off this summer and for her personal journey.
Grazer is a skilled and versatile angler, known to keep pulling in fish into the night. She has successfully raised two sets of cubs, and this year — finally — she’s an empty nester.
“She hasn’t had to worry about providing for anybody but herself, so she has really made some massive gains,” Jimenez said.
Like an ursine Sarah Connor, Grazer is one tough mother, known to preemptively attack huge males that might threaten her offspring. She’s also an expert at preparing for the future, thanks to her ability to catch and eat mass quantities of salmon.
Even without cubs, the park said “many other bears remembered her reputation and Grazer maintained a high level of dominance even though she was single.”
This year’s tournament benefited from a new surge of interest, with nearly 1.4 million votes cast. Two years ago, some 800,000 votes were cast in Fat Bear Week.
The annual competition is a celebration of the bears, which must pack on hundreds of pounds in order to survive their lengthy hibernation, as well as highlighting their thriving environment. In recent years, the area has seen record-setting salmon runs, with more than 60 million sockeye salmon, according to the Department of the Interior.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Communities big and small are trying to rein in climate change. But many people working on these climate solutions are running into a big obstacle: falsehoods and conspiracy theories about their work. So what does this mean for fighting global warming?
To talk about the current state of climate disinformation, we checked in with three NPR reporters who have reported on climate, disinformation and the media — and they can answer our questions: Climate solutions reporter Julia Simon, media correspondent David Folkenflik, and reporter Huo Jingnan, who writes about conspiracy theories among other things.
This was adapted from a roundtable discussion on All Things Considered.
What kind of false narratives about climate are we talking about?
Julia Simon: Climate disinformation in the past — sometimes paid for by fossil fuel interests — often related to false ideas that global warming is a scam or that the threat is overblown. Those falsehoods are still around, but what we’re seeing a lot more of these days are attacks on climate solutions even if we don’t always know who funds them. Think attacks on renewables. False ideas that wind turbines cause cancer or cause birth defects in animals. Disinformation may be spreading because solutions are really spreading.
For instance, this weekend we’ll have a story about a trend in urban planning called 15-minute cities — designing cities so that you access amenities in a short walk, bike ride or trip on public transport. Now there’s a conspiracy theory saying that this is a way to restrict people’s movement or to trap people in an open-air prison.
Podcaster Joe Rogan spoke about it on his show last month. “You’ll essentially be contained unless you get permission to leave,” Rogan said, “That’s the idea they’re starting to roll out in Europe.”
That is false.
Earlier this week the U.K. transport minister Mark Harper used some of the language of conspiracy theories when talking about 15-minute cities at the conservative Tory party conference. “What is sinister and what we shouldn’t tolerate,” Harper said, “is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops.”
It is false that local governments in the U.K. are deciding how often citizens can go shopping.
Huo Jingnan: The false narrative surrounding 15-minute cities is but one part of a larger sprawling conspiracy theory called the Great Reset. The theory goes that a shadowy global elite — often Jewish — wants to strip away ordinary people’s freedoms and make us live a life of deprivation. Under this theory, 15-minute cities are a ploy to take away people’s freedom to move around.
The buildings of downtown Los Angeles are partially obscured because of smog. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
What is the role of the media in all this?
David Folkenflik: Different kinds of false information spread in different ways. But if you’re considering misleading claims about climate — that’s predominantly on the right. And that involves an information ecosphere defined by Joe Rogan, as we heard above, but also Alex Jones, Breitbart, the Daily Wire, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and above all Fox News.
The funny thing is they are at once testers and popularizers of things that have gotten some traction online, and then you hear prominent figures on the right picking up the melody.
Back when he was on Fox earlier this year, Tucker Carlson made utterly unsubstantiated claims about dead whales coming ashore on New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts beaches.
Tucker Carlson: The government’s off-shore wind projects, which are enriching their [read: Biden] donors, are killing a huge number of whales, right now.
Folkenflik: But you hear versions of it from former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — once it passes audition, it makes the rounds.
How does fear-mongering affect the actual implementation of climate solutions?
Huo: It is a distraction from the issues we need to work on. If these narratives ring true to you, you might think that climate activists aren’t really talking about climate but about something else, so much so they could be secret agents of the government trying to take away your freedom.
One interesting example of a strawman here is one of the subplots of the great reset conspiracy theory, which is that the government wants to force people to eat insects. Including insects in the human diet has been an idea on the edges of climate circles. The mainstream idea is simply to eat less meat. But it attracted more attention over the years because many news outlets — including NPR — are easily intrigued by the idea of eating something seen as exotic.
And that gets turned into raw material for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones in March 2022:
Alex Jones: Coming food crisis recommends more sustainable diets of – wait for it – fly larva, fly larva, fly larva.
Simon: And a muddied information landscape about climate solutions can sometimes complicate the process of getting them enacted, says Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
“In the end, it actually doesn’t matter if 99% of the public believe in climate change,” King says, “if you’re able to embed real fear and seeds of doubt about the solutions that are on the table you end up with the same outcome, which is no legislative agenda, no meaningful policy proposals, no local action.”
What sort of impact do these conspiracy theories have on the people in the field trying to work on climate solutions?
Simon: I met with Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian professor who developed this idea of the 15-minute city — these more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods that conspiracy theorists think are preludes to open-air prisons. Moreno says he’s gotten death threats, and so have other scientists and researchers.
Moreno says the attacks give his colleagues a reluctance to publish articles about their work. And he says this is what the conspiracy theorists want: to silence them. And we’ve seen harassment and threats based on conspiracy theories targeting climate scientists and meteorologists for years.
Can anything break the cycle of disinformation or rumors?
Folkenflik: It’s not in the interest of Fox News and others who benefit financially from stoking outrage and, by and large, also have partisan rooting interests. In a few instances, there have been defamation cases against those media outlets — but those all come from specific people and institutions who claim they’ve been knowingly harmed and defamation law isn’t going to solve the wider issue of spreading false claims about climate research and solutions.
For other journalists and others, it’s tricky — you do need to address falsehoods and fact-check them. But by fact-checking, you’re also sometimes elevating these ideas that may not get widespread currency. News organizations, including NPR, generally try to balance those imperatives as they plan out coverage.
Huo: When it comes to social media, the platforms can change how they label, recommend and moderate content to change what users see and how they interact with platforms. Studies by researchers who were able to run experiments on Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 election showed that changing the algorithm changes user behavior, sometimes leading to less time spent on the platforms.
There’s also a practice called pre-bunking, like a form of inoculation against bad information, which has two strands. One way involves preventatively unraveling specific false claims before they reach a critical mass. Another is essentially news literacy training, to help equip people with tools to evaluate such claims critically. These things have to be done in a way that appeals to the people they’re trying to reach, not patronize them, and also acknowledge that known facts sometimes change, as they have for COVID-19.
While we do not have enough experimental studies on altering platform design to draw conclusions beyond specific interventions, experts in the field place hope in them. A lot of people put stock in hearing from those they trust (like friends) and those they admire (like influencers and celebrities). And they need to absorb it in settings where they seek such content out. That said, some major platforms are dialing back how much news they serve up and how much attention they want to spend on moderating. There’s no single easy or widely embraced answer yet.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Transcript :
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Here’s one obstacle to communities that are trying to fight climate change – falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the groups that are fighting global warming. As part of our week exploring climate solutions, three of our reporters have been looking into the impact of disinformation on climate. NPR climate solutions reporter Julia Simon, reporter Huo Jingnan, who writes about conspiracy theories, and media correspondent David Folkenflik, good to have you all here.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
HUO JINGNAN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Julia, let’s start with you. What are some of the most common false narratives about climate change?
SIMON: Climate disinformation in the past would frequently put out this false idea that global warming is a scam or that the threat is overblown. That disinformation was often paid for by the fossil fuel industry. Those falsehoods are still around. But what we’re seeing a lot more of today are these attacks on climate solutions, even if we don’t always know who funds them. Think things like attacks on renewables, wind turbines cause cancer or cause birth defects in animals. These are false ideas. And this weekend we’ll have this story about a trend in urban planning called 15-minute cities – these denser developments, more walking, less cars. Now there’s a conspiracy theory saying this is a way for global elites to trap people in open-air prisons. Here’s podcaster Joe Rogan talking about it on his show earlier this month.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, “THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE”)
JOE ROGAN: You’ll essentially be contained unless you get permission to leave.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: That’s true?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Are they?
ROGAN: Yeah. That’s the…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: How are they going to put us in there?
ROGAN: The idea they’re starting to roll out in Europe.
HUO: Ari, if I might jump in here.
SHAPIRO: Go ahead, Jingnan. Yeah.
HUO: Yeah. So this false narrative surrounding 15-minute cities is just one subplot of an even larger, sprawling conspiracy theory called the Great Reset. So the main gist is that a shadowy global elite, often Jewish, wants to strip away ordinary people’s freedoms and make us all live a life of deprivation. So under this theory, 15-minute cities is a ploy for open-air prisons.
SHAPIRO: So many of these false narratives are interconnected in the way that you describe.
HUO: Absolutely.
SHAPIRO: David, talk about the role of the media in all of this. Beyond podcasters like Joe Rogan, how are these ideas spreading?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, so different kinds of false information’s spread in different ways depending on what it is, who takes an interest of it. But if we’re talking about misleading claims about climate and climate change, that predominantly comes from the right, and that involves an information ecosphere defined by Joe Rogan, as we just heard a moment ago, but also folks like Alex Jones. There are sites like Breitbart, The Daily Wire, and then you get closer and closer to kind of mainstream-like outlets like the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and above all, of course, Fox News. And the funny thing is that these outlets and figures are at once testers and popularizer of the things that get some traction online and on social media. And then you hear these prominent figures on the right picking up the melody. Let’s take the question of dead whales coming ashore in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts beaches. That’s a real thing. That’s been happening in recent years, and it’s been unclear why. Here’s an influential voice making what are, on the other hand, utterly unsubstantiated claims about them.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT”)
TUCKER CARLSON: The government’s offshore wind projects, which are enriching their donors, are killing a huge number of whales right now.
FOLKENFLIK: That’s Tucker Carlson back when he was on Fox earlier this year. And again, federal and state agencies have looked in this and found there’s no evidence to support that. But you hear strong versions of it from former President Donald Trump, from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat, who’s taken steps to consider a run as an independent. Once those things kind of pass auditions in, like, the minor leagues, they hit the bigs.
SHAPIRO: Jingnan, how does the fearmongering we’re hearing about affect the actual implementation of climate solutions?
HUO: It’s a distraction. It’s like when – like, we need to work on real issues. But if this narrative rings true to you, you might think that when climate activists talk about climate solutions, they aren’t really talking about climate solutions. They are actually just trying to take away your freedom. So that is, like, really distracting. I mean, one other interesting example of such a straw man-esque distraction is another subplot of the Great Reset conspiracy theory that we just talked about. So in this subplot, the government is trying to force people to eat insects, like, eating bugs. So including insects in human diets, that’s been kind of an idea on the edges of climate circles. The mainstream idea is just to eat less meat. But as we all know, it attracted more attention because many news outlets, including NPR, are very easily intrigued by the idea of eating something seen as exotic to potentially save the planet.
SHAPIRO: I confess I did a story about eating bugs from South Korea.
HUO: I mean…
SHAPIRO: Larva.
HUO: Right. Of course. Of course. And I grew up eating silkworms. So, you know, that gets turned into raw material for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, “THE ALEX JONES SHOW”)
ALEX JONES: Overcoming food crisis recommends more sustainable diets of – wait for it – fly larva. Fly larva. Fly larva.
SHAPIRO: It’s a catchy refrain.
SIMON: It is. And, Ari, if I may, a muddied information landscape about these climate solutions – the real ones, like renewables and urban planning ideas especially – can really complicate the process of getting them enacted. We see that with these falsehoods hindering the implementation. Here’s Jennie King. She studies climate misinformation at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London.
JENNIE KING: In the end, it actually doesn’t matter if 99% of the public believe in climate change. If you’re able to embed real fear and seeds of doubt about the solutions that are on the table, you end up with the same outcome, which is no legislative agenda, no meaningful policy proposals, no local action.
SHAPIRO: Julia, what kind of impact do these conspiracy theories have on the people in the field trying to work on climate solutions?
SIMON: Yeah. I met with Carlos Moreno. He’s a Franco Colombian professor, and he’s developed this idea of the 15-minute city. That’s these more walkable neighborhoods that conspiracy theorists think are preludes to open-air prisons. Moreno says he’s gotten death threats, and so have other scientists and researchers. Moreno says the attacks give his colleagues a reluctance to publish articles about their work. And he says this is what the conspiracy theorists want – to silence them. And we’ve seen harassment and threats based on conspiracy theories targeting climate scientists and meteorologists for years. It has an impact on their work.
SHAPIRO: OK. So in the spirit of solutions, David, what can break the cycle of disinformation and rumors?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you know, if you’re talking about trying to reach the audiences that are grabbing on to them, you know, it’s not in the interest of Fox News or of Alex Jones or others who benefit from stoking outrage to say, folks, don’t pay so much attention to this. The financial model and the partisan rooting interests are already there. So you’ve seen some lawyers spring up and say, let’s do this through the courts and file defamation cases. And in some ways, that has helped. But those typically involve claims against specific people. And, you know, when you’re talking about whales writ large, you know, and windmills writ large, that’s harder to file a defamation case.
For journalists, they’ve looked at fact-checking in, you know, in the last decade or so. That is an important journalistic tool but doesn’t seem to solve the problem. You’re also hearing people bring up the idea of inoculation – some people call it prebunking (ph) – by giving people the tools to process some of these claims as they come in, as opposed to addressing specific claims along the way. And that seems to have some promise. But the real question is, how do you reach the people you want to reach without, in some ways, patronizing them but bringing them in? It’s a real question. These aren’t slam-dunks. These are tools.
SHAPIRO: That’s NPR’s David Folkenflik, Huo Jingnan and Julia Simon. Thank you all three of you.
HUO: Thanks so much, Ari.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
SIMON: Thank you, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
A family inspects the engine of a new Toyota Prius model during the Electrify Expo In D.C. in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 2023. Getting an electric vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500 will get a lot easier next year. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Getting a federal tax credit for buying an electric vehicle is about to get a lot easier — or at least, a lot faster.
Starting in January, EV car shoppers won’t have to wait until tax season to pocket the incentive, worth up to $7,500. Instead, the credit will be available as cash in hand on the day of purchase — and it’ll be available regardless of the size of a customer’s tax bill.
That’s how Congress wanted these incentives to work when they passed them as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But when it was rolled out last year, it still required EV buyers to claim their credit when they filed their taxes, a more burdensome route. That’s because the IRS needed time to come up with a new system to make the credits work as point-of-sale rebates instead.
That new system to claim the credit was announced Friday. Here’s what to know.
It’s all meant to happen at the dealership
All the requirements for qualifying for the tax credit still apply — for both EV buyers and automakers.
That means there’s still an income cap for buyers and there are limits to how much cars can cost to qualify for the credit. And not all models from automakers will qualify because of complex rules about how the cars are produced, including where the battery components come from.
But for buyers who qualify, actually accessing the credit will be a matter of extra paperwork at the dealership, instead of a monthslong wait for savings delivered through the tax filing process.
Dealers will register with the IRS and confirm that a vehicle qualifies for the tax credit, using the vehicle identification number.
That addresses one major customer concern. As of now, buyers have to do a lot of homework to figure out whether an EV they want to buy would qualify for a tax credit — navigating through a myriad of complicated and shifting rules.
President Biden puts on his mask after signing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Aug. 16, 2022. The massive law included a complicated tax credit for electric vehicles. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Delivering money faster — and to more people
Buyers will also now have the option to get the credit instantly instead of waiting for the next year’s tax season.
Those purchasing an EV would need to attest that they meet the individual requirements — like that they’re purchasing the vehicle for personal use, they’re not a dependent on anyone’s taxes, and they’re under the income limit.
Then they’d transfer the tax credit to the dealership, and in exchange, the dealer will either give them that much in cash or as a down payment toward the vehicle. The dealer will submit documentation to the IRS, and the IRS says dealers will be reimbursed “promptly” — within 72 hours or so.
Significantly, a buyer taking the credit at the dealership can get it regardless of what their tax bill is that year. Previously, a buyer would need to owe $7,500 in taxes in a given year to get the full benefit of the credit.
That functioned like an income minimum, since many low- and middle-income families owe less than that in taxes. It was also just another headache for people trying to figure out how much the credit was actually worth to them.
Now, even families with no tax liability at all can get the tax credit.
Meanwhile, tax credits for used electric vehicles (worth 30% of the price of the vehicle, up to $4,000) will also be available at the point of sale, through the same system of transferring the credit to the dealership. There is a lower income cap for that program, and some additional criteria for the vehicles.
There are caveats, though
Things can still go wrong. The IRS says there are provisions in place to prevent fraud and deception on the part of dealerships, and dealers can only participate in this program if they’re current on their own taxes.
And there’s one concrete situation where taxpayers may need to give back the credit.
Buyers can qualify under the income cap using either the current year’s income or the previous year’s, whichever is lower. If it turns out their income was over the cap in both years, and they already received the tax credit through a dealership, they would need to repay the tax credit to the IRS.
The income limits for a new vehicle are $150,000 adjusted gross income for an individual, $225,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for a married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.
For a used vehicle, the income caps are $75,000 for an individual, $112,500 for heads of households, and $150,000 for married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.
The new system could make a big difference
Though this will simplify things for EV shoppers, the tax credits still remain complicated as the government juggles both encouraging people to buy EVs while also pushing car companies to move more of their supply chains to the U.S.
But a point-of-sale rebate should at least make the credits less of a guessing and waiting game.
The changes “will make a tremendous difference,” says Elizabeth Krear, the vice president of the electric vehicle practice at auto data giant JD Power. “That’s $7,500 right there at the time of the transaction — versus having to finance at a higher price, which increases the monthly payments, and then waiting for that tax rebate down the line sometime in April.”
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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