Hasta La Gadget!

These days it seems like I am always tired. Not the 5-am-wakeup-so-I-can-get-to-the-gym kind of tired. And not even the 11-pm-bedtime-after-a-long-night-of-meetings tired. And while those kids certainly tire me out, I don’t think I can blame them for this one either.

These days I’m tired because I’m empathizing more with each member of my community. People keep getting sick — really sick. Diagnoses of cancers left, right, and center. As rabbis — or priests or pastors or imams — our congregants’ pain is our pain. Your fears are our fears, because we care for you and about you. Personally, I know that I am their rabbi and they are the members of my holy congregation. But more to the point, I feel that these people are my extended family.

There have also been deaths — too many deaths, too soon, too young, all tragic. It’s so painful. And while of course there is great joy in the rabbinate — weddings to celebrate, babies being born, children who sing and play joyfully in our synagogue — these days the joy does not always manage to outweigh the sadness.

I imagine this is quite normal. Step into the role of clergy, and you will see that from the moment we hear of a death, our lives are immediately changed. Meetings rescheduled, childcare altered, date night cancelled. And that’s just the beginning. Meet with the family, consult with the funeral home, write a eulogy, plan a funeral and burial, supervise shiva, counsel and support the mourners for weeks and months to come. As their rabbi, I walk on their path, crying with them, holding them, laughing and remembering when they want to laugh and remember.

Pain and loss also take a toll on doctors, nurses, and all those who witness suffering and must go home at the end of the day. When members of my community have a loss, they are generally suffering the one loss while I share a piece of all of their losses. I am so lucky to be in a large congregation with an incredible professional staff. Unlike many clergy who are alone in their congregations, this burden is not mine alone. But the sorrow I take home at the end of the day — indirectly impacting my husband and children — is mine alone. The pain of my congregants’ losses — the pain I carry with me — stays long after the shiva candle has been extinguished.

There has been so much pain for rabbis in the past few months, and I have to wonder if this pressure, fatigue, and pain is getting to everyone. Perhaps we need to learn better self-care. In this week’s Torah portion, Chukkat (Numbers 19:1-22:1), we read about a strange ritual performed after a person has come in contact with a corpse. The ritual of the red heifer removes that person’s impurity (or, “not-yet-readiness”) for Temple worship and communal living. The strangest part of the ritual is that the priest who helps purify the impure person becomes impure himself. The priest bathes, washes his clothes, and remains impure until evening. Only then may he return to his duties, his community, and his family. This is a Torah-mandated break for the priest and anyone else who has come in contact with the dead and with anyone who has come in contact with any of those people. The Torah shows us that pain and loss impact the lives of survivors beyond the immediate family, and that we need to take care of all those involved.

Reading this ritual, I wonder if this was the original rabbinic self-care, and what we might learn from this today. When you see your rabbi in a funeral suit, ask him how he’s feeling. If you know your rabbi has been dealing with a lot of sorrows lately, share your joys with her more. Give your rabbi some time and space after a funeral — it could be an hour away from the office (and rabbis, we owe it to ourselves to actually take a break!) or just a casual conversation about the weather. Don’t insist that he or she return to the pressures of the office — the emails, the phone calls, the details of planning a program — right after participating in the holy and sad task of a funeral. Allow him or her to pause, to take some time to grieve and to once again become “ready” for ritual work and communal life. Imagine how much more “ready” we all might be if we take some time away to heal and rejuvenate.

Clergy are called to this profession because we care. Our empathy runs deep as we engage in holy relationships and journey together on life’s path. When that empathy is returned, we can give you so much more.

The annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a spectacular display of the world’s best advertising, with an overlay of seminars, meetings, networking, parties, intimate dinners and not-so-intimate dinners. It is the place to be. And in some moments, it’s a place that makes you want to hide away just to catch your breath.

Thankfully, there was a destination passed on from one female advertising executive to another… The Ipsos Girls’ Lounge, a sanctuary away from the madness. Set up inside a sprawling penthouse at the Hotel Martinez this year, this growing group of smart, savvy women continued to redefine itself.

The Girls’ Lounge began as a female-only oasis at a few select conferences, providing beauty touchups that boost outer confidence — a great blowout, a fresh manicure, professional makeup and digital profile makeovers. In its second Cannes Lions, the Girls’ Lounge dug deeper with its Confidence Circle breakfast series and afternoon networking sessions, delving into issues that resonate strongly with professional career women.

Against the backdrop of the French Riviera, advertising’s All-Stars, including, Meredith Levien, New York Times‘ executive vice president of advertising, participated in a spirited debate about the future of women and their lack of representation at the top. Shelley Zalis, founder of the Ipsos Girl’s Lounge, challenged companies to not fill quotas for female leaders — but to actively seek out the most qualified women for these top roles and to adapt the working conditions for them. We need to keep our talented female executives opted in.

A resounding note rang true over and over: Women need to be less modest. We should be able to say we’re great and be confident about it. If you feel you have a different perspective and never speak up, you’re not going to get anywhere. If you want to get to the next level, you have to express yourself with what makes you unique and special.

“Female empowerment is about embracing feminine qualities like nurturing and collaboration,” said Zalis. “The companies that are successful now have these as core values although they were once considered to be too female.”

Zalis also shared how she gained balance early on by thinking forward. “Will I regret this? If my kid is playing in a game and he/she wants me to be there because it’s important to them, I won’t miss it. You have to change the meeting, or find someone else to take it… rebalance yourself. If I am going to regret something later, I don’t do it!” said Zalis.

An equally important component to balance and boosting confidence is taking care of your body during a packed business trip. Instructor Nicole Rijelle led the sunrise stretch, and reminded the ladies that in addition to paying our credit card bills, we must also remember to pay our “sexy bill”! It’s easy to push off exercise and eat badly while away, but we must break that work travel habit. And once we brought our sexy back, Courréges provided wardrobe consultation, sharing a stunning array of ensembles to show off the tone.

One of the things I love most about the Girls’ Lounge is you never know who you’re going to meet or what you will hear. From Gayle Fuguitt, CEO of ARF to Melissa Goidel, CRO of Refinery29 to the mother of Atlantic Recording Artist Katy Tiz who flew to Cannes just to hear her daughter rock the terrace with her hit “The Big Bang.”

All week along the Croisette, women were seen carrying their pink and white gift boxes from PopSugar, with perfectly coiffed hair, stunning makeup, their bags stuffed with business cards and lightness in their festival-weary feet. All telltale signs they had just visited the Girls’ Lounge.

The Girls’ Lounge has opened up the energy to have dialogue between women, with the authenticity of trust between girlfriends. I hope to see you at the Girls’ Lounge at ANA in Orlando on October 15-18, and at CES in Las Vegas in January 2015.

Find out more about the Girls’ Lounge
Follow the Girls’ Lounge on Twitter
Follow the Girls’ Lounge on Instagram

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue commissioned economic research firm IHS to produce another fact-challenged, anti-environmental study.

The argument industrial polluters and their friends in Congress are making against the new Environmental Protection Agency plan to curb power plant carbon emissions should sound familiar. After all, it’s the same scare tactic they trot out every time the government proposes stricter emission controls: exaggerate the cost, overstate job losses, and completely ignore the benefits.

The debate that roiled Washington 24 years ago during the George H.W. Bush administration is a good example. That’s when Congress, after a decade-long stalemate, passed legislation to reduce acid rain, urban smog and toxic chemicals in the air. Industry groups predicted the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments would cost anywhere from $46 billion to $104 billion a year, which, accounting for inflation, amounted to $71 billion to $160 billion in 2006, the base year the EPA used in a 2011 report to calculate the law’s cost. The agency determined that, in 2010, the law cost $53 billion — at least 25 percent less than industry predicted — and, more important, generated $1.2 trillion in public health and environmental benefits.

The proposal the EPA announced earlier this month would reduce power plant carbon pollution 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, which would likely close dozens of dirty, outdated coal-fired power plants. Most of the 600 or so coal-fired power plants operating across the country, which are responsible for 38 percent of the nation’s total carbon emissions, were built before 1980, when Pac-Man was cutting edge.

Just days before the EPA announced the draft rule, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business federation, released a report warning it would cost the economy $50 billion a year for the next 16 years, eliminate more than 200,000 jobs annually, and increase electricity costs by $289 billion by 2030.

There was no mention of the benefits of cutting carbon, but that’s no surprise. The Chamber has a history of disputing climate science, and five years ago a number of corporations, including energy companies Exelon and Pacific Gas & Electric, cancelled their memberships over the Chamber’s campaign against climate legislation. Although the Chamber refuses to identify its members, at least one major oil company, Chevron Texaco, and the oil and gas industry’s main trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, have reportedly given the association substantial donations in recent years.

As expected, the Chamber report provided ammunition for coal state legislators who’ve been railing about the Obama administration’s “war on coal” for some time.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) waxed hyperbolic. The EPA rule, he said, “is a dagger in the heart of the American middle class, and to representative democracy itself.” Echoing the Chamber report, McConnell maintained the rule would lead to “higher costs, fewer jobs, and a less-reliable energy grid.”

The response from Sen. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia was more measured, but essentially the same. The proposed rule “appears to be more about desirability rather than reliability or feasibility,” he said, “with little regard for rising consumer prices, the effects on jobs, and the impact on the reliability of our electric grid.”

Another Misleading Industry-Funded Report from IHS

For its part, the Chamber says it is merely providing a public service. “Americans deserve to have an accurate picture of the costs and benefits associated with the administration’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through unprecedented and aggressive EPA regulations,” Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said in a press release.

Accurate picture? If you’re looking in a funhouse mirror.

As it turns out, the Chamber report was produced by IHS, the same economic research firm I criticized last fall for its study that grossly inflated the number of jobs created by fracking and ignored oil and gas’ impact on public health, the environment and the climate. The Chamber — along with the American Petroleum Institute, America’s Natural Gas Alliance and other industry trade groups — financed that study.

IHS took the opposite tack this time around to reach its preordained, funder-friendly conclusion. Instead of tweaking its analysis to pump up job numbers, as it did in its fracking study, it used flawed assumptions to magnify the carbon rule’s cost and exaggerate job losses. And where IHS left out the substantial cost of fracking in last fall’s report, its most recent Chamber report doesn’t factor in the carbon rule’s considerable benefits, despite Harbert’s promise to provide the deserving public with that information.

IHS’ latest Chamber-sponsored study came under withering fire from not only the EPA, but also the Tampa Bay Times‘ PolitiFact.com and Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post‘s resident fact-checker. Among other things, they pointed out that IHS wrongly assumed the rule would require a 42 percent reduction of carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 when the EPA actually proposed a 30 percent cut.

IHS also incorrectly presumed the rule would require new natural gas plants to install carbon capture technology to meet their emissions-reduction targets. That baseless assumption distorted IHS’ estimate of how much electric utilities would have to spend over the next 16 years. It predicted that $339 billion of an estimated $478 billion in compliance costs — roughly 70 percent — would be needed to pay for new, more expensive carbon-capture capable plants.

Finally, even if IHS’ prediction of a $50-billion decline in annual economic output were true, it would have a negligible impact on a U.S economy with an annual gross domestic product of $17 trillion. As economist Paul Krugman pointed out in his New York Times column, “what the Chamber of Commerce is actually saying is that we can take dramatic steps on climate — steps that would transform international negotiations, setting the stage for global action — while reducing our incomes by only one-fifth of 1 percent. That’s cheap!”

The Coal Industry Has Been Contracting for Decades

What about the Chamber report’s claim that reducing power plant carbon emissions would throw 224,000 people out of work every year? That bloated estimate, which cuts across all job categories, also rests on IHS’ flawed calculation of the cost of compliance. In other words, there’s not much credibility there.

The EPA does estimate that the new carbon rule will lead to job losses nationally of 72,000 to 77,900 from 2021 to 2025 in such sectors as power plant construction and mining. But the agency projects that those losses would be offset by 76,200 to 112,000 new jobs in 2025 in the energy efficiency sector.

Coal state legislators, for their part, have mounted a vigorous defense of mining jobs, but they are at least 30 years too late. Although coal production is up substantially, at the end of 2012 the industry employed only 81,000 people, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — less than a third of what it did in the late 1970s. That amounted to only 0.05 percent of overall nonfarm U.S. employment. According to Krugman, “shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9.”

How does that translate at the state level? Let’s look at Sen. McConnell’s home state, Kentucky, the nation’s third largest coal producer. The Republican minority leader is up for reelection this year, and his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, is just as adamant about defending coal jobs as he is. When the EPA announced its proposed carbon emissions rule earlier this month, Grimes vowed to “fiercely oppose the president’s attack on Kentucky’s coal industry because protecting our jobs will by my No. 1 priority.”

Both McConnell and Grimes are playing to the home crowd, but the reality is cheap natural gas and mechanization has driven coal industry employment in the state to a historic low. At the end of last year, the industry employed only 11,700 Kentuckians out of a total nonfarm workforce of more than 1.85 million, according to the BLS. That’s a paltry 0.6 percent. Meanwhile, in Wyoming — the country’s top coal producer — the industry employs only 2.2 percent of the state’s nonfarm workers. In West Virginia, the second largest coal producer, it employs 2.9 percent.

What About the Benefits?

Given power plants are the largest source of carbon pollution in the country, the new EPA proposal — the first of its kind — would go a long way to address the threat that is unfolding before our eyes. In 2012 alone, climate and weather disasters cost the U.S. economy more than $100 billion and, according to a new study, that could be just a taste of things to come. The study, commissioned by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, concluded that rising seas and extreme heat could cost hundreds of billions in lost property, crops and labor productivity unless U.S. businesses and policymakers take immediate steps to cut carbon emissions and prepare communities for the unavoidable consequences of climate change.

Not only would the EPA proposal reduce power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels — and many would argue that’s not enough — the EPA says it also would cut “traditional” pollutants that cause soot and smog by more than 25 percent in 2030. All told, the agency projects that the new rule would provide an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion in climate and health benefits in 2030.

You won’t find any of that in the Chamber report.

Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan drew praise from environmental advocates who have long hoped that Washington would finally take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions and address the threat of climate change. Criticism, perhaps predictably, came from a combination of climate change deniers, coal-reliant communities worried about potential job loss, and business interests bemoaning possible higher energy costs.

Citing the cost issue as it joined the chorus of opposition was the National Black Chamber of Commerce. While the Black Chamber’s opposition may be sincere, it also provides big business advocates with a bit of diversity cover — striking since people of color actually stand the most to gain from the short-term public health benefits of the rule.

The reason: Reductions in carbon emissions will also reduce emissions of other pollutants, such as particulate matter, that cause problems such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and other respiratory effects, many of which disproportionately affect communities of color. These immediate public health benefits were stressed by President Obama as he tried to “sell” the EPA’s proposed action.

The proposed Rule will limit power plant emissions of carbon — which until now have remained unregulated — by creating a “consistent national framework” to reduce carbon pollution, while granting states flexibility in how they meet federal standards in ways that are most efficient and reflective of their needs. Because of this, the EPA’s proposal gives state-specific carbon emission targets that they will then meet individually or in regional groups — with carbon trading as one option on the table.

Carbon trading is already up and running in California. In a report, Minding the Climate Gap, that we prepared as the state’s trading system was being booted up, we found that the major portion of particulate pollution from facilities likely to fall under the cap-and-trade system came from a small number of facilities clustered in densely populated low-income communities and communities of color.

Using California Air Resource Board and Census data, we calculated the population-weighted average particulate emissions for all people of color and non-Hispanic whites — and the former group experienced a pollution burden that was over 70 percent higher than the latter group, with much of the difference due to emissions from petroleum refineries. In another study conducted with environmental economist, Jim Boyce, we looked at the pattern nationally — although with slightly less complete coverage of facilities — and also found that emissions of toxic co-pollutants from greenhouse gas emitters were much higher in communities of color.

All this suggests that the EPA’s proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions — and with them, co-pollutants like particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and air toxics could have enormous and immediate public health benefits for minority neighborhoods already stressed by other sorts of exposures. The economic interests of various business groups, including the Black Chamber, who publicly worry about potentially higher energy costs need to be counter-balanced with the very significant financial savings of decreased respiratory illnesses associated with reductions in harmful pollutants that disproportionately affect millions of African Americans and Latinos.

To fully realize the public health benefits of the Clean Power Plan, however, state flexibility needs to be accountable to equity concerns as well. While letting states forge their own compliance path sounds great in theory, such flexibility could actually work out poorly in practice. The reason is exactly what we found in Minding the Climate Gap: Cap-and-trade systems account for greenhouse gas emissions, but generally miss the co-pollutants that have more immediate health impacts.

To understand the problem, consider that in California, the La Paloma power plant in McKittrick and the Exxon Mobile refinery in Torrance both emit between 2.5 and 3 million tons of carbon dioxide. However, the La Paloma power plant emits 48.6 tons of particulate matter in a mostly rural area with no other emitters nearby while the Exxon Mobile plant emits 352.2 tons in a densely populated urban area with many other emitters nearby. Clearly, carbon reductions in the urban and more populated location would have far higher health benefits and associated cost savings than similar carbon reductions in the rural and lightly populated location.

Making carbon market systems more effective at pricing in all co-pollutants along with carbon emissions is easier than many might think. This is partly because the bulk of co-pollutants are associated with a handful of facilities within a few sectors, making it straightforward to limit certain kinds of carbon trades or, alternatively, price the trades (with a surcharge) to factor in the public health costs of co-pollutants. Revenues from those trades could be invested to address job development and environmental distress in the most disadvantaged areas, a legislative strategy that is currently being implemented in California.

The big point here is that the EPA was right to move ahead on addressing climate change and the president was, in our view, right to promote the proposed rule based on its immediate public health benefits. At the same time, legitimate concerns remain about whether we will leave potential health benefits unrealized if we allow states to over-rely on carbon trading, while turning a blind eye to the fact that the market is not an even playing field, particularly for people of color.

Another — cooler and cleaner — planet is possible and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposal is a step in the right direction to address climate change. Yet as stakeholders debate the Plan over the next several months, it will be critical to factor in health and equity concerns, consider the distribution of gains and losses, and encourage the full participation of every community that can benefit from reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and harmful co-pollutants.

Manuel Pastor is Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Rachel Morello-Frosch is Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

The adults in Westeros seem to drink booze like there’s no tomorrow. Given the world they live in, I don’t think we can begrudge them that. Etsy shop Chischilly Pottery pays homage to Game of Thrones‘ drunkards and direwolves with these awesome ceramic drinking horns. As the shop boasts, the mugs are sculptures you can drink from.

As you can see, the mug is made to rest in a slanted position, following the shape of the wolf’s head. It can hold 22oz. of liquid in this position and 32oz. when upright. The mug comes in matte, glossy and metallic finishes.

Warg into your browser and head to Etsy to order the mugs. They cost $50 (USD) to $54 each. Chischilly Pottery also has other mug designs, including dragons and horses.

[via Geek Alerts]