The store that sells every home good under the sun now also sells solar panels.
The company announced on Monday that it will sell and install solar panels in the United Kingdom.
Three stores, in Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, will act as a U.K. pilot for the company’s new “solar shops,” where the panels will be sold. Customers across the pond can also order and get a cost estimate of the panels online, and Ikea hopes to have solar shops in all of its U.K. stores by the end of the summer.
The announcement coincided with research conducted by Ikea that found that 33 percent of U.K. homeowners would like to invest in home solar panels as a way to help cut their electricity bills. According to the release, the same study says that customers could save up to 50 percent on their electricity bills with the solar panels.
ASSOCIATED PRESSIkea uses solar power in its stores. In this photo, Joseph Roth checks the installation of South Florida’s largest solar panel array atop the future IKEA store in Miami.
The Guardian reports that Ikea U.K. has made the move to sell the panels even after solar installations experienced a recent decline due to the government cutting subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by a whopping 65 percent. That cut was made just days after the U.K. agreed to help the nation quickly shift to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris in late 2015.
This is Ikea U.K.’s second attempt at selling solar panels. The company had a two-year agreement with the Chinese company, Hanergy, but their partnership ended last year. Ikea UK is now working with the London-based company, SolarCentury, which will provide more efficient panels with a better aesthetic.
“At Ikea we believe that renewable energy is undoubtedly the power of the future,” Joanna Yarrow, head of sustainability at Ikea UK and Ireland said in the announcement. “We’re already using solar power across our operations, and it’s exciting to be able to help households tap into this wonderful source of clean energy.”
By now, the message of the food movement has rung loud and clear -- eat your vegetables, eat local and get to know your local farmers.
Largely left out of those conversations are many of the workers employed by those local farmers who are responsible for picking or producing those locally-farmed goodies.
There’s a lot to talk about on the subject. Farmworkers in the U.S. earn extremely low wages -- an average annual individual income of $12,500 to $14,999, according to the Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey. Most lack health insurance and many work long hours -- more than half of NAWS respondents report working more than 40 hours a week.
Working and housing conditions are also often abysmal, but many farmworkers, most of whom are migrant workers born in Mexico, press on for fear of what might happen to them otherwise -- violence, losing their job, losing their home or worse. As Florida tomato picker Leonel Perez explained through a translator to HuffPost Live in 2013, “Everyone has found a way to make it work, to make it survive.”
Today, a growing group of workers are pushing back and successfully transforming ways of life that some have equated to modern-day slavery. An organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, of which Perez is now a staffer, has fought for better pay and conditions for tomato pickers in Florida and has created a model that is beginning to improve the lives of farmworkers in other parts of the country as well.
After many years of work, the coalition has to date won agreements with 14 major food retailers, including Whole Foods, Walmart, McDonald’s and Subway, to only work with tomato suppliers who participate in and meet the requirements outlined by the organization’s Fair Food Program.
That means better pay for workers -- thanks largely to the penny-per-pound premium paid by participating buyers. Among the program's other requirements is a zero-tolerance policy on forced labor, child labor, violence and sexual assault, required access to the education sessions led by CIW organizers so that workers can better understand their rights, as well as a third-party complaint resolution mechanism and ongoing audits to ensure compliance.
All the changes have made a big difference for the workers over the four growing seasons they’ve been in effect, according to CIW organizer Gerardo Reyes Chávez. All told, 90 percent of the tomato farms in Florida are now participating in the program and annual pay for pickers at participating growers is about $17,000.
“[It’s] because workers are at the center of it,” Reyes told The Huffington Post. “We are empowered to use the complaint system to report anything we identify in the fields, any abuse or situations that need to be fixed, and we’re protected when we do that.”
The program has also expanded to include tomato growers in six other states -- Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. And the workers’ stories have inspired actress Eva Longoria to produce a documentary, plus accolades from former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and one presidential hopeful -- a recent Bernie Sanders campaign ad featured the program.
Margaret Gray, author of the 2014 book Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic and a political science professor at Adelphi University, argues that the corporate buyers at the heart of the program are also key to the model’s chances at being applied to workers in other industries.
“The [Florida campaign] was able to go after these corporate giants and try and get them on board after they spent years and years trying to do something directly with the farmers,” Gray said. “This seems to be the sort of model that’s going forward.”
That’s already happening. Beginning this growing season, bell pepper and strawberry growers in Florida are adapting the CIW’s model, as are dairy workers in Vermont.
In 2014, the Burlington-based nonprofit Migrant Justice launched its Milk With Dignity campaign and named Ben & Jerry’s as its first corporate target.
It didn’t take long for the company to join the campaign: it signed an intention to implement the program throughout its northeast supply chain last year. And while negotiations are ongoing, organizers are optimistic those talks will come to a successful close soon.
According to Abel Luna, an education coordinator with Migrant Justice, the issues facing dairy workers in Vermont are similar to those of the Florida tomato pickers -- long days, low wages and little time off.
“You have no idea and have no control over your life,” Luna told HuffPost. “You’re dependent on other people to tell you everything."
Toby Talbot/Associated PressVermont nonprofit Migrant Justice is helping secure better wages and working conditions for dairy workers.
Luna says the campaign is changing all of that.
“From the first day, you feel the difference,” Luna added. “You will be educated about what your rights and benefits as workers will be and you’ll be educated on how to access this third-party mechanism to enforce your rights if there is a violation. You feel valued as a worker.”
Making improved wages and conditions the new normal for U.S. farmworkers could prove a challenge, and consumers will need to be on board.
Increased prices won't be as much of a factor as you might think. All this comes at no or little cost to the consumer, regardless of whether participating retailers eat the additional cost of higher pay or not. As research from the University of California-Davis labor economist Philip Martin has shown, because the average household spends so little on produce, even a 40-percent increase in average farmworker pay would mean about $15 a year in increased spending.
Whole Foods has not increased the retail price for tomatoes as a result of its participation in the Fair Food Program, according to National Geographic.
While many consumers are increasingly aware of their food's impact on the environment and animal welfare, Gray suspects that some may be experiencing fatigue when it comes to considering worker concerns as well. That’s especially the case when their romanticized vision of modern-day farm life doesn’t include largely underpaid migrant workers facing harsh conditions.
“But when someone imagines what the local farmer and local farm look like, they’re just thinking about white people," Gray said. "I think these workers, in their imaginations, don’t really fit into the equation. It’s a real dissonance that’s difficult for people.”
Breaking through those preconceived notions could be difficult, especially as industry groups have fought campaigns like the CIW’s.
Still, the work continues. Once the Vermont workers’ deal with Ben & Jerry’s is complete, the Milk With Dignity campaign’s targets will turn to other corporate dairy buyers.
Back in Florida, the CIW’s campaign with tomato pickers is also ongoing.
In addition to monitoring for compliance among existing participants, their campaign is targeting major buyers like Wendy’s, Publix and Kroger that have thus far declined to take part in the Fair Food Program. In March, the organization launched a national boycott of Wendy’s.
It is not lost on Reyes and his colleagues that their work extends far beyond any particular corporation or industry, however.
“We’re not just challenging [Wendy’s, Kroger and Publix], we’re creating a blueprint that can be used for workers in other realities, too,” Reyes added.
This story is part of The Huffington Post’s ongoing Farming in America series. The series highlights the hopes and fears and the challenges and successes of U.S. farmers pushing beyond conventional boundaries. Contact us below if you wish to get involved.
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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.
Etsy has already offered flasks emblazoned with solar panels and canvas prints of photovoltaic equipment.
Now the artisanal goods marketplace is helping people get actual solar panels.
The site, which lets people buy and sell handcrafted home goods and other items, announced this week a pilot program to offer discounts to Etsy users in four states when they install solar panels on their homes. That could help offset the company's carbon footprint, 95 percent of which comes from shipping products.
The company is partnering with the solar energy marketplace Geostellar to measure the impact of each solar installation in terms of emissions reduction. Solar users can get discounts of up to $37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, one of the chief greenhouse gases warming the planet and causing the climate to change. Etsy expects its customers to receive a total average discount of $2,000.
Here's how it works, as explained in a joint press release from the companies:
When a new participant applies for the Etsy Solar pilot program, Geostellar will instantly and interactively tailor a solar energy installation and financing plan to meet the unique needs of each individual household. Geostellar will then provide a discount based on the potential contribution of the clean solar energy generation toward the comprehensive emissions reduction goals of the Etsy community. Etsy developed the process according to Gold Standard requirements to enable those reduction rights to be validated, verified and registered as carbon offsets.
Etsy said it hopes to expand the program over the next year or so. For now, the company is choosing its starter states strategically. Etsy is based in Brooklyn, so it wanted to make sure it started in New York. In Florida, where big utility companies in 2014 quashed state-issued solar incentives, Etsy said it felt it could help bolster the industry.
The company also chose West Virginia and Utah because of those states’ long histories with mining and other causes of pollution.
“We felt like we could have a larger climate impact by helping solar there,” Chelsea Mozen, Etsy's senior sustainability specialist for energy and carbon, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
In February, Etsy became the first U.S. company to be recertified as a benefit corporation, or B corp, by the nonprofit B Lab after going public. As part of the voluntary designation, the company must adhere to strict environmental standards.
"The bigger picture here is that we've been very outspoken about how social good and business can go hand-in-hand -- they're not at odds with each other," Mozen said. "A lot of people on both sides want to say 'If you do social good, then you don't care about profit.' We're really trying to hold them in equal balance. They don't have to be either/or."
Close to 10 million Americans suffer from chronic depression, bipolar disorder, or another serious mental illness. Depression alone is the leading cause of disability worldwide. In the United States, mental illness — including depression — takes an enormous toll on health outcomes, quality of life, and economic productivity.
Despite its importance, mental illness is often poorly understood and subject to misperceptions by the general population, government officials, and even those who suffer from mental illness. Partially as a consequence, just under one-third of individuals with serious mental illness — defined as diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorders that result in functional impairment — go untreated in the United States. In 2014, an estimated 44.7% of the 43.6 million adults with any mental illness, and 68.5% of the 9.8 million adults with serious mental illness received mental health services in the past year.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 12 states where the highest shares of the adult population suffers from serious mental illness.
Click here to see the 12 states struggling with mental illness.
Depression and mental disorders are treatable psychiatric illnesses. Therapy, as well as a huge amount of prescription drugs such as anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers are used to treat serious mental illnesses. Because of this, states with a high share of adults with serious mental illness also tend to have more drugs prescribed per capita. The number of these and other kinds of retail drugs prescribed exceeded the national average of 12.7 prescriptions per capita in all but four of these 12 states. In West Virginia and Kentucky, more than 20 drugs are prescribed per person each year.
While the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness do not necessarily have the nation’s highest poverty rates, mental illness is far more common among people living in poverty. Of adults living in poverty, 8.7% report serious psychological distress, in contrast with 1.2% of adults with incomes at least four times higher than the poverty level — around $50,000 — according to the CDC.
A number of socioeconomic factors are associated with mental illness, either as contributors or outcomes. People with mental illnesses are more likely than others to abuse alcohol or illicit drugs. Residents of states struggling the most with mental illness are not necessarily among the most likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. However, in the majority of states with the highest prevalence of serious mental illness, higher shares of adults report needing, but not receiving, treatment for drug use than the 2.2% national average.
States assign different levels of importance to mental illness. Budget allocation for mental health issues varies considerably between states. Only 12 states have increased their respective mental health authority’s budget in each of the past three years. Idaho is the only state with a disproportionately high share of mentally ill residents to have increased its mental health budget annually over this period. Meanwhile North Carolina, which is also home to one of the highest shares of mentally ill adults, is one of just three states to have reduced its mental health budget every year since 2013.
Several states with a relatively high share of adults with mental illness are implementing progressive policies to better address societal issues associated with mental illness. Indiana, for instance, implemented a policy last year requiring state police academies to provide a crisis intervention overview to all police trainees for emergency instances involving the mentally ill.
To determine the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the share of the adult population with a serious mental illness in each state based on surveys conducted between 2013 and 2014 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Serious mental illness is defined as “having, at any time during the past year, a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder that causes serious functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.” The prevalence of any mental illness, which serious mental disorders that may not have impaired life activities for example, also came from SAMHSA. The percentage of adults reporting at least one major depressive episode in the past year, the share of adults who had suicidal thoughts in the past year, and alcohol and illicit drug abuse rates also came from SAMHSA. Per capita drug prescription rates came from the Kaiser Family Foundation. State mental health legislation and spending was compiled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We also considered poverty rates, uninsured rates, and educational attainment rates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) as well as 2015 annual unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These are the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, according to 24/7 Wall St.
AP IMAGES FOR AMERICAN EXPRESS
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 361,000 (8th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.7% (20th lowest) > Poverty rate: 17.6% (13th highest)
Of North Carolina adults, an estimated 4.7% have a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder — that is, serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, and eating disorders. This is the 12th highest share of all states. Mental illness is associated in particular with thoughts of suicide. In North Carolina, 4.3% of adults reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the eighth highest percentage in the nation.
Like only two other states, North Carolina has cut mental health spending in the last three years. Last year, despite the governor’s proposed 4% mental health spending increase, the legislature cut the budget by $84 million, or 14%.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Raymond Boyd via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 237,000 (13th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (17th highest) > Poverty rate: 15.5% (24th highest)
In Indiana, 7.6% of adults reported having at least one major depressive episode last year, one of the largest shares in the country. Chronic and persistent depression that interferes with day-to-day functioning is one of several serious mental illnesses that an estimated 4.7% of adults in Indiana struggles with.
In light of the relative prevalence of mental illness in the state, Indiana increased its mental health authority’s budget in 2015. The same year, Senate Bill 380 directed the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to create a central resource for training, funding, and other technical assistance for crisis intervention teams across the state. The bill also requires state police academies to provide mental health crisis intervention overviews to all police trainees.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
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> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 97,000 (19th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.8% (3rd lowest) > Poverty rate: 12.8% (15th lowest)
Slightly more than one in every five adults in Utah are living with some form of mental illness, which includes serious mental illness as well as a range of other less severe disorders, a larger share than in all but four other states. The share of adults living with serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or chronic depression, at 4.8% is considerably higher than the 4.0% of American adults with such an illness.
Unlike some states, Utah is taking active measures to treat mental health issues. Last year, the state was applauded by NAMI for passing House Bill 209, requiring certain behavioral health specialists to complete additional suicide prevention training to renew their license to practice. Of Utah adults, an estimated 4.8% reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the highest percentage in the country.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Tim Graham via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 109,000 (21st lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.3% (10th lowest) > Poverty rate: 22.6% (the highest)
Psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among more financially well-off individuals. Financial distress may partially explain the relatively high prevalence of serious mental illness in Mississippi, where 22.6% of people live in poverty, the highest poverty rate in the nation. Furthermore, 4.8% of adults in Mississippi are estimated to have a serious, diagnosable mental illness, among the highest percentages nationwide.
In addition to therapy, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat serious mental illness. In Mississippi, 17.7 of these and other kinds of medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the fourth highest prescriptions per capita in the country.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 434,000 (5th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (18th highest) > Poverty rate: 15.9% (19th highest) Substance use is more common among those suffering from mental distress.
Substances such as tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are frequently used as self-medication. In Ohio, 9.3% of adults abuse or are dependent on alcohol or illicit drugs, higher than the 8.8% national substance abuse rate. Adults in the state are also more likely than most American adults to suffer from short-term episodes of major depression. Of Ohio adults, 7.2% reported suffering from at least one major depressive episode within the past year, the ninth highest share of any state. Along with substance abuse and depression, adults in the state are also more likely to suffer from serious mental illness than most Americans. In Ohio, 4.8% of adults are living with a serious mental illness, one of the largest such shares in the country.
With relative prevalence of mental illness, Ohio residents are some of the most medicated in the country. Each year, roughly 17.5 prescriptions are filled for every state resident, considerably more than the 12.7 prescriptions filled for every American annually.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 59,000 (12th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.1% (23rd highest) > Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)
In Idaho, 20.3% of adults have some sort of mental disorder, including serious mental illnesses as well as less severe mental disorders, one of the largest shares in the country and considerably more than the 17.8% share of American adults suffering from a mental illness. Of the state’s mentally ill residents, roughly 59,000 suffer from a serious mental illness — schizophrenia, severe depression, and other disorder that can cause severe functional impairment.
Perhaps because mental illness is more common in Idaho than in much of the rest of the country, the state is investing more in treatment programs. While many states are reducing funding for mental health services, Idaho’s Mental Health Services department’s budget has increased in each of the last three years, one of only 12 states to do so.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 230,000 (16th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.5% (18th lowest) > Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)
Nearly one in every 20 adults in Missouri report serious mental illness, which include a range of psychiatric ailments from schizophrenia to eating disorders. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and undertreated — even for those with health insurance. Some states have taken notable steps to address the issue. Missouri’s legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 145, an act mandating health care providers to cover eating disorders.
Like most states struggling the most with serious mental illness, Missourians are more likely than adults nationwide to report at least one depressive episode or thoughts of suicide within the past year.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 168,000 (21st highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.9% (5th lowest) > Poverty rate: 18.9% (5th highest)
Kentucky is home to a relatively high share of adults with a serious mental illness. Roughly 168,000 Kentucky adults have a diagnosable serious mental illness, 4.9% of the state’s adult population. By contrast, only 4.0% of American adults grapple with a serious mental illness. Since anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat mental illness, the relative prevalence of mental illness in Kentucky may explain the high level of drug prescriptions in the state. Each year, there are 22 of these and other kinds of prescriptions filled per state resident in a single year, the highest drug prescription rate in the country. Despite the relative prevalence of serious mental health issues, Kentucky has cut funding for its mental health department in each of the last two years.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
DANNY JOHNSTON/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.1% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 115,000 (22nd lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.7% (2nd lowest) > Poverty rate: 19.2% (4th highest)
In Arkansas, 7.1% of adults reported having a major depressive episode within the past year, and 4.5% reported having thoughts of suicide, each among the highest shares of any state in the country. Some of those reporting such incidents likely partially comprise the 5.1% of adults in the state with a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Like other states with high relative prevalence of mental illness, Arkansas is home to one of the most medicated populations in the country. There are 15.8 prescriptions filled per state resident annually, considerably more than the 12.7 per capita prescription drug rate nationally.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Beth J. Harpaz/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.2% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 56,000 (11th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.2% (8th lowest) > Poverty rate: 13.9% (22nd lowest)
Maine is one of only four states where an estimated more than one in every 20 adults suffer from serious mental illness. Accounting for less serious forms of psychiatric illness, more than one in every five adults report some form of mental illness, the seventh largest proportion in the country. Roughly 87,000 Maine adults reported at least one major depressive episode within the past year, or 8.1% of the population, the highest percentage of all states.
Residents of rural areas not only need to travel further to health facilities, but also they may be more vulnerable to social isolation — a major driver and component of a number of mental illnesses. High proportions of Mainers live in very rural areas, which may help partially explain the state’s high prevalence of serious mental illness.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.3% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 27,000 (5th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 10.1% (5th highest) > Poverty rate: 12.0% (13th lowest) Approximately 27,000
Vermonters are beset with serious mental illnesses, comprising 5.3% of the state’s adult population, the second highest percentage of all states. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and under-treated — even for those with health insurance. In Vermont, however, the legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 139, a law intended to improve access to and quality of mental health services. Health insurance coverage in the state, which at about 93% is nearly the highest in the nation, may in the future be more valuable to the mentally ill. The state also enacted a law in 2015 prohibiting some state residents from possessing firearms due to mental illness.
People with mental health disorders are more likely to abuse alcohol or other substances than individuals without serious mental illnesses. Of adults in Vermont, 10.1% report abusing or dependence on alcohol or illicit drugs, the fifth highest share nationwide.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.4% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 79,000 (15th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.2% (19th highest) > Poverty rate: 18.1 (10th highest)
Serious mental illness is treated with therapy, as well as with drugs such as anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers. In West Virginia, 21.8 medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the second highest per capita prescriptions in the country and significantly higher than the national level of 12.7 prescriptions per capita. The 9.2% share of West Virginia adults dependent on illicit drugs or reporting alcohol abuse within the past year, while slightly higher than the national prevalence, is not especially high. However, 2.6% of adults in the state report needing but not receiving treatment for illicit drug use, the fourth highest such percentage nationwide.
According to the CDC, psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among financially stable individuals. The typical West Virginia household earns $41,576 annually, nearly the lowest median household income in the nation. The poverty rate of 18.1% is also among the highest in the country. Such conditions may have contributed to the high prevalence of serious mental illness in the state.
American workers are feeling a lot better about their jobs.
Propelled by a stabilizing economy, employee satisfaction is at its highest level in more than a decade, according to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, an association of HR professionals.
Eighty-eight percent of the employees polled reported being satisfied overall with their jobs in 2015. Of them, 37 percent described themselves as “very satisfied,” and 51 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied.” Compare that to results from the organization's 2005 survey, which found just 77 percent of people were pleased with their jobs.
As you can see in the chart below, satisfaction took a hit between 2009 and 2013, the years following the recession. By now, though, people are feeling more confident about the job market, and workers who were unhappy and switched jobs five or six years ago have likely settled into their new roles, contributing to the higher satisfaction level, the SHRM researchers say.
SHRM
Age apparently has little to do with how much people enjoy their work. Millennials' satisfaction ranks about as high as that of older generations.
“Stop the stereotypes," SHRM researcher Christina Lee wrote in a paper released alongside the survey. "Although Millennials may have slightly different mindsets, on the whole, they tend to place significance on several of the same aspects of job satisfaction that Generation Xers and Baby Boomers do.”
Compensation remains highly important in how employees feel about their jobs, with 63 percent of those surveyed citing it as a contributor.
Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.
Yet compensation ranked only as the second-highest factor contributing to job satisfaction, per the new survey. Topping the list was “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels,” which 67 percent of respondents cited.
“The day-to-day experience is what governs their perspective on their work,” Evren Esen, director of survey programs at the Society for Human Resource Management, told The Huffington Post. “That’s where corporate culture comes into play. You want your supervisor to ask for your ideas.”
Workplaces that promote openness, community and equality are increasingly becoming the norm. While these are aspects valued by all employees, millennials in particular have helped to push that shift forward by being direct about what they expect from their employers.
“They see themselves as equal with who they work with in terms of expressing ideas,” Esen said of millennials. “In that way, by sharing their beliefs with the higher-ups, they are heard more than other generations.”
The expectation that employees are treated equally and fairly, in addition to things like having trustful leaders and transparent management, will only grow as millennials take over the workforce.
Take parental leave: Having a family and young children is hardly a new development, but millennial workers have been more vocal than their older counterparts about having decent company support when they have a newborn. Paid time off is gaining traction quickly, and more and more companies are now offering paid time off to new moms and dads.
“It’s just what they think is normal,” Esen added. “Millennials say, ‘It’s not that way? Why isn’t it that way?’”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a new idea he thinks could radically change public transportation.
The billionaire tech mogul said Thursday that he’s developing a new self-driving vehicle that could replace buses and help ease gridlock in cities, according to Bloomberg.
“We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations,” Musk said at a conference in Norway. “Autonomous vehicles are key,” he added.
For now, Musk is keeping mum about the project’s details. “I don’t want to talk too much about it,” he said. “I have to be careful what I say.”
Bobby Yip / Reuters
Despite the secrecy, Musk hinted that the new vehicle would provide better service than city buses because it would take riders to specific places, not bus stops. “There’s a new type of car or vehicle that would be great for that and that’ll actually take people to their final destination and not just the bus stop,” he said.
If that's true, the future of public transit might look something like a cross between a traditional bus service and Uber.
Self-driving buses aren’t a totally new idea. Several cities -- Lausanne, Switzerland, and Zhengzhou, China, for instance -- are experimenting with the technology. Earlier this year, the Dutch city of Wageningen performed the first test of a fully electric, driverless shuttle bus on a public road.
Electric buses, driverless and otherwise, are becoming increasingly popular. Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, is working to bring all-electric buses -- which run only on battery power -- to Seattle. And New Zealand plans to retrofit its entire bus fleet with electric engines.
Handout . / ReutersTesla' Model 3 electric car.
Musk is the brains, and the wallet, behind several other ambitious transportation projects.
In late march, Tesla debuted its $35,000 Model 3 electric car to much fanfare. Musk confirmed Thursday that the company has received nearly 400,000 preorders for the new vehicle.
He also designed an ultra-fast concept train called the Hyperloop, and his company SpaceX is planning several high-profile space missions.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it falsified fuel economy test data to make emissions levels look more favorable, and its shares slumped more than 15 percent, wiping $1.2 billion from its market value on Wednesday.
Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Japan's sixth-largest automaker by market value, bowed in apology at a news conference in Tokyo for what is the biggest scandal at Mitsubishi Motors since a defect cover-up over a decade ago.
Toru Hanai / ReutersThe scandal prompted Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Mitsubishi Motors, to bow in apology at a news conference in Tokyo.
Shares in the company closed down more than 15 percent at 733 yen, the stock's biggest one-day drop in almost 12 years.
In 2000, Mitsubishi Motors revealed that it covered up safety records and customer complaints. Four years later it admitted to broader problems going back decades. It was Japan's worst automotive recall scandal at the time.
The company said on Wednesday the test manipulation involved 625,000 vehicles produced since mid-2013. These include its eK mini-wagon as well as 468,000 similar cars it made for Nissan Motor.
It said it would stop making and selling those cars, and has set up an independent panel to investigate the issue.
Mitsubishi Motors sold just over 1 million cars last year.
Mitsubishi Motors is the first Japanese automaker to report misconduct involving fuel economy tests since Volkswagen was discovered last year to have cheated diesel emissions tests in the United States and elsewhere.
South Korean car makers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp in 2014 agreed to pay $350 million in penalties to the U.S. government for overstating their vehicles' fuel economy ratings. They also resolved claims from car owners.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Discount retailer Target Corp has started raising employee wages to a minimum of $10 an hour, its second hike in a year, pressured by a competitive job market and labor groups calling for higher wages at retail chains, sources said. Target management has informed store managers, who in turn have started informing employees about the wage hike and most employees who earn less than $10 per hour should see their base pay go up in May, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
The $1-per-hour raise marks the second time Target has followed Wal-Mart Stores Inc in raising base wages. It also comes as a union-led push for a $15 minimum wage, the so-called “Fight for Fifteen” movement, is gaining traction in cities across the country and even has become a topic in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders calling for a $15 “living wage.”
Target's decision reflects growing competition for workers in an increasingly strong labor market. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has fallen to its lowest point in 42-1/2-years, and the jobless rate is only 5.0 percent.
Target last raised its minimum pay rate in April 2015 to $9 an hour, up from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour at the time. The move last April matched a similar announcement by Wal-Mart. The world's largest retailer in February 2015 said it will lift its base pay to $10 an hour in 2016, a step it has implemented in recent weeks.
Target's plan will also raise pay for employees who already make over $10 an hour. Such workers will be entitled to an annual merit raise and a pay-grade hike, which is related to experience and position of the employee, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Target declined to confirm it is offering the pay increase. "We pay market competitive rates and regularly benchmark the marketplace to ensure that our compensation and benefits packages will help us to both recruit and retain great talent, Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said.
Snyder said the company does not disclose details of its compensation programs and declined to comment on how many of the retailer's roughly 341,000 employees at its nearly 1,800 stores would receive the raise.
The move to $10 an hour could put pressure on Target's earnings, especially at a time whenTarget is investing billions to upgrade its supply chain and technology infrastructure in order to tackle chronic stock shortages. Target also is pushing for higher online sales, which could potentially explain why it has lagged its larger rival in setting the lead on wage increases, analysts said.
"This move will make it difficult for Target to meet its aggressive profit projections," said Burt Flickinger, managing director of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group.
At its 2016 Analyst Day in March, Target said it expects annual gross margin rates around 30 percent.
Even before the wage hike, Barclays Capital Inc last month had downgraded the stock from 'overweight' to 'underweight.' At the time, Barclays analysts called the retailer's gross margin projections "optimistic" due to the threat of rising labor costs and other concerns.
Of the 26 analysts who cover the stock, 11 rate it a "buy," and 13 rate it a "hold," according to data from Thomson Reuters StarMine.
LABOR PROBLEMS
Target, which generally is considered to be a better employer due to its competitive wages and compensation-related benefits than many retail rivals, has in recent months seen a spate of labor-related issues.
Last September, Target lost a bid to prevent the formation of a micro-union by pharmacy workers in a New York store, which would have marked the first time Target employed unionized workers in one of its stores. Target later sold its pharmacy business to CVS Health Corp.
Then earlier this month, a Target group leader filed a lawsuit accusing the company of failing to pay overtime to workers with low-level management responsibilities at its warehouses in New York state.
Current and former employees contacted by Reuters this month said the retailer cut hours in an apparent effort to offset the impact of rising costs after it raised pay to $9 an hour last March.
Target's Snyder said the retailer has not changed how it approaches scheduling and hours in its stores.
A current part-time employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said she averaged about 25-26 hours every week before March 2015, but has progressively seen her hours cut. She now averages at about 18-19 hours per week.
(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by David Greising and Nick Zieminski)
The fast-food giant went below the belt in a stupidly saucy tweet Friday, then got chicken and took it down an hour later, Adweek reported.
Double entendres and obvious sexual imagery are usually a bad recipe for a family-friendly chain. But that didn't stop KFC in Australia from serving up this gem (as shared by a Twitter user): A guy looks suggestively at his crotch while a woman reaches over. The caption reads: "Something hot and spicy is coming soon."
KFC, if you are experiencing "hot and spicy" sensations in your genitals, I recommend you speak to a doctor pic.twitter.com/iGaYDdXTI0
— mat whitehead (@matwhi) April 14, 2016
Viewers, like this Twitter user, had buckets of fun clucking about KFC's marketing doofus-ness.
Wait, is KFC introducing jerk chicken? Was that the joke?
— barry (@barrysaunders) April 15, 2016
The brand quickly yanked its message and apologized. ...
We are very sorry for our earlier tweet on H&S - we didn’t mean to offend and removed it when we realised we’d made an error in judgment.
— KFC Australia (@KFCAustralia) April 15, 2016
"I applaud and salute u colonel," one Twitter user responded.
Soaring demand for the caffeinated brew could hasten destructive climate change by encouraging producers to chop down some of the last remaining tropical forests as they struggle to increase yields on existing farmland, according to a report released Thursday by the nonprofit Conservation International.
Coffee grows in tropical countries near the equator, such as Indonesia, Brazil and Uganda, where thick jungles rich with biodiversity provide fresh water and store tons of carbon. Farmers expand their fields by felling trees in these forests and burning the dense underbrush -- releasing that carbon into the atmosphere, where it traps other gases and warms the planet. As a result, deforestation is a twofold environmental catastrophe: Left intact, forests absorb many of the pollutants that cause global warming. Destroyed, they unleash even more emissions and speed up the pace of climate change.
Worse, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. As climate change worsens, the amount of existing farmland suitable for growing coffee shrinks.
The underlying market force in all this is the skyrocketing demand for coffee. Coffee growers may have to triple their production by 2050 to meet current demand forecasts, the report predicted. Coffee demand is expected to spike 25 percent in the next five years alone, according to a report last year by the industry group International Coffee Organization.
Consider the two maps below. The dark blue, red and yellow segments represent forested areas where certain types of coffee could be grown in Brazil in 2010.
Conservation InternationalDark green represents forests not suitable for growing coffee. Different colors represent areas where certain types of coffee, such as Arabica or Robusta, can be grown.
Now fast forward to the middle of the century. By 2050, much of the farmland where Arabica beans are produced, represented in light blue, is expected to recede. Farmland for Robusta, represented in light pink, nearly disappears.
Conservation InternationalQuite a change in just 40 years.
"Ideally, plant breeders will develop new varieties that are adapted to the harsher conditions of the future, while, simultaneously, improving productivity. That is a tall order, but not impossible," Tim Killeen, a lead author of the report, said in a statement. "If it doesn’t happen, then coffee production will shift to landscapes with conditions similar to today’s coffee growing areas.”
Tropical forests currently cover 60 percent of the land around the world that can be used for coffee production. By 2050, as much as 20 percent of the land suitable for growing coffee would fall within the boundaries of protected areas. That means farmers will either have to produce more with less land, or start clearing new lands on which to grow. Conservation International named the Andes, Central America and Southeast Asia as the regions of most concern.
There is a hope. Some of the world's biggest coffee sellers, such as Nestlé and Starbucks, have begun improving their supply chains to increase farmers' yields with more sustainable growing practices. But unless those efforts are stepped up, the quickened pace of deforestation and climate change may derail the progress already made.
"Unless we act now, the trend of coffee production towards full sustainability may well be reversed," Peter Seligmann, founder and CEO of Conservation International, said in a statement. "The good news is that we know from our experience working with Starbucks and others that we can put the right practices in place to grow coffee in a way that protects forests and farmers -- but we need to keep pushing these techniques on a global scale."
President Barack Obama came into office promising to curb some of the Wall Street excesses that led to the recession and trillions of dollars in taxpayer-backed bailouts.
But Obama's 2010 reform of financial regulations, known as Dodd-Frank, wasn't enough to satisfy everyone, including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). They said Obama's changes didn't go far enough to end the perception that giant banks such as JPMorgan Chase were too big to be allowed to fail.
The senators in 2013 pushed what they saw as a solution to the too-big-to-fail problem, but lost to Obama and the banks. Massive financial institutions remained too big and too risky, they said, and still posed an outsized threat to the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, the idea behind the senators' failed bill got a big boost from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, which jointly announced that seven of the nation’s eight giant banks had failed to convince at least one of the regulators that the companies could enter bankruptcy without endangering the U.S. financial system.
The regulators were basically saying banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America remain too big to fail.
“The goal to end too big to fail and protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts remains just that: only a goal,” said Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the FDIC.
The Obama administration, after having spent years claiming that no bank remains too big to fail, now finds itself facing calls to support additional restrictions on America’s banking behemoths -- and the possibility that, once again, Obama and his lieutenants could be fighting on the side of big banks against proposals meant to shrink them.
“For Wall Street reform to work, regulators and members of Congress must continue to focus on reining in the largest and riskiest Wall Street institutions,” Brown warned on Wednesday.
Three years ago this month, Brown tried to do just that.
His proposal with Vitter, dubbed the “Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act,” effectively imposed a tax on big banks for borrowing from financial markets to fuel their growth. It almost certainly would have forced companies such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup to break themselves into smaller units to avoid the proposal’s tough restrictions.
Some financial regulators supported the bill on the grounds that big banks that borrow excessively in order to make loans and buy securities present too much risk to the financial system. Those banks were so big that if they ever neared failure, taxpayers would have to give them bailouts, those regulators believed.
But the Obama administration and big banks were vehemently opposed. Administration officials were adamant that Dodd-Frank, which the White House called “Wall Street reform,” had forever killed too big to fail. “One of the main reasons the president put so much of his personal effort into passing Wall Street reform was to end too big to fail,” then-Obama adviser Gene Sperling said in March 2013.
To undermine Brown and Vitter, administration officials and big bank representatives launched separate campaigns to convince a skeptical public that the problem of too big to fail had already been solved.
Treasury Department officials repeatedly claimed Dodd-Frank, because of its restrictions on taxpayer-funded bailouts, ended too big to fail “as a matter of law.” And if doubts lingered by year’s end, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew suggested in a July 2013 speech that the administration was prepared to take additional actions.
Instead, Lew took a victory lap that December after Brown and Vitter’s bill died in the Senate, never receiving a vote.
Big banks that fought against the Senate proposal now face the possibility of having to contend with the very restrictions that Brown and Vitter included in their legislation.
“Today's announcement should remind us of the central role that the big banks played in the last crisis -- and it is a giant, flashing sign warning us about the central role they will play in the next crisis unless both Congress and our regulators show some backbone … and demand real changes at these banks,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “Our top regulators warned us about the danger of the biggest banks -- and we would be foolish to ignore their warnings.”
JPMorgan, BofA, Wells Fargo, State Street, and Bank of New York Mellon have until October to convince federal regulators that they could file for bankruptcy (should they near failure) without endangering the broader financial system. If they again are unsuccessful in making the case that they're not too big to fail, regulators can impose tougher requirements, such as restricting activities in certain financial markets, or forcing them to fund more of their loans and securities with equity from shareholders, rather than borrowed money.
Goldman Sachs failed to persuade the FDIC it could safely file for bankruptcy, and Morgan Stanley failed to convince the Fed. But because the two regulators didn’t jointly make that determination, Goldman and Morgan dodged the potential clampdown that the other five banks now face. Citigroup effectively passed regulators’ test, though its so-called resolution plan, or “living will,” had some shortcomings.
Citi’s success should give other banks some comfort that they, too, could meet regulators’ expectations. The banks said they're committed to addressing regulators' concerns.
“No financial company should be considered too big to fail,” said John Dearie, acting chief of the Financial Services Forum, a Washington trade group that represents chief executives of the nation’s largest financial institutions. “It is in the best interest of the industry that all large institutions have credible resolutions plans.”
Otherwise, the White House may once again have to come to the industry’s rescue.
“These regulatory assessments add yet more weight to the case for aggressive action to realize the promise made in the Dodd-Frank Act that ‘too big to fail’ will be ended,” the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform said.
After a frenzied week watching orders for its Model 3 soar, Tesla declared Thursday that electric cars have gone mainstream.
The electric car manufacturer has received more than 325,000 pre-orders for its first affordably priced sedan. At an average cost of $42,000 apiece after various options are priced in, that comes to nearly $14 billion in sales.
Tesla claimed that eye-popping total makes this "the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever."
"Most importantly," the company added, "we are all taking a huge step towards a better future by accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation."
"We want to thank everyone who has shown their faith in Tesla and the mission of electric vehicles. We would write more, but we need to get back to increasing our Model 3 production plans!"
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had offered a similar thought on Twitter last Friday, just after the Model 3 was released, when orders stood at around 200,000.
Definitely going to need to rethink production planning...
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2016
For perspective on just how much of a production increase that may be, Autoblog notes that Tesla delivered a total of just 50,000 vehicles in 2015.
“The pent-up demand is something that surprised me," DBL Partners Managing Director Nancy Pfund, whose venture capital firm invested in Tesla a decade ago, told The Huffington Post on Monday. "I knew it was big, but I had no idea how much of a market we were tapping into with the Model 3.”
This story was produced and originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A federal judge in West Virginia sentenced former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship to a year in prison on Wednesday for conspiring to commit mine safety violations at his company's Upper Big Branch mine during a period leading up to the explosion there that left 29 miners dead in 2010.
Blankenship was convicted of the misdemeanor charge in December, but the conviction was explicitly not linked to the Upper Big Branch disaster itself and Blankenship's attorney worked hard to ensure the accident was hardly mentioned during the trial. And that verdict was a disappointment to prosecutors; he was found not guilty of the more serious felony charges of making false statements to federal regulators in the aftermath of the blast in order to boost Massey's stock price. (Had he been convicted on all counts, he would have faced up to 30 years in prison.) The conspiracy conviction rested on evidence of Blankenship's domineering management style which emphasized profits over the federal mine safety laws designed to avert underground explosions:
[T]he attention to detail that made Blankenship such an effective bean counter may also be his undoing. He constantly monitored every inch of his operation and wrote memos instructing subordinates to move coal at all costs. "I could Krushchev you," he warned in a handwritten memo to one Massey official whose facilities Blankenship thought were underperforming. He called another mine manager "literally crazy" and "ridiculous" for devoting too many of his miners to safety projects. Despite repeated citations by the MSHA, Blankenship instructed Massey executives to postpone safety improvements: "We'll worry about ventilation or other issues at an appropriate time. Now is not the time." And this is only what investigators gleaned from the documents they could find: Hughie Stover, Blankenship's bodyguard and personal driver—and the head of security at Upper Big Branch—ordered a subordinate to destroy thousands of pages of documents, while the government's investigation was ongoing. (Stover was sentenced to three years in prison in 2012 for lying to federal investigators and attempting to destroy evidence.)
Before he stepped down as Massey's CEO in 2010, Blankenship had built the company into one of the largest coal producers in the United States, and become a polarizing figure in his home state, where he bankrolled the rise of Republican party, pushed climate denial, and crushed unions. For more on Blankenship, read my piece from the magazine on his rise and fall.
NEW YORK -- It's one thing to get people to care about the price of energy. It's quite another challenge to get them to care about the source of energy and its environmental impact.
But buying an electric car -- presumably, in part, to reduce one's carbon footprint -- may push people to think about where the electricity to power that vehicle comes from, according to one early investor in Tesla Motors.
"The electric vehicle is like a Trojan horse for energy literacy," Nancy Pfund, managing partner at the venture capital firm DBL Partners, said during a panel discussion at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in Manhattan on Monday morning.
Pfund said she noticed the possible linkage a decade ago, when DBL first invested in Tesla, which sells luxury electric cars, and its sister company, SolarCity, which markets solar power systems. Both are chaired by billionaire Elon Musk.
"In the early days of Tesla, early adopters would buy the Roadster or the Model S, and weeks later we'd see an uptick in solar adopters," she told The Huffington Post in an interview. "They're really examples of the connection between transportation and the green electrical grid."
The idea is that no one wants to go greener by buying a battery-powered electric vehicle only to charge it with electricity generated from burning coal or gas.
Most Americans buy electricity from utility companies that produce energy by burning fossil fuels or generate power from water flow, wind turbines or solar panels. A small but growing number of people generate power from rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines and then sell any excess energy to the utility companies. To really go green, people need batteries to store their own clean energy for later use.
If purchasing an electric car focuses the buyer on other ways to access cleaner energy and use it in lower quantities, that can work to improve the whole system.
"Anytime you get people to be more literate and understand where something is coming from, they have a voice," Pfund added. "And a more engaged and vocal population will demand more energy choices."
But the average American doesn't want to become the electrical equivalent of a calorie counter, methodically logging every watt sucked from a power outlet throughout the day.
Experts at the Bloomberg summit suggested that people also want technology that monitors how their homes use electricity throughout the day, and then reduces or retimes that usage to avoid waste, as automatically as possible.
"I don't think you want any more of a cognitive burden on anyone," Colin McKerracher, the lead advanced transportation analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost. "You want systems to create the optimal outcome without any additional cognitive burden."
Still, once there are affordable ways to get detailed information about energy use at home, Pfund said she expects people to start customizing the way they use power to meet their individual priorities.
For some, that already entails a high-end electric car.
"I believe just as personalization is a trend, with personalized radio and a personalized phone, there's a whole bunch of people who say, 'I want to be a good citizen of the planet, I don't want to pollute, but I want a great car,'" Pfund said. "Those people will drive this push."
Before Mark Bertolini became the chief executive of the country's biggest health insurer, before he was celebrated by business publications for being an "unconventional boss" who is "mindful of morality," before he overhauled his company to prioritize the wellness of his workers, he was a father watching his teenage son die.
It was 2001, and Bertolini's son Eric, who was then 16, was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. Bertolini, now the chief executive of Aetna, quit his job at insurance rival Cigna and moved into his son's hospital room in Boston to help manage his care.
Eric made a full recovery two years later, but was struck by complications and needed a kidney transplant.
Once again, Bertolini stepped in, donating one of his kidneys to his son.
Those experiences, coupled with a severe skiing accident he suffered in 2004, completely changed the way that Bertolini saw health and, by extension, health care.
"What I found very quickly in both his circumstance and mine was getting our lives back, becoming engaged and productive members of society, was something that the health care system cared very little about," Bertolini says in the sixth episode of "Pioneers," a new video series by The Huffington Post that profiles leaders in various industries who have redefined success by making it their mission to live more meaningful and less stressful lives.
Facing long-term disability and chronic pain after colliding with a tree, Bertolini turned to yoga and meditation. A recent study by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that participants who practiced mindfulness meditation experienced greater pain relief than those who received a placebo. Regular meditation and healthy amounts of sleep essentially work to drain out toxins -- such as molecules associated with the degeneration of brain cells -- that build up during waking hours.
"I still have my pain, but as we say in the meditative arena, in the mindfulness arena: 'I have pain, I'm aware of my pain, I am not my pain,'" Bertolini says. "I had to learn how to be more 'Zen' in the way I approached my daily life, and meditation was a way to learn how to do that."
That approach bled over into his work life, too. Under Bertolini's leadership, Aetna helped spearhead the movement in corporate culture to focus more on employee health -- as both a means of improving people's lives and a way of reducing health care costs. And perhaps most importantly, he addressed one of the biggest sources of stress for his workers: money.
Last year, Bertolini raised the minimum hourly base pay for all U.S. workers at Aetna to $16 after reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a best-selling 700-page book on income inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty.
"If people are too busy looking for food, if they're too busy stressing about whether or not they have enough money to pay for their health care, how can they possibly sleep?" Bertolini says.
Still, for wealthy executives, money shouldn't be everything in business, he says.
"We view stock price and compensation as ways of measuring the success of an organization, and I think, because of that, we have a very short-term view of how capitalism works," he says. "At Aetna, we actually say: 'You know what, we're here for the long run. Here are the fundamentals we're investing in, like we did with our employees.'"
To watch previous episodes of Pioneers, head here.
• Plaintiffs argue the federal agency overstepped its authority in approving the genetically modified fish. • Produced by AquaBounty Technologies, the salmon are engineered to grow twice as fast as wild species. • Critics worry engineered salmon could prove disastrous for wild salmon populations.
Nearly a dozen fishing and environmental groups have filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to block its recent approval of genetically modified salmon.
The plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice, argue that by green-lighting the first-ever genetically altered animal slated for human consumption, the FDA violated the law and ignored potential risks to wild salmon populations, the environment and fishing communities.
"That's one of the major risks here, is the escape of these fish into the wild," George Kimbrell, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety, told The Huffington Post. "It could be a final blow to our already imperiled salmon stocks."
Produced by Massachusetts-based company AquaBounty Technologies, the AquAdvantage Salmon is an Atlantic salmon engineered with genes from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a deep water ocean eelpout to grow twice as fast as its conventional counterpart.
Handout / ReutersAn AquAdvantage Salmon is pictured in this undated photo provided by AquaBounty Technologies.
The 64-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges whether the FDA has authority to regulate genetically modified animals as "animal drugs" under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It also argues the agency failed to protect the environment and consult wildlife agencies in its review process, as required by federal law, CFS said in a release.
"I think it's important to note that FDA has gone ahead with this approval over the objections of over 2 million Americans in the comment period," Kimbrell told HuffPost.
In its approval announcement in November, the FDA said it determined "food from AquAdvantage Salmon is as safe to eat and as nutritious as food from other non-GE Atlantic salmon and that there are no biologically relevant differences in the nutritional profile of AquAdvantage Salmon compared to that of other farm-raised Atlantic salmon."
FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnamn told HuffPost in an email that as a matter of policy, the federal agency does not comment on pending litigation.
SAUL LOEB via Getty ImagesFresh Atlantic salmon steaks and fillets at Eastern Market in Washington, D.C. in 2013.
The lawsuit is the latest development in an ongoing and heated debate over genetically modified organisms, their safety and whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled. While proponents say the technology allows agricultural farmers to be more efficient, opponents argue they result in heavy pesticide use and transgenic contamination.
In the case of its GE salmon, AquaBounty says the fish grows to market size using 25 percent less feed than any Atlantic salmon on the market today.
But if the engineered fish were to be released into the wild -- a risk AquaBounty says is eliminated by raising them on land and away from the ocean -- critics worry they might outcompete endangered wild salmon for food and introduce new diseases.
“Once they escape, you can’t put these transgenic fish back in the bag," Dune Lankard, a salmon fisherman and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska representative, said in a release. "They’re manufactured to outgrow wild salmon, and if they cross-breed, it could have irreversible impacts on the natural world. This kind of dangerous tinkering could easily morph into a disaster for wild salmon that will be impossible to undo."
Plaintiffs in the case include Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Golden Gate Salmon Association, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and others.
HAWTHORNE, Calif. -- Electric car manufacturer Tesla unveiled its latest electric car Thursday night -- the hotly anticipated, lower-cost Model 3 sedan.
The much-hyped public presentation of the mid-sized sedan at Tesla's design studio was a historic moment for both the electric car industry and for Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The Model 3, Tesla's fourth production car, is the first one that's aimed at the masses, with a starting price of $35,000. For Tesla, considered the Apple of the automotive industry, the Model 3 has the potential to be its iPhone -- a sexy, mass-market, consumer-priced machine that changes the game.
ASSOCIATED PRESSThis undated photo provided by Tesla Motors shows a silver Model 3 car. The promise of an affordable electric car from Tesla Motors had hundreds of people lining up to reserve one. At a starting price of $35,000 — before federal and state government incentives — the Model 3 is less than half the cost of Tesla's previous models.
If the car becomes as popular and successful as Musk hopes, Tesla stands to become a major consumer brand that helps shepherd the all-electric car era into the mainstream. Musk said at Thursday night's event that 115,000 Model 3s had been ordered in the previous 24 hours.
#TeslaModel3 ! pic.twitter.com/kXnLwO2Rnc
— Matt Ferner (@matthewferner) April 1, 2016
But it may be a bumpy road. The Koch brothers are planning a multimillion-dollar assault on electric vehicles, Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales model is prohibited in several states, automotive technology and trends are evolving rapidly and there is a possibility that tax incentives -- a key to electric car sales -- will drop by the time the first Model 3s ship in late 2017. The Model 3 isn't the first affordable all-electric vehicle on the market, and the competition is likely to intensify.
Musk said the Model 3 can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than six seconds and will have a range of at least 215 miles on a charge. The car will seat five adults comfortably and will have front and rear trunks, he said.
"Can you fit a seven-foot surfboard in a Model 3? Yes," said Musk.
A quick spin in a Model 3 with a Tesla driver showed the car to be blazingly fast with sporty handling. When the driver pressed the accelerator, the three passengers -- all journalists -- gasped and giggled.
The back seat was indeed comfortable for two, and had ample room for a third person.
Less than two hours after Musk took the wraps off the car, the number of orders topped 133,000.
133K reservations and counting #TeslaModel3 pic.twitter.com/bmfFedDsIi
— Matt Ferner (@matthewferner) April 1, 2016
UPDATE: April 1, 10:34 p.m. -- Musk reported 232,000 Model 3 orders had been placed.
