Researchers reveal key obstacle slowing global technology rollout: 'Further progress is needed'
Sustainable Investment reported that America has made a sharp turn in its energy policy. Where the previous administration held back on liquefied natural gas out of concern for the environment, President Donald Trump is moving forward with LNG terminals, as well as doubling down on domestic oil.
The Federal Reserve has left the Network for the Greening of the Financial System, and investors are withdrawing from other climate alliances.
Graham Steele, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions with the U.S. Treasury, said the Federal Reserve's withdrawal was a "response to short-term political considerations," Sustainable Investment reported.
By contrast, investors and governments in Europe and Asia are still heavily interested in reducing heat-trapping air pollution and other forms of environmental damage.
Sustainable Investment cited fund manager Fidelity International's study, the "Professional Investor DNA Survey," which revealed that out of over 120 institutional investors, 63% listed the environment as their top priority — specifically the reduction of heat-trapping carbon pollution, energy system transformation, and the conservation of natural resources.
"Our study shows that ESG is still on the minds of investors," said Jenn-Hui Tan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Fidelity International, per Sustainable Investment. "Even though ESG investments are now integrated into asset allocation, further progress is needed to reduce implementation barriers."
Further research by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin identified America's retreat on this issue as an opportunity for the German clean energy sector to step up and strengthen the domestic market, Sustainable Investment revealed. Other European and Asian countries could do the same, benefitting their economies and the world.
Do you think America has a plastic waste problem?
Definitely
Only in some areas
Not really
I'm not sure
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Palantir, Oracle Stock Falls as Fed Jitters Shake AI Software Stocks
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Aug 19 - Enterprise software stocks traded weaker on Tuesday as investors awaited clarity from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's upcoming remarks at the Jackson Hole economic symposium. Market participants remain cautious about whether the central bank will signal rate cuts or keep policy tight. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Signs with NVDA. Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR) slid more than 9%, while Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) lost over 5%. Both names have benefited this year from investor interest in artificial intelligence, with Palantir up more than 116% year-to-date and Oracle advancing more than 44%. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), another AI beneficiary, moved lower by about 1%. Its market value now stands at roughly $3.8 trillion, ranking it as the second most valuable U.S. company behind Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) bucked the broader decline, rising 0.5% after unveiling an AI-powered version of Acrobat Studio. The new platform integrates with Adobe Express Premium and includes Firefly-based tools such as text-to-video and text-to-image features. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump has pledged to ‘lead a movement to get rid of' voting by mail. Will Utah be a target?
Eva Przybyla, front, and Nicholas Wells process ballots at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) President Donald Trump this week vowed to 'lead a movement to get rid of' voting by mail ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 'WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,' the president said in a post on Truth Social Monday. Trump, who has long opposed voting by mail, continued to claim, without evidence, that it's fraught with fraud. Utah has been the only red state among eight that have conducted universal by-mail elections, including six Democratic strongholds and one swing state — a fact that some conservatives here have balked at, while others have defended the state's by-mail system as a popular, convenient and safe voting method. After Trump's post, Utah's top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, issued a short statement on social media without addressing the president directly. Utah Legislature approves bill to require voter ID, phase out automatic voting by mail by 2029 'The constitutional right of individual states to choose the manner in which they conduct secure elections is a fundamental strength of our system,' Henderson said. The president, however, asserted that states should do what the federal government wants. 'Remember, the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,' Trump said. 'They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.' Another high-ranking Republican and member of GOP legislative leadership — Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork — disagrees. McKell told Utah News Dispatch in an interview Tuesday that, like Henderson said, states have the right to choose how to administer their elections, and that he'd push back on an effort to completely undo voting by mail. 'In Utah, we're in a good place. I think there's strong support for vote by mail. There's also strong support for security,' McKell said. He added that's 'the needle we tried to thread' earlier this year when the 2025 Utah Legislature passed a bill that he sponsored to require voter ID and eventually phase out automatic voting by mail in this state by 2026. The aim of that bill, he said, was to preserve voting by mail as an option for Utah voters while also adding a new layer of security. Even though local polls have shown a vast majority of Utahns remain confident in their elections, Gallup polling shows trust nationally has decreased especially among a faction of Republican voters since 2006 as elections have become more polarized. After Trump lost the 2020 election, he ramped up rhetoric to cast doubt on election security and voting by mail. Asked about Trump's comments this week, McKell reiterated it's a matter of states rights. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'It is a federalism issue,' he said. 'If it's not enumerated in the (U.S.) Constitution, it's reserved for the states. That's article 10. I think states have the right to dictate how they run their elections.' McKell also defended Utah's track record as a state that has used voting by mail for years, starting with optional pilot programs that counties opted into before moving to universal voting by mail. 'In the state of Utah, Republicans have done really well with vote by mail. We elect Republicans,' he said, also noting that Trump in 2024 won the red state handily. 'There's generally broad support for vote by mail, especially among rural voters and elderly voters in Utah.' He added that 'it's OK if there's some tension between the federal government and state government,' but he argued the Constitution clearly reserves elections for states to control and administer. Pressed on how he'd respond to pressure from the Trump administration to get rid of voting by mail, McKell said, 'I would resist a movement that didn't originate in the state,' adding that he responds to his constituents, not the federal government. 'If there's a movement to change vote by mail, it needs to come from — it must come from — the state,' he said. 'It's a state issue. The states need to be in control of their own elections. Right now, I don't feel like there's a reason to eliminate vote by mail. I think we do a good job.' Utah election audit finds no 'significant fraud,' but raises concern over voter roll maintenance Not all Republicans in Utah embrace voting by mail, however, Earlier this year, McKell's bill was the result of a compromise between the House and Senate to more drastically restrict the state's universal vote-by-mail system. Asked whether Trump's comments could further inflame skepticism around the security of voting by mail in Utah, McKell said it's nothing new. 'We saw these comments before, and even going into the last legislative session, there were folks that opposed vote by mail.' But McKell said multiple state audits 'have shown that our elections are safe and secure,' while legislators have also made efforts to continually improve the system where issues have cropped up, like in voter roll maintenance. It remains to be seen whether Trump's comments could fan some Republican lawmakers' appetite to go after voting by mail during their next general session in January, but McKell said typically every year there's a slew of election bills for legislators to sort through. Asked whether he plans to make any tweaks to his 2025 bill, McKell said he's still talking with clerks about any possible changes. 'I feel like we did strike a really appropriate balance, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at ways to make it better,' he said, adding that he doesn't have any specific proposals yet, 'but that could change as we get closer to the legislative session.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
USA Today
23 minutes ago
- USA Today
What six wars did Donald Trump end? See the list of conflicts he claims as settled
As President Donald Trump continues to work toward peace between Russia and Ukraine, he is touting a record of settling six wars. "I've settled 6 Wars in 6 months, one of them a possible Nuclear disaster," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 18, before the meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House where he made a similar claim. "I know exactly what I'm doing, and I don't need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them," the social meda comment continued. But did Trump really end six wars in six months? Here is what we know: More: Trump caught on hot mic talking to Macron: 'I think he wants to make a deal for me' Has Trump ended six wars? Since Trump took office, the United States has been involved in five ceasefires or peace agreements, though not all parties involved credit the U.S. for the agreements. Those include: When asked about the sixth war Trump was referring to, the White House also cited Ethiopia and Egypt. However, there has neither been a war or a peace agreement between the countries, according to Axios. Trump dealt with a dispute between the two countries in his first term as they were feuding over a huge hydropowerdam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt and Sudan have expressed concern that water flow to their part of the Nile River would be impacted, USA TODAY previously reported. Trump mentioned the countries in a July meeting with the NATO Secretary General where he rattled off other examples of settling wars. "We worked on Egypt with a next-door neighbor who is a good neighbor," he said. "They're friends of mine, but they happened to build a dam, which closed up water going into a thing called the Nile. I think if I'm Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile and we're working on that." The White House did not answer follow-up questions on how this constitutes a "settled war." More: A Nobel Peace Prize for Trump? World leaders are lining up What happened at the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump? Zelenskyy's August trip to the White House had far fewer fireworks than the February visit, when he was berated by Trump and Vice President JD Vance. In addition to Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also attended the summit on Aug. 18. Zelenskyy, wearing a black suit instead of the military garb that drew comments in February, met with Trump in the Oval Office ahead of the wider group of foreign leaders. He also thanked Trump, something Vance had criticized Zelenskyy of not doing during the previous Oval Office spat. Trump then met with the European leaders in the White House East Room, saying they would know 'in a week or two weeks' if a deal to stop the fighting is possible. After the day of meetings with the European leaders, Trump called Putin to urge him to meet with Zelenskyy. Trump deemed it a step in the right direction. "Everyone is very happy about the possibility of PEACE for Russia/Ukraine. At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy," he wrote on Truth Social. "After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years." Although the meeting showed strong European unity, it was unclear whether major progress toward peace was made. Trump said the United States would help guarantee Ukraine's security in a deal, but did not clarify the extent of the commitment. He also appeared to dismiss the need for a ceasefire ahead of peace negotiations. Contributing: Joey Garrison, Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Bart Jansen, Zac Anderson, Francesca Chambers, Josh Meyer, Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
