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Since the Trump administration first took office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has followed a similar formula for most of its posts on X, which are typically celebrating mass deportations, using dehumanizing language like criminal illegal aliens, and defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Recently, though, the account has taken a detour to post a different genre of content: aspirational pro-America artwork. On July 1, the DHS posted an image of a painting by the late Thomas Kinkade titled Morning Pledge, which shows a suburban neighborhood with a church and an American flag. Above it, the DHSs caption reads: Protect the Homeland. Then, on July 14, the DHS followed up with a piece by contemporary artist Morgan Weistling that depicted a family of early settlers in the American West. The painting, which shows two parents holding a newborn baby inside a covered wagon, is captioned: Remember your Homelands Heritage. New Life in a New Land Morgan Weistling. [Screenshot: DHS/X.com] Following the post, Weistling clarified that the DHS used his painting without permission, and that it invented an entirely new title for his work. But beyond ethical concerns about permission and copyright, the DHSs recent posts raise more pressing questions about what kind of America represents the organization’s concept of an ideal place to liveand who is included in that vision. Taken without permission After the DHS posted an image of his work, Weistling took to his official website, as well as to Facebook and Instagram, to set the record straight. (The Facebook and Instagram messages have since been deleted.) [Screenshot: Morgan Weistling/Facebook] So I was having a nice little vacation with my family when I get a message from a friend that the Department of Homeland Security has posted a painting of mine and its going viral, Weistling wrote on his Facebook page. As of this writing, the DHSs post has 19.1 million views and 34,000 likes. In a separate message on his website, Weistling added: They used a painting I did 5 years ago and re-titled it and posted it without my permission. It is a violation of my copyright on the painting. It was a surprise to me and I am trying to gather how this happened and what to do next. [Screenshot: morganweistling.com] According to Weistlings website, the painting used by the DHS is actually titled A Prayer for a New Liferather than the DHSs altered version of New Life in a New Land. This updated title, alongside the caption Remember your Homelands Heritage, places outsized emphasis on the land itself. Taken together with the paintings scene, the post seems to be skirting just around the edge of endorsing manifest destiny, or the assumption of American settlers inherent right to land in the West. Weistling did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for a comment. A Manifest Destiny aesthetic Since the Trump administration took office in January, the DHS’s X account has become an active forum for the agency to promote President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. In early July alone, the DHS has already posted several images callously shrugging off the human suffering caused by the president’s deportation policies, which, most recently, include a new detention center for migrants built in the Florida Everglades. One repost from the White Houses official account shows a cup of coffee with the phrase Fire up the deportation planes added atop the liquid. Another image shows a border patrol vehicle in the desert, facing a distant sunset. The caption in neon green and white boasts: ZERO Releases in June. Lowest Month of Illegal Alien Encounters EVER. And a third, in a near-parody of this administrations extreme stance on immigration, shows a mock poster of the film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial with the text: Even E.T. knew when it was time to GO HOME. Take control of your departure using the CBP Home App. Between these posts are countless images of Black and brown people arrested by ICE for alleged crimes. The pivot to posting Kinkade’s and Weistlings works might be tonally jarring, but it’s indicative of the broader message the DHS account is trying to send. Weistlings body of work is almost entirely concerned with early American settlerspresenting an uncomplicated view of Americas origins, with scenes featuring a family happily riding west in a stagecoach or a rancher diligently tending his herd. Its a perspective that does not appear to include reference to Indigenous people. Meanwhile, Kinkade, who became notable for commercializing his work in the 80s and 90s, catered specifically to a Christian middle-class audience (a community that he was later criticized for allegedly exploiting). An entire section of his studios website is dedicated to Patriotic Art, the bulk of which highlights iconography like the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and in one instance, Captain America. In Kinkades 2012 obituary in New York magazine, author Jerry Saltz wrote that the artist represented the epitome of sentimental, illustrational, conservative art. Both Weistling and Kinkade present an idyllic (and notably Eurocentric) portrayal of American societyone that, perhaps, evokes a fictional past thats implied by the phrase Make America Great Again. When the DHS urges its followers to Protect the Homeland, the question becomes: protect it for whom?
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E-Commerce
After two years of reducing its overall carbon footprint, Amazon now reports that its emissions increased in 2024. The companys surge in data center construction and electricity use to support an increased use of AI helped fuel that rise, as did expanded delivery operations. Amazons total carbon emissions in 2024 reached 68.25 million metric tons, according to the companys latest sustainability report. Thats a 6% increase from the year priorand a 33% increase from 2019, when the company launched its Climate Pledge commitment to reach net-zero emissions across its operations by 2040. Amazon breaks down its carbon footprint into direct emissions, indirect emissions from purchased electricity, and indirect emissions from other sources. All three of these categories saw an increase in 2024. Direct emissions, primarily from its delivery services, grew 6% compared to 2023; the company cites supply constraints for EVs and low-carbon fuels. Direct emissions in total account for 15.13 million metric tons of carbon. Indirect emissions from purchased energy grew 1%, in part due to the higher electricity usage required to support advanced technologies like AI, according to the report. These emissions account for the smallest slice of Amazons overall footprint at 2.8 million metric tons. Indirect emissions from other sources also grew 6%, and these emissions make up 74% of Amazons total carbon footprint. That increase was driven primarily from data center construction and fuel consumption by third-party delivery service providers, per the report, which states that the company is using generative AI in virtually every corner of its business. Amazon says it’s continuing to work toward its 2040 net-zero goal, and that its progress will not be linear. It also claims it continues to match 100% of its electricity consumed in data center regions with renewable energy sources. But Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an organization of workers at the tech giant pushing for more climate action, argues the numbers are misleading. The group says that in areas of the U.S. that are home to more than 70% of Amazon data centers, electricity comes primarily from gas or coal. Utility companies are also building out new fossil fuel infrastructure to support these data centers. To match its electricity consumption with renewables, Amazon uses mostly renewable energy creditswhich have faced criticisms of greenwashing. In some cases, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice says, the company has simply purchased the credit for existing renewables, which would have been used anyway. Bloomberg reported that if these credits werent counted, Amazons 2022 emissions would have actually been three times higher than what the company disclosed. Amazon isn’t the only tech company building out data centers to support AI. A Meta data center in Louisiana will require three new gas plants for power. Google’s 2023 emissions grew 13% compared to the year prior because of AI and data center growth. Microsoft’s emissions are up 23% since 2020 for the same reason. But Business Insider recently reported that Amazon’s data centers “are on pace to command the highest electricity demand” from all the tech companies it examined. Im frustrated that nobody talks about what AI is doing to the environment, an Amazon software engineer said in a statement from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. They want people to think that AI is this magical tool that lives in the cloud, but what they dont tell us is that AI literally uses coal and fracked gas for its power. Our CEOs want to dupe us into focusing on how efficient shiny new AI features are, as if we dont know well be killing the planet with the few hours were saving on code. And in a year, I might not even have a job.
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E-Commerce
These specialty-made purses double as a mobile DJ kit. That’s because Nik Bentel Studio‘s newest purse, called the Tati Fte Bag, is actually wearable tech. The bag comes in two models: The $350 Speaker Bag, which pairs with bluetooth, and the $400 Mixer Bag, which has four input channels and is compatible with CD players, computers, phones, and amps. The bags started as a thought experiment, Nik Bentel tells Fast Company. “What if your everyday bag looked and felt like a piece of audio gear?” [Photos: Nik Bentel Studio] The resulting bags have room to hold your phone, chapstick, and mints, but they also have about three hours of play time each. Made from an acrylic shell, the material was chosen because it “allowed us to fully lean into the language of tech objects,” Bentel says. “It has this glossy, rigid, futuristic feel that instantly evokes gadgetry and display cases.” [Photo: Nik Bentel Studio] This is a purse meant to look like a gadget, not the other way around. “We wanted the bags to feel like they were pulled directly from a DJ booth,” Bentel says. Using fabric or leather would have softened the concept too much while acrylic gave the bags a “clean, synthetic, almost sci-fi finish.” The biggest challenges were precision, since acrylic has to be cut perfectly, and scale. [Photo: Nik Bentel Studio] “We wanted them to feel bold and graphic, but still functional as bags,” he says. “And of course, getting the buttons, knobs, and laser-etched details just right took a lot of back-and-forth to make sure they captured that playful realism.” Bentel has made clever, whimsical bags before like one made out of electrical cords and another for a single slice of pizza. The Tati Fte Bag brings that same sense of humor to sound. The rise of digital music and streaming has put a premium on physical music experiences like LPs and helped bring back the turntable. A boom box that’s a purse takes that impulse and makes it wearable.
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E-Commerce
For years, Cynthia Robertson had a particular morning routine: Every day, she would display a flag on her front porch in Sulphur, Louisiana, the color of which corresponded to the current air quality. On one far end of the spectrum, a purple flag meant there was hazardous air filled with particulate matter, and everyones health effects were increased; on the other end, a green flag meant the air quality was satisfactory, with air pollution posing little or no risk. In between were red, orange, and yellow flags. Residents already know there’s pollution in their neighborhood, thanks primarily to the 16-plus industrial plants that surround their city. “We can smell it,” Robertson says. But the flags helped to quantify just how bad the air was on any particular day. Robertson is the executive director of Micah 6:8 Mission, an environmental nonprofit in Southwest Louisiana. The front porch where she would display flags was actually the nonprofits property, where theres also a community garden, an orchard, a pond, goats, chickens, and educational programs open to the community. Micah 6:8 Mission would also post a picture of the days flag, and the color chart explaining its meaning, to its Facebook pagedetails that helped residents gauge whether they should be spending time outdoors, or wait it out inside. “Particulate matter is a killer,” Robertson says, referring to particles that are 2.5 micrometers or less in size, and which can come from all sorts of pollution, from vehicle exhaust to burning fuels. “That tells you, ‘Don’t go out and garden this morning. Wait until the air calms down after the overnight releases from the plants. We didnt want to be the poster child for heres what happens if you defy the CAMRA law But last year, Robertson stopped displaying the flags and making those Facebook posts. In 2024, Louisiana passed a law (the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act, or CAMRA) that seems to prohibit community groups from using their own air sensors and sharing air quality dataparticularly if the data points to bad air qualityor risk hefty fines. Any sharing of such data has to include clear explanations, context, and all relevant uncertainties around the data, but community groups say the state hasnt made clear what that all means, exactly, or what they could do to make their air quality comments acceptable. CAMRA also prohibits groups from sharing information for the purposes of enforcement actions or to allege violations of clean air laws. Environmental lawyers say this means that sharing air monitoring data is allowed if it shows that the air quality is good, but that data can’t be shared if it shows the air quality is bad. Because there wasnt any clarity on what they considered [relevant uncertainties and so on], we said okay, we cant afford to run afoul of this, Robertson says. (Fines begin at $32,500 per day.) We didnt want to be the poster child for heres what happens if you defy the CAMRA law. That uncertainty, experts say, essentially means the law not only discourages air quality monitoring but also discourages community groups from talking about their own air quality dataconstraints that potentially run afoul of the First Amendment. Though the Louisiana law may be particularly strict, its not the only law that has recently been passed or considered by state legislatures around the publics ability to monitor and use air quality data. Thats a trend environmentalists find concerning as the Trump administration rolls back environmental protections, gives coal plants free rein to pollute, and restricts access to environmental data. The importance of low-cost community air monitoring Sulphur, Louisiana, sits downwind of petrochemical sites, and the region has experienced a disproportionate level of health impacts from pollution, including rates of cancer higher than the national average. Micah 6:8 Missions air quality alertsfirst, thanks to a low-cost sensor from air quality monitor startup PurpleAir, and then from a sensor the nonprofit received as part of an Environmental Protection Agency granthelped residents control their pollution exposure. People paid attention to the alerts: If the days flag was orange, Robertson says shed hear people say, Well, I guess Im not going to garden this morning. The EPA does have its own air quality monitors, but they dont give a full picture of air pollution. The EPAs monitors are expensive and there are only a few of them in any given city. That leaves bigs gaps in the data. What we know about air pollution, and particularly about air pollutants that vary in space and time, is that what people are actually exposed to doesn’t necessarily correspond with what’s measured at the EPA sensor, says Noelle Selin, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Air pollution can be an extremely local issue, differing from one city block to the next. The EPAs sensors may miss all the pollution from car exhaust happening on one particular traffic-heavy street, or all the downwind pollution from factories if the agencys monitor is placed upwind. Low-cost sensors like those from PurpleAirwhose sensors start at under $200, and which purports to have the worlds largest air quality datasethave helped fill some of those data gaps. The government network is monitoring background levels [of air pollution], says PurpleAir CEO Adrian Dybwad. Its not meant to tell you your kids school has wildfire smoke around it right now, or to bring your kids inside because the air quality is looking poor. PurpleAir can provide a more hyperlocal picture. Dybwad hears from users often about how they use PurpleAirs data: It helps parents manage their kids asthma by choosing when to let them play outside, and athletes use it to plan their exercise schedules. In one instance, in Arkansas, a mass of buried tree stumps caught fire, sending smoke up from the ground and out into the streets. No one was paying attention to that, Dybwad recalls hearing, until PurpleAir sensors near the site spurred local news coverage that led to an EPA response. Even scientists have come to rely on low-cost community air monitors. And though a low-cost sensor may come with a little less accuracy and a few more uncertainties than a $10,000 model, it still provides useful, real-time, and vital informationparticularly, Selin says, around pollution exposure for certain populations that aren’t well covered by EPA sensors. “No one is using PurpleAirs data to enforce regulations on polluters Micah 6:8 Mission is now part of a federal lawsuit, alongside six other community group, alleging that Louisianas CAMRA law violates their constitutional rightsprimarily, the right to free speech. That lawsuit was filed in May, and the lawyers involved expect a response to their complaint from the state this week. Community air monitoring has been growing across the country because people are simply more aware of bad air quality events, like intense wildfires or pollution that they can see or smell for themselves. It’s also grown thanks to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included $117 million in grants for community air pollution monitoring and supported the purchase of air quality sensors. The CAMRA law came about as a way to standardize such community programsand was backed by industrial groups like the Louisiana Chemical Association. Kentucky also passed a law this year preventing low-cost air sensors from being used as the basis for regulatory enforcement of environmental laws. Ohio considered legislation that would restrict community air monitoring data from being used for the enforcement of environmental laws, though that language was ultimately removed. And in West Virginia, proposed statutes would have restricted community air monitoring data from being used for fines or any regulatory- or rule-creation actions, though those statutes have so far failed. Dybwad warns that there have always been limitations on how people can use data from low-cost sensors like those from PurpleAir. For something like a court case, to enforce environmental regulations, or to take a polluter to task, you need certified data, he says, noting, Thats always been the case. No one is using PurpleAirs data to enforce regulations on polluters. The fight to keep monitoring the air So these bills may not materially change how individuals or community groups use low-cost sensors. But according to David Bookbinder, the director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Projectwhich, along with Public Citizen Litigation Group, filed that lawsuit on behalf of the community groupstheyre still part of a disconcerting trend. (The Environmental Integrity Project also publishes Oil & Gas Watch News, which has reported on this wave of bills.) That’s why we thought it was important to go challenge the Louisiana statute and say, You can’t tell people what they’re allowed to say, Bookbinder says. To him, the law is designed to discourage monitoring, and to absolutely gag people from talking about it. The fact that Trump is now president adds even more concern, Bookbinder says. Trump has already repeatedly rolled back environmental protections, including giving the worst-polluting coal power plants exemptions from toxic pollution limits. That individuals and community groups can access low-cost sensors to monitor whether the air theyre breathing is healthy is incredibly important, Bookbinder says, especially when the EPA is clearly going out of the business of protecting public health. Community air sensors have helped put pollution data into anyone’s hands, and any threat to that would hurt Americans. Selin, the MIT professor, doesn’t have specific knowledge of the Louisiana lawsuit, but she emphasizes how crucial such sensors are, saying, “It’s really important to encourage people to understand their environment and to democratize access to measurements and science.”
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E-Commerce
Imagine that you own a small, 20-acre farm in Californias Central Valley. You and your family have cultivated this land for decades, but drought, increasing costs, and decreasing water availability are making each year more difficult. Now imagine that a solar-electricity developer approaches you and presents three options: You can lease the developer 10 acres of otherwise productive cropland, on which the developer will build an array of solar panels and sell electricity to the local power company. You can select 1 or 2 acres of your land on which to build and operate your own solar array, using some electricity for your farm and selling the rest to the utility. Or you can keep going as you have been, hoping your farm can somehow survive. Thousands of farmers across the country, including in Californias Central Valley, are choosing one of the first two options. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that roughly 117,000 U.S. farm operations have some type of solar device. Our own work has identified more than 6,500 solar arrays currently located on U.S. farmland. Our study of nearly 1,000 solar arrays built on 10,000 acres of the Central Valley over the past two decades found that solar power and farming are complementing each other in farmers business operations. As a result, farmers are making and saving more money while using less waterhelping them keep their land and livelihood. A hotter, drier, and more built-up future Perhaps nowhere in the U.S. is farmland more valuable or more productive than Californias Central Valley. The region grows a vast array of crops, including nearly all of the nations production of almonds, olives, and sweet rice. Using less than 1% of all farmland in the country, the Central Valley supplies a quarter of the nations food, including 40% of its fruits, nuts, and other fresh foods. The food, fuel, and fiber that these farms produce are a bedrock of the nations economy, food system, and way of life. But decades of intense cultivation, urban development, and climate change are squeezing farmers. Water is limited, and getting more so: A state law passed in 2014 requires farmers to further reduce their water usage by the mid-2040s. The trade-offs of installing solar on agricultural land When the solar arrays we studied were installed, California state solar energy policy and incentives gave farm landowners new ways to diversify their income by either leasing their land for solar arrays or building their own. There was an obvious trade-off: Turning land used for crops to land used for solar usually means losing agricultural production. We estimated that over the 25-year life of the solar arrays, this land would have produced enough food to feed 86,000 people a year, assuming they eat 2,000 calories a day. There was an obvious benefit, too, of clean energy: These arrays produced enough renewable electricity to power 470,000 U.S. households every year. But the result we were hoping to identify and measure was the economic effect of shifting that land from agricultural farming to solar farming. We found that farmers who installed solar were dramatically better off than those who did not. They were better off in two ways, the first being financially. All the farmers, whether they owned their own arrays or leased their land to others, saved money on seeds, fertilizer, and other costs associated with growing and harvesting crops. They also earned money from leasing the land, offsetting farm energy bills, and selling their excess electricity. Farmers who owned their own arrays had to pay for the panels, equipment and installation, and maintenance. But even after covering those costs, their savings and earnings added up to $50,000 per acre of profits every year, 25 times the amount they would have earned by planting that acre. Farmers who leased their land made much less money but still avoided costs for irrigation water and operations on that part of their farm, gaining $1,100 per acre per yearwith no up-front costs. The farmers also conserved water, which in turn supported compliance with the states Sustainable Groundwater Management Act water use reduction requirements. Most of the solar arrays were installed on land that had previously been irrigated. We calculated that turning off irrigation on this land saved enough water every year to supply about 27 million people with drinking water or irrigate 7,500 acres of orchards. Following solar array installation, some farmers also followed surrounding land, perhaps enabled by the new stable income stream, which further reduced water use. Changes to food and energy production Farmers in the Central Valley and elsewhere are now cultivating both food and energy. This shift can offer long-term security for farmland owners, particularly for those who install and run their own arrays. Recent estimates suggest that converting between 1.1% and 2.4% of the countrys farmland to solar arrays would, along with other clean energy sources, generate enough electricity to eliminate the nations need for fossil fuel power plants. Though many crops are part of a global market that can adjust to changes in supply, losing this farmland could affect the availability of some crops. Fortunately, farmers and landowners are finding new ways to protect farmland and food security while supporting clean energy. One such approach is agrivoltaics, where farmers install solar designed for grazing livestock or growing crops beneath the panels. Solar can also be sited on less-productive farmland or on farmland that is used for biofuels rather than food production. Even in these areas, arrays can be designed and managed to benefit local agriculture and natural ecosystems. With thoughtful design, siting, and management, solar can give back to the land and the ecosystems it touches. Farms are much more than the land they occupy and the goods they produce. Farms are run by people with families, whose well-being depends on essential and variable resources such as water, fertilizer, fuel, electricity, and crop sales. Farmers often borrow money during the planting season in hopes of making enough at harvest time to pay off the debt and keep a little profit. Installing solar on their land can give farmers a diversified income, help them save water, and reduce the risk of bad years. That can make solar an asset to farming, not a threat to the food supply. Jacob Stid is a PhD student in hydrogeology at Michigan State University. Annick Anctil is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University. Anthony Kendall is a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Michigan State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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