 |
|
|
|||||
For brands, trying to reach Gen Z is hit or miss: New product launches can be lost to the ether just as easily as they can go viral. But failing to connect with the younger generation is no longer an option, and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine knows it. On June 18 at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Witherspoon announced that Hello Sunshine’s newest launcha Gen Z-focused platform called Sunniewill come to life via Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, a website, a virtual zine and in real life, including media content, events, and mentorship opportunities. Gen Z consumers, roughly between the ages of 13 and 28, have already shown interest in Hello Sunshine’s content, particularly thanks to projects like Daisy Jones & the Six and the Legally Blonde prequel, Elle. The idea for Sunnie first came during the company’s flagship live event, Shine Away, with organizers noticing attendees bringing their daughters along. With Hello Sunshine founded as a platform to fill in the white space of women representation in media, the team noticed a similar vacuum absent for the younger generation. “That piqued our curiosity. It’s like, what is this younger generation looking at differently and what do they need?” Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden tells Fast Company. “We’re bringing Sunnie to life very similarly to how we brought Hello Sunshine to lifein digital communities, in real life, and in real connections.” And while the overarching mission of Sunnie and Hello Sunshine align, targeting a particular demographic was a new challenge, in need of new approaches. To do so, the company put intentionality front and center, bringing research and real Gen Z voices to the table, and partnering with those who have it figured out. ‘Changing the way girls feel about themselves’ Founded in 2016, Hello Sunshine sold to Blackstone-backed Candle Media in 2021 for $900 million, Fast Company reported at the time. While the young company had only a handful of movies and TV series at that point, its projects were top drivers of user engagement on streaming platforms. Prior to launching Sunnie, the company partnered with YPulse, a marketing research and insights company focused on Gen Z and millennials, and mentorship platform tre, to better understand just what Gen Z is actually looking for in media. Surveying 1,000 teen girls aged 13 to 18, the study found that 76% of Gen Z believe that advertising does not reflect them, underscoring a clear gap between companies and young consumers. The study also explored what Gen Zers are actually looking for and the lasting impact that media can have. Finding that 7 in 10 young girls actively seek opportunities to connect and wish they had more community in their lives, Sunnie is focusing on fostering that community online, and in-person, with upcoming live events. “We had years of working with Gen Z, and then the research came back and told us what we had already learned from the Gen Z customer ourselves, but it’s validating,” says Maureen Polo, Hello Sunshine’s head of direct-to-consumer. The findings also reignited a sense of purpose for the ambitious initiative, revealing that 91% of respondents value brands that provide them with tools to express their individuality, and 63% seeing themselves as someone who can make a difference in the world. “It is proof that storytelling doesn’t just reflect culture, it actually helps build confidence, purpose, and possibility in girls,” Harden says. “What the research showed is if we do that well, we will play a part in changing the way girls feel about themselves and their confidence.” Bringing Gen Z into the equation At Sunnie, Gen Z is not left out of the conversation; they are leading it. A major insight from the study revealed that 87% of respondents believe brands should involve girls early in their design and planning processes. “It’s moving beyond representation and young women being better seen in their mediawhich they told us they weren’tbut moving from that to not just speaking to them, but actually cocreating with them,” Polo says. To do so, Sunnie and tre gathered a Gen Z advisory board of 22 girls and young women, providing insights on everything from programing and content to even the platform’s name. Additionally, Sunnie and Hello Sunshine’s programming aims to foster deeper relationships between Gen Z and their parents. While Hello Sunshine’s data showed Gen Z is its fastest growing digital audience, 52% of its base audience is mothers and caretakers of Gen Z girls, inspiring a multigenerational approach. “We reach these moms of young girls and moms of teenage girls,” Polo says. “We’re helping them understand this next generation as we’re learning about them, and we’re actually translating that back.” Partner with those who get it right In the spirit of cocreation, Sunnie not only tapped into Gen Z expertise, but also that of brands and institutions that have the Gen Z connection figured out, such as the makeup and skincare brand e.l.f. Beauty. “We started looking at the brands that are out in the world doing an amazing job talking to consumers, and in some cases, some of the world’s most powerful brands are actually product companies,” Polo says. “We started partnering really thoughtfully and strategically to talk to the next-generation audience with brands that we believe super serve them to learn together.” Kory Marchisotto, e.l.f Beauty’s CMO, says the secret to forging connections with consumers is simply listening and responding to their needs. “It’s very simple, and it’s called putting your ear to the ground and tuning the outfit,” Marchisotto says. “We don’t make this stuff up. They tell us, we listen, and we act on what we hear.” Inspired by e.l.f Beauty’s work, which includes activations on Roblox and Twitch, Sunnie aims to foster similarly meaningful connections. For instance, the beauty brand often follows up on popular requests left on social media, and talks directly with consumers. On a recent TikTok live, Marchisotto, who will be a Sunnie mentor as well, jumped on a popular trend of reusing the brand’s packaging to create a giant lip gloss, following the instruction of users who were tuned in. “We did it together,” she recalls. “And I asked them why the hell they were doing it. And at the end, I really understood whybecause there’s no distance between me and the community as the CMO. There’s no ivory tower.” Sunnie also partnered with other institutions, creating an ecosystem of mission-focused experts, including AnitaB.org, Child Mind Institute, Lyda Hill Philanthropies IF/HEN Initiative, Step Up, the Womens Sports Foundation, and Purdue University, harnessing their individual expertises for various projects. If Sunnie succeeds in its mission, its launch could provide other companies with a framework to connect more effectively with a younger generation of consumers. “It’s really listening with a scalpel,” Marchisotto says. “But more important than listening is acting on what you hear so that you can shape culture together.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Everyone whos ever talked to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other big-name chatbots recognizes how anodyne they can be. Because these conversational AIs creators stuff them with as much human-generated training content as possible, they dont end up sounding like anyone in particular. Insteadto borrow the title of a 1986 book by philosopher Thomas Nagelthey offer the view from nowhere. But what if you could train a bot by feeding it material youd created, reflecting your knowledge, way of thinking, and style of self-expression? Instead of sounding like nobody, it might sound like you, or at least a rough approximation thereof. Given enough training fodder and sufficiently advanced technology, such a bot could even be capable of serving as an automated extension of your own brain. Thats the idea motivating Delphi, an AI startup whose 14-person team is building a platform for what it calls digital minds. The 2-year-old company, which previously raised $2.7 million in seed funding, is announcing its $16 million Series A round, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Menlo Ventures, Anthropics Anthology Fund, Michael Ovitzs Crossbeam, and others. It will use the new infusion of cash to continue to build out its web-based tool kit, which already includes features for creating, refining, and monetizing digital minds. The creators currently using Delphi tend to be people with substantial existing followings theyve built up through websites, newsletters, podcasts, social-media accounts, speaking engagements, books, and other modes of communication. They include business-advice newsletter kingpin Lenny Rachitsky, wellness coach Koya Webb, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, sex therapist Vanessa Marin, motivational speaker Brian Tracy, financial adviser Codie Sanchez, bodybuilder-actor-governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, and many others. Its possible to chat with their digital minds via a texting-style typed session or a voice call; creators can also enabled video calls. Digital mind conversations can be in text form or via calls with simulated voices. [Image: Courtesy of Delphi] Despite the voice and video options, the core of the concept isnt about deepfaking how a creator looks and sounds. We’ve centered everything around the mind, Delphi cofounder and CEO Dara Ladjevardian told me during my recent visit to the companys San Francisco office. That doesn’t mean just capturing your expertise, but also capturing how you reason about things, he says. So you can give personalized advice, so we can be predictive of what you might say in new situations. Even if Delphis emphasis on the quality of the conversation over audiovisual razzmatazz helps it avoid a disconcerting uncanny valley effectWe’ve seen consumers don’t really care about the video, Ladjevardian saysits still a bit of a mind-bending proposition. Along with overcoming the obvious technical challenges of teaching AI to channel a specific person in a way thats trustworthy enough to actually be useful, Delphi will also need to get consumers comfortable with seeking advice from simulated versions of real experts. The Delphi site includes a browsable guide to digital minds dispensing advice of many kinds. [Image: Courtesy of Delphi] This, today, I think, to a lot of consumers just seems weird, says Sequoia partner Jess Lee, who led the firms investment in Delphi. We need to cross the chasm and there need to be more people using them. And I think that will come with new Delphi owners shipping and showcasing what it can do. Already, Delphi is helping early adopters scale up their ability to engage with audiences. We’ve always had a fundamental challenge, which is that more people want to ask me questions than I’m possibly able to get to in 10 lifetimes, let alone in the next year, says relationship and confidence coach Matthew Hussey. Last year, his company created Matthew AI, a Delphi digital mind trained on 17 years of his existing content. By calling it Matthew AI, he hoped to manage expectations about what it could and couldnt do. Even then, he wasnt sure how customers would respond. We sort of launched this squinting, bracing ourselves for a whole bunch of mixed reviews, Hussey told me. And it’s probably been one of the most well-reviewed things we’ve ever created. How to create a (digital) mind In Ladjevardians account, the Delphi story begins with a gift he received in 2014: a copy of Ray Kurzweils book How to Create a Mind. In it, the noted inventor and futurist explored the inner workings of the human brain and how they might be re-created in computer software. As it often does, Kurzweils own mind had raced ahead of what was possible at the time. But the forward-looking analysis resonated with Ladjevardian. He eventually started an AI company that let people shop by sending text messages, then quickly sold it. Entrepreneurship ran in Ladjevardians family: Decades earlier, his grandfather had been a successful businessman in Iran. After the 1979 revolution, he had to be smuggled out of the country, came to the U.S. with nothing, and was able to build a life, explains Ladjevardian, whod started his AI shopping company on his own, found life as a solo founder lonely, and craved wisdom from his grandfather. But a stroke had greatly limited the elder mans ability to communicate. Ladjevardians thoughts turned back to Kurzweils book. He talks about the mind being a hierarchy of pattern recognizers, Ladjevardian says. And when I was building thi first startup, I realized an LLM is pretty much a pattern recognizer. So I set out to create a digital mind for my grandpa and use it for advice. It was therapeutic. In November 2022, the experience of turning a memoir his grandfather had written into an interactive tool led him to start Delphi with Sam Spelsberg, a colleague from Miami-based OpenStore, where Ladjevardian had worked after selling his startup. Spelsberg is now Delphis CTO. Delphi creators can tweak their digital minds to be chatty or to the point, creative or all business. [Image: Courtesy of Delphi] Harnessing AI to preserve human insight for the ages remains part of the story at Delphi, whose website calls the service your path to digital immortality. But by applying the technology to the immediate needs of people who make a living as experts on various topics, the company gave itself a mission with a clearer business model. It offers free accounts trained on 100,000 words and limited to text chatting. Creators who pay $79, $399, or $2,499 per month get progressively richer access to features such as larger training sets, voice and video calling, analytics, setup help, and the ability to charge for sessions and keep 85% or more of the proceeds. (Delphi is already realizing revenue from its cut but doesnt disclose a specific figure.) Creators decide how much free access users get to their Delphi experience and when a paywall kicks in. As Sequoias Lee points out, there are additional ways digital minds can bolster a business, such as upselling products and providing customer support: I talked to a clinician who runs a nutrition program and uses it to train other nutritionists on his program, she says. Delphi responses can include citations linking back to relevant material such as articles and podcasts. [Image: Courtesy of Delphi] In my unscientific experiments chatting with a few digital minds, I learned not to expect too much from the technology in its current state. Maybe it will someday pass a sort of specialized Turing test where youre unsure if youre talking to Lenny Rachitsky or his synthetic doppelgänger. For now, however, Delphi Lennys auto-generated observations are rife with telltale evidence of their artificiality, such as a tendency to repeat the same phrases. Still, the tips it gave me on how cash-strapped startups can hire the best talent seemed solid and included links back to Real Lennys Substack and podcasts. According to Ladjevardian, Rachitsky uses his Delphi to help shape his writing: People can ask him follow-up questions when they read a blog, and he can look at analytics to see what’s resonating and use that for ideas for future content strategy. Even if todays digital minds do churn out responses that feel, well, digital, the originating humans viewpoint can come through. When I asked the digital version of investor Keith Rabois about the ideal place to start a company, it was as blunt and opinionated as the real thing: Miami offers a pro-business environment, a growing talent pool, and a lifestyle that attracts top-tier people. . . . San Francisco, on the other hand, is a disaster. Its unsafe, overregulated, and culturally toxic. ChatGPT would never put it quite that way. (For the record, Delphi itself relocated from Miami to its current digs in San Franciscos Jackson Square neighborhood: If you want to attract the best engineers, youve got to be in San Francisco, Ladjevardian says.) Then theres another digital mind whose answers I found of particular interest. Before I met with Ladjevardian, hed trained one based on my large archive of published writing for demo purposes. I later supplemented it with additional content until it drew on more than 5,000 itemsarticles, podcasts, tweets, and more. Placing a voice call to a simulated version of yourself speaking in a synthesized version of your own voice is a surreal exercise, but my biggest takeaway was that tech journalism is not the best source material for Delphi in its current form. In most cases, articles I wrote years ago about now-obsolete products are of limited training value today. And Delphi didnt yet know my take on matters of the moment such as Apples upcoming VisionOS 26. My conversations with my digital self left me with a greater appreciation for why the experts featured on Delphis site tend to focus on topics with longer shelf lives, from leadership to sex. Please dont call them clones In a world full of tech companies whose self-professed aspiration to create AI thats smarter than any human, theres something reassuringly down-to-earth about Delphis short-term goal of helping specific humans boil down what they know into a monetizable product. Yet the startups work to imbue AI with human-like traits is inherently fraught. When other companies are in the news for attempting to humanize AI, its often in a negative light, for reasons ranging from the silly (the failure of Metas terrible celebrity chatbots) to the tragic (lawsuits resulting from teens developing an unhealthy relationship with Character.ai). Details as mundane as terminology matter. Originally, Delphi referred to its AI conversationalists as clones, but that sounds a little dystopian when you hear it at first, says Lee. It seems like a facsimile of a person. That’s not really what you’re doing. You’re just taking someones existing expertise, their blog posts, their tweets, and you’re making it conversational. A Delphi-Sequoia brainstorming session led to the digital mind term, which Lee finds somehow much more accessible. That said, when I spoke with Ladjevardia, he was still getting used to the switch and referred to clones a few times before correcting himself. Even with Delphis emphasis on practical advice and downplaying of fancy visuals, a lot could go wrong. Ladjevardian says the service doesnt let anyone generate digital versions of other people and is manually vetting users by making them upload photos of themselves holding an ID. (It has, however, resuscitated some long-deceased philosophers and other notable figures; I chatted with one former president of the U.S. whose greetingHi, I’m Abraham Lincoln. How can I help?was a touch out of character, though he sounded more Lincolnesque in the conversation that followed.) The company also has guardrails in place to prevent inappropriate answers: When I asked physician Mark Hymans digital mind questions involving my own health, it did not attempt to answer them and instead recommended that I see a healthcare provider. Ladjevardian, who volunteers that his project to build a bot based on his grandfather got him canceled on Twitter, understands the need to acclimate people to what Delphi is doing. Some companies that have unsuccessfully pursued vaguely similar ideas were founded by AI researchers who were way too focused on the technology, he says. And this is a very human company. I’ve had people cry to me after creating their digital mind. As the startup sees where its product can go, creating experiences that can bring people to tears will be optional. Engendering confidenceeven among those prone to skepticism about AIwont be. Ladjevardians bet: The fact that garden-variety LLMs have left us awash in information and advice of questionable provenance makes Delphis association with specific human experts only more powerful. Whenever there’s an era of abundance, the pendulum swings and people want curation and trust, he argues. Even the brightest of digital minds might have trouble foreseeing whether that theory will indeed play out to the companys advantage.
Category:
E-Commerce
When a viral Reddit post revealed that ChatGPT cured a five-year medical mystery in seconds, even LinkedIns Reid Hoffman took notice. Now, OpenAIs Sam Altman says GenZ and Millennials are treating AI chatbots as life advisors. The next step? Always-on AI agents tailored to your health, career, finances, and relationships, a future where personalized AI assistants could redefine how we seek information, leaving traditional search engines in the dust. A 60-Second Fix That Went Viral Five years of chronic jaw pain. Multiple doctors, MRIs, and specialistsand still no answers. That was the plight of one Reddit user suffering a persistent jaw clicking (likely from an old boxing injury). In desperation, he turned to an unlikely last resort: an AI chatbot. He typed his symptoms into ChatGPT and waited for the bots opinion. The response was shockingly on-point. ChatGPT suggested the users jaw disc was slightly displaced but movable, and walked him through a simple mouth exercise to reset it. I followed the instructions for maybe a minute max and suddenly no click, the user reported. After five years of just living with it, this AI gave me a fix in a minute. Unreal. The anecdote might sound like sci-fi wishful thinking, but it quickly went viral across social media. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman highlighted the story, marveling at how an AI delivered relief in seconds after human experts struggled for years. Replies poured in from others with similar jaw issues who finally found answers to their medical dilemmas. Hoffman triumphantly declared Superagency! on Twitterhis term for AIs almost superhuman problem-solving capacity. In other words, this was more than a one-off win for a clever chatbot; it felt like a glimpse into the future of personal healthcare and beyond. ChatGPT: From Search Engine to Life Coach The jaw episode underscores a broader shift in how young people are seeking information and advice. Its not just about troubleshooting medical quirks. Increasingly, people are posing all sorts of personal questions to AI, the kinds of questions they might once have typed into an incognito search or perhaps never voiced at all. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a front-row view of this phenomenon. He notes stark generational differences in ChatGPT usage: Older people use [ChatGPT] as a Google replacement, Altman recently observed, whereas many in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor. In other words, younger users arent just asking AI for trivia or weather updates, theyre confiding in it, seeking guidance on college decisions, career moves, and personal dilemmas. Altman says some college students have ChatGPT so deeply integrated into their daily lives that they dont make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what theyve talked about. The chatbot has effectively become a confidanta kind of always-available sounding board and advisor in one. Generational shift Statistics back up this generational sea change. In a recent Vox Media survey, 61% of GenZ and 53% of Millennials said they prefer AI tools like ChatGPT over traditional search engines like Google. Its a remarkable turning of the tide: the first internet generation, raised on Googling anything and everything, is now swapping keyword searches for conversations with AI. The reasons are understandable. Rather than wading through pages of blue links and ads, a chatbot gives a straightforward answer or solution, often in a single exchange. Instead of piecing together advice from scattered forum posts and WebMD entries, you get a tailored response in plain English (or whatever language you speak). Unlike a one-and-done search query, an AI conversation can go deeper, you can ask follow-ups, provide context, and get nuanced answers that evolve with the conversation. Doctors will hate ChatGPT [its] 1000% more useful than WebMD, one user quipped in response to the jaw-fixing story. That tongue-in-cheek comment captures a real sentiment: for a growing cohort of users, AI isnt just an information tool, but a trusted guide. It feels less like using software and more like consulting an ever-patient mentor or coach. Crucially, AI advisers can be brutally efficient. Theyre available 24/7, never get tired of questions, and can recall everything youve ever told themsomething even the friendliest physician or counselor cant match. A team of AI advisers Millions are now acclimated to a general-purpose bot like ChatGPT as their all-in-one guru, but an even more profound shift is on the horizon: curated AI agents tailored to specific domains and individual needs. AI agents serve as specialized successors to the chatbots we know today: smarter, more personal, and deeply knowledgeable about you and the topics you care about. Instead of one AI to rule them all, you might soon have a whole team of AI advisors at your side. This could have profound implications across a variety of use cases, from personalized health and wellness coaches who remember your medical history, track your symptoms, and provide advice accordingly, career mentors who can advise users on interview preparation and networking, to financial advisors who provide dedicated investment strategies that consider risk appetite and savings goals. AI agents can also serve as relationship coaches, mental wellness guides, and a catalog of other functions that are currently reserved for sophisticated human professionals. AI proxies These examples are no longer science fiction, with startups and large corporations already working to make domain-specific AI companions a reality. Expert-driven AI personas enable subject-matter experts, whether it’s a doctor, a professor, a financial guru, or a popular podcaster, to create an AI version of themselves that can interact with anyone. Experts upload their knowledge (via articles, videos, and recordings), and the platform trains a customized AI that educates itself based on a flywheel of knowledge from those sources. The result is a chatbot that doesnt just sound like an expert, but a specific, real person with a verified background. In essence, its a way to bottle up expertise and scale it infinitely: an expert can help thousands of people at once through their AI proxy, without diluting the personal touch. Expertise on demand AI Agents will reinvent how people learn, interact, and build community in an AI-enabled society, where knowledge isnt accessed by trawling search results, but by conversing with an intelligent agent that understands a users context and can tap into the worlds expertise on demand. These agents can act independently on a user’s behalf to perform web searches, interface with calendars or other services, curate flight options for travel, and carry out tasks without needing constant supervision. Crucially, these curated agents promise k trust anchored in expertise and personalization, something todays general chatbots lack. A user might hesitate to take medical action based on a random internet answer, but advice from an AI trained by a respected doctor or a therapist carries more weight. And because these agents retain long-term memory, they offer continuity. Your conversations pick up where they left off, and over time, the AI develops a richer understanding of a user’s needs and preferences. Its the difference between asking a stranger for advice versus conslting a personal coach whos been with you for years. A Vision of AI-First Knowledge The implications of this shift are enormous. Were looking at nothing less than a transformation in how humans find information, solve problems, and make decisions. In the past three decades, the phrase Google it emerged as a reflection of the revolutionary idea that any answer was just a web search away. We have already heard in the past few years, Ask your AI, just as often. That future may seem idealistic, but signs of it are already sprouting. The fact that a 22-year-old today might consult an AI life coach before calling their parents speaks volumes about the comfort level younger generations have with AI. They trust it not just to fetch facts, but to understand and advise. And as the technology improves, these AI agents will only become more capable companions. Theyll feel more natural, more alive, not in a sentient sense, but in their ability to hold extended, context-rich dialogues and proactively assist us. Instead of a one-size-fits-all oracle, well have a collection of personal AIs fine-tuned to different aspects of our lives.All of this raises the question: Do AI advisors spell the end of traditional search engines and conventional advice channels? Its a possibility that Googles leadership is surely pondering. The tech giant has noted the trend of users turning to TikTok or ChatGPT for queries and is racing to infuse its search with AI. Yet, even if search engines incorporate chat features, the paradigm is shifting from searching to consulting. The AI agent model flips the scriptyou dont find information, information finds you via an intelligent intermediary that knows what you need.We are on the cusp of a new era of AI-first knowledge seeking, one that is more conversational, contextual, and personalized than ever before. The transition wont happen overnight, and it wont be without challenges (accuracy, bias, and privacy among them). But as the Reddit jaw-fix story illustrates, people are already discovering that sometimes the best expert is an AI that reads everything and listens without judgment. The generations coming of age now are comfortable asking machines for guidance in a way no generation before was. In the coming years, curated AI agentsyour always-on career guru, health coach, financial planner, and confidantcould become as commonplace as smartphones. Instead of typing queries into a search bar, well chat with friendly AIs who know us and have a wealth of specialized knowledge to share. The digital knowledge ecosystem is being reshaped around these intelligent agents, moving from the chaotic open web toward more context-aware and continuous interactions. AI agents are poised to fundamentally reshape learning, interaction, and community. And if that vision holds, the way we get advice, from solving minor health annoyances to navigating lifes biggest decisions, will never be the same.
Category:
E-Commerce
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. On a summer night in 2023, an explosion at one of Louisianas biggest petrochemical complexes sent a plume of fire into the sky. More explosions followed as poison gas spewed from damaged tanks at the Dow chemical plant, triggering a shelter-in-place order for anyone within a half mile of the facility, which sprawls across more than 830 acres near Baton Rouge. For more than a year, a little-known government agency has been investigating the incident. But the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board will likely shut down before completing its probes of the Dow explosion and other such incidents across the country. President Donald Trumps administration has quietly proposed shutting down the board, an independent federal agency charged with uncovering the causes of large-scale chemical accidents. Near the end of a 1,224-page budget document released with little fanfare on May 30, White House officials said shutting down the agency, commonly called the CSB, will help move the nation toward fiscal responsibility as the Trump administration works to redefine the proper role of the federal government. The CSBs $14 million annual budget would be zeroed out for the 2026 fiscal year and its emergency fund of $844,000 would be earmarked for closure-related costs. The process of shutting the agency down is set to begin this year, according to CSB documents. Eliminating the CSB will come at a cost to the safety of plant workers and neighboring communities, especially along the Gulf Coast, where the bulk of the U.S. petrochemical industry is concentrated, said former CSB officials and environmental groups. Closing the CSB will mean more accidents at chemical plants, more explosions and more deaths, said Beth Rosenberg, a public health expert who served on the CSB board from 2013 to 2014. This shows that the Trump administration does not care about frontline communities already burdened with this industry, said Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project, an environmental justice group in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Were the ones who have to shelter in place or evacuate whenever theres an explosion or [chemical] release, and now there will be less oversight when these things happen. The CSB did not respond to a request for comment. The proposed closure of the CSB follows several other moves by the Trump administration to slash staffing levels at the Environmental Protection Agency and ease federal health and safety regulations. Founded in 1998, the CSB investigates the causes of petrochemical accidents and issues recommendations to plants, regulators and business groups. The CSB doesnt impose fines or penalties, instead relying on voluntary compliance or on enforcement by other agencies, such as the EPA, to mandate safety improvements. Of the more than 100 investigations the CSB has conducted, Texas leads the country with 22 cases, followed by Louisiana with 8. Those numbers tell us that Louisiana and Texas really need the Chemical Safety Board, and there will certainly be negative impacts here if it closes down, said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. Along with the Dow chemical explosion, the agency has four other active investigations of incidents in Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia. CSB investigations often take several months to complete. In an update of the Dow explosion investigation last year, the CSB hinted at several events of concern at the chemical complex between Baton Rouge and the town of Plaquemine, Louisianaan area that forms part of the industrial corridor known as Cancer Alley. Among the targets of the investigation were at least two mechanical problems, multiple smaller explosions after the initial blow-up, and the release of more than 30,000 pounds of ethylene oxide, a colorless gas the agency noted is a cancer-causing substance. The CSBs last completed investigation was a fatal 2024 explosion at a steel hardening facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The CSB identified several safety failures and at least three other dangerous incidents involving similar hazards at other facilities owned by the same company, HEF Groupe of France. HEF failed to ensure that information about those incidents and lessons learned from them were shared and implemented organization-wide, the CSB investigation, released early this month, found. A chain reaction of mishaps at the Chattanooga facility resulted in an eruption of hot molten salt that killed a worker, according to the investigation. On average, hazardous chemical accidents happen once every other day in the U.S., according to Coming Clean, an environmental health nonprofit. Coming Clean documented 825 fires, leaks, and other chemical-related incidents between January 2021 and October 2023. The incidents killed at least 43 people and triggered evacuation orders and advisories in nearly 200 communities. Trump called for the CSBs closure during his first term but settled for leaving many investigator and agency leadership positions unfilled. Slowing the agencys work resulted in a backlog of 14 unfinished investigations by the time former president Joe Biden took office in 2021. Under the first Trump administration, investigations were hampered by staffing shortages and monthslong conflicts between the board and the agencys Trump-appointed director, according to a federal inspectors report. In the new budget proposal, the Trump administration indicated the CSBs duties could be handled by other agencies. The CSB duplicates substantial capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate chemical-related mishaps, a CSB budget proposal said. This function should reside within agencies that have authorities to issue regulations . . . This justification is a lie, said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA and a former CSB recommendations manager. While OSHA and the EPA are limited to assessing specific violations of their existing standards and regulations, the CSB can look far more broadly and at the deeper causes of accidents, including worker fatigue, corporate budget cuts, and lax oversight, Barab said. Even when other federal agencies appeared to ignore CSB recommendations, communiy groups and local governments could cite them when pushing for improved safety standards, Ozane said. It was scientific evidence we could all use to pressure the state or the federal regulators to do something about pollution and safety in the places we live, she said. This is just another tool and another resource thats been taken away from us. Tristan Baurick This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-quietly-shutters-the-only-federal-agency-that-investigates-industrial-chemical-explosions/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
Category:
E-Commerce
In 2024, for the third straight year, the median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. has shrunk, to 2,150 square feet. That’s down from nearly 2,500 square feet back in 2013, and startlingly close to the roughly 2,100 square foot average seen in 2009 at the depth of the global financial crisis. It’s a downsizing that underscores just how hard it is for most people to afford to buy a home today, and the extent to which homebuilders are adjusting their offerings to meet demand. This telling figure comes from The State of the Nation’s Housing, an annual report just released by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The report finds that affordability challenges are reshaping the housing market, right down to the square footage. Homebuilders are able to make adjustments to meet demand where it is, and what it’s showing is that there’s demand for lower-cost units, says Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies. Buyers look like they’re willing to buy slightly smaller homes in order to be able to afford them, given that prices have risen so high over the past three, four, five years, and interest rates remain relatively high as well. Since 2019, average home prices have risen more than 60%, according to the report. Historically, that average has been skewed by the cost of new homes, which tended to be more expensive than existing homes. But that gap is narrowing. In the 2010s, the typical new single-family home was about $66,000 more expensive than the median sales price of an existing home, McCue says. In 2024, the typical new home cost only about $8,000 more. I take that as a reaction to the lack of inventory and the tightness of existing housing sales markets, McCue says. Part of this price drop has been engineered by homebuilders themselves. McCue says many builders are trying to help buyers by offering more favorable interest rates and interest-rate buydowns through their own mortgage companies. They’re able to make some adjustments, and in doing so, we’re seeing the price points of new homes coming down to make those sales happen, McCue says. In addition to reducing the size of U.S. homes, these efforts have had some impact. New home sales in 2024 were up about 3% over 2023, and existing home sales have dropped to a 30-year low. [Homebuilders] have been able to kind of buck the trend by making these hard-fought gains in affordability, McCue says. But with interest rates hovering above 6% and a general sense of economic uncertainty tied to the Trump Administration’s trade policies, whether sales of new homes will continue to rise is unclear. One of the themes looking forward is how much of these adjustments, and how much of these hard-fought gains will be upended by rising costs due to tariffs, he says. Another way the shape of housing is changing is in growing numbers of townhomes on the market. The report found that in 2024, builders started 176,000 townhomes, a 59% increase compared to 2019. It’s one example of the way in which buyers and builders are focusing on products that are relatively more affordable, given the affordability constraints, McCue says. Those constraints don’t look to be going away any time soon, and that’s created a separate but connected boom in the housing market. According to the report, about 93,000 single-family rental homes were started in 2024, which is the highest number on record and more than double the 40,000 rental units started in 2019. As homeownership gets farther and farther out of reach for many Americans, homebuilders appear ready to build rental homes they can afford.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] next »