For A Change, A Company Does It Right By Employees As A Tornado Loomed

Extreme tornado damage in an industrial area of 
Mineral Wells, Texas that was hit by a tornado
late last month. One employer, Ventamatic, 
took watches and warnings seriously, so they
sent employees home ahead of the storm,
which very likely saved lives. 

 I've written in the past cases in which companies seemed indifferent to their employees as tornadoes bore down on their workplaces. 

For a change of pace, we have a case in which a company protected its employees from a tornado. 

That nobody died is a testament to great warnings from the National Weather Service, a company that enacted its emergency plan and kept a close eye on the weather.

The company in question is Ventamatic which has, or at least had, a manufacturing plant in Mineral Wells, Texas. 

 Company officials on the afternoon of April 28 first noticed a dangerous supercell storm when it was near Wichita Falls, about 80 miles northwest of Mineral Wells. 

An area of Texas, including Mineral Wells, went under a tornado watch, since the supercell was heading in the general direction of tha city. So Ventamatic officials sent all the 120 workers home, because the homes had better protection from tornadoes than the plant. 

Plus, removing the workers meant there wasn't concentration of people at risk. Sending the workers home dispersed them into a wide area.  Many workers went home to houses that were ultimately not in the path of the tornado ,and not damaged.  

Supervisors at the plant also contacted the next shift telling them to hold off on coming in until the bad weather passed. 

The tornado struck the complex as an EF-3 with winds of up to 145 mph. A total of 132 homes and businesses suffered damage.  Nine houses were a total loss and 12 others had major damage. The Ventamatic plant was decimated. 

Aerial video of the industrial complex housing Ventamatic showed leveled buildings and sheet metal strewn everywhere.  The sheet metal must have been swirling wildly in the tornado, enough to cut a person in half if they're hit. 

But there was nobody at Ventamatic to hit.  

Mineral Wells Mayor Reagan Johnson called management a "true, true lifesaver for the community. Incredible that he did that.......Just knowing even what that employer did, the forethought to do that, the awareness, what a hero,!" according to KDFW Fox 4. 

 It appears not all businesses in the manufacturing complex were sent home.  Unconfirmed reports on Facebook indicated employees at a factory called Parker Hannifin were taken by surprise by the tornado and didn't even have time to reach the safest part of the building, which was the bathrooms. 

They instead huddled in a break room, and managed to escape serious injury.

Bottom line, Ventamatic officials were weather aware, had an emergency plan that included what to do when a tornado threatens, and they followed that plan. Perfect!

That contrasts with past incidents involving workplaces and tornadoes. In December, 2021, a huge tornado rampaged through western Kentucky, approaching the town of Mayfield. Workers at Mayfield Consumer Products, a candle factory claim in a lawsuit that supervisors repeated turned down employees requests to go home and hunker down with families, which they believed to be safer than the factory building. 

Some workers left anyway. 

In the end, the powerful tornado leveled the factory, killing nine people and injuring several  more. At last report, the lawsuit had not been resolved. 

On the same night as the Mayfield tornado, another twister struck an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, killing six workers.

As I wrote in December, 2021, a few days after the tornadoes: 

"Tornado warnings for Edwardsville were issued at least 20 minutes before the tornado hit. However, Amazon managers either didn't take the warning seriously, didn't know what to do with them, or more depressingly if true, prioritized production over worker safety. "

In that same tornado outbreak an Amazon driver heard tornado warnings and sirens and wanted to head back to the warehouse or a safer place. A vehicle is pretty much the least safe place to be in a tornado. 

The driver's dispatcher radioed back, "If you decide to come back that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won't be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are. If you decide to return with your packages it will be viewed as you refusing your route, which will ultimately end with you not having a job tomorrow. The sirens are just a warning."

Yes! The sirens are a warning! Meaning get to a safe place immediately. But it's all about profits to keep Amazon's multibillionaire owner happy, isn't it?

The issue isn't just tornadoes. 

During Hurricane Helene, supervisors allegedly didn't allow workers to leave the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, Tennessee as flood waters rose outside. They weren't allowed to leave until it was too late. 

Twelve people were swept away in the floodwaters and all but five of them died.  

Meanwhile, back in Mineral Wells, there were other success stories that prevented tornado deaths. 

Johnson, the Mineral Wells  mayor, said a teenager was home alone but had the presence of mind to hide in a closet as the tornado bore down on their house.  Probably because tornado safety is drilled into Midwestern kids' heads. 

In another case, a husband got into a closet 10 seconds before the tornado hit because his wife was relentlessly nagging him to do so. 

"She's getting a good anniversary present this year, I hope," Johnson said.  

"End-to End" Climate Attribution Science Can Link Specific Companies To Climate Change Disasters

Climate attribution science is getting
more and more sophisticated. This
might make it increasingly 
possible for local governments to
recoup from climate disasters, like
this 2024 Vermont flood might
have been. 

Climate attribution studies - the art and science of determining to what extent weather extremes are tied to climate change - are getting so good that they're starting to delve into how much individual corporations are responsible for given disasters. 

This advanced work on assigning individual corporations' role in climate disasters is known as end-to-end attribution. 

For now, the focus is on heat waves, as the science doesn't appear to be quite there in assigning blame for other disasters, like floods, wildfires and hurricanes. But that's coming. 

 According to CBC:

"A new study by climate researchers in Europe and the U.S. and published in the journal Nature has taken this analysis further, by lining the deadliest type of disaster - heat waves - directly to major fossil fuel companies and their products. 

The study looked at major heat waves that happened between 2000 and 2023 and the role of 'carbon majors.'  These include state-owned companies (such as Gazprom in Russia or Saudi Armco, investor-owned private companies (Shell, BP, ExxonMoil or even Canadian companies such as Suncor and Census) and nation-states that produce fossil fuels such as coal (India, the former Soviet Union)."

 The study indicated that the median intensity of heat waves globally between 2010 and 2019 was about 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter, and 0.47 Celsius of that was due to just 14 of the largest carbon producers. 

More from CBC

"The study goes into granular detail, with data for each one of the 180 carbon majors and their specific contribution to each of the 213 heat waves studied. The detail even shows the impact of smaller companies - for example, the smallest carbon major by emissions, a Russian coal company, made 16 heat waves more than 10,000 times likely - meaning the heat waves would have been virtually impossible without the emissions of that carbon major."

The study drew on previous research detailing the lifetime carbon emissions of these carbon majors, and other studies that show how carbon emissions make heat waves worse. They then connected those two strands to estimate how the emissions of a specific carbon major impacted the severity and likelihood of a particular heat wave.

The research doesn't assign a quantity or dollar amount of heat wave damage caused by each corporation. Besides, heat waves usually don't cause much damage to buildings and infrastructure, at least compared to other disasters.

But heat waves kill a lot of people, and how do you put a price tag on that?  

Then there are practical matters. Some regions are more prepared for heat waves than others. An intense heat wave might not be as bad in, say Oklahoma, because practically everyone there has air conditioning. Air conditioning, meanwhile, is much more rare in western and northern Europe, where heat waves in recent decades have been taking an especially big toll. 

Still, this attribution science regarding climate damage caused by specific firms is probably of great interest to policymakers. 

A great example is here in Vermont. 

Vermont and New York have enacted "climate superfund" laws, which would force corporations that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide to pay a share of what climate change has cost Vermont, based on how much the company contributed to global emissions during the same period.  

Lawmakers in Vermont were prodded into enacted this legislation in part by a series of devastating floods in the state. 

Trump's Department of Justice has sued both Vermont and New York, claiming the climate superfund laws attempt to "extorts" energy producers.  

Still, if the New York and Vermont superfund laws survive the legal challenges, or we get a more climate friendly administration in the future, the research we're talking about would definitely interest people in both states. And any other jurisdiction that wants to establish similar laws. 

Beyond the United States, the International Court of Justice issued a July advisory opinion that said countries dealing with climate disasters could seek reparations from countries emitting the most carbon. 

Some legal experts said the International Court of Justice, which is under the United Nations, could spur similar moves around the world in local courts. 

Any science that would more accurately assign responsibility for climate-related disasters and expenses might favor all these laws and lawsuits.  

End-to-end attribution can boost a claimant's case, notes the Conversation. Such attribution can meet what is known as the "but for" test, which means that but for a specific company's emissions, climate related damages would not have happened.

Also, notes the Conservationist:

"One is called proportional liability, and it attempts to quantify the extent to which a company's emissions contribute d to increased risk or the severity of damage. This flexibility strengthens the method's applicability across different legal systems."

Meanwhile, climate attribution science will almost definitely continue to improve. That science is going to be a force that a lot of people in power are going to need to contend with.

Also, says the Conservationist, "The end-to-end attribution method enables claimants to connect global warming to local disasters, such as the 2021 Pacific Northwest 'heat dome'. This is crucial, as climate litigation focused on single, high-impact  events is usually more successful."

Climate attribution science is getting more and more sophisticated. This will probably change the climate legal landscape, even if the Trump administration is trying to postpone that day.  

In Dystopian Climate World Of Trump, A New Word In The Lexicon: "Greenhushing"

It seems everybody's afraid of the Trump administration. 

Or they don't want to deal with Trump's fragile ego. 

This trembling in your boots mindset has spread to corporations. Some just co-opt themselves, abandoning any values they had to please Dear Leader. 

They ditch their supposed DEI policies, write statements espousing the alleged sheer brilliance of Trump, and disavow an attempts to fight climate change, legitimate or note. 

Other companies retain their values for the most part, but feel they have to hide it.  

Which brings us to a brand new term: "Greenhushing."

That's when a company hides or under-reports information about its environmental policies and actions. In some cases, they do that to avoid accusations of the more familiar term "greenwashing."

Greenwashing is when companies exaggerate how wonderful they are for the environment. Greenwashing is all a bunch of PR. The products aren't as environmentally friendly as advertised. The company's purported activism on combating climate change is false.

Greenhushing, meanwhile, has gotten new attention as corporations try to avoid the Wrath of Trump. 

If Trump finds out that a company is doing something to combat climate change, he'll just launch a flurry of mean tweets against them or worse.  The mean tweets are really just his rants on Truth Social, which is his social media platform. 

If you love reading Trump's rants and those of his sycophants, Truth Social is the site for you!!!! 

Anyway, greenhushing appears to be the way to go. Not just in the United States, but elsewhere, for various reasons. Per Bloomberg:

"Along with the fear of political blowback, worries about reputational damage and regulatory scrutiny weigh on companies especially outside the U.S.  In Europe, where tackling climate change is still on governments' agendas, researchers say companies are pulling away from publicizing their climate efforts due to the risk of being seen as greenwashers."

Greenhushing is remarkably widespread: Bloomberg again: 

"In 2024, 63 out of the 100 largest publicly listed firms in Britain were under-promoting their work in environmental protection, according to an analysis by the Manchester UK-based research firm Connected Impact........When it came to U.S, companies the researchers found the desire for staying unnoticed was even greater - as many as 67 major public and private firms resorted to greenhushing"

A company has got to do what a company has got to do, though, right?  So if an outfit does things that help the environment, and help the fight against climate change, but doesn't broadcast it, there's really no harm. 

They're getting the job done of fighting climate change, so it's all good. Even if they have to keep their heads down to avoid the Wrath of Trump.