THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• How bitcoin’s hunger for energy is undermining efforts to address climate change.

• Ahead of Prime Day, a reminder of the toll the sale takes on Amazon’s workers.

• A number to remember when it comes to arrest data of unhoused people in Portland, Oregon.

THIS WEEK’S EPISODE

Can Our Climate Survive Bitcoin?

Bitcoin isn’t as hot of an investment as it used to be – but it is heating up the planet. And that’s not stopping towns and cities across the U.S. from supporting bitcoin operations. This week on Reveal, we’ll explore how bitcoin’s enormous use of power is setting back efforts to address climate change. Already, bitcoin has used enough power to erase all the energy savings from electric cars, according to one study.

We’ll take you to:

• Kearney, Nebraska, where the mayor, who is also a local representative for the state’s largest electric utility, was influential in bringing a cryptocurrency operation to the city. Kearney has since doubled the amount of electricity it uses.
   
• Hardin, Montana, where bitcoin’s demand for electricity is so great that it’s giving new life to the dirtiest type of power plants: ones that burn coal. In just one year, the amount of carbon dioxide a plant put into the air jumped nearly tenfold.

We’ll also explore whether there can be such a thing as clean cryptocurrency. Our guest host Shereen Marisol Meraji, who you might recognize from NPR’s Code Switch, talks with Ludwig Siegele, now the European business editor at The Economist, who gives his assessment of the challenges of making cryptocurrency environmentally friendly.

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2022.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Prime Day Is Around the Corner. Before You Buy, Here’s a Look Behind the Smiles at Amazon.

Big rig trailers are parked at an Amazon fulfillment center in Fresno, Calif. Credit: Paul Kuroda for Reveal

Amazon Prime Day is July 12-13. Each year, the sale event has grown, with the company’s more than 200 million Prime members receiving access to exclusive deals. When Prime Day first launched in 2015, it was to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary and incentivize consumers to join as Prime members. Now “88% of Americans plan to shop on Amazon during Prime Day this year and 47% are waiting for Prime Day to make their biggest purchases of the year,” NBC News writes.

Amazon says its Prime membership “was built on the foundation of unlimited fast, free shipping,” and we know it is that obsession with speed that has turned its warehouses into injury mills. We’ve been investigating Amazon’s workplace safety for years, based on the company’s own internal records. Here’s some of what we have found:

• We amassed internal injury records from 2018 from 23 of the company’s 110 fulfillment centers nationwide. Taken together, the rate of serious injuries for those facilities was more than double the national average for the warehousing industry.
  
  Workers said they had to break safety rules to keep up or they would lose their jobs. So they took the risk. If they got hurt, they would lose their jobs anyway. One warehouse worker told us she had to scan a new item every 11 seconds to hit her production quota, and Amazon always knew when she didn’t.
   
• In 2020, we obtained a new cache of records that showed company officials had profoundly misled the public and lawmakers about its record on worker safety.
  
  Warehouse injuries were especially acute at robotic facilities and during Prime week and the holiday peak that includes Cyber Monday. Those two weeks had the highest rate of serious injuries for all of 2019.
   
• In the wake of our reporting, regulators have begun cracking down on Amazon for its injury crisis. And in April, the Amazon Labor Union pulled off the country’s first successful union vote at an Amazon warehouse. In addition to demanding better pay and benefits, the union is pushing for longer breaks and more reasonable production quotas.

We’ve also investigated how Amazon handles its vast empire of customer data – and it’s not good. For years, the retail giant allowed detailed data – from what you search for, what you buy, what shows you watch and what pills you take – to flow to companies that had no relationship with the consumer, without enough oversight or customer knowledge. And that’s not all. Read the full investigation.

FEATURED STORIES

Scores of Migrant Children Considered or Attempted Suicide in US Custody, Records Show
By Aura Bogado

Data obtained by Reveal highlights how a patchwork system can be ill-equipped to tackle serious mental health episodes, leaving migrant children to bear the tremendous toll. Read the full story.

Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients
By Grace Oldham and Dhruv Mehrotra

The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account. Read the full story.

A Number to Remember

Ending on a Good Note

🎧 Aura Bogado was on NPR’s Here & Now on Wednesday to discuss her investigation into how migrant children’s shelters are ill-equipped to handle serious mental health episodes, leaving children to bear the tremendous toll. Listen.

Reveal obtained data showing nearly 600 episodes in which migrant children in the government’s custody said they’d considered or attempted suicide – all in the first three months of the Biden administration alone.

🎧 Melissa Lewis was on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s daily news show, Think Out Loud, on Wednesday to discuss how the arrest data for Portland’s homeless population is particularly striking. Listen.