Welcome to NTN Nightly, I am General Norvel, this edition, Stop Stories. Government rolls out a $10 million assistance package to victims of Hurricane Elfer. The Department of Agriculture launches new web portal as part of rebounding efforts. And the Castries Constituencies Council has secured a temporary relocation for vendors. The Cabinet of Ministers has reviewed the report on the preliminary damage assessment following Hurricane Elfer and has approved an emergency assistance package to provide immediate relief to the various sectors affected. The agriculture industry was most impacted with banana and plantain farmers sustaining heavy losses. Crop loss is estimated at some $34 million. 500 homes were damaged with 50 completely destroyed. The CDC buildings in Castries were also impacted. Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastney at a news conference Friday 9 July informed that the government was realigning funds from the budget to provide assistance and had also applied to the National Economic Fund to finance the relief package. $10 million has been received. $5 million will go towards agriculture. $3 million allocated to the Ministry of Equity which will be dispersed through the SSDF. $1 million for repairs to the CDC buildings and $1 million for road repairs and cleanup. The CIP program, the first couple of years the monies were going into the consolidated fund and it's important to know that once it went into the consolidated fund there was a proper record and accounting of how those monies were used. Now that it's going into a separate fund and it's being managed by a separate board and there is clear rules as to what we can use the monies for or apply the monies to. It's not everything that government would like to do that the fund can provide assistance to. So one of the first initiatives that we had was the problem that we were having with Winfresh when Winfresh was collapsing and funds were lent to the Ministry of or to the Department of Invest in Lucia to assist in salvaging the assets of Winfresh and to keep the market open with Winfresh. And now those monies are being applied to the restructuring of the FTO. Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Corporate is Honourable Ezekiel Joseph. In form that affected farmers will receive financial assistance for labour. This will target some 2,487 acres of farmland. Farmers will also receive free inputs for the LISAs, oil and fungicide. Minister Joseph indicated that farms with windbreaks were not severely impacted by the gusts from Hurricane Elsa and the Ministry will be expanding its resilience program across the sector. We have made an allocation for Billion Resilience to $47,000 and that will be to provide farmers with planting material, tree crops that they can plant along the boundaries to provide that safety net whenever we have been experiencing heavy winds. Our vegetable farmers got damaged too. Unfortunately, mostly it was the infrastructure. And the infrastructure we were going to have really got severely damaged were a number of greenhouses. The figures is showing that over 100 greenhouses got affected and we have agreed that to provide an allocation both to repair the greenhouse and to assist our vegetable farmers who are severely affected. Unfortunately, some of our livestock farmers got severely damaged. Well, not they got damaged, but the infrastructure got damaged as far as their buildings, their pens and in some cases some of them lost animals. And what we have agreed is to provide an allocation of $300,000 where we shall be providing support to our livestock farmers that experience damage during the passage of the storm. We think it's opportune because like we all know we are early in the hurricane season and whilst we did not realize heavy rainfalls but whatever we are doing, we think there is need for us to create an environment that we can see the free flow of water. And in that case, we are going to support our farmers, especially those in the low-lying areas and their heavy drainage areas. We are going to support them with drainage assistance. Our CMOS farmers got affected, our fishermen got affected, our fisher folks got affected and support will be given to them. In closing the area we are looking at seriously is the question of assisting those banana farmers who have not been paid for about eight weeks and an allocation has been made to pay them at least out of the eight weeks to pay for five weeks and the other three weeks will be paid when we, like you heard the Prime Minister spoke about, supporting restructuring the NFTO. So the balance of the outstanding payments will be made after we have restructured the NFTO and I can say here that even before the storm we had gotten an allocation of 4.2 million dollars through the support of the Honorable Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to assist us in restructuring the NFTO. So that again is an allocation that will be used during the recovery period for our banana farmers. Meanwhile Minister for Equity, Social Justice, Local Government and Empowerment Honorable Leonard Montute assured individuals whose homes will affected that government was moving swiftly to assist them. The 50 households that I mentioned that were completely damaged will provide assistance to the tune of up to $15,000 which will amount to some $750,000 to do the repairs that is needed and the estimated 450 households that suffered damage to their roofs will receive between a range of $1,500 to $7,500 and that will work out to be an estimated $2.25 million. And so I ask that our people out there who have suffered damage a few days already just be a little patient. We are rolling out this program as quickly as possible. We understand your plight. We recognize the need for the assistance and we did all that we could to receive the funding as soon as we can and we will waste no time in ensuring that we reach you in executing and implementing the relief that is needed on your part. A number of households and individuals have already received assistance under the Hurricane Elsa relief package and on Monday 12 July all affected sectors will begin to receive aid. The Ministry of Health and Wellness welcomes the partnership with pharmacies to make COVID-19 vaccines available to the public free of charge. Now in this report from Funnel Neptune. The People's Discount Pharmacy Limited recently commenced its new initiative with the Ministry of Health to ensure access of COVID-19 vaccines to its clients. National Immunization Manager Tecla Jabatis applauded the initiative and says this provides a great opportunity for people to access vaccines in a comfortable environment. This is really a partnership between the Ministry of Health and People's Discount Pharmacy for us at the Ministry of Health and also the owner of People's Discount Pharmacy. It is important that vaccines become available and accessible to our population. For them it is about people accessing vaccines in a familiar environment one that where they always come to to access other medications. For us we think it is a brilliant idea. We always welcome those public-private partnerships. We think it is an excellent avenue to reach out to the people. Order of People's Discount Pharmacy Limited, Rosemary Michelle says she is pleased that pharmacies can play a great part in healthcare and encourages people to get vaccinated. I want to say from a pharmacist point of view all medications have side effects. The simple aspirin that people take to save their lives can create a lot of problems otherwise. So we are encouraging people, it is important to take the vaccine.  And so we encourage people to take the vaccine. It is going to help solve the kind of problems that we are experiencing now. The COVID-19 vaccination drive at the People's Discount Pharmacy Limited will take place every first day at the St. Louis Street branch from 9am to 4.30pm. The Ministry of Health encourages other pharmacies around the island to come on board and make vaccines available to the public. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness I am Fennel Neptune. The Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, continues to advocate for equitable access to vaccines across the globe. 1.1 million new COVID-19 cases were recorded in the Americas this week, a small decline when compared to the previous week. While mortality has also been reduced in this period, the Americas is still reporting over half of the deaths registered globally. A clear sign according to PAHO director Dr. Carissa Etienne that the toll of the pandemic continues to devastate families and communities, even as parts of the region are experiencing some relief. She noted that while cases in some areas are declining, cases in other parts of the region are rising. In the Caribbean, Cuba is reporting the highest number of new cases per week since the beginning of the pandemic. And Trinidad and Tobago is facing increased mortality due to COVID-19. The diversity and inequity of our region continues to be reflected, not only in the trends of the pandemic, but also on how countries are able to access vaccines. There is progress in vaccinations in the Americas, but alas not for all. One in four people in our region have been fully immunized and over 600 million doses have been administered in the Americas. However, over half of these doses have been applied in just one country, the United States. More developed countries have come to the aid of poorer countries donating COVID-19 vaccines. PAHO commended these countries, which include the United States of America and Mexico, to name a few. Dr. Etienne noted that regional solidarity is required to successfully fight the COVID-19 pandemic. PAHO, she assured, is playing its part in that fight. More countries know how to deploy vaccines and are ready, but they need more doses and they need them now. And that's why PAHO has urged nations with enough vaccines to share them with countries in the Americas that are still struggling. And that call is starting to resonate. This week El Salvador welcomed 1.5 million new vaccine doses from the United States government through the COVAX facility as part of the pledge to share at least 20 million doses to our region. Others are receiving additional donations of doses bilaterally. Bolivia is due to receive just over 1 million doses this week and other donations are being prepared. PAHO is leading the logistics for the delivery of the COVAX doses and we've been working with the US government, the COVAX facility and recipient countries to make sure that all requirements are met and that vaccines can quickly and safely arrive at their destinations. Director of PAHO, Dr. Carissa Atn. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives has launched the new Department of Agriculture Web portal as part of ongoing rebranding efforts. We get details in this report. In order to better support our nation's farmers and the general public, the Agriculture Ministry recently revamped its website to create a digital experience designed with its stakeholders and customer base in mind. The goal of this redesign is to provide the agricultural community with easily accessible support as they adapt their farming operations to better provide for our nation and the world. The Ministry's most recent activities and statistics as well as information on its state and sector strengths are all featured on the newly updated website. This includes a web-based version of the Ministry's recently launched iFarm App which provides information on crop production. One of the main goals of rebranding according to the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperatives, Barbara Morphilicia is to appeal to the younger population. We saw with the old website the colors and the depiction they were not in line with the colors internationally known to be attributed to agriculture. So we came back with the colors you would see green and yellow featured which are the prominent agriculture colors internationally. So our website was more in line with what is known internationally and the global standard and also the content on the website. It features more heavily centered around the various departments, the service and product offering and the content needed for persons who are engaging agriculture, content such as the technology parks which would feature on the website. Other information that you would need to help you through things like concessions, videos on our shows, agriculture on the move, you would find that and of course linking that to our social media platform. These things were non-existent in the previous version of the website so we've updated it to make it more attractive and interactive. The improved website according to the Director of Agriculture Services, Dr. Aria King Sinak will provide efficiency by allowing clients to access a variety of services without having to physically visit the department. In many instances persons would bring in items and when it's detained they don't understand why. So on our website all of these things will be explained they would have access to conditions for imports and all of those things to make doing the ease of doing business a little easier, a little more accessible. So it's more or less to ensure that our faces out there and persons understand what we're doing and that they are able to access us at any given time with any questions. To access the Department of Agriculture's new website one can visit www.doaslu.govt.lc From the Ministry of Agriculture, this is Amanda Fay-Clock reporting. The Casstrees Constituencies Council has secured temporary relocation of fenders who will be impacted by demolition works on the marketing board building. Jesse Leos has a report on these and other plans surrounding remaining works on the first phase of the Casstrees redevelopment project. Ahead of the demolition of the old marketing board building in the Casstrees market, arrangements are being made to temporarily relocate vendors who ply their trade in that immediate vicinity for their safety. This undertaking is the latest work through the Casstrees redevelopment project. Similar to the accommodations made for provisions vendors last year during construction of the state of the art sheltered area, the city is looking to ensure that vendors who will be impacted by this new construction can still earn a living. Casstrees Mayor Peterson Francis says the vendors have agreed to the location pitched by the city. We have identified a spot for the vendors along the marketing board. So as long as we finalize this, I mean we have just signed an MOU, which means you have two reasons. This is going quickly, but you know, the season that we are in there right now that we have to put people for this before project. So, but that is on the card. So we are now in consultation with the people that we are going to move them by, if you know the empty spot by RECI there, we're going to relocate this temporarily. To date, the first component of the Casstrees redevelopment project phase one has been completed, now accommodating provisions market vendors in the sheltered area structurally designed to withstand wind speeds up to a category 5 hurricane with a layout that enables a free flow of traffic. Mayor Francis laments, however, that even with the more comfortable quarters assigned to the vendors, the city still grapples with excessive street vending. While the vendors were vending on the little tapoline, under the wind and so on, now we have given them a first-class facility. This is the time they want to go out now, go on the road to sell. And that has been a challenge for us.  These are the vendors operating within the facility. Yes, itself. Now they are leaving the facility. Yes, they are. Why is that? I don't know why. Now they have become very creative. They are now taking trolleys. Before we didn't have trolleys, but now because we have the food market, we are now on the road selling. Because those who have gone back to the sidewalk, but we are not tolerating that. So it is a challenge. The next component of phase one of the project will see the construction of a container box park creating an avenue for micro-enterprising cosmetic shops, cafes, pubs and eateries. Thereafter, the remaining component of phase one will include modifications to the market entrance adjacent to the castries harbor, construction of a state-of-the-art food court, high-end air-conditioned restaurants, a refurbished craft market, entertainment area and meat and fish depots. For the Government Information Service, I am Jesse Leance reporting. This is NTN Nightly. Up next, Primers Hutchingson with the NTN Nouvelle, Cueio Allo. One of the eight universally recognized rights of the consumer is the right to satisfaction of basic needs. This means that every consumer has the right to basic goods and services that guarantee survival. This right includes adequate food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, water and sanitation. Welcome back. We join Primers Hutchingson for the NTN Nouvelle, Cueio Allo. Thank you very much, Janelle. Thank you, Madam. I am from Kenybuesco, Sablite, for the Government Information Service. I am from Nouvelle, Cueio Allo, Primers Hutchingson. The rights of the consumer, Sablite Lefama, is the right to satisfaction of basic needs. The right to satisfaction of basic needs. I am Janelle Lefama, for the Government Information Service. This right includes adequate food, a refurbished craft market, a refurbished craft market, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Equality, and the journalists to present their report to the Cabinet of Governments to provide assistance for the damage caused by the cyclone. Prime Minister Alain Chastney said that for those 600 people who suffer from damage and the damage caused by the cyclone, the government will always be able to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage, and the people who suffer from damage. The government will also be able to provide assistance to the financial institutions who have often helped with the damage caused by the cyclone. And we will also be able to provide assistance to the government to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage. Prime Minister Alain Chastney said that for those 500 people who suffer from damage from the cyclone, the government will always be able to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage caused by the cyclone. And we will be able to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage caused by the cyclone. Prime Minister Alain Chastney said that for those 500 people who suffer from damage caused by the cyclone, the government will always be able to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage caused by the cyclone. And we will be able to provide assistance to the people who suffer from damage caused by the cyclone. We pay six people for financial support for farmers who suffer from damage unaffected and so far underг financial restoration. We also pay six people for dog welfare. We also have a major canal allocation of the land that has been in place to assist with the major waterways. We also have the most affected farmers, the fishers. Through the Department of Fisheries, we also have the farmers. We also have the farmers who are in support of the income and the financial support of the farmers. The Minister of Agriculture also said that the Department of Fisheries can assist with the major waterways. We also have the farmers. During the last three weeks, the Renew restructuring NFTU, the content prime minister, has given us an allocation of $4.2 million per cycle. And it is still going to assist farmers. We will not allow farmers to assist with the major waterways. It's not a fault of the government that farmers fix the H.I.L.A. I mean, let us continue with the government. We have problems there. And I don't want to talk about the TV or the radio. I don't want to have problems there. And we have to try to have good resources to change the problem there. C'est divers la famille qui devait affecter par cyclone Elsa. La gênée 3 million dollars qui a place pour y retrouver assistance. Méné skiné responsabilité pour égalité. On a ablénatement tout. Expliqué, à façon, c'est assistance à la CAEFET. En 3 million dollars à la CAEFET, l'année a pli pour une seconde CAE, nous estimez qu'il tout fait dommager totalement. Avec ce monde-là, nous c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, nous c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, même qui 15 mille dollars pour assister au coup, nous c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, on c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, on c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, on c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé, et nous c'est dommageé. On dit à average, nous c'est à l'heure où nous c'est aidé nous c'est aidé. by $5,000 for each kai, it will cost $2,250,000. So, that's how we spent $3,000,000 to buy our assistance because the majority of the people who are in the kai are poor. They are poor. People who can, with us, want to help our assistance, they need it. So, I promise that we will buy our assistance and we will do our best to buy our assistance as soon as possible. So, I would like to thank my mother, SSDF, who implemented the program for the kai to come and visit us. I would like to ask you a few questions. We have made an assessment of the address on this side with Abwesan. We will talk to Bahou Matui to help our assistance to the kai. We will talk to the kai who is a neighbor, the kai family, who is also a kai. We will talk to the kai to help them to come and visit us. We know that the kai will always be there. We will talk to Bahou Matui who is a kai, who is good for the government and for everyone to come and visit us in a normal situation. I am very happy to have the Minister of Responsibility to make an assessment. We will talk to them. We will discuss the issue of the kai and the cooperative. We will discuss the issue of the assistance to the kai who is coming to the kai and the kai and the assistance to the kai. We will talk to the kai and the kai to help them to come and visit us. I would like to ask you a few questions. What do you think about this new kai? I would like to thank everyone. Thank you very much. I would also like to thank you for all the support you have given us. Also for the support that you have given us despite the corona. Thank you very much for your channel.


God's purpose for you is not always going around preaching about Him 24-7. For some people, yes, that is their purpose. God has different purposes for us all here on earth, and it's our job to tune in and listen to what exactly He wants from us. What are you passionate about? What moves you emotionally? How do you want to help people improve their lives? And maybe it's not people, maybe it's the environment, maybe it's animal. You know, how do you want to make a difference in the world? That is God's purpose for you. And He put them in your heart for a reason. Like and subscribe for more content on Christianity.


really pleased to have this opportunity to speak at the Open Source Summit Europe. Many of you are old friends of Open Forum Europe and I have known you for years, yet I believe this is the first time that I'm ever presenting at a Linux Foundation event, so I'm really happy to be here with you. Being here really represents a conscious strategic shift in our organization and the way we communicate. As the leading think tank promoting openness in IT in Brussels, we've been talking to policymakers for over 15 years, trying to convince them to take Open Source seriously. But today, I'm here to make the case to you rather that it's time for the Open Source community to take public policy more seriously and argue that the time to do so is now. But first, perhaps you'll allow me to indulge in a personal story to illustrate how far we've come, also with Open Source in Brussels. 12 years ago, I had just started working with Open Forum Europe and with some colleagues, I had registered to participate in an event organized by the European Commission on standardization, I believe. And we're told informally that the organizers had asked for extra security because the Open Source people were attending. And we were seen as dangerous first and probably last for me personally. Anyway, fast forward to last week and the commission has just published a communication that outlines its new Open Source strategy. It's a bold document that not only recognizes the role of Open Source in underpinning most of the technology today, but also fully embracing it and spells out the role of Open Source and openness in achieving the twin transformations towards a green and digital Europe. So I urge you all to read it because it's really a bold document. But where does this leave us? The Open Source development model now runs the show. We have a European commission that's committed to the openness, to the importance of Open Source for Europe's digital future. Is the job done? Can we all go home? No, it's really now that Open Source is big. It's everywhere that the real political challenges emerge. And it's when your code is fundamental to the technologies that build our societies, that you have new responsibilities to help solve the large challenges that society faces.  And I prefer to put it like this in a positive call for action, but actually change is coming, whether you like it or not, and really whether you get engaged or not. Governments everywhere and in Europe are stepping in to regulate the tech space in the coming years and they have reason to. In Brussels right now, big pieces of legislation are being prepared in order to hold platforms responsible, to regulate AI and how data is handled and even to create a new industrial strategy based on the digital transformation. And that's just to name a few. And really all these policy efforts will impact Open Source in different ways. Open Source may not be the direct target for regulation, but by being everywhere, by winning as Open Source has done, it will inadvertently at least get affected. And so these efforts, where do they come from? Why is this happening now? Well, I think that in large part, they stem from an increased geopolitical tension. There is a sense of urgency coming from the impression that Europe is not autonomous, it's not resilient or some like to put it, it's not sovereign. And indeed, this concept of digital sovereignty is really being heard a lot in the tech policy discussions right now and is seen as an impetus for action. It's not new, Europe's autonomy has been a political concern for decades, but the way it's currently defined in the context of EU policy, I think was introduced by Emmanuel Macron in his Sorbonne speech in September 2017 and has since come to underpin a lot of the digital policy discussions that are going on right now. But if we go beyond the buzzword, the current buzzword, what does this digital sovereignty mean in practice? And why is this both a challenge and an opportunity for the Open Source community? I believe that it comes down to a sense of control, control of our infrastructure, especially the parts that are considered as critical to core functions of our society. And as we know, Open Source is there, running large parts of it. And the sense of control in my view, there are two paths to achieving it. The first is one where we make our world smaller in order to feel that we are in charge. For example, develop European standards with only European stakeholders or buying only from European-based companies. The second, however, is control through openness. Looking at it from a software perspective, this means having access to the code, being able to choose and change vendors, voiding lock-in, you know all of this. And if we bring that concept to the geopolitical level, you can see that the same messages of control through openness have the potential to resonate well in an unstable world. If politicians choose the first path, however, and there is a risk of this, I am convinced that we might get a sense of control, not actual control, and innovation and knowledge exchange will suffer. And by extension, open source in Europe will suffer. So looking at open source from a geopolitical perspective, I see that we can help solve this challenge of control without making our world smaller. So what is it that we're talking about when we say that open source can help us get more control and why is it so crucial now? It's worth repeating. Consider now the old story of lock-in of our desktop environments. That was the big fight. That's the time I got involved first in open source. This challenge of lock-in when we are digitizing all aspects of society, be it in healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, how can we help digitize our societies in a global world at the technological forefront without losing control? I think the open source model and open technologies have a major role to play here. Avoiding lock-in, the classic advocacy fight of open source is now geopolitical. This challenge I think is of way greater magnitude than those of earlier political fights. Open source advocates have engaged in and I include myself there. So where are we? Open source might have won in the marketplace, but in order to step up and meet today's challenges, we have to sort out some of our limiting beliefs. The first is an internal belief. I believe among members of the open source community. And again, I include myself here. There is still a notion of being the challengers, the underdog, the disruptors. Well, open source is now everywhere, including in public services, underpinning e-government services. With that comes challenges and responsibilities. It means you are the establishment. When you are big, that's when you need to start talking to policymakers and to take policymaking and regulation seriously. And here, paradoxically, I think we are up against another limiting belief. And notwithstanding the excellent open source strategy of the European Commission, let's keep in mind that there are, I would say three general groups among public officials when it comes to open source. The first is sort of the open source believers. They are excited about the possibilities I outlined earlier. Then there is the old guard, if I can call it that, which is still strong that looks at open source with suspicion are concerned that it is not secure and just a cheaper alternative. And finally, we have really the biggest group, those who never think about open source. It's never been on their radar or maybe they have a general feeling that it has something to do with the hackers, with hackers in basements, nothing wrong with that. And so paradoxically, I think we are everywhere and experts know this, but the vast majority in the public sector are not aware. They see open source as something niche, at best I would say. And important, I think to note is that not being thought of is sometimes something good, but when governments look to regulate the tech space, being unknown can be dangerous or at least have serious consequences. I'll tell you another short story to illustrate this. A couple of years ago, the commission published a communication on standards and patents. And when we asked or rather complained about the fact that there was no mention of royalty-free licensing, no mention of open source and how it's impacted. The answer from the European Commission was simply not a single open source company had come to them and asked to have a conversation or filled out the consultation document. And so think about this. Not a single party had come, not a single stakeholder had come to talk to them about this. And so being part of the political discussion had implications then and I think will have serious implications in the future. If we don't engage. But it's not all doom and gloom. I think today we have actually a real opportunity to engage and to be proactive when it comes to engaging with policymakers. And last week, as I mentioned, the European Commission published this document. Its latest open source strategy. A very ambitious document. And stating that open source plays an important role in the digital autonomy of Europe. Saying also that open source can give Europe a chance to create and maintain its own independent digital approach and stay in control of its processes, its information and its technology. So what does the commission want with these efforts and these statements? And I believe we were told openly what they want by Pierce O'Donohue, a director at DigiConnect. He spoke at OFE's open source policy summit in February this year. The commission challenges open source as a community of stakeholders to show them what open source can do for society and for Europe. And they are reaching out to you, to us, the open source community, to engage. They have already taken the first step. And really now it's time for us to level up. Yeah. And so where to start? Right now, there is the easiest way for you to engage, I would say, in the policy conversation is to take part in this European Commission's study on the impact of open source software and hardware. It's actually being carried out by Openform Europe together with Fraunhofer. This study is meant to guide open source policy for the next 10 years. I believe it will go beyond policy statements and strategy documents and will impact funding investments and procurements. So it's really important. We are conducting a big survey as part of this study of open source companies, projects and organizations with the aim of, you know, to capture the real face of open source as it is today, within companies and both small one-person ventures and tech giants, we want to hear from all of you. So go to our website or the Commission's website and you'll find the links. Where to start if you run an open source business? There are many ways that you can get involved and engaged as a stakeholder. Just this week, European Open Source Business Association is formally launching in Brussels. It's called APEL, Association Professionale Europienne de Logiciel Libre. It aims to be the voice of open source businesses vis-à-vis the European institutions. I think it's a milestone really for open source to be represented as a stakeholder in Brussels. So are you a supporting member of a National Business Association for open source? Are you encouraging them to engage at the European level? Remember what I mentioned about the standards and patents communication a few years back? There was no open source company that had spoken to the European Commission and that's how you get inadvertently affected by policy. Today, I think the situation has improved somewhat but the level of resources of the European Open Source Business Associations are nowhere near where they should be when taking their real world importance into account. Other industries put way more effort into European representation. And you can tell yourself that you won, it's the government's responsibility to understand the importance of open source and just sit back and wait for them to call us for our opinion, but you can also take responsibility for the situation and start the conversation. Build that bridge. Remember open source, the community that you're all part of has the capacity, I think, to help solve some of Europe's large strategic challenges. And it's not only open source, this is not unique to open source. It usually takes a crisis or an immediate threat for smaller industries to react to political risks or opportunities. The big ones are at the table already, the establishment is there. But open source is not small anymore. It can sometimes look small in the eyes of the policymakers or look niche. We have to step up and improve the communication, educate policymakers. And that's why I'm now turning to you here at the Open Source Summit Europe. Join us in our conversation with policymakers. Don't wait for an existential threat. Show policymakers how openness can solve their problems. Thank you and stay in touch.


With forward pay from Appalachian Wireless, you'll avoid contracts and credit checks while taking advantage of some awesome perks, like unlimited talk text and 3 gigs of data for just $44.99, or with 5 gigs for a mere $59.99. Forward pay. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. When you ask yourself the question, somebody is going to make a difference. Why would it not be you? Somebody is going to make a difference. That was the message here today when world leaders from around the globe gathered here today in Pikeville at the East Kentucky Expo Center for the All Take Innovation Forum, a forum designed to look at new innovations growing around the world and to see how Eastern Kentucky can capitalize on that spirit of entrepreneurship and development. This is spectacular. This is idea generating, it's throwing out ideas, it's looking over the menu of things that we possibly would like to try to do in the private sector. It's encouraging to people who are innovative and entrepreneurial. That's what SOAR is trying to do is generate a lot of new thinking, new ideas, taking the new world as we see it and using it for our purposes. During today's forum, Congressman Hal Rogers announced the construction of a new 50,000 square foot spec building to be built at Marion's Branch here in Pikeville. Just the latest in new endeavors to lure new industry into the region. It's a $5 million speculation building. It will be built at the Morton's Branch location, industrial site, in an effort to attract jobs to our region. I think it's terribly important because never one the money is hard to come by local government. Secondly, I think this will give us a sales pitch, sort of a sales leader. People are going to say, you know they've got all the utilities there, I'm sure the county and city are going to be very favorable on attractions to bring you here. So I think it's a great start. One of the early achievements Pikeville has its eyes set on, being part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. All tech's new distillery, the Dooling Barrels Distillery, set to open in 2017. Reporting from Pikeville for EKB News, I'm Jackson Ladder.


Okay, we're back here live in New York City for Big Data Week. This is SiliconANGLE.tv's exclusive coverage of Hadoop world strata plus Hadoop world big event big data week We just wrote a blog post on SiliconANGLE.com calling this the South by Southwest for data geeks and and It's my prediction that this is going to turn into a quite the geek fest Obviously the crowd here is enormous packed and an amazing event and we're excited. This is SiliconANGLE.com I'm the founder John Furrier. I'm joined by co-host of Dave Vellante Wikibon.org where people go for a free research and peers collaborate to solve problems and we're here with Jack Norris Who's the vice president of market marketing at MapR a company that we've been tracking for quite some time Jack welcome back to the Cube. Thank you Dave. I got to hand it to you You know we met quite a while ago now as well over a year ago And we were pushing at you guys saying well, you know open source and look we're solving problems for customers We got the right model we think you know, this is our strategy. We're sticking to it and watch what happens And like I said, I have to hand it to you guys are really have some great traction in the market You're doing what you said and so congratulations on that. I know you got a lot more work to do but yeah, yeah, and actually the the topic of openness is one that's it's pretty interesting and You know if you look at the different options out there all of them are combining open source with some proprietary Now in the case of some distributions It's very small like an odbc driver with a proprietary driver But I think it represents that that any solution combining to make it more open is is important So what we've done is make innovations, but while we've made those innovations We've opened up and provided api's like NFS for standard access like rest like Odbc drivers, etc. So so it's a spectrum. I mean actually we were in Oracle open world a few weeks ago And you know you listen to Larry Ellison talk about the Oracle public cloud makes are actually very strong It's open. You can move data. It's all Java. So it's all about the standards. Yeah, and yeah From an opposite, but it's really all about the business value. That's that's what the bottom line is So we had your CEO John Schroder on yesterday John and I both were very impressed with Essentially what he described is your philosophy of we we announced a product when we have we have customers when we announce that product and That's impressive And he was also given some good feedback to startup entrepreneurs out there who are obviously a lot action going on with the startup community And he's basically said the same thing get customers Yeah, and that's it that's all and use your tech But don't be so locked into the tech get the customers understand the needs and then deliver that so you guys have done great And I want to talk about the show here Okay, because you guys are have a big booth and big presence here at the show What what are you guys are learning? I'll see how's the positioning? How's the new m7 news hitting give us the quick update? so a lot of news first started on Tuesday where we announced the m7 edition and Yeah, I brought a demo here for me for you all Because the the big thing about m7 is what we don't have so We're not demoing region servers. We're not demoing compactions We're not demoing a lot of manual administration administrative tasks So what that that really means is that we took the stack and if you look at H base H base today has About half of new users Adopting H base. So it's a lot of momentum in the market And you know used for everything from real-time analytics to kind of lightweight OLTP processing But it's an infrastructure That sits on top of a JVM that stores its data in the Hadoop distributed file system That sits on a JVM that stores its data in a Linux file system that writes to disk And so a lot of the complexity is that stack and so as an administrator you have to worry about how data gets You know kind of basically written across that and you've got region servers to keep up When you're doing kind of writes you have things called compactions which increase response time so it's a it's a complex environment and we've spent quite a bit of time in in Collapsing that infrastructure and with the m7 edition you've got files and tables together in the same layer Writing directly to disk. So there's no region servers. There's no compactions to deal with there's no Pre-splitting of tables and trying to do manual merges. It just makes it much much simpler. Let's talk about some of your customers in terms of The profile of these guys are I'm assuming and correct me if I'm wrong that you're not selling to the tire kickers You're selling the guys who actually have some experience with with Hadoop and have run into some of the limitations And you come in and say hey we can solve some of those problems. Is that is that right? Can you talk about that? characterization I think part of it is When you're in the evaluation process and when you first hear about Hadoop It's kind of like the Gartner height curve right and you know this stuff It does everything and of course you've got data protection because you've got things replicated across the cluster and Of course you got scalability because you can just add nodes and you know so forth Well once you start using it you realize that yes, I've got data replicated across the cluster But if I accidentally delete something or if I've got some corruption that's replicated across the cluster too So things like snapshots are really important so you can return to you know, what was it five minutes before? You know performance where you can get the most out of your hardware You know ease of administration where I can cut this up into into logical volumes and and have Policies at that whole level instead of it an individual file. So there's a there's a bunch of features that really resonate with users after they've had some experience and those tend to be our You know our kind of key customers. There's a there's another phase too, which is when you're testing Hadoop you're looking at What's possible with this platform? What what type of analytics can I do? When you go into production now all of a sudden you're looking at how does this fit in with my SLAs? How does this fit in with my data protection? Policies, you know, how do I integrate with my different data sources and can I leverage existing code? You know we had one customer You know large kind of systems integrator for the federal government They have a million lines of code that they were told to rewrite to run with other distributions that they could use Just out of the box with map bar so Let's talk about some of those customers. Can you name some names and get sure sure so? Actually, I'll talk with the we had a keynote today and We had this beautiful customer video that we had to cut because of time so it's running in our booth And it's a streaming on our website. I think we've got a actually some of the bumper here. We kind of inserted so But I want to shout out to those because they ended up in the cutting room floor That's good. We've actually been running it here. Yeah, so one was Rubicon project and They're they're an interesting company. They're a real-time advertising platform at auction network They recently passed Google in terms of number one ad reach as mentioned by comscore And the lot of press on that I particularly like the headline that mentioned those three companies because I was measured by comscore and comscore And Google's a key partner and Yesterday we announced a world record for the Hadoop teresort running on running on Google. So M7 for Rubicon it allows them to address and replace different point solutions that were running alongside of Hadoop and You know it simplifies their their potentially simplifies their architecture because now they have more things done with a single platform increases performance simplifies administration Another customer is ancestry.com who You know, maybe you've seen their ads or heard some of their radio spots They're They do a tremendous amount of data processing to you know help family services and genealogy and figure out, you know family backgrounds One of the things they do is is DNA testing So for an internet service to do that advanced technology is pretty impressive and You know you send them.  So for them Simplifying H-Bass meant additional performance so they could do matches faster and really simplified administration So, you know and Malina Graham's words, you know, it's simpler because they're just not there those those components Jack I want to ask you about enterprise grade had due because Yeah, and then Ted Dunning because he was mentioned by Tim Estes on his keynote speech So so you have some rock stars in in the company house his management team We had your CEO when we've interviewed emcee Srivastan at Google IO when we were on a panel together So I have to know your team solid team So we'll talk about Ted in a minute, but I want to ask you about the enterprise grade had due conversation What does that mean now? I mean, obviously you guys were very successful at first again We were skeptics at first but now your traction and your performance has proven this is a market Yeah, and for that kind of platform What does that mean now in this in at this event today as this is evolving as a dupe Ecosystem is not just a dupe anymore. It's other things. Yeah, there's there's there's three dimensions to enterprise grade the first is is ease of use and Ease of use from an administrator standpoint. How easy does it integrate into an existing environment? How easy does it does it fit into my my IT policies? You know, do you run in a lights out data center does the Hadoop distribution fit into that? So that's that's one, you know, whole dimension a key to that is is You know complete NFS support so it functions like You know like standard storage A second dimension is on dependability reliability, so it's not just you know, do you have a checkbox h a feature? It's do you have automated stateful failover? Do you have self-healing? Can you handle multiple? Failures and and you know automated recovery, so you know in a lights out data center Can you actually go there once a week and then just you know replace drives and a great example of that Is one of our customers had a test cluster with with map bar was a POC went on to did other things They had a power field they came back a week later and the cluster was up and running and they hadn't done any manual Task there and they were they were just blown away that the recovery process for the other distributions along So I gotta ask you I gotta ask you. It's the third one. What's the third one third one is performance? Okay, and Performance is is you know kind of raw speed. It's also how do you leverage the infrastructure? Can you take advantage of of the network infrastructure multiple nicks? Can you take advantage of heterogeneous hardware? Can you you know mix and match for different workloads? And it's really about sharing a cluster for different use cases and and different users and there's a lot of features there It's not just Ross. So ease of use fitting into the existing IT infrastructure policies the whole the whole what happens when something goes wrong Can you automate that and then easy? Dependable fast and it's the same thing. Yeah, making H base easy dependable fast So the talk of the show right now You had the keynote this morning is that you map our marketing has dropped the big data tournament going with data Cosm is that true? Is that true? So Joe Hellerstein just had a tweet Joe Name is Cal Berkley professor computer science professor now's CEO of a startup What's the name start up trifecta they're doing here a good couple epic tweets this week So shout out to Joe Hellerstein, but Joe Hellerstein's tweet just says map our marketing It's decided to drop the term big data and go with data Cosm with a shout out to George Gilder So I'm kind of a little intellectual kind of humor. So what is that? What's what's your response? Is it true? What's happening? What is that? Are you a VP of marketing? Yeah, well, if you look at the big data term I I think you know there's a lot of big data washing going on where You know architectures had been out there for 30 years or you know all about big data so I think there's a There's the need for a more descriptive term The the purpose of data Cosm was not to try to coin something or try to you know change a big data label it was just to get people to take a step back and think and to realize that we are in a massive paradigm shift and You know with a shout out to George Gilder acknowledging, you know, he recognized what the impact of of making available compute Ment he recognized with telecosm work what bandwidth would mean and if you look at the combination of we've got all this this compute efficiency and bandwidth now data Cosm is is basically taking those resources and unleashing it and changing the way we do things and I think I think one of the ways to look at that is the new things that will be possible and There's been a lot of focus on you know sequel interfaces on top of of Hadoop, which are important But I think some of the more interesting use cases are taking this machine J generated data that's being produced very very rapidly and having Automated operational analytics that can respond in a very fast time to change how you do business either how you're communicating with customers How you're responding to to different? risk factors in the environment for fraud, etc. Or just increasing and improving Your response time to kind of cost events. I met it earlier called it He called the actionable insight any sort of signing intent to be able to respond Well, it's interesting that you talk about the George Gilder because we like to kind of riff and get into the concept abstract concepts But he also was very big in supply-side economics and so if you look at the business value conversation One of the things we pointed out yesterday and this morning's opening Review was you know the top conversations insight and analytics, you know as a killer app right now The app market has not developed and that's why we like companies like continuity and what you guys are doing Yeah, under the hood is being worked on right at many levels performance units of those three things But analytics is a no-brainer insight, but the other one's business value Yeah, so when you look at that kind of data Cosm I can see where you're going with that And that's kind of what people want because it's not so much like I'm Republican because he's Republican George Gilder and he bought American spectator everyone knows that so so you know obviously he's a Republican but politics aside The business side of what big day is implementing is massive. Yeah, I guess that's a Republican concept But not really I mean businesses is all parties so relative to data Cosm I Mean no one talks about e-business anymore We're talking IBM at the IBM conference and they were saying hey, that was a great marketing campaign But no one says hey You in e-business today, so we think that big data is gonna have the same effect Which is hey, do you have big data? No, it's just assumed. Yeah, so that's what you're basically trying to establish that It's not just about big data. Yeah, let me give you one small example from a business value standpoint and Ted Dunning you mentioned Ted earlier chief application architect and one of the co-authors of The book Mahoot which deals with machine learning He dealt with one of our large financial services companies and You know one of the techniques on Hadoop is is clustering K nearest neighbors You know different algorithms and they looked at a particular Process and they sped up that process by 30,000 times. So there's a blog post That's on our website. You can find out you know additional information on that and I know this on this one On this on this one point, but I think you know to your point about business value and you know, what does data Cosm really mean? That's an incredible speed up in terms of Performance and it changes how companies can react in real time it changes how they can do pattern recognition and Google did a really interesting paper Called the unreasonable effectiveness of data and in there they say simple algorithms on Big data on mass amounts of data beat a complex model every time And so I think what we'll see is a movement away from data sampling and trying to do an 8020 to looking at at all your data and Identifying where are the exceptions that we want to increase because they're you know revenue exceptions Or that we want to address because it's a cost or a fraud issue That's what I would give a shout out to To the guys at digital reason Tim Asti's one plugged Ted It was idolized him in his terms of his work. Obviously his work is awesome But to he brought up this concept of understanding gap and he showed an interesting chart in his keynote Which was the date explosion, you know, it's up and you know straight up, right? It's massive amount of data 64% unstructured by his calculation then he showed out a flat line called attention So as data has been exploding over time going up attention me user attention is flat with some uptick maybe but so users and humans Yes, they can't expand their mind fast enough. So machine learning Technologies have to bridge that gap. That's analytics. That's insight and you know There's a big conversation now going on about more data or better models people trying to squint through some of the comments That Google made say all right does that mean we just throw out the models data Trump's algorithms data Trump's algorithms But but the question I have is do you think and your customers talking about okay? Well now they have more data can actually develop better algorithms that are simpler and Is it a virtuous cycle? Yeah, I think I mean There are There's there are a lot of debate here a lot of information But I think one of the one of the interesting things is given that compute cycle given the You know kind of that compute efficiency that we have and given the bandwidth you can take a model and then iterate very quickly on it and kind of arrive at insight and in the past it was just The that amount of data and that amount of time to process Okay, that could take you 40 days to get to the point where you can do now in hours, right? Right? So I mean Great examples fraud detection. Yep, right? So we use the sample six months later Hey your credit card might have been hacked and now it's you know You get a phone call or you can't use your credit card or whatever it is And so but there's still a lot of use cases where you know weather is an example Modeling and better modeling would be very helpful Excellent, so so data Cosmo are you planning other you know marketing initiatives around that or is this sort of tongue-in-cheek fund Throw it out there little red meat into the to the chum in the waters You know the cubes here talking, you know for the whole day What could we possibly do to help give them a topic of conversation? Okay data Cosmos now Of course we found that on our proprietary H base Jack Nora, thanks for coming in we appreciate your support you guys have been great We've been following you continue to follow you've been a great support of the Cube want to thank you personally while we're here MapR has been generous underwriter supports of our great independent editorial want to recognize you guys Thanks for your support, and we continue to look forward to watching you guys grow and kick ass So thanks for all your support, and we'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Thank you Ten years ago the video news business believed the internet was a fat the science has settled We all know the internet is here to stay Bubbles and busts come and go but the industry deserves a news team that goes the distance Coming up on social angle are some interesting new metrics for measuring the worth of a customer on the web Every morning we're on the air to bring you the most up-to-date information on the tech industry With scrutiny on releases of the day and news of industry-wide trends We're here daily with breaking analysis from the best minds in the business Join me Kristen Folletti daily at the news desk on silicone angle TV your reference point for tech innovation 18 months ago


Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dan Quinlan, I'm the Chair of the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance. We are Vermont physicians, nurses, therapists, veterinarians, researchers, aides, and other medical and health professionals who share a deep concern about the impacts of climate change on our patients, our children, and our communities. We're joined together in a collective recognition that the track we're on is not good enough. Unless we all work together to change that, climate change will utterly upend the lives of our children and all who follow us. Last night, the 2023 UN Global Meeting on Climate Change ended. Today, Vermont's Bill McKibbin sent out an email summarizing his thoughts. He ended with the following statement. Today's agreement is literally meaningless and potentially meaningful. The diplomats are done now. The rest of us are going to have to supply that meeting. I'm joined here today by three wonderful colleagues and friends, Dr. David Rand, Dr. Megan Melgarie, and Dr. Beth Zygman. Our goal today is to describe why we believe that Vermont's should support the Make Big Oil Pay campaign. We believe this idea is exactly the major, the kind of major step that Bill McKibbin and so many other leading voices are asking us to support. Dr. Melgarie. Hello, thank you for having me. My name is Megan Melgarie, and I'm a primary care doctor in the community, and also a clinical associate professor at the Larner College of Medicine. I think Katherine Hayhoe summarized this nicely in her book, Saving Us, and I'm paraphrasing here, but she said fossil fuels have done a lot for us. They've advanced our society. They've accelerated our growth and our wealth. So there's definitely acknowledgement that fossil fuel in our country and in the world have led to advancements. There's no denying that, and none of us want to go backwards and be living in a society pre-industrial. But at this time, we have technology and we have advancements to allow us to move forward from such a polluting and unhealthy form of energy. And so fossil fuel combustion globally causes 10.2 million premature deaths and pollutes our air and it's dangerous to human health. So I'm a clinician in Vermont, so locally I've noticed climate change related health impacts in my clinic for the past 11 years that I've practiced and over time I've noticed more frequent impacts and more intense impacts for patients and their health. This summer was particularly salient in terms of the impacts that were noted that I noticed in clinic. For example, my patients with lung disease are really impacted by climate change related impacts. So with the extreme heat of the summer combined with the wildfire smoke coming from the Quebec fires, increased allergens in the air, all of these factors can exacerbate people who have COPD, asthma, and people who are definitely coming in more with exacerbations of their illnesses. I have one particular case that I found poignant and I had a patient with COPD. She was hospitalized this summer right around the time when the wildfire smoke was the most intense and I think in New York City they said it was the highest levels on record of air pollution. She was hospitalized, she was just at home with oxygen and I visited her two weeks later because it was clear that she was not able to make it into the clinic. And she told me she had not literally stepped outside her home from the time that she was hospitalized until now. So she hadn't gone outside and breathed in outdoor air.  She hadn't visited her neighbors or gone to her mailbox because her disease was so exacerbated still and because the air quality was still poor. And so people are really being impacted by the impacts of climate change in their health our most marginalized and most vulnerable patients who have illnesses are the most impacted but everyone is impacted. All of us have been impacted by climate change related health impacts whether we know it or not. So and fossil fuel companies continue to make tremendous profits at the expense of our health. So again, they had a role and now we need to move forward from that. And fossil fuel companies are still subsidized when their actions, the combustion of fossil fuels are causing death and disability and illnesses in our community. So I hope we're encouraging legislators to support the fair share idea when it comes into legislation coming up in January. Thank you very much. Sure, thanks Megan. My name is Dr. David Rand. I'm an internal medicine doctor. I teach medical students in residence at the University of Vermont, where I also practice. In addition to being a doctor, I'm also a father. Many us in Vermont thought that we were safe from the devastating impacts of climate change and then came the floods and the wildfire smoke and the algae blooms choking our lakes and the heat. Climate change impacts the health of my patients and also of my family. It boggles my mind that I can't let my daughter go outside some days because the wildfire smoke will damage her lungs and that I have to warn my patients about being exposed to the air because they will increase their risk of having a heart attack or needing to come into the hospital for breathing problems. I worry most about my patients who can't afford to stay inside and turn their HEPA filters on. The people who need to work outside, whether they work on a farm or delivering packages or in construction. Climate change affects people's health differently and a lot depends on how rich or poor you are. In the floods, many people's lives were devastated, emotionally, financially and physically, but the people most impacted were those who couldn't afford to rebuild on their own, who couldn't afford to work, sorry, who couldn't work because where they worked was flooded. Climate changes multiplies inequality. Meanwhile, we have known what causes climate change for a very long time. As early as 1977, in fact, scientists at big oil companies predicted that continued use of their very own products, fossil fuels, would cause major changes in the climate and yet they kept it a secret and then they lied about it. As a doctor and as a vermonter, I'm calling for fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share. To help vermonters and my patients adapt to the devastating changes to our climate that their products have caused. But it can't stop there. We must elect politicians who will do whatever it takes to stop this runway train. Our leaders must stand up to big oil and transform our economy from one dependent on burning fossil fuels to one that uses clean energy. And we must all do whatever we can individually to minimize our own climate emissions. We don't have a minute to waste. Thank you. Hello and thank you for inviting me to this event. I'm Dr. Beth Ziegman. I'm an associate professor of radiology with a sub-specialty in cardiothoracic radiology. That means I'm a specialist in the imaging diagnosis and surveillance of diseases of the heart and lungs. But it doesn't take a heart and lung specialist to point out the horrible health impacts of climate disruption. This past summer we were plagued by weeks worth of wildfire smoke from Canada, smoke that's highly toxic to the lungs and heart, as well as numerous other organ systems. And then there were the catastrophic floods in our state and all the resulting tragic cost to the mental and physical health and well-being of Vermonters. Not to mention the astronomical financial cost to our state, not only to rebuild communities and lives, but to pay for the escalating cost to our already struggling healthcare system. We know with certainty that these terrible events and their health impacts can be traced to the burning of fossil fuels, primarily oil and natural gas and coal. How? Because it is indisputable that weather disruption is caused by climate change. And make no mistake, big oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have known for decades. In fact, the first address by the American Petroleum Institute President on this topic to his industry leaders was in the 1960s. And he pointed out where we were headed. Based on amazingly accurate research by their own scientists, they knew what was coming. That the continued burning of fossil fuels would lead directly to this crisis and the ballooning costs that we're now facing. People throughout the world, including in Vermont, suffer worse and more frequent health impacts and there are so many impacts. Increases in lung disease, mental health conditions, skin infections, in our region, Lyme disease, direct physical injuries from climate events, heat-related illness, water contamination, the list goes on and on. What's truly astounding is that despite this, the oil and gas industry continues to blatantly lie about their intentions to help the transition to clean energy. And we've seen this recently at the climate conference in Dubai. They continue to pretend that they're going to help the transition to clean energy. Instead, they do everything possible not just to delay, but to derail the energy transition. They must be held accountable for the mounting costs of their lives, the costs to your health, to our health, to the health of our children and our grandchildren and all future generations. Just like the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, the fossil fuel industry has to pay for this mess. Thank you. Hi. I would like to start by thanking the healthcare professionals from the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance for taking time out of very busy care schedules to be here and to speak about the varying costs of climate change, particularly among colleagues and patients. My name is Jordan Hyden. I use she, her pronouns and I'm B. Perg's Keep Vermont Cool campaign manager.  The Make Big Oil Pay campaign is rooted in a value that most of us learned in kindergarten. That is, if you make a mess, you should help clean it up. But unfortunately, big oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and Shell are not doing that and have not been doing that for decades. Instead, they've raked in unprecedented profits, over $200 billion last year alone. And in the process, they've left an enormous path of environmental destruction behind. So we believe it's time for Big Oil to pay its fair share to combat the climate crisis, redirecting a portion of profits to create climate solutions through the implementation of a Vermont Climate Superfund. This concept is wildly popular. And a recent survey conducted by Data for Progress found that the idea enjoys broad support from Democrats, independents and Republicans. So what we've found locally, that is the case as well. After knocking on thousands of doors through VPurg Summer Canvas and hosting community action events in every single county in the state, and with support from local legislators and organizations like the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance, we look forward to watching this important concept evolve in the State House. So if you'd like to learn more about the campaign to make big oil pay, please visit makebigoilpay.org and stay tuned for details about a day of action taking place at the State House in the second week of January. Thank you so much for being here and we're happy to take any questions if you have them. Hi, so logistically, how do you see the oil companies contributing to the Superfund? Yeah, that's a great question. I will take that. So this is something that is being developed that is based on information we have from other states. So just to be clear, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York have already set this tone. They have bills in motion as we speak. And this is something, again, that is developed off of the EPA Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Program. So it's something that is a work in progress. We're working closely with lawyers and experts in determining how we can get those funds. But it is something that will be required of them. It's based off the amount of climate emissions that each individual entity produces. And it's just based on their own individual responsibility. So those funds will be redirected towards the state in a way where we can use them for a variety of things that's to be determined. But it could be infrastructure reconfigurations. It could be renewable energy projects, things of that nature. That remains to be seen at this point. The bill is being drafted. So we'll have more information about that in the coming weeks.  It's definitely not a lawsuit. And I don't believe it's a tax. But there will be more information as we continue to work with legislators on exactly how that comes to fruition. What is your message to legislators as they head into this session of January? Does anyone want to take that? Maybe from all perspectives. Yeah. Does anyone want to start from? Want to share? Not from the perspective. The health perspective takes us from the health perspective. My message to legislators would be that our health care costs continue to climb. We've lurched so far recently from crisis to crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic was the prime example. And this crisis is analogous. We need to hold accountable the companies who knew what they were doing, who knew what the impacts would be, and who basically spent decades trying to obfuscate and pretend that this wasn't happening and confuse the public about the science. The science is clear. So the message to legislators would be we need to do everything in our power to hold these folks accountable. The same way that we did with the opioid crisis. Thank you. Can I take a shot at that as well? So I think for us, thinking from a medical perspective, what's gone on here is very similar to what happened with the tobacco debate. So that information was hidden from the public. And that's absolutely what's going on here. And we're not unique in the sense of there are groups like this in 23 states now. There's also a national organization. There's international organizations. In 2018, there was a letter that went out from the Global Climate Summit that was signed by 117 health organizations across the planet, representing 17,000 hospitals and 6 million healthcare employees. That was 2018. And this whole thing has only grown since then. So that's another part of the message to legislators. We are really trying to get them and the public to see that the medical profession is incredibly concerned about this for a very good reason. Again, based on very solid science and what the physicians and others are seeing in their clinics. And I would also just like to add that we believe Vermonters have been footing the bill for the climate crisis for far too long. And Vermont is actually the seventh highest number of federally declared disasters over the last decade and also has the fifth highest per capita spending on climate disasters since 2011. So it's really critical that we start to make these changes now. And have you gained support from Vermont residents and the people who are paying for those consequences? Absolutely. Yeah, we actually just wrapped up a 14 county statewide tour where we hosted 17 community action workshops across the state, really trying to mobilize for this campaign and coming soon, Bill. But we have received a lot of support. A lot of folks are taking action writing to their legislators, sharing on social media and getting involved in many different ways. So we are seeing that support. Megan. What's your last name, Megan? It's Maljuri. And it's Barbara. Emma's in Mary, A-L-G-E-R-I. So sorry, let me turn the camera on you.  So it kind of went through a little bit of a laundry list of the sort of health impacts that happen upon people who are exposed to climate change. Could you just go over one more time, sort of what you're seeing in a primary care office from climate change? Yeah, thank you. Good question. So from my perspective, climate change related health impacts range from people coming in or calling pretty much daily from spring until the end of the fall with tick concerns, whether it's tick on them, they're concerned about Lyme disease, they're concerned about anaplasmosis. I've diagnosed both of those concerns for people in the office or through the lab. And in addition, exacerbations, pretty much anyone with a chronic medical issue can be susceptible to exacerbation of that disease in the setting of the strains of climate change. So the extreme heat can lead to people with hypertension becoming dehydrated. The extreme heat and humidity can lead to exacerbations of Lyme disease. So my asthmatic patients can have trouble breathing, COPD patients have trouble breathing, they come into the clinic, sometimes need a steroid, sometimes as I mentioned, they need to be hospitalized for that. And so there's a lot of impacts for that population, people with congestive heart failure also are exacerbated by the extreme heat and other stressors from climate-related impacts to their health, and they can have trouble breathing and come into the clinic with concerns. I also, there was a study by National Academy of Sciences indicating that there's a 21% increase in allergies over the past 20 years. And I definitely see that in the clinic too. So people are coming in with these prolonged colds and saying, what can be done? Can I, do I need antibiotics? And really what they have is allergies and they never have had these before. More extreme cases of allergies where people need to take allergy medicine year round now where they didn't before, because we have such a delayed frost and there's more carbon dioxide in the air. So those are some of the impacts that I see in the clinic. Yeah, so a lot falling on the shoulders of primary care physicians because of climate change. And given the fact in Vermont that we have such a shortage, are you concerned at all? I mean, certainly I think that in Vermont we have an aging population to begin with. So as I said, climate change impacts everyone but it also impacts our older patients. You know, the very young, the very old, people who are pregnant, people who are marginalized, who have been provost. So when we think about our aging population, people have chronic illnesses and these are exacerbated. We already have a shortage of primary care providers. So I am concerned about being able to adapt, being able to respond to the needs of Vermonters. Are you concerned that everybody who has negative impacts exacerbated by climate change will be able to see primary care physicians? Do you think that that might not even be able to happen? I, yeah, I mean, we see that now where people can't get in to see their doctor. They have prolonged waits and end up in the hospital because of that. So I am concerned about that. And because people are gonna end up in the hospital and emergency medicine costs so much more. Do you guys have like a ballpark figure of how much the cost is gonna be because we're not able to meet these demands? Sort of what the supplement from the Superfund would be? Like just like a ballpark estimate of how much money you think is gonna go. Yeah, we could be seeing costs upwards of $5 billion over the course of the next 25 years but those are estimates and could be much higher. So what we're hoping to see is a 50% contribution from those big oil and gas entities. So $2.5 billion over the course of the next 25 years. Thank you. If there are no other questions, I think we'll wrap it up here but a few of us will be hanging around, floating around if you wanna continue the conversation but thank you so much for your time and we appreciate your attendance today. All right, hello, my name is Josh Ferguson and I am a climate and energy organizing fellow at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group and this past fall I was blessed to have the opportunity to visit every county in the state and bring this conversation on climate change to every corner of Vermont and I found in that tour is that there are a lot of shared feelings about climate change and the damages of climate change in Vermont and we really are trying to bring that conversation to the forefront, you know. A lot of tax-paying citizens in Vermont are seeing rises in their taxes and their healthcare and in their housing needs, they spend a lot of thousands of dollars out of pocket every year to update their facilities so that they can continue to operate as normal and in fact, across the state, we found that operating as normal has come at a higher cost and we feel that the time for Vermonters to carry that burden is over and that it is time for big oil companies, big energy companies who have created at least 70% of the damage associated with climate change, that it is time for them to pay a fair share.