(Vox) Humans now have left undeniable fingerprints on extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and flooding experienced around the world. As these disasters intensify, they push questions the world has grappled with for over 30 years to the forefront: Who is responsible for that damage? And how much should they pay? Increasingly, people around the world are…

(Bloomberg) For more than a year, Spain has been struggling with drought that has sent water levels in dams below historical averages, prompting local officials to tell residents not to water their gardens and to turn off taps at night to guarantee supply during the day. The situation is particularly hard for farmers. The central…

(WSJ) Two years ago chief diversity officers were some of the hottest hires into executive ranks. Now, they increasingly feel left out in the cold. Companies including Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and…

(Bloomberg) Firms that fail to take ESG seriously face a bleak future in the European Union, as the bloc pushes ahead with the world’s most ambitious set of environmental, social and governance regulations. That’s according to Mairead McGuinness, the EU’s commissioner for financial markets and services. “What the European Union has been doing is quite extraordinary,” McGuinness said…

(WSJ) Social media was more than a decade old before efforts to curb its ill effects began in earnest. With artificial intelligence, lawmakers, activists and executives aren’t waiting that long.  Over the past several months, award-winning scientists, White House officials and tech CEOs have called for guardrails around generative AI tools such as ChatGPT—the chatbot launched…

(The Information) The California Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a challenge from labor unions to Proposition 22, which classified gig workers as independent contractors rather than as employees. Many gig workers want to be independent contractors, but Prop 22 doesn’t honor the spirit of what this means. I run a company that works frequently…

(Bloomberg) Prime Coalition and Azolla Ventures have rolled out a $239 million fund to invest in early-stage startups that are unlikely to lure traditional investors for their climate technology solutions. The new fund will look at three factors as part of its investment criteria — impact, lack of alternative funding options and commercial potential of the climate solution,…

(Axios) Limited partners’ grumpiness about VC distributions is not for naught: the industry’s cashflow ratio at the end of 2022 (-$48.8 billion) was at its most imbalanced since at least 1998, per new PitchBook data. Why it matters: Investors are giving more scrutiny to VCs in their portfolio who didn’t return much cash during 2021’s extraordinary…

(Bloomberg) Google’s Bard artificial intelligence chatbot will answer a question about how many pandas live in zoos quickly, and with a surfeit of confidence. Ensuring that the response is well-sourced and based on evidence, however, falls to thousands of outside contractors from companies including Appen Ltd. and Accenture Plc, who can make as little as…

(Politico) When do you know a bill might have legs? When there’s a bit of horse-trading going on. A first-in-the-nation bill to compel large corporations to disclose their planet-warming emissions is picking up steam in the California Legislature, where it passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on Monday. Read more here.