Gap CEO On Why Running Beats Stress

Gap chief Art Peck is still new to the job, but he has a good idea of what works for him when it comes to de-stressing.

For Peck, who took over as CEO of the clothing company in February, running is a way of "getting to a great place to think."

"I get that moment when my head clears. Maybe I'll be looking forward and thinking about what's going to happen during the day or the week, maybe I'll be thinking about a tough problem that I'm staring at," he told HuffPost Live on Monday. "A lot of the noise goes away."

That noise usually is his smartphone. As is too common these days, people are increasingly tethered to their devices, even when they leave the office. But Peck has one rule: at night, his phone stays in the kitchen, he said. 

Still, he acknowledged that it's getting harder to distinguish between work and life, saying that the notion of strict boundaries between the two is a bit "antiquated."

"You take your work with you," Peck said.

Gap plans to close 175 stores over the next few years, as young customers flock to cheaper options like H&M and Forever 21. The company is scrambling to lure back shoppers, and much of its efforts are centered around rolling out more fashionable designs.

Shell To Cease Costly Alaska Arctic Exploration

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell will cease exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska's coast following disappointing results from an exploratory well it just completed.

Shell found indications of oil and gas in the well in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska's northwest coast, the company said Monday in a release from The Hague, Netherlands. However, the petroleum was not in quantities sufficient to warrant additional exploration in that portion of the basin, the company said.

"Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S.," said Marvin Odum, president of Shell USA, in the announcement. "However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin."

Shell will end exploration off Alaska "for the foreseeable future," the company said.

The decision reflects the results of the exploratory well in the Burger J lease, the high costs associated with Alaska offshore drilling and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska, the company said.

Shell has spent upward of $7 billion on Arctic offshore development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Monday was Shell's final day to drill this year in petroleum-bearing rock under its federal permit. Regulators required Shell to stop a month before sea ice is expected to re-form in the lease area.

The company reached a depth of 6,800 feet with the exploratory well drilling in about 150 feet of water.

Environmental groups oppose Arctic offshore drilling and say industrial activity and more greenhouse gases will harm polar bears, walrus and ice seals.

Over the summer, protesters in kayaks unsuccessfully tried to block Arctic-bound Shell vessels in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

 

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Elon Musk Says Climate Change Refugees Will Dwarf Current Crisis

Elon Musk, co-founder of electric carmaker Tesla Motors, warned on Thursday that climate change will spark a refugee crisis of catastrophic proportions if no action is taken.

In a speech in Berlin, the Tesla chief executive said Europe's current wave of people seeking asylum, prompted mostly by political violence, will be dwarfed as fresh water becomes scarce, food supplies become insecure and weather changes in the coming decades. 

"Today's refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change," Musk told an audience at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. "Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe."

Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over cheating on nitrogen oxide emissions tests on its diesel vehicles is a troubling, Musk said, but it's a small issue compared with the problem of overall carbon dioxide emissions.

The billionaire has devoted much of his career to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Besides running an electric car company, he serves as the chairman of SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer. Earlier this year, both missions merged, when Tesla announced a battery pack that would allow buildings to store excess solar energy generated throughout the day for use at night.

"I think it's very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans," Musk said. "One that is almost impossible to reverse."

Climate change remains a contentious issue in the United States as some lobby groups, often acting on behalf of companies that benefit from the carbon economy, sow doubt with the scientific consensus of humankind's role in warming the planet. But in Germany, a country Musk called "the best in the world when it comes to solar power," facts about the climate are much more widely accepted.

Still, Musk said even Germany has a long way to go. Despite the country's aggressive transition to renewable energy, a program called Energiewende, Germany remains dependent on vehicles fueled by gasoline and diesel. The scandal engulfing Volkswagen -- the world's largest automaker by sales and, until now, the pride of Germany manufacturing and exports -- only serves to highlight the problem. 

"If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It's almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it's, like 97 percent," Musk said. "So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, 'Did nobody tell you?' No, everyone was telling us. 'So why didn't you do anything?' What's the answer? I think it's very important that we do something."

Watch the full speech below. Musk begins talking at 9:03:

Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year

Now that we know Volkswagen purposefully rigged 11 million vehicles to circumvent environmental rules, releasing an enormous amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, the company’s Sustainability Report from 2014 comes off as a horrible joke.

"It's a jaw-dropper. So unbelievable," Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Huffington Post.

In the report, which was reviewed by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the automaker details its commitment to the customer, its employees and, of course, to the environment. “Environment” is mentioned 335 times over 156-pages -- an average of twice per page. 

“The Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of resolute commitment to environmental protection.” -- page 86.

“We intend to put our creative powers to good use for the benefit of people and the environment." -- page 14.

As we now know, Volkswagen put its creative powers to use in a far less noble way, devising software to purposefully cheat on emissions tests and secretly installing it its diesel vehicles. On Wednesday, chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to quit his job at the world’s largest automaker in the wake of the growing scandal and in anticipation of billions in fines, lawsuits and increasing customer rage. More firings are on deck.

VW’s report follows a long tradition of companies using self-reported data -- sometimes certified by well-paid consulting firms -- to make broad declarations of ethical commitment, used to reassure the public that companies aren't just profit-seeking monsters. These are called “corporate social responsibility” reports, "CSR" is the biz lingo. This is a huge movement; most corporations produce these things. Here’s Coca-Cola’s. And Ikea’s. And Exxon-Mobil’s.

And, of course, not all of these efforts are mere publicity ploys. Some companies take this stuff very seriously, even tying environmental goals to executive pay -- an extremely sigficant matter. But in the wake of the VW scandal, it’s going to be harder for anyone to believe a word in these reports.

“[Volkswagen] will probably severely tarnish this entire movement,” writes Greer in a blog post. She’s written before about the key danger of CSR programs: that they end up as merely shiny promotional efforts that allow businesses to sidestep true responsibility for their endeavors.

"There are some companies doing good things," Greer told HuffPost. "Oftentimes they're just doing it and not necessarily putting it in a report."

Yet many efforts are sideshows. Companies give money to philanthropies, for example, but fail to examine the core parts of their businesses that need attention.

Volkswagen will probably severely tarnish this entire movement. Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greer is working with Target now on cleaning up environmental issues in the retailer's supply chain. She also commends Apple for dealing with pollution issues overseas. "They have a CSR report, but I think they are walking the walk more than just talking the talk," she said of Apple.

VW’s absurd document follows a long tradition. BP is also notorious for the false promise of its environmental slogans. The oil company won plaudits for acknowledging the reality of global warming and for the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” back in 2000. Then, in 2010, BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history. 

By contrast, Exxon Mobil after the Exxon Valdez disaster became “religious about safety standards,” writes Chrystia Freeland for the Washington Post in 2010. Getting the oil out of the ground and moving it around the world without killing anyone or destroying the ocean is a core social responsibility.

So is adhering to environmental regulations, which VW brazenly decided to forgo.

Companies need to start with those simple goals before moving on to marketing materials.

Apple Might Release An Electric Car In 4 Years

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Apple seems pretty keen to unleash an electric car soon.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is aiming to roll out a vehicle by 2019. The 600-person team working on the project, which is code-named "Titan," is set to expand threefold.

The vehicle is unlikely to be completely autonomous, though one with self-driving capabilities may be unveiled eventually, according sources involved in the matter who spoke to the Journal. Some also expressed doubt that Apple would be able to meet its 2019 target.

There's been much speculation about Apple's plans to break into the automobile market. The company has made several high-level industry hires in the past year: Doug Betts, formerly of Toyota, Nissan and the Chrysler Group, joined in July; and Paul Furgale, a robotics specialist, left his former post at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology earlier this year.

Last month, The Guardian reported that Apple was looking into testing robotic cars at a former naval base with high-level security near San Francisco. 

Apple may be feeling increased pressure from Google, which recently named John Krafcik, a former CEO of Hyundai Motors America, as chief of its self-driving car project. Google has been testing self-driving cars for years, and it began driving trials on its new egg-shaped prototype in May.

Google's far from the only other company with autonomous vehicles on the road, however, and there's been at least one run-in (or near-run-in) with a Google car and another self-driving prototype.

A Lot Of Managers Want to Raise The Minimum Wage, Too

A 64 percent majority of hiring and human resource managers think the minimum wage should be raised in their states, according to a new online Harris Poll commissioned by CareerBuilder. That's a slight increase from the 62 percent who said the same thing last year.

In the poll, released Friday, just over a quarter of the managers said they worked at firms that had hired minimum-wage workers this year. Among that group, 69 percent said they wanted the wage increased.

“As big name brands take measures to increase pay for minimum wage workers and the market overall grows more competitive for skilled labor, employers are going to start feeling more wage pressure when trying to attract and retain employees at all levels within the organization," Rosemary Haefner, the chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder, said in a statement.

The vast majority of the representatives of the firms surveyed believe that $7.25, the current federal hourly minimum wage, isn't fair, with more than 60 percent saying it should be increased to $10 or more. Just a small fraction, however, supported the idea of a $15 minimum wage -- a proposal that has the backing of many labor groups, including the Service Employees International Union.

Other polls have found a similar divide in the nation as a whole. While a majority of the public backs a $10.10 minimum wage, according to a July YouGov poll, support for a $15 wage remains lower, with Republicans substantially more likely to oppose the greater amount.

The CareerBuilder poll also found that Americans in minimum wage jobs mostly find it difficult to make ends meet. Just 33 percent of those who work at the minimum wage now, or who have done so in the past, said that they were able to make ends meet financially. Nearly half said they needed to take more than one job to stay afloat.

The survey used an online panel to reach 2,321 hiring and human resource managers in the private sector ages 18 and over, and 3,039 full-time private-sector employees ages 18 and over, between May 14 and June 3.

 

Are There Enough Jobs? Depends Who You Ask.

Job growth in August continued apace with recent trends, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. But consistency does not mean lack of controversy: The health of the economy remains the subject of heated debate. 

The steady, but not stellar, rate of job growth continues to divide mainstream analysts content with recent gains from liberal-leaning economists who argue that there are still too few jobs for the number of potential job seekers. 

The economy produced 173,000 jobs in August, the BLS reported -- a decline from July, in which the economy produced 245,000 jobs. 

The official unemployment rate declined to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent, the lowest rate since April 2008.

Workers’ hourly wages rose 0.3 percent, slightly higher than in July, bringing total wage growth up to 2.2 percent for the past 12 months.

As usual, the initial jobs numbers are subject to change, leaving hope that employment grew more than expected in August. Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial, called the “slowdown in employment misleading.” Swonk noted that August jobs data is “notoriously underreported” and predicted it would later be revised to show that 220,000 jobs were created. 

Still, even with revisions, experts’ interpretations of August’s jobs numbers reflect their larger views about what a "full employment" economy should really look like. 

Economists who thought job growth was healthy last month and the month before that continued to do so. Those same economists are sanguine about the prospect of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates in the coming months in order to head off price inflation -- even as inflation continues to undershoot the Fed’s target of 2 percent. Prices for consumer goods, excluding energy and food, rose at a rate of 1.8 percent during the 12 months ending in July.

“The underlying pace of jobs growth remains darn healthy,” tweeted Justin Wolfers, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Over the past three months, we've added an average of +221k jobs per month.”

“How long until we hear the words ‘Obama boom’”? Wolfers added. “Seriously. We now have a record 66 straight months of private-sector jobs growth.”

How long until we hear the words "Obama boom." Seriously. We now have a record 66 straight months of private-sector jobs growth.

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) September 4, 2015

Tara Sinclair, chief economist of the job search site Indeed and an associate professor at George Washington University, largely agreed that August's report provided qualified support for a Fed interest rate hike.

“Wages are rising, and inflation is nowhere to be seen, so although we would hope for stronger numbers there is an argument for a September rate hike," Sinclair said in a statement. “There is some concern a rate hike will choke off potential growth, but we simply aren’t seeing the movement to indicate that in the near-term.”

For other mostly liberal-leaning economists, however, August’s jobs numbers are one more sign that the economy is not producing enough to meet the needs of a growing population or generate widespread wage growth. They are vehemently opposed to a Fed interest rate hike until wages grow more substantially, warning that an increase could limit employment growth even as the recovery has yet to reach large swaths of the population. In an economy weak enough for a high share of workers to give up looking for jobs, competition for labor will also be too low to raise wages significantly, these economists argue.

“We’re clearly not at full employment so, especially given the absence of price and wage pressures, the correct answer is” for the Fed to maintain current interest rates, wrote Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities.

Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute called the rate of wage growth in recent months -- between 1.8 percent and 2.2 percent -- “by any standard...anemic,” in a Thursday blog post in advance of the August jobs report.

Friday’s jobs numbers only strengthened Gould’s conviction that the economy must be allowed to create more jobs before the Fed begins raising interest rates. 

Gould estimates that if the economy produces jobs at the August rate of 173,000 a month, the “prime-age” population -- 25- to 54-year-olds -- will not reach pre-recession employment levels until October 2017. (Gould uses the prime-age population to filter out the effect of aging workers retiring.)   

After climbing for years, the prime-age employment to population ratio was still lower in August than during the low points of the last two business cycles, Gould explained in her analysis of the new numbers.

After years of climbing, August's prime-age EPOP is still below the last two troughs. pic.twitter.com/w7wKpC3gp5

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 4, 2015

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