On Sunday New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered that sex offenders stay away from Pokémon Go. The immensely popular game that has taken the world by storm for the past month leads its players on a real life search for digital Pokémon, using your phone’s map function.

Last week NY State Senators Jeffrey Klein and Diane Savino discovered that using the app actually might take you to the homes of convicted sex offenders. Now they are trying to pass legislation that will keep players a minimum of 100 feet away from such locations. It is also possible to pay real life money to get a rare Pokémon, in order to lure other players to your location–a tactic that some businesses are using to get customers to come to their stores.

Governor Cuomo previously worked to prohibit or limit Internet access for convicted sex offenders and pedophiles. This new directive will ban all registered sex offenders from downloading and playing interactive online games such as Pokémon Go. This will immediately affect around 3,000 individuals on parole.

We directed @NYSDOCCS to restrict sex offenders on parole from playing Pokémon GO and similar games: https://t.co/WpL19oEswq

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) August 1, 2016

Cuomo also sent a letter to Niantic, Inc., the American software company behind Pokémon Go, asking for cooperation on the issue by technologically barring sex offenders from even using the app. He said in a statement:

Protecting New York’s children is priority number one and, as technology evolves, we must ensure these advances don’t become new avenues for dangerous predators to prey on new victims. These actions will provide safeguards for the players of these augmented reality games and help take one more tool away from those seeking to do harm to our children.

In the same statement, Jeffrey Klein said that pedophiles constantly seek new ways to approach and lure victims and that this is an important first step to limit the technological ways they can do it.

Diane Savino pointed out that Pokémon Go is an entertaining game for children, but the real world can be dangerous and it is important to remember the risks. However, there is no evidence that anyone has been sexually abused because of the Pokémon Go app.

It is great that an online game manages to get kids out and moving in their search for Pokémon, but there are several risks involved when walking around with your eyes on a screen–such as robbery, various physical injuries, and in one case, even finding a dead body. Hopefully the new directives regarding sex offenders will protect kids from one of those potential dangers.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced the New York State Lights Out Initiative, which is a program that couples with the Audubon Society’s efforts to reduce the light pollution that disorients birds during peak migration seasons. From April 15–May 31 and August 15–November 15 state owned buildings will turn off non-essential outdoor lighting from 11 PM to dawn. This small measure will make a big difference directly for the birds, but will also have many indirect implications in favor of conservation efforts.

A phenomenon called Fatal Light Attraction causes migratory birds, who often navigate with the stars, to become disoriented due to all the specks of light on the ground. Estimates suggests that between 500 million and one billion birds die annually as a result, mainly through flying into windows, walls, or the ground. These are direct deaths; considering that these birds are on their way to breeding grounds at the time, one can argue that the damage to their populations reverberates in the form of a lesser amount of breeding and eggs produced.

Image courtesy joiseyshowaa via Flickr

In addition to the mandatory outdoor light cutbacks, many buildings are being encouraged to draw their blinds and reduce indoor lighting when possible as well. Furthermore, private citizens are welcome to participate in any or all of these measures. It is also worth noting, from a non-bird but a general conservation standpoint, that these actions will reduce the consumption of electricity for a substantial amount of hours over the course of many months. This in and of itself is a gain as well.

As a supplement to the Lights Out measure, Governor Cuomo launched an I Love New York Birding website; a site with a plethora of information regarding bird watching techniques, ideal locations, and other information of a relevant nature. This way, people can become more educated on the importance and beauty of our birds and become more engaged with nature.

Direct engagement with nature by the populace is one of the most important measures that can be taken in the name of conservation. In addition to the increases in pollution, consumption, and other ailments of modern society that directly damage the environment, when people tend to feel more detached from the natural world it indirectly suffers from that attitude. The more people feel that nature is all around them, interact with the ecosystem, or spend time immersed in nature, the more likely they are to value and protect it. This is not an abstract theory. A study by Cornell University demonstrated that bird watchers are among the largest demographics to support conservation. While factors such as age, education, and political ideology played roles as well, they were dwarfed by influences that involve direct interaction with nature.

Image courtesy of the U.S. National Archives via Flickr

Thus the Lights Out initiative targets one of the key draws to conservation. Yet one does not have to be a bird watcher in order to care about the environment and take measures in its defense. While other outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, and water sports may also lend themselves in a similar fashion to a conservation ethos as bird watching does, any sympathetic sentiment is productive to these objectives. In the meantime, the actual act of turning off these lights will certainly benefit the local bird populations. This is a great program, and hopefully it becomes a tradition.

Feature image courtesy of [Chris Goldberg via Flickr]

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A scathing piece was released by the New York Times last week on the state of nail salon workers in the greater New York city area. Entitled “The Price of Nice Nails,” and written by Sarah Maslin Nir, the article described how many men and women who work in nail salons in New York are brought there illegally, abused, payed significantly less than minimum wage, and exploited. Now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has decided to take action.

Yesterday, Cuomo announced emergency measures to combat these systemic issues. These measures include a task force composed of multiple agencies. The task force will make sure that all nail salons are complying with the state’s laws. One particular focus will be on the safety precautions taken at the salons, as prolonged exposure to some of the chemicals and materials used can be dangerous. There will also be an education campaign launched, to ensure that workers know their rights. Given the multi-cultural mix of the workers in the salons, the education campaign will be conducted in six different languages.

One of the most prevalent concerns raised throughout the article were the incredibly meager wages the workers in nail salons were receiving. Often, workers weren’t even paid for the first few weeks or months of their employment. Many also had to pay the salon for which they worked when they first started–the salons called these payments “training fees.” Even when the workers had been there for a while, many were paid $30-$40 for a day of work, well below New York state’s minimum wage of $8.75 per hour. Moreover, not paying someone for their work, or requiring them to pay to work is patently illegal. One of the workers profiled in the article, Nora Cacho, provides a good example of the ridiculously low wages provided to nail salon workers. The piece states:

She frequently earned about $200 for each 66-hour workweek — about $3 an hour. In sandal season, if she was lucky, she left the shop with slightly more — $300 each week, she said. On snowy days, Ms. Cacho, who is part of a class-action lawsuit against the chain, would return home with nothing.

Part of the emergency response also includes requiring that nail salons pay workers those back wages that they never received. The order states that the salons can get a bond, or expand their insurance coverage to cover what will probably be pretty hefty amounts to pay out for many of the nail businesses.

Overall, this is certainly a step in the right direction, although the New York Times investigation raises serious questions about how such blatant and widespread labor law violations could have been happening without any sort of attention from the government. But, while Cuomo may be conducting damage control, this will aid those abused workers. That can only be considered a good thing.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo officially announced that New York State will ban fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process of extracting natural gas that involves injecting water, sand, and a combination of chemicals underground on site in order to fracture the shale rock and release the gas. A highly controversial topic, Cuomo’s decision was controversial as well–he was met with both praise and criticism from a highly divided demographic. However, the move to ban fracking is a strongly defensible choice, and the arguments against the ban do not hold up well under scrutiny.

For example, natural gas has been lauded as a solution to American foreign oil dependence. In the wake of ongoing turbulent relationships with the Middle East and oil rich nations therein, many suggest that the large deposits of natural gas within the borders of the United States is a possible means of alleviating the country’s need to import oil from them. But is such a complex plan of developing an elaborate and brand new energy industry the most logical solution to problems in international relations? Rather than go about this process in order to avoid dealing with these tense situations, why not attempt more diplomacy in hopes of alleviating them? Oil and natural gas aside, it would not be such a bad thing to genuinely pursue better relationships with Middle East countries. Hiding behind the energy industry as an excuse is not a sustainable argument.

Others argue that natural gas is cleaner than oil. Natural gas emissions byproducts are lower and less damaging than those of oil, and it is of a substantial energy density so as to sufficiently provide power to our machines and devices. However we should not be tempted by the quick, convenient, and immediate solution. It will still cause problems and will run out eventually. This argument comes back to renewable energy. There is plenty of potential and increased economic accessibility to renewable energy, which is cleaner than natural gas and will not run out. Thinking purely in terms of energy requirements, we do not need natural gas.

Aside from geopolitics and national scale energy needs, some tie natural gas and fracking directly to the benefit of people on the ground. There is an American cultural identity tied into coal and mining towns. It is a widely applicable occupation, providing employment to individuals and income for families. Coal mining is a means of asserting ones identity, and has often been passed down through generations. Fracking is a technology intensive process demanding expertise and consequently cannot be undertaken by anybody. Arguments that fracking provides economic opportunities for towns in which shale is located are shaky. Unlike coal, where the industry arrives on site and hires locals to pursue the mining, fracking companies often bring in outside workers to extract the gas; the residents of the town rarely benefit from the boom.

A fracking site. Courtesy of Casey Hugelfink via Flickr.

Some people of a financially minded nature have suggested that the moratorium represents a transfer of economic resources from farmers to environmentalists. Residents of southern New York State are now unable to receive royalties from resource development and gas mining. Tim Worstall, the author of a fiscally conservative Forbes Magazine article on the topic, suggests that the environmentalists are being granted their desires and benefits at a cost which is the loss of acquisition of desires and benefits for the people who could receive money for fracking on their land. He proposes a hypothetical situation that in order to maintain a balanced public policy, environmentalists should literally pay homeowners their losses for not fracking. He is of strong opinion that this would be met with high resistance, in demonstration of his point that this process is unfair.

No doubt this scenario represents a substantial portion of the controversy over fracking. However the author is thinking of benefits and losses purely from an economic standpoint. On the one occasion that he might be considering the state of the environment, he refers to environmentalists’ interest in preventing fracking in “the fair state of New York”. In this sense it is an aesthetic issue. Interestingly enough, there is little in the way of aesthetic damage when it comes to fracking, although it does turn small farm towns into industrial sties. Then there is the catastrophic side effect of increased likelihood of earthquakes. However, environmentalists’ resistance to fracking is very much motivated by human health concerns. The primary problem with fracking is that the myriad of chemicals injected into the rock seeps into the groundwater. This can be damaging to the human body when consumed, potentially causing neurological disorders, birth defects and cancers, and is most visibly linked to flaming faucets. The volume of chemicals is so high that water can literally catch fire. The documentary Gasland delves further into these issues and additional dangers of the industry and refineries. Here is a trailer:

Flaming faucets and contaminated drinking water are most common for homeowners in close proximity to the fracking site. Namely, those on whose land the fracking will take place. Here is a major cost for which the author of the Forbes article does not account.

Produced water is the mix of chemicals, metals, and carcinogens that comes up during the fracking process. In some New York counties, produced water has been used as a de-icer, sprinkled across roadways throughout the winter. Then it runs off into streams and waterways. This is dangerous for fish and local wildlife that live nearby, as well as for humans who drink that water. This increases the range of contamination from near to the fracking site to across the entire state. It is a misuse of a substance that should not exist in the first place.

Considering the long list of potential alternatives for meeting our energy needs, we do not need natural gas. Furthermore, considering all the problems associated with the current method of extracting it, we certainly do not need fracking.

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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