tonight on kqed newsroom, overfishing, climate change and newsroom the oceans of biodiversity. our special guest tonight continues her family's legacy of marine conservation with a new initiative to restore ocean health. what is a long game for twitter now that elon musk has shaken the tech world with his $44 billion plans acquisition of the social media company? we chew on that and the other big stories of the week with a panel of reporters.

we crashed through the surf with the san francisco coast guard in this week's edition of something beautiful. a man two from kqed headquarters in san francisco this friday april 29th, 2022 . hello and welcome to the show. this is kqed newsroom. this week san francisco, twitter accepted elon musk to buy the company later says he wants to take the tech from private and promote more free speech on the platform. joining me now is the chief of marketwatch, jeremy owens, thank you for joining us. >> the heavenly. >> this week after this was announced that he was going to have the plan to take overand it was accepted, elon musk went on twitter which seems to be one of his natural habitats and criticized the senior twitter executives which led to some of the musk supporters piling on and criticizing and really harassing these executives as well, seems like there is a lot

of consternation about what the musket takeover would mean for blic discourse. what are you hearing? what are you hearfrinome emsame eeas everybody else that watches elon on twitter. they want to know what is a truth and what is a troll and what is his attempt to geinin peopletht,e ourecent days brought more right-wing users back to the platform who may have left after donald trump had his account take it away. after the new york post had hunter biden information from being shared. maybe that is a tactic he is using but nobody knows. trying to figure out the musk ambitions and what he's doing and the meaning behind what he says is a fools errand. what creates is uncertainty. i think a lot of the employees are so behind closed doors wonder what will happen next you know, elon musk gave the board of twitter an option. to either endorse his

acquisition or, put it to shareholders and essay think they not only endorsed but unanimously endorsed. jack dorsey the former chief executive and cofounder is still on the board and went out on his own and gave a full throated enforcement of the ownership of elon. that will matter within those walls at twitter, but, the fact is we will not know what elon will do until he gets a hold of twitter and doesn't. >> this despite the fact that musk has had several pieces of his business questioned overtime, right? there are lawsuits coming out of the tesla factory in fremont that have racial allegations about racist behavior there. he has run many companies, sort of burnout started culture. he has no filter and yet there is the full throated endorsement in large part it seems because the deal was so good that kind of could not say no. >> for sure, he's paying $44 billion for twitter that is a lot. especially as we have seen

socks come down in the first quarter and into today. twitter had an earnings report yesterday that was not great. it was okay, but, it makes people wonder how it is going to service all of the debt, right? in the deal, they are learning billions of dollars of debt onto the books of twitter and twitter has to pay for the moving forward. can you make enough profit? especially as he talks about getting rid of the base model which gets most of the revenue. he talks about new initiatives úthat do not always pay off. flat out says he doesn't care about the economics, right? that is really going to be a question moving forward. i think again, some of the uncertainty that is just resting on the shoulders of twitter and its employees are now. >> in the last few moments we have, we have reports that came out this week, i understand it is called [ null ] week in business reporter service because so many reports come out and we have had a very serious warning about a major recession,. >> deutsche bank says there will be a recession it.

the only bank that has gone that far saying that, what we have seen in these earnings report so far is the companies, apple and facebook and google and microsoft and amazon big tech companies just blew up during the pandemic, right? two years of profits we have never seen, profit margins we have never seen, now, they are getting squeezed. the inflation consumer sales letter is felt by companies now. amazon said it got $6 billion extra cost in the first core. apple expects $4 billion-$8 billion of costs in the first quarter, right? that iseating into those margins. it is because we put so much into the past two years, so much government incentive, money just flowing into the ve system, all of those are starting to get caught it. all the money put in the system two years, the falsehoods are cut off. what the effect is on the other side is a question mark. shrinking in the first quarter after growing really well in the fourth quarter. so, there's a lot of uncertainty. i use the word uncertainty a lot. never experienced a global

pandemic in the government liquidity before. and what comes after is a real question. >> thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. tesla also under scrutiny. a lawsuit filed last week by a tesla worker alleges rapid racism in fremont the latest in a growing number of discrimination suits against the company including a civil rights action by the state of california joining us now to talk about the new tesla lawsuit and the other top stories of the week, are supervising senior editor of race and equity . thank you both for joining us. >> thank you. >> so, what do you two think about elon musk taking over twitter? i know you have different viewpoints that you look at these news items from. otis, let's start with you. angle are you seeing news about tesla through?

>> what i am not seeing is talk about black workers. thousands of black workers saying they had been subjected to racial slurs. to racial imagery at the factory in fremont. how can we be talking about someone taking over a social media company without talking about the racism that is going i feel that twitter has the potential to become this place where people are being harassed frequently and then, he is going to allow that. he is a free speech absolutist. what does that mean in the public square? >> already when we see on twitter, this is not a place that always is a paragon of high-minded discussion, right? you see women especially people of color getting harassed. i think when you talk about the investigation into tesla and the way they deny the

allegations, despite a $100 million judgment against the by one black employee who filed suit, a federal investigation, multiple lawsuits, this is just one of them. then, you know, coupled with the way elon musk used twitter historically too often what it seems like i think to critics, but folks against people he disagrees with. there is real concern about what this will look like moving forward and about how, you know, he might react to some of these issues that are a lot easier i think that the outside looking in to, you know, with facebook and twitter and everybody. okay, get under the hood and the tell us how easy it is to police the situations and create free-speech, you know, a place where is free-speech but also respect. >> yeah so talk to bankers apparently when he was looking for funding and said he would be willing to cut workers. i am curious if he would keep twitter in san francisco where he might move it out of states like he did with the headquarters of tesla moving to texas. >> i think there are deeper

questions around tax breaks and the lease and if it would work. certainly, this is a huge workforce. a lot of people insight twitter are nervous about what you are talking about and also about the general direction of the company. >> he said he might add the edit button to twitter. i said i would appreciate the unit better on my twitter >> right, although, there are questions about do we have an edit button on the president's tweet? and could people say they did not say something? i think, always there will be a lot of signs to these debates. >> i feel the platform is a place where ha speech could rain. i see the way elon musk uses twitter d it reminds me of when it no. putting anything out you want to stir people up and say that was a joke. people have been heard from what has been posted on twitter. careers have and lives that have been destroyed from twitter posts. we have to be very vigilant about it. i have to say, he could walk

away by pain just $1 billion in >> right. right, right. >> pocket chaise to him. that should be part of the story too. someone has that much money and that much power. i feel he is making a power move and controlling a very public square of information. >> absolutely. let's turn to a story about people who do not have as much power and do not have influence. hearing seven happy this week about the proposal of governor newsom to implement care courts to address issues with homelessness. you have been following the hearings. >> interestingly i think obviously this is aimed at homelessness but really it is in the severely mentally ill but i think they are trying to make the distinction. this court could help people who are not homeless. it, they are estimated between 7000 and 12,000 people who are, you know, so mentally ill they can't get treatment themselves and they are not in a position

to navigate the process and this would be a kind of, you know, it is not a complete conservatorship. it is one step allow that. we had set trey quinn on political breakdown talking this week. she is sharing the legislation. that there is a real effort to try to find an alternative to what is out there and there are concerns from counties about the ability to provide the treatment. to me, that is the most interesting part of this in a way is that actually it really holds counties responsible for finding ways to house people and give them the support they need and so, this would be making its way through the process in the coming weeks. >> we also heard this week in a few different forms, talk about policing and various police sections. there was a state audit that came up and found there are in at least five agencies they found evidence of bias among police officers towards people of color and women and lgbtq

people. towards low income people, so, we see that's coming out. also there is news if you could share with us about opd and the case coming out of receivership and the l.a. times reporter who was targeted by the sheriff in los angeles. >> right. first, priya . before we talk about opd, let's note this is the 30th anniversary of the police officers who brutally beat randy king. the first viral video of police brutality. this is the 30th anniversary of the acquittal. opd was under federal monitor for 20 years. 20 of the 30 years. a judge's going to let him out 20 or probationary period. but, i wonder with what we hear out of los angeles, with chefs targeting a reporter and the audit, it's has got to be clear to people that police cannot police the police. we need to have independent

auditin of various departments and oakland is getting under, from under the monitor, monitoring, it still has these high disparities of who they stop, who they use force against and who they arrest. >> i would take a moment here to just, you know, make a shout out to the kqed podcast. i know you worked in that as well. they looked at police records of misconduct and really dove deep into this topic. >> we are still doing that. reporter on sb 16 where the transparency law where police departments have to release missed misconduct cases. and you are hearing officers using the n word and officers takedown people for no reason and arresting them for resisting and then when you look at the camera footage, the person said please don't hurt me. >> it is support it this is

happening in concert with an unprecedented spite, at least in the short period of violent crime and murders nationally, so, it is not as if policing is corrupt and working, right? we have the problems and a lot of this has to do with the lack of trust in these communities. the feeling of what people who lose family memberor who are victims of crime themselves that they are almost re- victimized by police. i do think the case in l.a. is very troubling. somebody in the meeting, the sheriff is going after a reporter who reported the news essentially. i think that, you know, we had to think about this collectively but also on an individual basis of these agencies and was to hold them to account. >> yes. in the l.a. case, the day after the sheriff targeted the reporter, the reporter posted another story where there is someone who says the sheriff lied. i showed the sheriff the video of an officer putting his knee on the neck of a person more than three minutes. the sheriff lied about it. police will lie about anything.

>> both with kqed, thank you for being with us today. >> it pleasure pier >> thank you. turning now to the environment. a shift emerging in the way environmental advocates and scientists look at protecting the planet. the stance is evolving from sustainability to regeneration. the concern is land and oceans have become so depleted of biodiversity it is not enough to sustain the status quo. instead we need to aively repair the damage we have done and regenerate the earth. next guest has launched a mission to restore the abundance of the oceans by 2050. an ocean advocate and explore as well as the granddaughter of the underwater scimitar for an scientists who can install. thank you for joining us in the studio. >> thank you so much for having me. we're glad you are with here. you are usually in france >> that's right that's right.

we went there during the pandemic as left so much we decided to stay. >> reporter: you are in town because he had a keynote speech lastly? >> yes the california cameo science. a wonderful opportunity to see the storied institution that i have heard so much about firsthand and to be able to show the celebrations with everyone. it was a wonderful experience. >> you spoke last night i was fortunate to hear you there about the need to restore the abundance of our oceans. you have a mission to get there by 2050. let's take a look at how things are now. what is the state of the oceans? we hear they are hurting. how bad is the situation? >> well, you know, right now, we have lost about half of the blue natural capital living in the ocean. so, about half of the whales and fish and other life that live there when my grandfather first started exploring the oceans in the 1950s and 60s are gone. we are reaching a point where if we do not start turning this

around, we could reach tipping points in the next decade from which it will be difficult to come back. now, after covid we all know what the tipping points are. the x financial curse. we do not want to reach those exponential curves in the ocean because we start seeing different species crashing and it could have a cascading effect, so, what we are looking at oceans 2050 is how we can take the best available science on regenerating oceans and turn it into action. by 2050 so in the next decades, we can lay the groundwork for that life to cascade up words rather than crash downwards. what is exciting for me is that the science tells us this is poible. it shows us how to do it. we have so many examples of restoration projects around the world that prove this point. >> so, let's get to the solutions in a second. what brought us here? overfishing? pollution?

climate change? >> absolutely. all of those things, climate change i think is the one thing that all of my scientist friends are most concerned about. not just because of rising sea levels and changing temperatures, but also changing currents which many species depend upon for nutrients are flowing from the deep ocean that they feed on and allow them to survive. we are also seeing increased ocean acidification. that is not related to climate. that is specifically the carbon emissions that we produce that are being absorbed into the ocean. the ocean has absorbed 30% of carbon emissions since the industrial revolution. without the oceans we would be in a completely different situation with climate change. but. >> it would be wise. >> it would be far worse. ú>> in terms of heat and extremes on earth and land?

>> exactly, the carbon emissions absorber the ocean are making the oceans turn more acidic. it can be really problematic for creatures that have limestone in their structures like plankton which is the base of the food chain which produces a lot of the oxygen that we breathe and coral reefs. oyster farmers are noticing that acidifying waters make it difficult for oyster larvae to go from a larval stage into the oyster stage where they build their shells and when they cannot build their shells and transition to the next stage of their development they die, so, oyster farmers are experiencing losses there. it is something that we are increasingly feeling the impact of with climate change. of course, compounding that, pollution, a growing number of dead zones around the world. overfishing is taking a huge toll on our oceans. many people were able to see what it looks like in the documentary. it is a concern and i think we quickly are reaching the point of no return. we have not reached it yet.

that is really important to keep in mind. >> i think there is a fair many people have. you know, they look out at the way we as humans have chosen to live our lives, to run our society. granted for a long time wedid not know what we were doing but we know now. there is a concern it is too late. that at this point, you know, we are on this pattern. a runaway train there is no way to stop it. you have a different perspective? tell me a little bit about how that came about. >> well, i think that if it bleeds, it leads, right? so, we have this tendency to want to talk about the things that are catastrophic in our world. there are a lot of things catastrophic happening in the oceans and the environment. but that is all that is happening. there is an increasing number of people that are cused on rebuilding the oceans. a lot of success stories there. growing momentum in terms of

carbon and financing oceans. oceans typically have been at the very bottom of the list of things that are philanthropic we funded. that is a shame because oceans depend on every single sustainment goal to be. >> >> the power of seaweed. can you tell us more about that? it's really a burgeoning industry. >> it is one of those examples of something that we can do that can have an outsized positive impact on the issues. but, ocea used to be blanketed in ocean forest. all around the coastline. we had in california many decades ago these full cat forest that supported a huge amount of life that would go all the way up to alaska of course. in europe it was the same. all of the coastlines had kelp for us. around australia, africa, then a lot of the force have been lost due to pollution d

changing temperatures. >> we i'm sure medical california spoke the interesting thing is all of these benefits that the seaweed forests provide from oxygenation of the water, d acidification of the water, habitat for biodiversity which has a positive impact on fisheries because fish need homes too. you may have holes they can reproduce. of course sequestering carbon. so, the ocean really does not mind if the seaweed forest is anchored from a rope at the surface or, anchored into the substrate underneath. so, that is where seaweed farming is interesting. it is really in the embassy in the west of coors. in the east and asia they have been doing it for thousands of years and actually they can see some of the farms from space. we are seeing a lot of interest not just in developing new seaweed farms but also, in how we can use seaweed as an industrial food stuck for plastic alternatives and food products and other things. what we have learned in oceans

2050 in the city would project where we had been studying the carbon sequestration potential of seaweed farms that seaweed farms can sequester exponentially more carbon than we ever anticipated. at times more even than the amazon rainforest. so, we are using the science field to devep a common protocol. a voluntary common protocol. sued farmers can be compensated for stewardship and the services that they provide to rebuilding the oceans and we hope that beyond carbon credits we also will be able to start investing biodiversity credits benefits and compensating g the people for these benefits rather than compensating them for excitation which has been the model that we have been using for so long. >> you certainly have obstacles to overcome. would you tell us i little bit about what those are? and what your vision is what

the ocean can be in 2050. >> we have a lots of obstacles. i think one of the primary obstacles is this idea that are two scientists talk about which is the worst thing to do for our oceans is to think it is already too late and to stop trying. you know, the oceans canada turn around very quickly. they are extraordinarily resilient. you know, fisheries can come back and, you know, mangroves and seaweed forest can do their work and help us rebuild marine ecosystems. there is a lot that we can do. i think what i believe is the most important thing is that we have a shared vision of what we úwant accomplish. because, in any endeavor, to get to a better place you need a vision of where to go. >> what does that look like in the last minute we have together? tell your vision? >> i think by 2050, it is possible for us to rebuild our oceans. rebuild marine life and see the

increased abundance of whales and the increased abundance of fish and the expansion of ocean forest through farming and while restoration. we can see marine protected areas up to 30% globally by 2030. all of these things are possible and all of these things would help rebuild the oceans to the abundance my grandfather what's new and silly people around the world watched in his films on saturday nights. i think that is absolutely possible and if we come together with that vision in mind, we can make it happen. >> it will for your children and mind. all of ours. >> absolute. >> we appreciate you coming in today. >> you can learn more about her work at the oceans 2050 websites. up next, the ocean, the san francisco coast guard, often

battling the waves the weather in work to enforce the law. the safeguard of marine ecosystems and securing ports. in this week's something to become officers practice maneuvers of a sort of ocean beach in san francisco. [ music ] [ music ] [ music ]

[ music ] >> that is the dramatic end of our show for tonight. you can find kqed newsroom online or on twitter or email us at kqed.org . thank you for joining us, we will see you back here next friday night. have a great weekend.

yamiche: new threats from russia and new covid concerns. >> no one should be making idle comments about the use of nuclear weapons. yamiche: russia's president warns the west not to interfere in ukraine, threatening ominous consequences. and president biden requests even more funds from congress to help ukraine sustain the prolonged war. plus, the highest ranking biden official yet catches covid, and dr. fauci makes headlines on the state of the pandemic. meanwhile -- >> with the title 42 public health order set to be lifted, we expect migration to increase.

yamiche: