Hurricane Ian wasn’t just Florida’s deadliest hurricane since 1935, but also the U.S.’s second costliest disaster, after Katrina, with at least $60 billion in damages—much of which will take years to fully repair.
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Justin Hutchinson was working at a smoothie shop in his native Baton Rouge, trying to save money for his tuition to Louisiana State University, which he was struggling to pay after the death of his father. Hutchinson was a popular employee: He’d memorize customers’ orders and even their cars so he could start blending their smoothies as they pulled up. One regular, a marketing CEO, recognized his “people skills,” and offered him an internship at his marketing agency, ThreeSixtyEight. On that new path, Hutchinson made the tough decision to leave school to avoid continuing to rack up debt, still nervous it could impact his career. But five years later, Hutchinson is now the agency’s business development director.
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Qatar’s upcoming World Cup has already been a human rights disaster, as the rapid construction of multiple stadiums has caused the reported deaths of 6,750 migrant workers since 2010 when FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar. And there’s yet another controversial issue for soccer fans to face: its devastating environmental impact.
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One of the most overlooked emergencies of the climate crisis is extreme heat, which, research suggests, is killing more than 5 million people a year. Deaths from severe heat strokes and related complications increased 56% in the U.S. between 2018 and 2021, and that could only get worse across the globe as temperatures continue to soar.
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Setting an all-time record, chief executives in the U.S. earned 399 times more than the typical worker in 2021. CEO compensation spiked last year by an average of 11.1% over 2020.
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At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, Marriott’s CEO details how the hotel company is responding to a surge in combined business and leisure bookings.
Travel has returned after COVID-19 suddenly halted jetsetting—but trip trends don’t resemble those prior to the pandemic.
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The intrepid rock climber’s foundation finances solar projects in low-income communities around the world. With the help of Salesforce, he’s now targeting the Crescent City.
In the aftermath of 2021’s Hurricane Ida, the most devastating hurricane in Louisiana after Katrina, power disappeared from New Orleans. All eight transmission lines went down, leaving more than a million in Southeastern Louisiana without power, all in extreme heat; in some outer regions of the city, it wasn’t restored for nearly a month. This hurricane highlighted the fragility of energy supply during crises, especially for the most marginalized.
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On a Monday segment of ITV’s This Morning, a popular British morning show, the cheery hosts spun a Wheel of Fortune-esque disk. They were choosing the fortune of a caller, who would receive a cash prize—or have his energy bills covered for the following four months. “It’s absolutely murder,” the caller said of his bills. After the hosts counted down (“da, da, da, da!”) the man was relieved when the pointer landed on “energy bills.”
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The apex predator has been extinct for nearly a century, but with genetic engineering, scientists believe they can bring it back—and help restore Australian ecosystems.
By the 1920s, Yellowstone employees had exterminated all of the national park’s gray wolves, as directed by federal and state control programs. But in 1995, the wolves were reintroduced, and the apex predator has since reenergized the park’s ecosystems, producing positive effects that cascade down the food chain.
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This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022. Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us.
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If you happened to find a dead spider somewhere around your home—no questions or judgments about how the critter met its end, of course—you might notice it curled up, with its eight legs no longer spread wide, but crumpled together into a ball.
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