Sustainable Switch Climate Focus: Climate rule rollbacks in US and EU
This is an excerpt of the Sustainable Switch Climate Focus newsletter, where we make sense of companies and governments grappling with climate change on Fridays.
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Climate law rollbacks in the United States and the European Union are in focus today as the Trump administration is planning to phase out its emergency management agency, while the EU is facing pressure from countries over its corporate, sustainability and methane emissions laws.
President Donald Trump said he planned to start "phasing out" the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the hurricane season and that states would receive less federal aid to respond to natural disasters. "We're going to give out less money," he said. He also said he planned to distribute disaster relief funds directly from the president's office.
In keeping with the Trump administration's broader efforts to unwind environmental laws, three sources that spoke to Reuters said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is planning to roll back Biden-administration rules meant to curb carbon dioxide, mercury and other air pollutant emissions from power plants, following through on a promise the agency made in March.
It's not just the Trump administration rolling back climate laws, as a Swedish centre-right lawmaker Jörgen Warborn has proposed that the EU should further slash the number of companies subject to its environmental and corporate sustainability rules.
The European Commission proposed a "simplification omnibus" in February that it said would help European firms compete with foreign rivals by cutting back on sustainability reporting rules and obligations intended to root out abuses in their supply chains.
But the walk-back on environment, social and corporate rules has met resistance from some investors and campaigners, who have warned it weakens corporate accountability and hurts the bloc's ability to attract more investments towards meeting climate goals.
Additionally, European Union countries are demanding that Brussels simplify the EU's methane emissions law, according to a document seen by Reuters.
From this year, the EU requires importers of oil and gas to monitor and report the methane emissions – the second-biggest cause of climate change after CO2 emissions. Draft conclusions from a meeting of EU countries' energy ministers showed governments are preparing to ask the Commission to add the methane law to its "simplification" drive to cut bureaucracy for companies.
WHAT TO WATCH
With more than 600 dead pythons under her belt, Amy Siewe - known as the 'Python Huntress' - is one of a handful of women among hundreds of men hunting the invasive Burmese python in Florida's Everglades wetland ecosystem. Click here for the full Reuters video.
CLIMATE LENS
China's access to fresh stockpiles of minerals like dysprosium and terbium has been throttled recently after a major mining belt in Myanmar's north was taken over by an armed group battling the Southeast Asian country's junta, which Beijing supports.
Now, in the hillsides of Shan state in eastern Myanmar, Chinese miners are opening new deposits for extraction, according to two of the sources, both of whom work at one of the mines. Click here for the full Reuters exclusive report.
Number of the Week - $80 billion
The amount that Indonesia has invited foreign investors to put in for building a seawall hundreds of kilometres long to prevent floods along the north coast of its most populous island Java, President Prabowo Subianto said.
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