Latest news with #ValerieVolcovici
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Trump administration memo urges countries to reject plastic production caps in UN Treaty
By Olivia Le Poidevin and Valerie Volcovici GENEVA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States has sent letters to at least a handful of countries urging them to reject the goal of a global pact that includes limits on plastic production and plastic chemical additives at the start of U.N. plastic treaty talks in Geneva, according to a memo and communications seen by Reuters. In the communications dated July 25 and circulated to countries at the start of negotiations on Monday, the U.S. laid out its red lines for negotiations that put it in direct opposition to over 100 countries that have supported those measures. Hopes for a "last-chance" ambitious global treaty that tackles the full life cycle of plastic pollution from the production of polymers to the disposal of waste have dimmed as delegates gather for what was intended to be the final round of negotiations. Significant divisions remain between oil-producing countries— who oppose caps on virgin plastic production fueled by petroleum, coal, and gas — and parties such as the European Union and small island states, which advocate for limits, as well as stronger management of plastic products and hazardous chemicals. The U.S. delegation, led by career State Department officials who had represented the Biden administration, sent memos to countries laying out its position and saying it will not agree to a treaty that tackles the upstream of plastic pollution. "We will not support impractical global approaches such as plastic production targets or bans and restrictions on plastic additives or plastic products - that will increase the costs of all plastic products that are used throughout our daily lives," said the memo Reuters understands was sent to countries who could not be named due to sensitivities around the negotiations. NAIROBI MEETING The U.S. acknowledged in the memo that after attending a preliminary heads of delegation meeting in Nairobi from June 30 to July 2, "we plainly do not see convergence on provisions related to the supply of plastic, plastic production, plastic additives or global bans and restrictions on products and chemicals, also known as the global list". A State Department spokesperson told Reuters each Party should take measures according to its national context. "Some countries may choose to undertake bans, while others may want to focus on improved collection and recycling," the spokesperson said. John Hocevar, Oceans Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA, said the U.S. delegation's tactics under Trump marked a "return to old school bullying from the U.S. Government trying to use its financial prowess to convince governments to change their position in a way that benefits what the U.S. wants". One of the world's leading producers of plastics, the U.S. has also proposed revising the draft objective of the treaty to reduce plastic pollution by eliminating a reference to an agreed "approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastics", in a proposed resolution seen by Reuters. A source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters it indicated that the U.S. is seeking to roll back language that had been agreed in 2022 to renegotiate the mandate for the Treaty. The U.S. stance broadly aligns with the positions laid out by the global petrochemicals industry, which stated similar positions ahead of the talks, and a number of powerful oil and petrochemical producer countries that have held this position throughout the negotiations. Over 100 countries have backed a cap on global plastic production. In the U.S., the Trump administration has numerous measures to roll back climate and environmental policies that it says place too many burdens on industry. Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 without intervention, choking oceans, harming human health and accelerating climate change, according to the OECD. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oil producer pressure, Trump rollbacks threaten last-chance global plastics treaty
(Corrects fuels in paragraph 2 to petroleum, coal and gas, not only coal and gas; corrects name surname in paragraph 19 to Andersen, not Anderson) By Olivia Le Poidevin and Valerie Volcovici GENEVA (Reuters) -Hopes for a "last chance" ambitious global treaty to curb plastic pollution have dimmed as delegates gather this week at the United Nations in Geneva for what was intended to be the final round of negotiations. Diplomats and climate advocates warn that efforts by the European Union and small island states to cap virgin plastic production - fuelled by petroleum, coal and gas - are threatened by opposition from petrochemical-producing countries and the U.S. administration under Donald Trump. Delegates will meet officially from Tuesday for the sixth round of talks, after a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) in South Korea late last year ended without a path forward on capping plastic pollution. The most divisive issues include capping production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty. Delegates told Reuters that oil states, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, plan to challenge key treaty provisions and push for voluntary or national measures, hindering progress toward a legally binding agreement to tackle the root cause of plastic pollution. Government spokespeople for Saudi Arabia and Russia were not immediately available for comment, Andres Del Castillo, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a non profit providing legal counsel to some countries attending the talks, said oil states were questioning even basic facts about the harm to health caused by plastics. "We are in a moment of revisionism, where even science is highly politicized," he said. The U.S. State Department told Reuters it will lead a delegation supporting a treaty on reducing plastic pollution that doesn't impose burdensome restrictions on producers that could hinder U.S. companies. A source familiar with the talks said the U.S. seeks to limit the treaty's scope to downstream issues like waste disposal, recycling and product design. It comes as the Trump administration rolls back environmental policies, including a longstanding finding on greenhouse gas emissions endangering health. Over 1,000 delegates, including scientists and petrochemical lobbyists, will attend the talks, raising concerns among proponents of an ambitious agreement that industry influence may create a watered-down deal focused on waste management, instead of production limits. ISLAND STATES VULNERABLE Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 without intervention, choking oceans, harming human health and accelerating climate change, according to the OECD. "This is really our last best chance. As pollution grows, it deepens the burden for those who are least responsible and least able to adapt," said Ilana Seid, permanent representative of Palau and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Small island states are particularly impacted by plastic waste washing ashore, threatening their fishing and tourism economies. They stress an urgent need for dedicated international funding to clean up existing pollution. "Plastics are a concern for human health because (plastic) contains about 16,000 chemicals, and a quarter of these are known to be hazardous to human health," said Dr. Melanie Bergmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Jodie Roussell, global public affairs lead at food giant Nestle and a member of a 300-company coalition backing a treaty to reduce plastic pollution, told Reuters that harmonizing international regulations on packaging reduction and sustainable material use would be the most cost-effective approach. French politician Philippe Bolo, a member of the global Interparliamentary Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, said that a weak, watered down treaty that focuses on waste management must be avoided. Bolo and a diplomatic source from a country attending the talks said the potential of a vote or even a breakaway agreement among more ambitious countries could be explored, as a last resort. Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, however, said countries should push for a meaningful pact agreed by consensus. "We're not here to get something meaningless... you would want something that is effective, that has everybody inside, and therefore everybody committed to it," she said.
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oil producer pressure, Trump rollbacks threaten last-chance global plastics treaty
By Olivia Le Poidevin and Valerie Volcovici GENEVA (Reuters) -Hopes for a "last chance" ambitious global treaty to curb plastic pollution have dimmed as delegates gather this week at the United Nations in Geneva for what was intended to be the final round of negotiations. Diplomats and climate advocates warn that efforts by the European Union and small island states to cap virgin plastic production - fuelled by coal and gas - are threatened by opposition from petrochemical-producing countries and the U.S. administration under Donald Trump. Delegates will meet officially from Tuesday for the sixth round of talks, after a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) in South Korea late last year ended without a path forward on capping plastic pollution. The most divisive issues include capping production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty. Delegates told Reuters that oil states, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, plan to challenge key treaty provisions and push for voluntary or national measures, hindering progress toward a legally binding agreement to tackle the root cause of plastic pollution. Government spokespeople for Saudi Arabia and Russia were not immediately available for comment, Andres Del Castillo, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a non profit providing legal counsel to some countries attending the talks, said oil states were questioning even basic facts about the harm to health caused by plastics. "We are in a moment of revisionism, where even science is highly politicized," he said. The U.S. State Department told Reuters it will lead a delegation supporting a treaty on reducing plastic pollution that doesn't impose burdensome restrictions on producers that could hinder U.S. companies. A source familiar with the talks said the U.S. seeks to limit the treaty's scope to downstream issues like waste disposal, recycling and product design. It comes as the Trump administration rolls back environmental policies, including a longstanding finding on greenhouse gas emissions endangering health. Over 1,000 delegates, including scientists and petrochemical lobbyists, will attend the talks, raising concerns among proponents of an ambitious agreement that industry influence may create a watered-down deal focused on waste management, instead of production limits. ISLAND STATES VULNERABLE Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 without intervention, choking oceans, harming human health and accelerating climate change, according to the OECD. "This is really our last best chance. As pollution grows, it deepens the burden for those who are least responsible and least able to adapt," said Ilana Seid, permanent representative of Palau and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Small island states are particularly impacted by plastic waste washing ashore, threatening their fishing and tourism economies. They stress an urgent need for dedicated international funding to clean up existing pollution. "Plastics are a concern for human health because (plastic) contains about 16,000 chemicals, and a quarter of these are known to be hazardous to human health," said Dr. Melanie Bergmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Jodie Roussell, global public affairs lead at food giant Nestle and a member of a 300-company coalition backing a treaty to reduce plastic pollution, told Reuters that harmonizing international regulations on packaging reduction and sustainable material use would be the most cost-effective approach. French politician Philippe Bolo, a member of the global Interparliamentary Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, said that a weak, watered down treaty that focuses on waste management must be avoided. Bolo and a diplomatic source from a country attending the talks said the potential of a vote or even a breakaway agreement among more ambitious countries could be explored, as a last resort. Inger Anderson, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, however, said countries should push for a meaningful pact agreed by consensus. "We're not here to get something meaningless... you would want something that is effective, that has everybody inside, and therefore everybody committed to it," she said. Solve the daily Crossword
Time of India
02-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Bezos-backed methane tracking satellite is lost in space
By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON: An $88 million satellite backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos that detected oil and gas industry's emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane has been lost in space, the group that operates it told Reuters on Tuesday. MethaneSAT had been collecting emissions data and images from drilling sites, pipelines, and processing facilities around the world since March, but went off course around 10 days ago, the Environmental Defense Fund , which led the initiative, said. Its last known location was over Svalbard in Norway and EDF said it did not expect it to be recovered as it had lost power. "We're seeing this as a setback, not a failure," Amy Middleton, senior vice president at EDF, told Reuters. "We've made so much progress and so much has been learned that if we hadn't taken this risk, we wouldn't have any of these learnings." The launch of MethaneSAT last March was a milestone in a years-long campaign by EDF to hold accountable the more than 120 countries that in 2021 pledged to curb their methane emissions . It also sought to help enforce a further promise from 50 oil and gas companies made at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December 2023 to eliminate methane and routine gas flaring. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Scientists say capping leaks from oil and gas wells and equipment is therefore one of the fastest ways to start tackling the problem of global warming. While MethaneSAT was not the only project to publish satellite data on methane emissions, its backers said it provided more detail on emissions sources and it partnered with Google to to create a publicly-available global map of emissions. EDF reported the lost satellite to federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Space Force on Tuesday, it said. Building and launching the satellite cost $88 million, according to the EDF. The organization had received a $100 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 and got other major financial support from Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation and the TED Audacious Project and EDF donors. The project was also partnered with the New Zealand Space Agency. EDF said it had insurance to cover the loss and its engineers were investigating what had happened. It said it would continue to use its resources, including aircraft with methane-detecting spectrometers, to look for methane leaks. Despite the efforts to increase transparency on emissions, methane "super-emitters" have rarely taken action when alerted that they are leaking methane, the United Nations said in a report last year. The pressure on them to do has decreased as the United States under President Donald Trump's second administration has effectively ended a U.S. program to collect greenhouse gas data from major polluters and rescinded Biden-era rules aimed at curbing methane.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US environment agency employees say Trump administration undermining mission
By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nearly 300 current and recently terminated employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a declaration of dissent on Monday, outlining five major concerns about how the Trump administration's politicization of science and severe job cuts were undermining the agency's mission. The declaration to Administrator Lee Zeldin was sent as another expected round of staff reductions looms and as the agency undergoes a major reorganization, including the dissolution of its office of research and cancelling of billions of dollars in grants. The reorganization will consolidate several key offices, reflecting plans to cut regulatory red tape and promote more fossil fuel energy development, as laid out in President Donald Trump's executive orders. "Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration's focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise," said the 278 EPA employees who wrote and signed the letter in their personal capacities, including 174 who signed their full names. The declaration is similar to one sent earlier this month by employees of the National Institutes of Health to its director to protest the politicization of research and disruption of scientific progress. The EPA employees said their five main concerns are the partisan rhetoric and misinformation shared in EPA communications; disregard for the agency's own scientific assessments; abandoning environmental justice while slashing funding; dismantling the research office; and creating a culture of fear. "Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come," they said. "EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety."
