Syria has been torn apart by a civil war which has raged since 2011. With thousands dead and accusations of atrocities committed by both sides, the country is under sanctions which make it difficult for its leaders to travel abroad.
But the reason for Nicaragua refusing to sign the deal is less obvious. The small Central American nation refused to sign in 2015 because it did not think the deal went far enough.
Nicaraguan lead envoy Paul Oquist called the Paris agreement “a path to failure” that lets big polluters off the hook when speaking to Climate Home on the sidelines of the 2015 talks.
“We don’t want to be an accomplice to taking the world to 3 to 4 degrees and the death and destruction that represents,” Mr Oquist said.
“It’s a not a matter of being trouble makers, it’s a matter of the developing countries surviving.”
Mr Oquist said the world’s 10 biggest carbon polluters accounted for 72 per cent of historical emissions, while the 100 smallest were responsible for just 3 per cent.
Nicaragua contributes 0.03 per cent of global emissions, according to the European Commission’ Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.
Guardian 1st June 2017 European leaders dismissed Donald Trump’s claim that the Paris climate accord can be renegotiated after the US president announced he will pull out of the deal struck in 2015 to seek better terms. Shortly after Trump’s announcement the leaders of France, Germany and Italy released a joint statement rejecting Trump’s assertion that the climate deal can be redrafted. “We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” said chancellor Angela Merkel, president Emmanuel Macron and prime minister Paolo Gentiloni. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/01/trump-withdraw-paris-climate-deal-world-leaders-react
Larsen C: What will happen when the huge Antarctic ice shelf cracks?, ABC Science By Genelle Weule, 2 June 17, A massive crack in one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves is very close to breaking point, and when it fractures it will create an iceberg bigger than Kangaroo Island.
The Larsen C ice shelf is located on the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out towards South America.
A large fracture, which has been growing across the ice sheet for decades, has recently started to accelerate, said Sue Cook, a glaciologist from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.
According to the latest data by a team of UK scientists, the fracture ripped open by 17 kilometres in the last week of May and turned towards the ocean.
Dr Cook said the lengthening fracture was within 13 kilometres of the sea, and there was nothing to stop it fracturing.
When it breaks it will create an iceberg of 5,000 square kilometres.
Trump is doing his best to ruin the world for our children and grandchildren
In an inexplicable abdication of any semblance of responsibility or leadership, Donald Trump has announced that he will begin the process to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate treaty, joining Nicaragua and Syria as the only world countries rejecting the agreement. It now seems inevitable that the history books will view Trump as America’s worst-ever president.
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty is a mostly symbolic act. America’s pledges to cut its carbon pollution were non-binding, and his administration’s policies to date had already made it impossible for America to meet its initial Paris climate commitment for 2025. The next American president in 2020 can re-enter the Paris treaty and push for policies to make up some of the ground we lost during Trump’s reign.
Their reasoning was dubious at best, arguing that environmental attorneys will cite the international agreement in their efforts to prevent the Trump administration from eliminating President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. By law, the US government is required to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, because it poses a threat to public welfare. The Republican Senators wrote:
Environmentalists will argue that these [Clean Air Act] Section 115 requirements are, in fact, met more easily by the Paris Agreement because it includes enhanced transparency requirements in Article 13, which establishes a process for nations to submit plans to reduce emissions to one another and then to comment on the plans of one another.
As National Resource Defense Council climate and clean air program senior attorney David Doniger explained to me, this argument is nonsense:
They are making things up. EPA did not rely on Paris to justify the Clean Power Plan, and none of the parties defending the Plan has cited Paris as a legal basis. On Clean Air Act Section 115, no one I know has made, or even thought of, this argument.
It’s difficult to discern the Republican Senators’ motivations behind this letter. Even big oil and coal and many of America’s largest companies supported America staying in the Paris agreement. Industries don’t like the uncertainty involved in lurching in and out of international treaties, and experts are concerned about the effect on America’s international influence from tearing up this critically important agreement that we helped broker less than two years ago, that was signed by nearly every world country.
Perhaps the Republican Senators are trying to ride Trump’s nationalist, anti-globalist coattails. Maybe they think that their right-wing base will be excited if they stick it to the rest of the world on Paris. However, majorities of voters in every single county in the US support regulating carbon as a pollutant, and 71% of Americans (including 57% of Republicans) think the US should participate in the Paris agreement.
In short, efforts to pull out of the Paris treaty are woefully misguided, and almost everyone knows it. Everyone except 42% of Senate Republicans including leader Mitch McConnell, James Inhofe, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and of course Trump’s senior advisor Steve Bannon and his EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. Additionally, the Koch brothers and Vladimir Putin are not fans of the treaty. Those two factors may best explain this decision by Trump and the Republican senators.
Good luck kids, you’ll need it
Political calculations aside, pulling America out of the Paris agreement is grossly immoral. Human-caused climate change puts the well-being of our children and grandchildren at risk. That’s especially true for poorer countries that lack the resources to adapt to its impacts, and that contributed the least to the problem. However, the move will also hurt the American economy, as Joseph Robertson wrote on these pages earlier this week:
With China, India, and the EU all moving toward record investments in clean energy and high-efficiency construction, transport and industrial production, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement risks making the US into an economic backwater. Withdrawal would effectively deprive American businesses and communities of the most efficient ways to boost investment, hiring, innovation, and return on investment.
Some Republican leaders are struggling to preserve their party’s credibility and viability. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned against the withdrawal. 20 House Republicans have now joined the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, whose goal is to craft economically beneficial climate policies that both parties can support. And a group of Republican elder statesmenincluding Secretaries of State and Treasury to Presidents Reagan, George HW Bush, and George W Bush met with the White House seeking support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax plan.
So far, these leaders’ laudable efforts have failed. Trump and the majority of Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to increase American carbon pollution. They want to repeal all of America’s climate policies with no replacement plan. In short, they’re happy to let the world burn, and for our children and grandchildren suffer the consequences.
2020 election will be a climate referendum
This is the rotten state of today’s GOP. They’re happy to sell out the future of humanity for their own short-term political gain. Noam Chomsky was right – the Republican Party may be the most dangerous organization in human history. This move comes at a time when the need to act on global warming has been clear for decades, but the GOP has blocked all American climate policy efforts, and we’re now running out of time to avoid dangerous climate change.
America’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty will take four years, meaning that the 2020 election (and the 2018 midterms) will be a referendum on Trump’s decision today. American voters must send the world a signal in that election. In the meantime, it will be up to the rest of the world – particularly China and the EU – to take up the mantle of leadership on climate change that America has left behind.
Trump: U.S. will withdraw from Paris climate accord
Paris climate deal: Donald Trump withdraws US from the accord, SMH, 2 June 17 Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason Washington: President Donald Trump on Thursday said he will withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, spurning pleas from US allies and corporate leaders in an action that fulfilled a major campaign pledge.
“We’re getting out,” Trump said at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden in which he decried the Paris accord’s “draconian” financial and economic burdens.
“In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” Trump said. But he added that the United States would begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or “a new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.”
With Trump’s action, the United States will walk away from nearly every nation in the world on one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century. The pullout will align the United States with Syria and Nicaragua as the world’s only non-participants in the accord.
The United States was one of 195 nations that agreed to the accord in Paris in December 2015, a deal that former US President Barack Obama was instrumental in brokering.
Supporters of the accord condemned Trump’s move as an abdication of American leadership and an international disgrace.
“At this moment, when climate change is already causing devastating harm around the world, we do not have the moral right to turn our backs on efforts to preserve this planet for future generations,” said US Senator Bernie Sanders, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year.
“Ignoring reality and leaving the Paris agreement could go down as one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our nation’s history, isolating the US further after Trump’s shockingly bad European trip,” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse added.
Former US president Barack Obama, who signed on to the accord, wasted no time in criticising Trump’s move. In a statement, Obama said the Trump administration was rejecting the future by pulling out of the climate pact……..
Under the pact, which was years in the making, nations both rich and poor committed to reducing emissions of so-called greenhouse gases generated by burning fossils fuels and blamed by scientists for warming the planet.
The United States had committed to reduce its emissions by 26 per cent to 28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2025. The United States, exceeded only by China in greenhouse gas emissions, accounts for more than 15 per cent of the worldwide total.
Trump, who campaigned for president last year with an “America First” message, promised voters an American withdrawal.
US supporters of the pact said any pullout by Trump would show that the United States can no longer be trusted to follow through on international commitments……..
In a statement backed by all 28 EU states, the EU and China were poised to commit to full implementation of the agreement, officials said.
Trump has already moved to dismantle Obama-era climate change regulations, including the US Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing emissions from main coal-fired power plants.
Some US states, including California, Washington and New York, have vowed to continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue engaging in the international climate agreement process.
Oil majors Shell and ExxonMobil Corp supported the Paris pact. Several big coal companies, including Cloud Peak Energy, had publicly urged Trump to stay in the deal as a way to help protect the industry’s mining interests overseas, though others asked Trump to exit the accord to help ease regulatory pressures on domestic miners. Reuters http://www.smh.com.au/world/paris-climate-deal-donald-trump-withdraws-us-from-the-accord-20170601-gwiord.html
While it fulfils Mr Trump’s election promise to pull out of the pact — which he has labelled a job killer — the announcement has caused widespread shock and outrage.
European leaders have condemned the decision and even big business is angry.
Former president Obama called the decision a “rejection of the future”, while former US vice president and ardent climate change campaigner Al Gore blasted Mr Trump’s move as “indefensible”.
“The worst part: There is absolutely no reason for it. Aside, perhaps, from bravado and arrogance,” he writes. Sutter said, in walking away from the agreement, Mr Trump was turning his back on the entire world and on the consensus of climate science. Continue reading →
Paris climate deal: Donald Trump to lose Elon Musk, Disney boss from advisory council, ABC News, 2 June 17 Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and Disney chief executive Bob Iger say they will leave President Donald Trump’s advisory councils after he confirmed the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord…..
While the move was welcomed by conservative groups and Republicans, several business leaders — including Mr Musk and Mr Iger, and the heads of companies including Google, Facebook Shell and Amazon — have spoken out against the decision.
“Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” Mr Musk said in a Twitter post. Mr Musk, who founded SpaceX and Tesla among other companies, had been a member of Mr Trump’s infrastructure council, manufacturing jobs council and his strategic and policy forum……
A couple of hours after Mr Musk’s announcement, Mr Iger also said he will be stepping down from the advisory council “as a matter of principle”. Other business leaders, such as Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Microsoft president Brad Smith and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt have tweeted that they were “disappointed” with the decision.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said stopping climate change is “something we can only do as a global community”.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children’s future at risk,” he wrote on Facebook.
Other global companies, including Intel, HP, Dell, Amazon and oil giant Shell have released statements expressing support for the Paris agreement.
“We believe that robust clean energy and climate policies can support American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth,” Amazon wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the governors of three US states — New York, California and Washington — announced they would form a “United States Climate Alliance” to convene states “committed to upholding the Paris climate agreement”.
By Graham Readfearn • Wednesday, May 31, 2017, On the face of it, the climate science conference scheduled for the romantic Italian city of Rome looks like any other.
The organizers, India-based ConferenceSeries, promise their “4th World Conference on Climate Change” will attract “world class experts” from across the planet.
Anticipating “more than 500 participants,” the event claimed to have an organizing committee with representatives from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the European Space Agency, and the European Environment Agency (EEA).
But a DeSmog investigation reveals the event is being hijacked by a group of climate science deniers who have previously claimed they want to investigate climate scientists for fraud and have dismissed human-caused climate change as a hoax.
Since being contacted by DeSmog, both the WMO and the EEA have issued statements distancing themselves from the three-day conference, scheduled to start on October 19.
ConferenceSeries, also known as OMICS, promotes hundreds of meetings around the world and is behind the logistics and promotion for the Italy conference. In August 2016 the U.S. government’s Federal Trade Commission launched court action against the company, alleging deceptive marketing practices. The case is ongoing.
Seven presenters, including Monckton and Mörner, and one organizer of that London meeting, Maranzana, are also scheduled to speak at the Rome event. Continue reading →
The president’s decision not only harms the planet but goes against the wishes of the American public. President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement is the latest demonstration of his administration’s complete disregard for the health and safety of the American people, the economy on which those families rely, and the future of the planet we all share.
The landmark 2015 climate agreement was negotiated by 197 countries and has been approved by 147 nations, including the United States. It is our best attempt yet to deal with the increasingly negative impacts of climate change.
China suspends permits for new coal plants as overcapacity policy bites, Energy Desk, May 16, 2017 by Zachary Davies Boren @zdboren The Chinese government has ordered the vast majority of its provinces to stop permitting new coal power projects.
This represents an update to the government’s ‘traffic light’ system, designed to tackle the country’s coal overcapacity crisis — that we reported on last year.
Last year the National Energy Administration kicked off a new scheme to determine whether provinces should build new coal- fired power stations.
The system, created so that the country would stop adding to its overcapacity crisis, assigns each province a colour to signify the viability of its coal pipeline — based on profitability, existing capacity and ‘resource constraints’ such as air pollution and water.
Red means no new coal projects should be permitted. Orange indicates local governments and coal companies should tread carefully. And green says that there is plenty space for new coal power.
24 provinces were issued red lights, 4 earned the orange light (which recommends not adding coal in much stronger language than last year) while only two were given the green light……..
We reported earlier this year that the permits for new coal plants in 2016 have declined 85% compared to 2015, but that the new permits are concentrated in areas of high water stress.
Data from the last two quarters (the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017) show this trend continues.
FT 1st June 2017US companies in industries from manufacturing and energy to information technology have reacted with dismay to the prospect of President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, warning that pulling out of the accord would hit jobs and investment.
Businesses have raised concerns about the impact on markets for products that can help cut greenhouse gas emissions, and warned that countries remaining in the accord could impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods.
However, some groups have said they will press ahead with investments in emissions-reducing technologies, saying they expect continued long-term growth in demand despite the lack of support from the US administration. Leading US
companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft have taken out an advertisement in US newspapers on Thursday with an open letter to Mr Trump arguing that the Paris agreement generates jobs and economic growth
by expanding the markets for innovative environmentally friendly technologies. It warns that withdrawal would limit US access to those markets. https://www.ft.com/content/5f2b6e06-4663-11e7-8519-9f94ee97d996
Energydesk 28th May 2017 On the very day Theresa May triggered Article 50, her government quietly issued another bold statement to Brussels. Documents obtained by Energydesk reveal UK government attempts to significantly weaken draft EU climate and energy rules, even as Brexit is underway.
Key renewable energy and energy efficiency targets proposed by the European Commission should be reduced, made non-binding, or even scrapped altogether, the UK said, despite the fact that they would not take effect until after the UK had left the EU.
“This smells of obstructionism,” Jonathan Gaventa, director of environmental think-tank E3G, told Energydesk. “The UK is pissing off countries it needs as allies.” The news comes as the future of the Paris climate agreement hangs in the balance, with the United States refusing to commit to the deal at the G7 meeting.
President Trump has privately told multiple people, including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave the Paris agreement on climate change, according to three sources with direct knowledge.
Publicly, Trump’s position is that he has not made up his mind and when we asked the White House about these private comments, Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks said, “I think his tweet was clear. He will make a decision this week.”
Why this matters: Pulling out of Paris is the biggest thing Trump could to do unravel Obama’s climate policies. It also sends a stark and combative signal to the rest of the world that working with other nations on climate change isn’t a priority to the Trump administration. And pulling out threatens to unravel the ambition of the entire deal, given how integral former President Obama was in making it come together in the first place.
Caveat: Although Trump made it clear during the campaign and in multiple conversations before his overseas trip that he favored withdrawal, he has been known to abruptly change his mind — and often floats notions to gauge the reaction of friends and aides. On the trip, he spent many hours with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, powerful advisers who back the deal.
Behind-the-scenes: The mood inside the EPA this week has been one of nervous optimism. In a senior staff meeting earlier this week, Pruitt told aides he wanted them to pump the brakes on publicly lobbying for withdrawal from Paris.
Instead, the EPA staff are quietly working with outside supporters to place op eds favoring withdrawal from Paris.
The White House has told Pruitt to lay off doing TV appearances until Trump announces his decision on Paris. (In past weeks, the EPA Administrator has gone on TV to say the U.S. needs to quit Paris, but Pruitt told aides he’ll be keeping a lower profile. He doesn’t want a Paris withdrawal to be seen as his victory. “It needs to be the President’s victory,” one source said, paraphrasing what Pruitt has told aides.)
Pruitt’s aides have told associates in recent days that they remain confident the President will withdraw from Paris but they’ve been worried about him being overseas and exposed to pressure from European leaders and the environmentalist views of his top aides like Ivanka and economic adviser Gary Cohn. Top EPA staff were relieved when Trump refused to join the other six nations of the G7 in reaffirming “strong commitment” to the Paris agreement.
One level deeper: If Trump follows through and announces publicly he plans to withdraw from the Paris deal, an administration official laid out three ways he could do that:
Trump could announce he is pulling the U.S. from the deal, which would trigger a withdrawal process that wouldn’t conclude until November 2020 at the earliest. Under the deal’s terms, any country can’t send notice of its intent to withdraw until three years after the deal entered into force, which was Nov. 4, 2016. The actual process of withdrawal would then take one year. In this time, it’s feasible Trump could change his mind, the administration source said.
Trump could declare that the Paris deal is actually a legal treaty that requires Senate approval. Such a vote would fail, and then Trump would have Senate backing to not abide by the deal, which he deems a treaty. A letter that 22 Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent to Trump this week urging him to withdraw from the deal, increases the odds of this happening, the source said. Trump could also call for a Senate vote in combination with either the first or third option.
Trump could withdraw the U.S. from the treaty that underpins the Paris deal, which is called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This would be the most extreme option because it would take the U.S. out of all global climate diplomacy. This process would take just one year.
Will we always have Paris? All of these scenarios take more time and maneuvering than a simple announcement, which ensures the debate about what to do with the climate deal won’t be over with any time soon.
G7 summit ends with split between Donald Trump, other leaders on climate change, ABC News, 28 May 17Under pressure from allies, US President Donald Trump has backed a pledge to fight protectionism, but refused to endorse a global climate change accord, saying he needed more time to decide.
Key points:
German Chancellor says climate talks were “difficult”
Donald Trump says he will decide on Paris Agreement next week
Final communique just six pages, compared to 32 last year
The summit of Group of Seven wealthy nations pitted Mr Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they hoped were long settled.
Mr Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, tweeted that he would make a decision next week on whether to back the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions following lengthy discussions with G7 partners.
“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters.
“There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”………
Security questions dominated initial G7 discussion on Friday and the leaders called on internet service providers and social media firms to “substantially increase” their efforts to rein in extremist content.
US officials said Mr Trump had enjoyed “robust” conversations with his allies in Sicily and had also learnt a lot — especially in the debate on climate change.
Critics have pointed to the rising seas from climate change, risks of storm surge, radioactive waste and threats to drinking water and wildlife at the site, nestled near Everglades National Park, as reasons to stop nuclear expansion.
Complaints have also centered on the difficulty of evacuating the densely populated area around the plant in case of emergency. Miami-Dade County is home to 2.6 million people.
“Investing tens of billions of dollars on a power plant that will be underwater one day, along with the highly radioactive waste it will produce, makes no sense,”
Why nuclear could become the next ‘fossil’ fuel, Afp, Homestead, United States, Daily Star 29 May 17 A gray dinosaur statue outside south Florida’s largest power plant is meant to symbolize two decommissioned fossil fuel reactors, but it also could be seen to represent a nuclear industry crumpling under mounting costs.
Almost a decade ago, Turkey Point was aiming to become one of the country’s largest nuclear plants.Florida Power and Light had argued that such expansion was needed to maintain diverse energy sources and to supply Florida’s booming population for years to come, while touting nuclear as a clean form of energy.
But now, just three reactors are in operation – one natural gas and two nuclear reactors, built in the 1970s. And plans to build two more nuclear reactors — first announced in 2009 — are essentially on hold for at least four years, according to filings with the state’s Public Service Commission……
The project has been controversial from the start, and casts the spotlight on wider concerns about nuclear power.
Critics have pointed to the rising seas from climate change, risks of storm surge, radioactive waste and threats to drinking water and wildlife at the site, nestled near Everglades National Park, as reasons to stop nuclear expansion.
Complaints have also centered on the difficulty of evacuating the densely populated area around the plant in case of emergency. Miami-Dade County is home to 2.6 million people.
“Investing tens of billions of dollars on a power plant that will be underwater one day, along with the highly radioactive waste it will produce, makes no sense,” said fishing captain Dan Kipnis, one of the activists who is fighting to stop the project.
Legal challenges to the plant’s planned expansion began in 2010, and continued this month with a hearing before the Atomic Safety Board.
Over the course of the two-day hearing, environmental scientists and lawyers wrangled over whether the porous limestone in Florida could really contain wastewater injected underground, without allowing toxic chemicals to seep upward into drinking water.
Currently, Turkey’s Point’s two nuclear reactors use a series of cooling canals to treat wastewater.
These canals were confirmed last year to be leaking into a nearby national park, after a radioactive isotope, tritium, was found at up to 215 times the normal levels in the waters of Biscayne Bay.
The three-judge safety board panel is expected to rule by year’s end on whether an operating license should be granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Throughout Florida, FPL is expanding its solar installations, and is shuttering coal plants.
Its energy mix is 70 percent natural gas, 17 percent nuclear, with the rest divided between solar, oil and coal.
Meanwhile, the ever-dropping cost of natural gas is making nuclear less attractive every day, analysts say.
“Most people think Turkey Point will never get built,” said Mark Cooper, senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School, referring to FPL’s proposed two new nuclear reactors. “It turns out it was not the environmentalists, it was not the lawsuits,” Cooper told AFP.
“They could not deliver a safe, economically viable product. They couldn’t do it in the ’80s and they can’t do it today,” said Cooper.
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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