Recycling of plastics now problematic

From an Article by Renzo Pipoli, Reuters Events, October 27, 2020

The Canadian federal government announced in October plans to ban six very commonly used single-use plastic items by the end of 2021 to tackle a pollution problem that became more pressing after China banned plastic waste imports in 2018.

Canada’s Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the ban is part of a broader plan to reach zero plastic waste within a decade that will also include making plastic producers responsible for waste. Only plastics considered both harmful to the environment and costly to recycle were listed.

The coming ban on bags and six-pack rings will affect polyethylene while the one on straws will impact polypropylene (PP). Bans on plastic cutlery and drink stirrers will affect both PP and polystyrene. Bans on plastic food containers will hit expanded polystyrene.

The Canadian government has asked for feedback by December 9th. The ban will not come into effect until the end of 2021.

The planned bans in Canada are part of an international growing tendency, said Ashish Chitalia, Wood Mackenzie’s research director. “That is a trend that we’re seeing since 2018 as it all started when China banned the imports of plastic waste, and that has encouraged exporters of plastic waste, like North America, Europe, to improve their policies and reduce plastic waste at the source,” Chitalia said.

Industry to be responsible for plastic waste collection

The China ban, “along with social pressure to tackle the plastic waste in the environment and landfills,” are encouraging regulators to consider stemming the plastic waste at the source,” Chitalia added.

Wilkinson said single-use plastics easier to collect and recycle were not included.“The focus is on plastics that are particularly problematic, and that is particularly things like expandable polystyrene or Styrofoam,” he said. For example, drink containers and lids were not included, Wilkinson added on an Oct. 7 interview with CTV News.

“The broader part of this plan is to make producers and vendors responsible for the collection and recycling, to set requirements in terms of the amount of product that has to be recycled, to require recycled content standards,” he said.

There is an urgent need in Canada to tackle the plastic waste problem, he explained. “Last year 29,000 tonnes of plastic ended up in our environment. Most of it in our lakes, our rivers, and our ocean,” he said.

Other plans include incentives to consider recyclability in product design, and mandating minimum recycled components in manufacturing.

“When we throw away plastics that don’t get recycled we waste C$8 billion worth of material every year so there’s an opportunity to make sure we’re making good value and good use of resources,” Wilkinson said.

Canadian plastic waste exports under study

According to a 2019 report by Greenpeace about Canadian waste exports following China’s import ban in the preceding year, Canadian plastic waste exporters have struggled to find destinations.

In 2015 Canada exported to China, including Hong Kong, 100,618 tonnes of plastic waste, according to Greenpeace. Then came China’s January 2018 ban on 24 materials, including eight plastics. Since the ban, waste exporters have diverted shipping to countries including Malaysia, Taiwan and several others, but divided in smaller volumes, according to Greenpeace.

Results of a Greenpeace investigation of waste plastic found in unlicensed facilities in Malaysia detected Canadian labels in the plastic waste found there, the report said. Greenpeace called on the Canadian government to meet obligations under the Basel convention on the control of trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

U.S. companies warn against plastics ban

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent on Sept. 21 a letter to Mary Ng, Canada’s minister of international trade, undersigned by over 50 associations representing plastics from adhesives to vinyl, to warn that the ban undermines free-trade agreements.

“The proposed ban on any product containing plastic and manufactured in the U.S. clearly meets the definition of a non-tariff barrier,” the letter said. A ban “would have a disproportionate trade impact, given the $12.1 billion of manufactured plastic that enters Canada from the United States every year,” it added.

“That is exclusive of other products (like cars, medical supplies and devices, and information technology products) that contain plastic components or goods that require plastic to prevent contamination, such as food,” it added. “Such a precedent would create further incentives to ban trade by other governments, which could impact over $10 billion in Canadian exports of plastics and plastic products,” it added.

Industry concerned about ‘toxic’ designation

Both the U.S. and Canadian plastic industries object to the use of the word ‘toxic’ to describe plastics. “Consumers would assume that every day and essential products that contain plastic are now toxic,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce letter said.

The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) on Oct. 7 shared the U.S. concern about the designation of plastics as ‘toxic’ and about using the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) to regulate plastic disposal.

Wilkinson has said that if the issue around the word ‘toxic’ is one of nomenclature, the government is open to discussions but will not renounce efforts to protect the environment.

The CIAC has also shown concern about increased carbon taxation.

Canadian industry warns against ‘premature’ decisions

The Canadian government should not take “premature” decisions, the CIAC added.

Canada’s plastics producers are improving design for recycle and reuse models; and investing in recycling, it said. The industry’s own goals aim for products becoming fully recyclable or recoverable by 2030, while all plastic should be reused, recycled or recovered by 2040.

Programs to eliminate plastic pellets release from industry operations into rivers and oceans will be in place by 2022.

Canada’s plastics manufacturers add C$28 billion to the economy annually and employ 93,000 Canadians, it said. According to Wood Mackenzie’s Chitalia, the ban “gives an opportunity for Canadian producers of bioplastics to penetrate single-use plastics markets.”

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See also: Plastic Pollution Coalition calls out retailers ….

Calling on AMAZON: “Ditch Single-Use Plastic Packaging”

It’s time to stop plastics pollution everywhere

The Nord Stream pipeline(s) run 760 miles under the Baltic Sea

From an Article by Tsvetana Paraskova, OilPrice.com, November 25, 2019

Russia’s gas giant Gazprom is rushing to hire an engineering contractor to have an underwater natural gas pipeline, which has broken off the seabed in the Arctic, fixed, Russian news agency Interfax reports.

This is the second time a pipeline on the route that crosses the Baydaratskaya Bay has come to the surface in the past two years. As Interfax notes, last year another pipeline had broken off the seabed.

It was not clear if the resurfacing of the pipelines has created major safety hazards or affected gas supply from the fields in the Yamal Peninsula, according to The Barents Observer.

A unit of Gazprom has announced a competitive tender for engineering surveys for the Bovanenkovo – Ukhta 2 line, which transports natural gas from the Bovanenkovskoye field on the Yamal Peninsula via the Baydaratskaya Bay in the Kara Sea to mainland Russia and onto Europe.

Bovanenkovskoye is currently the largest natural gas producing field on the Yamal Peninsula, according to Gazprom. The construction of the Bovanenkovo – Ukhta 2 gas pipeline began in 2012 and the pipeline was brought on line in 2017.

Now with a second line resurfacing, Gazprom has launched a tender for repair works on 9.2 kilometers (5.7 miles) of the pipeline in the bay, Interfax reports, citing tender documents from the Gazprom unit.

Gazprom expects the work to help it have the pipeline placed in a trench of up to 5 meters (16.4 feet) below the seabed. The engineering surveys are planned to take place in 2020 and 2021, according to Interfax.

Gazprom is dominating gas supplies to many European markets, and now it also vies to meet rising Chinese natural gas demand. Russia wants a share of the huge Chinese market and the Russian gas giant looks to supply pipeline gas to China — and this will begin in weeks.

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Russian natural gas pipelines in West Siberia and the Yamal Peninsula

See also: Pipeline problems for indigenous peoples on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula · Global Voices, February 20, 2020

The Yamal Peninsula contains some of the biggest known reserves of natural gas on the planet. This remote peninsula in the Russian Arctic extends for 700 kilometres into the Kara Sea, and now several pipelines, offshore gas fields, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals have made it their home. Those tens of millions of cubic metres of natural gas have attracted Russia’s state-owned gas companies and several international investors; in 2008, Gazprom announced its Yamal Project, to unlock the region’s hydrocarbons on a vast scale. Yamal is also home to 15,000 people, 10,000 of whom are Nenets reindeer herders.

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is under high pressure and very low temperature

From an Article by Marissa Luck, Houston Chronicle, December 17, 2018

PHOTO— A Liberian-flagged tanker named the Maria Energy left Cheniere Energy’s recently completed Port of Corpus Christi facility with the first shipment of liquefied natural gas on the morning of Thursday, December 11, 2018. The shipment marked the first LNG export from Texas.

The world’s biggest buyers of liquefied natural gas will quadruple their uncontracted demand for LNG, and more buyers will be on the hunt for additional LNG soon, too, a report from Wood Mackenzie suggests.

That’s good news for Texas, which is transforming into an LNG export hub as companies tap into cheap natural gas supplies.

By 2030, the seven major LNG buyers are expected to gobble up 80 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas over and above their existing contracts, according to Wood Mackenzie.

Total demand from those buyers, including purchasing LNG on contract and off contract, will grow to 180 million metric tons, up from 150 million metric tons today, the research firm said.

“As China pushes on toward a lower-emission economy, its demand for gas and LNG has grown significantly and we expect the trend to continue in the longer term,” said Wood Mackenzie research director, Nicholas Browne in a statement.

The major seven LNG buyers are clustered in Asia, including China National Offshore Oil Corp., PetroChina, Sinopec, Tokyo Gas, Jera Co. and CPC Corp. Together they account for more than 50 percent of the global LNG market.

“Other traditional major buyers, on the other hand, are facing legacy contract expires and will be on the hunt for a mix of contracts to lower average costs and security in supply sources,” Browne added.

Next year could be a record year for new liquefied natural gas projects too – collectively suppliers could give the green light on LNG investments totaling 220 million metric tons per a year of capacity.

To put that in perspective, nearly 300 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas was traded globally last year — a jump from 100 million metric tons at the start of the century, according to an outlook from Shell.

Several projects are expected to get the green light next year, including the $27 billion Arctic LNG-2 in Russia, at least one project in Mozambique and at least three the U.S. Expansion projects in Australia and Papua New Guinea will also be in the running.

A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration earlier this week said the U.S. could more than double its export capacity in the next year to become the third largest LNG exporter behind Australia and Qatar.

In Texas, Cheniere Energy sent out the first LNG export tanker from the state earlier this week. Cheniere’s initial customers for the Corpus Christi facility hold long-term supply contracts from Europe, Asia and Australia.

Cheniere started exporting LNG from the U.S. in 2016, when it sent LNG from its Sabine Pass complex in Louisiana. Dominion Energy of Richmond, Va., also is exporting LNG from Cove Point in the United States, and others are expected to follow in the coming months, including two Houston firms, Kinder Morgan, which is completing an export terminal in Georgia, and Freeport LNG, which will operate a Gulf Coast terminal at Quintana Island.

Companies behind another four export projects on the Gulf Coast —Magnolia LNG, Delfin LNG, Lake Charles and Golden Pass— have federal approvals and are expected to make final investment decisions in the coming months, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Several other companies, including Sempra Energy of San Diego, NextDecade of Houston and Tellurian of Houston, are working on projects expected to start up in the coming years. This week NextDecade scored state permits for its Rio Grande LNG project in Brownsville. And the federal government just released an environmental study on another Brownsville project, Annova LNG, an important milestone in the permitting process.

Browne said 2019 will be “the biggest year ever” in terms of LNG projects advancing and receiving final investment decisions.

“Asia’s major buyers will be at the forefront in ensuring this next generation of LNG supply is brought to market,” he added.

FOIA request for MOU rejected by State of WV

From an Article by Ken Ward, Jr., Charleston Gazette-Mail, June 15, 2018

PHOTO: Then-West Virginia Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher (seated at left of table) meets last November in Beijing with China Energy President Ling Wen (seated at right of table) in front of President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. From: W.Va. Department of Commerce

A member of West Virginia’s negotiating team on the $80 billion natural gas investment deal with China was asked to repay $23,000 in travel expenses after the Justice administration raised questions about a potential conflict of interest, the governor revealed Friday.

Last November, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping looked on in Beijing as officials from the Mountain State and a Chinese energy company signed what was hailed as a landmark deal for West Virginia.

Under the deal, China Energy Investment Corp. would invest more than $80 billion over the next 20 years in West Virginia’s natural gas industry.

Gov. Jim Justice and other state leaders have been banking on the China deal, predicting it will create tens of thousands of additional jobs in the state. It also was described as a victory for Trump, the largest in a series of Chinese investments in the United States that totaled $250 billion.

But on Friday, Justice revealed an ethical cloud over the China deal: At least one member of the state’s trade delegation — an industry executive — was also working to help his private company.

Brian Abraham, the governor’s general counsel, said the state was “using someone who probably shouldn’t have been involved in the negotiations” as part of its trade delegation.

“People that were there in China maybe representing their own special interests, we didn’t think was right,” the governor added.

West Virginia officials are eager to see the fruits of the China Energy investment, as a cornerstone to the natural gas industry’s continued growth in the state. But along the way, some lawmakers and watchdogs are questioning whether the state is putting the industry’s interests ahead of the public concerns about broadening the state’s economic base. This year, ProPublica is partnering with the Charleston Gazette-Mail to examine those issues.

At a news conference Friday, neither Justice nor Abraham would name the individual or his company. In an interview later, Abraham confirmed that the man was Steven B. Hedrick, who is CEO of Appalachia Development Group LLC and also CEO of the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center, or MATRIC, a nonprofit that partners with industry on various research and development efforts.

Appalachia Development Group has been seeking a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of an effort to build a natural gas “storage hub” for various natural gas liquid byproducts that can be used in a wide variety of manufacturing.

Abraham said the state Commerce Department paid for Hedrick’s travel for the China negotiations because it considered him acting as a state official, part of a special Commerce Department program in which certain executives are “loaned” to the state.

The Governor’s Office, though, discovered later that Hedrick had not joined the program and when asked to do so after the trip, he declined, Abraham said. Had he joined the program, Hedrick would have been required to sign an agreement to abide by the state ethics law’s prohibition on using public office for private gain.

“Why is this person behind the curtain at Commerce if they’re an individual on the outside?” Abraham said. “That created an ethical dilemma.”

Also, Abraham cited an incident in which state officials were later told that Hedrick asked China Energy officials to specifically target some of their investment in his company’s natural gas storage hub. Abraham said that, on one trip, Hedrick stayed an extra day to pitch his project.

Abraham said Hedrick was asked to repay the state $23,000 in travel expenses and that the repayment had been made.

A spokeswoman for Hedrick said he was not available for comment, but she issued a short email statement that said Hedrick was “grateful to respond to the request of the state of West Virginia to support the Commerce Department’s mission to attract business to the state.”

The statement said MATRIC “promptly paid any expenses invoiced by the state.”

Although officials signed a memorandum of understanding in China, the state has refused to release the text of the agreement and few details have been made public. The China deal and the natural gas storage hub are considered by many state officials as key and related economic development projects for West Virginia’s future.

The state’s natural gas industry has already greatly expanded, and backers of the China deal say it will provide huge amounts of capital that could fund processing plants, pipelines and other facilities that will turn natural gas byproducts into crucial ingredients for a wide variety of plastics manufacturers. These kinds of “downstream” developments will allow West Virginia to capture far more jobs and economic growth than just drilling for gas and shipping it out of state.

The revelations about the China deal came just one day after Justice asked for and received the resignation of Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher, whose agency bungled the state’s implementation of a federally funded flood-relief program.

Thrasher was the top state official who traveled to China last November as part of the trade delegation.

Justice said Friday that discussions toward realizing the Chinese natural gas investments are ongoing, and repeated his earlier statements that the deal “came into being” because of his personal friendship with Trump.

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The Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica want to tell the story of the changing landscape in West Virginia, and how coal and natural gas are impacting it. West Virginians: Tell us how your community is changing. Call or text us at 347-244-2134, or email us: changing wv@wvgazettemail.com.

Gov. Justice has a secret MOU in his pocket!

From an Article by Troy N. Miller, Truthout*  Op-Ed, November 28, 2017

The Trump administration wants to allow China to invest more than $80 billion in West Virginia’s gas fields. Whether it grows West Virginia’s economy or not, investors will expect returns.

One full year after getting elected, there is no denying that Trump is doing important things to support West Virginia’s long-standing regime of fossil fuel feudalism — by any economic manipulation necessary.

But even as Trump’s administration scraps Obama-era regulations and shoves the costs of business onto West Virginia’s families, coal and nuclear are still struggling to stay competitive with other sources of energy (such as unsubsidized renewables).

The administration’s solution to that reality reeks of big government cronyism: Make the federal government pay higher rates to those sources so that those sources can continue to operate, even though they’re uncompetitive.

But the big news recently is the administration’s plan to bolster the natural gas industry through a deal with China. Instead of tough trade talks with China involving new hefty tariffs or value-added taxes, the Trump administration, with Gov. Jim Justice, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Sen. Joe Manchin’s cheerleading, wants to allow China to invest more than $80 billion in West Virginia’s gas fields.

It’s a huge number for a state with an annual GDP closer to $75 billion — but it’s important to remember that this is an investment, not a grant.

Yes, that’s money coming into our economy. And that money may cause the economy to swell — but there’s little chance it will cause the economy to grow.

The fundamental issue here is that investors, foreign or domestic, expect returns. And they expect those returns whether West Virginia’s economy grows or not.

It’s all but guaranteed that more money will leave the state than will come in over the next 20 years. The question is, will we tax that wealth before it leaves the state? Will we tax it enough to pay for the clean up, when we reach the 21st year? Will we tax this investment enough to rebuild our roads and bridges? To bolster our public education? To rebuild when the next floods happen?

Is there any stipulation on this proposed deal that would require China Energy to hire locally? Is there any stipulation that they’ll build their machinery locally? That they’ll use local vendors?

Or will they do like they’ve done in regions of Africa and other resource-rich regions around the world, and bring in their own workers to work their equipment — while dictating the terms of agreements to any local vendors they do business with?

Is there any stipulation that these firms keep our waterways clean, our roads safe and that they act as good members of the community?

Seems unlikely, since those stipulations don’t seem to apply even to the fossil fuel firms that currently operate in West Virginia — the ones based out of Oklahoma or North Dakota, or anywhere but West Virginia.

But it’s tough to know. As far as I’ve been able to find, the text of this deal has not been made public.

Foreign investments have always been part of a “race to the bottom” strategy — whether it’s the US investing in South Asia and Mexico, Germany investing in South America, or China investing in Africa and West Virginia.

Like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, the financial elites who have benefited from the last 40 years of international trade (including the current president) want us to believe without question that this agreement will ultimately be different for West Virginia’s working families.

But this agreement seems to follow a very basic economic model, one older than the United States itself.

1.) We’ll produce the natural gas for Chinese firms.

2.) The Chinese firms will produce the valuable finished goods (probably plastics).

3.) They’ll sell those goods back to us at a massive mark-up.

And based on history, what will West Virginia have to show once the gas is harvested and the profits funneled out?

Toxic groundwater, more abandoned factories and a new generation of citizens to foot the bill for this deal’s true costs to West Virginia’s communities and to the environment.

* – Originally from Wheeling, West Virginia, Troy N. Miller is a writer and radio producer living in Washington, DC.

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China has dangled an $84 billion capital investment offer to blind us -- incredible!

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemist & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

While in China, President Trump signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreements talking about investing $250 billion in the U. S. One MOU is for China Energy Investment Corp. to invest $83.7 billion in shale gas development and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia over two decades, according to a statement from the WV Department of Commerce. For comparison, West Virginia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the worth of all goods and services produced in the state for a year, is in the neighborhood of $66 billion.

A MOU is not a contract, little more than a statement saying “we are thinking about this project.” We should do a lot of thinking about this one. Over the last 46 years, U. S. capital has flowed to China, and the Chinese have managed to accumulate very substantial capital themselves.

However, the Communist party has maintained firm control and Xi Jinpeng, Trump’s opposite number, was elevated to the same status as Mao Zedong. As thoughtful citizens know, some three-fourths of the disposable part of U. S. tax money goes into our military, designed to resist the advance of Communism, including China and North Korea. Russia is still strongly influenced by Communism.

That U. S. investment has built up China at the same time we have built up a military to defend against them, witness the “pivot to Asia.” Doesn’ this seem to be self-contradictory? The result is that China is a rising power. The headline says “China GDP Growth Eases to 6.8% in Third Quarter 2017.” For the U. S. the corresponding figure is at a more or less constant 2.8%.

Consider the proposed big deal in West Virginia. Chinese companies competing with American companies? Will they bring their own workers, as they have for projects in Africa? Will they hire American workers, pay American wages and benefits, work them American standard hours, etc.? Won’t they want cheap Chinese labor (remember Trump’s statement “I am always going to put America first, the same way that I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first.”) Remember the old adage “ He that pays the piper calls the tune.” Will the Chinese give that up?

Then there is the language problem, and our submerged racial attitude toward our smaller, yellow skinned, brothers with different customs. If they would be forced to give up the advantages of bringing their own labor, they will have to have supervisors in contact with the businesses that do the extraction (or they are less careful managers than all that money justifies). How will American bosses react to having Chinese bosses?

Now to the particular problem in West Virginia. The Chinese need the energy desperately, along with raw materials for the chemical industry that comes up with the gas, such as ethane and propane, and they certainly can use any profit they get, since they still have a huge number of people who haven’t benefitted from their recent economic expansion. And extraction leaves the pollution, sickness, broken roads, contaminated aquifers and other environmental problems, in West Virginia, just as American investment avoided pollution, and the rest of it in China when we sent capital and got their products. You can’t have large scale fossil fuel extraction without those problems. We would build up their strength (against our military) and reduce our mineral reserves, and make this resource colony (our State and Nation) less valuable and less productive for the future.

Ever hear the phrase, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And doesn’t it seem to apply in this case? It is attributed to Vladimir Lenin. You remember his politics, don’t you? Perhaps a lot of serious thought should be given to this MOU.

See also: Why $84 Billion From China Can’t Buy a U.S. East Gas Hub – Bloomberg

The US under Trump is in chaos

Energy 202: Trump’s Paris speech needs a serious fact check

From an Article by Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, June 2, 2017

Donald Trump spent 131 days contemplating what life would be like if the United States left the Paris climate agreement. Ultimately, he seemed to like what he saw, and followed his gut.

This past Thursday, the president made official his long-rumored decision to withdraw the United States from the 195-nation accord.

Speaking outside the White House, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to remove the United States from the landmark deal aimed at curbing climate-altering emissions and keeping global warming below a threshold — 2 degrees Celsius above the global temperature before humans began burning fossil fuels — at which the worst consequences of climate change are believed by the scientific community to take hold. (The Post’s Philip Rucker and Jenna Johnson have the main story here.)

A wide swath of world leaders, top scientists and business titans immediately condemned the decision. But in a Rose Garden speech, Trump said withdrawal was necessary for U.S. economic security.

“I am fighting every day for the great people of this country,” he said. “Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.”

For roughly 25 minutes, Trump laid out his rationale for withdrawal. Some of this made sense — some coal jobs, for example, will indeed be saved by eliminating the Clean Power Plan, one of President Barack Obama’s main efforts at meeting the Paris commitment.

But many of the other reasons Trump gave for withdrawing seemed at best strained and at worst unfounded.

Below we break down some of the claims we found especially difficult to understand:

CLAIM #1: For weeks, as the tug-of-war between the pro- and anti-Paris camps in the White House played out, Trump seemed to grope for a way to claim a middle ground on the Paris decision. The bone he chose to throw Paris supporters is the possibility that the United States can somehow ”reenter” the agreement in the future.

In his speech, Trump promised to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or really an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.”

“We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” he continued.” And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”

THE PROBLEM: From the start, the Paris agreement was designed to have the plasticity Trump seemed to be seeking by talking about some kind of renegotiation. The breakthrough Obama and others made in the lead-up to Paris was allowing nations to choose the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions they were willing to cut.

“Paris already gives countries tremendous flexibility, and no penalties,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. ”Trump obviously didn’t read the Paris agreement, and his statement was written by people who willfully misrepresented its contents — his staff or their lobbyist friends.”

Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris accord did not legally bind nations to emissions targets. The only thing keeping a nation in check was pressure from its international peers. Under the agreement, the United States could miss an emissions goal and face no penalty. It could reset that goal, too, with no formal consequence. It’s unclear what other concessions the United States could gain from a renegotiation.

Also, a new Paris deal may not be practical.

Right after Trump announced his decision, three large European nations indicated they have no interest in a do-over. Italy, Germany and France issued a statement barely an hour after Trump’s speech, saying that the Paris accord “cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” according to Reuters.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt — who lobbied heavily for leaving the deal — argued on CNN after the Rose Garden announcement that Paris was a “failing agreement to begin with.” He added that Trump has repeatedly said he is “committed to continuing” climate-change discussions, but with “America at the forefront of those discussions.”

CLAIM #2: While Trump as president has taken a decidedly softer stance toward China than he did while running for office, he used the Paris announcement to take a swing at one of his favorite punching bags to illustrate the raw deal he believes the United States got under the agreement.

“China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants,” Trump proclaimed. “So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement.”

And again, Trump said: “Under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us.”

THE PROBLEM: Not so. Again, the agreement does not bind any nation to any emissions target. What China did choose to do under the agreement is have its carbon emissions “peak” by 2030 before then declining. The world accepted that longer leash for China and other developing nations to let them use fossil-fuel energy to promote greater economic growth.

But to meet that goal, China cannot “do whatever they want” until then, as Trump said, at least if China wants to meet that voluntary 2030 target. It needs to begin acting now to control emissions — and in fact, is signaling to the world it is already doing so by announcing in January the cancellation of plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants.

The Paris deal “is more fair to the U.S. than previous agreements because it includes all the major economies of the world, not just the rich countries, so both developed countries and developing countries have skin in the game,” Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the school’s Environmental Law and Policy Program, said. Trump’s ”portrayal is at odds with reality,” she added.

CLAIM #3: In a baby step for a politician who once dubbed the idea of climate change a hoax, Trump suggested in his speech that human activity can warm the planet — albeit backhandedly, and to make the point that the climate accord is futile. Here’s what Trump tweeted in 2013:

“Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that, this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100,” Trump said during the speech, holding up his hand with thumb and index finger only millimeters apart.

THE PROBLEM: While it’s true that current commitments are not enough to meet the two-degree goal, Trump’s figures are off. As my Post colleague Chris Mooney writes, reporting on an analysis from an MIT researcher: “The current country level pledges under the Paris agreement would reduce the planet’s warming by the year 2100 down from 4.2 degrees Celsius (7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit), or nearly a full degree Celsius.”

CLAIM #4: Trump also singled out for criticism a United Nations initiative that actually predates the Paris deal called the Green Climate Fund. It’s a pool of money that finances climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in poor nations, but Trump is concerned that U.S. contributions are hurting the United States.

“Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris accord,” Trump said, ”it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments.”

And that money the United States pays is ”raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism,” he said. ”That’s where they came.”

THE PROBLEM: There are a few, according to the nonprofit Friends of the Earth.

The Green Climate Fund contains $10.3 billion not $100 billion. And the U.S. share comes from the Treasury, not any pool or money set aside for anti-terrorism purposes.

“I’d never heard anything like this before,” Karen Orenstein, deputy director of economic policy at Friends of the Earth, said of the terrorism claim. “It’s totally ridiculous.”

CLAIM #5: During his Rose Garden speech, Trump attempted to rev his coal-country base by saying: ”I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

THE PROBLEM: This line is confusing. It was delegates of the nearly 200 nations of the world, not the approximately 2 million people of Paris, who negotiated the climate accord. Paris was simply the city that hosted the talks after which, in the long tradition of diplomatic nomenclature, the agreement was named. Nonetheless, the line is likely to resonate with Trump voters who feel they have been left out of the economic recovery and who do not relate to international diplomats who they don’t believe are working in their best interest.

One other note: Hillary Clinton actually won Allegheny County, Pa., where Pittsburgh is located, by 16 points. Or, as the mayor of Pittsburgh, Democrat Bill Peduto, said: “Pittsburgh stands with the world & will follow Paris Agreement.”

And The Post’s Philip Bump reminds readers what Pittsburgh used to look like: “Once upon a time, the city of Pittsburgh was a robustly blue-collar anchor to the American steel industry. Once upon a time, the air was thick with smog and soot from industry lining the city’s rivers. Once upon a time, decades ago, the collapse of the steel industry and American manufacturing put the city itself at risk.”

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Lord Nicholas Stern, Senior British Economist

Some Ten (10) years now from the Stern report: a low-carbon future is the ‘only one available’

Economist says green development is the only route to global economic growth and points to China leading the world on climate change action

From an Article by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, October 27, 2016

Clean, green development is the sole route to future global economic growth, according to British economist Lord Nicholas Stern, with a continuation of polluting, high-carbon growth only leading to self-destruction.

There is a strong argument that China is now leading the world in action on climate change, Stern said, making the country both a competitor and inspiration for other nations.

Stern, speaking ahead of two lectures to mark the 10th anniversary of the highly influential Stern report, said the cost of not acting to halt global warming had risen while the costs of doing so had fallen.

The 2006 Stern report, commissioned by the UK government, found that the economic damage caused by unchecked climate change could be 5-20% of global GDP each year, but that cutting carbon emissions would cost just 1% of GDP. The report warned against delaying action, but this has not been heeded, said Stern on Thursday.

“We have delayed action,” he said. “The potential damages now look bigger than I suggested then. In that sense I underplayed the consequences of not getting on with it. But the costs of action are a good deal lower than I indicated then, in that technical progress has been faster that we thought. The cost of solar power [for example] is not far off a factor of 10 less than in 2006.”

Today, he said, a low-carbon future is the sole option for prosperity. “It is the only one available and it is a very exciting growth story,” Stern said. “Any attempt to follow high-carbon growth will eventually be self destructive due to the very hostile environment it creates. There was an old alleged tension between growth on the one hand and climate responsibility on the other, but it’s a completely fake horse race.”

Stern said other drivers of economic growth, such as using interest rates, tax changes and structural reforms, had limited potential. “Sustainable development of infrastructure and cities is the growth story of the future,” he said. “We are winning the arguments intellectually and politically, but it has all been much too slow.”

Stern foresees economies in which people travel using efficient self-driving cars, bicycles and walking, homes and businesses are powered by green energy, materials are widely recycled and ultrafast broadband supports home working. “It is a very attractive future if we just put our minds to it,” he said. “Cities where you can’t move and breathe make no sense.”

Stern said China could be seen as the leader in climate action today. “You can make a strong case for that,” he said, noting Chinese coal use peaked two years ago. “You have radical change in energy and very big structural change in the economy, moving very strongly towards service sectors and high-tech.”

He said a key driver is the threat to China from fossil fuel burning, both in terms of climate change impacts, particularly droughts and floods, and air pollution.

“I wish the whole world had known [in 2006] how big an issue air pollution was. We kill millions a year, so delay on that has resulted in probably the deaths of tens of millions of people,” he said. “The double gain – both reducing the risk of climate change and reducing air pollution – is now seen as a very powerful and attractive argument for action. This argument has been particularly strong in its attraction in China, which has probably moved the most in the last 10 years.”

Stern said China was also driven by the desire to be the biggest player in the green economy: “If there is a race in green products, China rather fancies itself to do well.”

China already leads the world in wind and solar energy installations and also has a major nuclear power programme. “The future of nuclear will be determined in China as it is the only country doing it at scale,” Stern said, suggesting 100-150 new nuclear power plants could be built there in the next 15-20 years.

The UK has been a leader on climate change, he said, both in its pioneering domestic laws passed in 2008 and in international negotiations towards the global Paris climate change agreement. “But the UK wobbled in 2015 in terms of support for renewables and that has created some uncertainty,” he said.

Since coming to power, the Conservative government has drastically cut or ended subsidies for wind and solar power, leading the UK to fall down league tables ranking national energy sectors and attractiveness for renewable energy investment. Stern said all low-carbon energy technologies, including nuclear, would be needed in the UK but that “solar and wind with storage is particularly promising”.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net