Skip to main content

Donald Trump may quit Paris climate accord (hindu )

Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change, at times calling it a hoax to weaken U.S. industry.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a White House official said on Wednesday, confirming a move certain to anger allies that spent years negotiating the landmark agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

But there may be “caveats in the language” that Mr. Trump uses to announce the withdrawal, leaving open the possibility that the decision isn’t final, according to the official, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the decision before the official announcement.

Click Here!
Mr. Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning: “I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Nearly 200 nations, including the United States under President Barack Obama’s administration, agreed in 2015 to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world’s industrialised economies in rejecting action to combat climate change.

During Mr. Trump’s overseas trip last week, European leaders pressed him to keep the U.S. in the pact.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change, at times calling it a hoax to weaken U.S. industry.  An overwhelming majority of scientists, however, say climate change is driven by human use of fossil fuels.

Word of Mr. Trump’s decision comes a day after the President met with Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Like his boss, Mr. Pruitt has questioned the consensus of climate scientists that the Earth is warming and that man-made climate emissions are to blame.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pruitt have moved to delay or roll back federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions while pledging to revive the long-struggling U.S. coal mines.

What is not yet clear is whether Mr. Trump plans to initiate a formal withdrawal from the Paris accord, which under the terms of the agreement could take three years, or exit the underlying U.N. climate change treaty on which the accord was based.

The U.S. is the world’s second largest emitter of carbon, following only China. Beijing, however, has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting its targets under the Paris accord, recently cancelling construction of about 100 coal-fired power plants and investing billions in massive wind and solar projects.

Mr. Trump had vowed during his campaign to “cancel” the Paris deal within 100 days of becoming President, as part of an effort to bolster U.S. oil and coal industries. That promise helped rally supporters sharing his scepticism of global efforts to police U.S. carbon emissions.

After taking office, however, Mr. Trump faced pressure to stay in the deal from investors, international powers and business leaders, including some in the coal industry. He also had to navigate a split among his advisers on the issue.

Mr. Trump’s aides including Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, lawyer Don McGahn and Peter Navarro, along with Mr. Pruitt, argued hard for leaving the accord. They said the deal would require the U.S. government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which would hurt business.

Mr. Trump’s administration has already begun the process of killing Obama-era climate regulations.

The “stay-in” camp, which included Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, had argued the United States could reduce its voluntary emission-cuts targets while still keeping a voice within the accord.

Oil majors Shell and Exxon Mobil have also supported the Paris pact, along with a number of Republican lawmakers. 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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i