Trump Signals US Is Likely To Exit Paris Climate Deal

June 1, 2017

Washington, Jun 1: President Donald Trump is still undecided but leaning toward withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, White House officials said Wednesday, a move that would honor a campaign vow but risk rupturing global alliances and disappointing both environmentalists and corporate titans.donald

Although officials warned that Trump's thinking could shift before he announces his decision Thursday, a U.S. exit from the climate pact could have severe ramifications internationally. It could raise doubts about the commitment of the world's largest economy to curbing global warming and make it more difficult to hold other nations to their environmental commitments.

All but two countries - Nicaragua and Syria - signed onto the 2015 accord, which was a signature diplomatic achievement for President Barack Obama.

The Paris agreement has long divided the Trump administration, with the president taking much of the spring to make up his mind amid an intense campaign by both sides to influence his decision.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and adviser, are among those who have urged him to stay in the deal. White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have pushed for a withdrawal, which wouldn't actually be finalized until near the end of Trump's term.

Although the White House signaled that Trump was likely to announce an exit from the Paris accord, it made no public announcement Wednesday. Trump tweeted that he would announce his decision Thursday at 3 p.m. in the White House Rose Garden. The president has a history of changing his mind at the last minute, as he did in deciding not to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement after aides had suggested he would.

All day, senior administration officials cautioned that Trump had not yet made a final decision on the climate pact - and the president himself seemed eager to maintain the suspense.

"You're going to find out very soon," Trump told reporters Wednesday, in response to questions during a brief Oval Office appearance with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Asked whether he had been hearing from CEOs trying to persuade him, Trump said, "I'm hearing from a lot of people, both ways." More than 190 nations agreed to the accord in December 2015 in Paris, and 147 have since formally ratified or otherwise joined it, including the United States - representing more than 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Under the Paris agreement, the United States promised to reduce its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by 2025. As of 2015, emissions were 12 percent lower, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Hard-line conservatives have sought to convince Trump that meeting this target would be harmful to the bottom lines of U.S. businesses and would jeopardize manufacturing jobs, especially in the Midwest and other regions where Trump found deep support in last year's election.

They also have argued that staying in the Paris agreement could be used as a legal tool by environmental groups seeking to fight Trump's environmental policies.

In addition, a group of 22 Republican senators - including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., - wrote to Trump urging "a clean break" from the Paris agreement.

But Tillerson and other internationalists have argued that it would be beneficial to the United States to remain part of negotiations and meetings surrounding the agreement as a matter of leverage and influence.

A broad range of outsiders have lobbied Trump to remain part of the global pact, from former vice president Al Gore to Pope Francis. The administration's debate has triggered an outpouring of lobbying from corporate America as well, as Apple, ExxonMobil and other major companies have strongly supported the accord.

During Trump's maiden foreign trip last week, a number of European leaders sought to persuade Trump of the magnitude of the climate change crisis and the importance of American leadership to address it.

Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director, told reporters last week that Trump "wants to do the right thing for the environment. He cares about the environment. But he also cares very much about creating jobs for American workers." He added, "If those things collide, growing our economy is going to win. The president ran on growing our economy."

As a candidate, Trump railed against the Paris accord and pledged to scrap it, as part of his "America First" agenda to promote economic nationalism and disentangle the United States from international agreements that he considers harmful.

Trump also said he thought climate change was a "hoax." Asked by a reporter Wednesday whether he still believes so, the president said only, "Thank you, everybody."

News reports Wednesday that Trump was expected to withdraw from the Paris accord sparked swift and strong reactions.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and a member of a White House manufacturing jobs advisory board, tweeted that if Trump does exit, he would have "no choice" but to end his affiliations with the administration.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and one of Trump's finalists for secretary of state, tweeted, "Affirmation of the #ParisAgreement is not only about the climate: It is also about America remaining the global leader."

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said leaving the Paris agreement would amount to an "abdication" of American values.

"This would be yet another example of President Trump's 'Putting America Last' agenda - last in innovation, last in science, and last in international leadership," Bennet said in a statement.

Others cheered the notion that Trump might soon kill the climate agreement that had been an Obama legacy item.

"President Trump's decision sends a strong message to the environmentalist movement: no longer will the United States be strong armed by their scare tactics intended to harm our economy and inhibit economic growth," David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action group, said in a statement.

A party that has fully joined the accord, as the United States has, cannot formally withdraw for three years after the agreement was entered into force in 2016 - and that is capped by an extra year-long waiting period. Under those rules, Trump could not complete a U.S. exit from the agreement until Nov. 4, 2020 - the day after the next presidential election.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he tried to explain to Trump during their climate discussions last week that withdrawing from the pact was no simple task.

"Not everything in international agreements is 'fake news,' " Juncker said Wednesday. He added, "This notion, 'I am Trump, I am American, 'America First' and I'm going to get out of it' - that won't happen. We tried to explain that to Mr. Trump in Taormina in clear German sentences. It seems our attempt failed." Taormina is the Sicilian resort town where the Group of Seven leaders met last week.

Trump also could opt to withdraw from the more foundational U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which laid the groundwork for the Paris deal and was signed by President George H.W. Bush and ratified by the Senate in the early 1990s.

But that is a more radical move, which would further withdraw the United States from all international climate change negotiations.

The Trump administration already has rolled back key Obama administration initiatives through executive action, including the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which was a key part of the U.S. promise through the Paris agreement. These policies have made it highly unlikely that the United States could honor its Paris pledge to sharply cut carbon dioxide emissions.

That leaves Trump with two clear choices: withdraw from the Paris agreement or revise the U.S. emissions targets downward to a more achievable level while remaining in the pact.

A downward revision would certainly prompt criticism from the international community, but not nearly so much as an abandonment. The Paris agreement is, after all, the first global accord on climate change action that has managed to unify both developed and developing nations behind a single framework to cut emissions.

Moreover, the accord is flexible in the sense that it does not mandate that any nation achieve any particular level of emissions cuts. Rather, every nation under the agreement pledges to do the best it can, and to participate in a process in which nations will regularly increase their ambitions over time.

The ultimate goal of the Paris agreement is to hold the warming of the planet to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above the temperatures found in the preindustrial times of the late 1800s. The Earth is already about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was at that time, scientists have determined, and current and near future emissions seem quite likely to take the planet past 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming decades.

Recent research has highlighted that above 2 degrees, major threats could ensue for Earth systems ranging from coral reefs to the planet's vast ice sheets.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
March 28,2020

Canadian researchers are developing a DNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and has currently infected nearly 5,00,000 people worldwide and crippled the global economy.

Entos Pharmaceuticals, a health-care biotechnology company headed by a University of Alberta researchers, develop new therapeutic compounds using the company's proprietary drug-delivery platform and has begun manufacturing vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus.

"Given the urgency of the situation, we can have a lead candidate vaccine within two months. Once we have that it's a race to get it into clinical trials," said John Lewis, CEO of Entos and a Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Lewis said in comparison to a traditional vaccine, DNA-based vaccines hold several advantages.

Nucleic acids are introduced directly into the patient's own cells, causing them to make pieces of the virus--tricking the immune system into mounting a response without the full virus actually being present, the researcher said.

According to the company, the approach is recognised as being easier to move into large-scale manufacturing, offers improved vaccine stability and works without needing an infectious agent.

In the current absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, several companies around the world are mounting efforts to begin similar work.

The first clinical trial using a DNA-based vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.in the US on March 13.

Their approach allows for antibodies to be made in the human trial volunteers against a specific protein on the surface of the coronavirus that lets the virus enter human cells.

The hope is that the antibodies will stop the interaction.

Though this approach is designed to be effective against COVID-19 specifically, Lewis said Entos is taking a different tack.

The company plans to use plasmid DNA to amplify the production of key coronavirus surface and structural proteins with each injection, with an eye to the bigger picture.

"Many of the structural proteins in the virus are pretty well conserved across all the coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS," said Lewis.

"We're hoping that if we express more of the structural proteins that are common to most coronaviruses, we can inhibit the current COVID-19, and also potentially protect against all coronaviruses both past and future," Lewis added.

To move the project forward quickly, the company is seeking financial support from both provincial and federal levels of government.

"We have the opportunity to save a lot of lives, and I think it's really upon us and governments to find solutions for that," Lewis said.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
January 30,2020

New York, Jan 30: Three Indian citizens were arrested by border patrol agents here for entering the US illegally.

US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle near Massena in New York state along the county's northern border on January 24. During the vehicle checking, the agents found that two of the passengers were Indian citizens who entered the US illegally and not at a designated port of entry.

Both the passengers were transported to the Border Patrol Station for processing and charged.

The vehicle driver, also an Indian citizen who originally entered illegally into the US in 2012 and was ordered removed from the country in absentia last December, was charged with alien smuggling, a felony, which carries a penalty of a fine and up to five years of imprisonment for each violation.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
April 10,2020

Paris, Apr 10: French pharma major Sanofi said on Friday it has decided to donate 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug which could be a potential weapon against novel coronavirus, across 50 countries.

The company has already doubled its incremental production capacity on top of the usual production for current indications across its eight hydroxychloroquine manufacturing sites worldwide and is on track to quadruple it by the summer.

"In this global health emergency, Sanofi stands ready to assist as many countries as possible, starting with countries where its medicine is registered for current approved indications as well as countries where there are no hydroxychloroquine suppliers or countries with underserved populations," it said in a statement.

Sanofi called for coordination among the entire hydroxychloroquine chain worldwide to ensure the continued supply of the medicine if proven to be a well-tolerated and effective treatment in COVID-19 patients.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health and economic crisis which is shaking some of the very fundamentals of international solidarity and cooperation among countries," said Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson. "This virus does not care about the concept of borders, so we should not either," he added.

"It is critical that international authorities, local governments, manufacturers and all other players involved in the hydroxychloroquine chain work together in a coordinated manner to ensure all patients who may benefit from this potential treatment can access it. If the trials prove positive, we hope our donation will play a critical role for patients," said Hudson.

While hydroxychloroquine is generating a lot of hope for patients around the world, said Sanofi, it should be remembered that there are no results from ongoing studies and the results may be positive or negative.

To date, there is insufficient clinical evidence to draw any conclusion over the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID-19 patients.

It is one of several medicines being investigated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its international clinical trial seeking a treatment solution for COVID-19. "Sanofi is supporting ongoing trials by providing the medicine to some participating investigator sites and other independent research centres," it said.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.