09/25/2018 | Page 2 of 2

Marshall Islands Marches Toward Zero Greenhouse Emissions by 2050

By Uponsci | 09/25/2018 | No Comments | Science

The Marshall Islands, an atoll-nation vulnerable to sea level rise from climate change, announced steps Monday toward an ambitious plan to cut its greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050.

The Pacific country became the first small island nation to present such a strategy to the United Nations amid increasing interest from governments worldwide toward eliminating planet-warming emissions in a bid to curb man-made climate change.

“If we can do it so can you,” Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands president, said at an event on the sidelines of the annual U.N. summit that featured a handful of heads of small island nations.

The announcement came as more than 150 heads of state and government gathered on Monday for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

Heine upped the pressure on world leaders to go beyond current pledges to reduce their heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions as agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“I challenge you all to develop your own vision to fully decarbonize by 2050,” she told an audience of climate policymakers and advocates brought together by U.S. nonprofit The Climate Group.

Worldwide, nine other countries have so far unveiled long-term plans to completely eradicate carbon emissions at home, from Britain to France and the United States under the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama.

Since then, the United States has become the only country to announce its intention to withdraw from the Paris pact, following a decision by President Donald Trump last year.

The Paris accord aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), and ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with a sweeping goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century.

Aseem Prakash, founding director of the University of Washington’s Center for Environmental Politics, said the Marshall Islands’ move spoke to a growing trend around carbon neutrality by cities, companies, and now countries.

Cities, regions and companies, including Indian conglomerate Mahindra and the state of California, made similar carbon-zero commitments in the run-up and at a global climate summit held in San Francisco earlier this month.

The announcement was charged with symbolism, said Prakash, with the Marshall Islands contributing less than 0.00001 percent of the global total of emissions.

The Marshall Islands’ net-zero strategy, in addition to seeking to slow climate change in the transport, electricity and waste sector, stresses the need to invest into adapting to freak weather events linked to global warming, from hurricanes to floods, said Heine.

At the event, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pledged $300 million over four years to help Pacific countries set up defenses to ward off the impact of climate change.

“The challenge of climate change requires us to look beyond our domestic borders,” she said in a news release.
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Scientists Voice Opposition to Changes in US Endangered Species Act

By Uponsci | 09/25/2018 | No Comments | Science

Thousands of scientists joined on Monday to accuse the Trump administration of trying to erode the Endangered Species Act in favor of commercial interests with a plan to revamp regulations that have formed a bedrock of U.S. wildlife protection for over 40 years.

The extraordinary critique of the administration’s proposal, which was unveiled in July, came in an open letter addressed to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from three associations representing 9,000 professional biologists.

A separate letter similarly condemning revisions proposed to endangered species policies was signed by 273 leading university scientists from around the country.

Both came as the 60-day public comment period drew to a close for what would be the most sweeping overhaul in decades of the rules implementing the landmark environmental law.

The 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) currently protects more than 1,600 species of U.S. animals and plants listed as either endangered — on the brink of extinction — or threatened — deemed likely to become extinct in the foreseeable future.

The ESA is credited with a number of high-profile success stories, including the comeback of the American bald eagle, the California condor and the grizzly bear.

But the act has long been controversial for requiring the government to designate “critical habitat” deemed essential to a listed species’ survival and limiting commercial activities there, such as construction, mining, energy development or logging.

Developers and other critics argue that such restrictions pose an unfair and overly burdensome intrusion on property rights and economic activity.

Under the administration’s proposal, the government would end the practice of automatically treating endangered species and threatened species essentially the same.

The plan also calls for initially evaluating a species’ critical habitat on the basis of its current range, rather than according to the larger area it could be expected to occupy once recovered.

The administration has argued its proposal would enhance wildlife protection by building greater support for a statute that has become outdated and by streamlining the regulatory process.

Scientists, however, said the planned revisions would undermine the ESA and drive some wildlife closer to extinction.

One proposed change, they said, to allow consideration of economic factors when assessing a species’ status, would violate the law’s requirement that safeguards hinge solely on science.

“This is completely disastrous for efforts to save species from extinction,” said Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecology professor at Duke University.

A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Brian Hires, said the agency encourages “input on our proposed ESA regulatory changes from all stakeholders as part of a robust and transparent public process.”
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Trump and Moon Sign Revised Trade Agreement

By Uponbiz | 09/25/2018 | No Comments | Business

U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed a revised free trade agreement between the two countries Monday afternoon in New York, following their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

“I’m very excited about our new trade agreement,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Moon. “This is a brand new agreement. This is not an old one rewritten. … I’m very excited about that for the United States, and I really believe it’s good for both countries.”

Trump called the signing “a historic milestone in trade” and “something that most people thought was not going to be happening.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Moon called the revision of the free trade agreement “significant, in the sense that it expands the ROK-U.S. alliance to the economic realm, as well.”

“With the swift conclusion of the negotiations for the revision, uncertainty surrounding our FTA (Free Trade Agreement) have been eliminated,” he said, adding that “as a result, companies from both countries will now be able to do business under more stable conditions.”

The new deal contains amendments to the 2012 U.S.-South Korea free trade deal known as KORUS, which Washington and Seoul agreed to revise in March.

Trump had previously blamed KORUS, signed during the Obama administration, for increasing U.S. trade deficits with South Korea.

The amendments include provisions to ease customs barriers for U.S. agricultural goods and pharmaceutical exports. It will increase the number of cars the U.S. can export to South Korea, from 25,000 to 50,000, without being subject to the country’s more stringent safety regulations.

Seoul also accepted a quota on its steel exports to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs Trump has imposed on other countries.

The new deal, however, does not include a currency agreement as members of the Trump administration had previously indicated.

NAFTA deal

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Canada are still trying to work out a deal on a new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Montreal on Sunday that negotiators are “very likely” to hold informal talks on the sidelines of the UNGA.

Trump struck a side deal on the three-nation trade agreement with Mexico last month and has threatened to exclude Canada. His administration wants to reach an agreement by the end of September.

Canada says it does not feel bound by any deadlines. Trudeau reiterated his position that he would not sign a bad NAFTA deal.

In a blog for the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, economist Tori Whiting wrote that under the new KORUS agreement, Washington “failed to fully achieve the goal of eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers.” She added that protectionist tariffs “should remain dormant under a new NAFTA.”

US-China tariffs

Also on Monday, a new round of U.S.-imposed duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and a retaliatory set of tariffs imposed by Beijing on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods took effect.

The new U.S. duties cover thousands of Chinese-made products, including electronics, food, tools and housewares. The new tariffs begin at 10 percent, and will rise to 25 percent on Jan. 1, 2019.

In a policy statement, Beijing accused Washington of using tariffs as a means of intimidating other countries to submit to U.S. wishes on economic matters.

“We have now reached a stalemate,” Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, said in his podcast, “where neither side can be seen as caving in to each other’s demands, potentially signaling that we could be in for a long-standing trade war.”

Prasad added that it seems clear Trump “wants nothing less than total capitulation by the Chinese side on all American demands.”

This includes, he said, not just measures by China to reduce the trade deficit, but also other issues that the U.S. has long been concerned about, such as “better protection of intellectual property rights of American companies, better access to Chinese markets for American investors, as well as American manufacturers.”

The U.S. has already imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount on U.S. goods.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened more tariffs on Chinese goods — another $267 billion worth of duties that would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.
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Iran’s Currency Hits Another Record Low, With Six Weeks to US Sanctions

By Uponbiz | 09/25/2018 | No Comments | Business

Iran’s currency has hit another record low against the dollar, six weeks before the United States is due to reimpose sanctions on Iranian oil exports that are Tehran’s main revenue source.

The Bonbast.com website, which tracks Iran’s unofficial exchange rates, showed a new low of 16,000 tomans, or 160,000 rials, to the dollar Monday.

The rial has weakened to a series of record lows against the U.S. currency in recent weeks. Bonbast.com displayed the rial at a record low of 128,000 to the dollar on Sept. 3.

Iran’s official exchange rate, set by its central bank, has stood at 42,000 to the dollar since April.

The Trump administration has vowed to reinstate sanctions on Iranian oil exports on Nov. 4, in a bid to pressure Tehran to give up what the U.S. says is its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. Washington reimposed a first set of economic sanctions on Iran last month as part of the pressure campaign. The moves reverse the previous U.S. administration’s suspension of those sanctions under terms of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.

Speaking to VOA Persian last Friday in an interview broadcast Monday, U.S. economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University said Iranians should expect more of the same with their currency.

“The Iranian people already have anticipated the problems that will befall them after the sanctions go back on, and they react much more rapidly, of course, than anyone,” Hanke said. “That is why the rial has been plummeting and inflation has been soaring.”

A weakening rial makes dollar-denominated imports more expensive for Iranians.

In a Monday tweet, Hanke said Iran’s annual inflation rate has hit a record high of 293 percent.

In a graphic posted with the tweet, Hanke said he calculated the rate using data from Bonbast.com, Iran’s central bank and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It is impossible to predict how low the Iranian currency will go,” Hanke said. “We just know it is dying. And when currencies die, inflation goes up, the economy tends to be completely destabilized, and society in general becomes destabilized because [people] can’t trust their own money.”

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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