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A zhuzhed-up explanation of the international plastics treaty negotiations you definitely didn't pay attention to this week.
Let’s just admit it: The INC-2 has a pizzazz problem. For one thing, if you’re not in the know, its name could easily be mistaken for the model number of
a large kitchen appliance. Even if you are in the know, it’s difficult to get excited about what is “the second of five U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics meetings” — even if this one did take place in Paris.
But what the INC-2 lacks in, shall we say, broad public interest appeal, it makes up for in importance, compelling characters, and drama. Yes, I said it: drama!
Here’s everything you need to know about this week’s INC-2 negotiations, which concluded on Friday and have the ultimate aim of creating a first-of-its-kind legally binding global plastics treaty.
This week, over 2,000 participants from 175 countries flocked to the UNESCO headquarters in Paris to debate, lobby, demonstrate, observe, sing, make art, and generally get very little sleep. For many attendees, it was a reunion of sorts: The first Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting (INC-1) was held six months ago in Uruguay; the next, INC-3, will take place in Kenya in November.
Why such a frenetic, globe-trotting schedule? Because the delegates only have until the end of 2024 — technically, just 15 more total negotiating days — to hammer out the specifics of the first international plastic pollution treaty, as directed by the U.N. Environment Assembly last year. If they’re successful, the treaty will be the most important international environmental agreement since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015.
It’s a complicated subject. Campaigns against things like plastic straws and takeout bags have come to be seen by some U.S. activists as distractions, while others have defended plastics’ enormous lifesaving upsides and the fact that a like-for-like replacement of everyday plastics with paper bags could, counterintuitively, skyrocket global emissions (fun fact: the single-use plastic bag was invented as an environmentally friendly alternative to cutting down trees).
But the INC delegates aren’t trying to get rid of plastics altogether, just reduce their use. The U.N. cites data that shows over a third of all plastics are used for “gratuitous” purposes like packaging, including food and beverage containers, which overwhelmingly end up in landfills. Cutting down on wasteful packaging while promoting recyclable and reusable goods could slash 80% of plastic pollution by 2040.
Unfortunately, the world’s plastic problem is only getting worse. Emissions from the making of plastics alone are expected to outpace coal emissions within the decade. By 2040, U.N. projections show conventional plastics, which are made using newly extracted fossil fuels and thus a major part of oil companies’ plans for surviving the energy transition, taking up a whopping 19% of the global carbon budget. And by 2060, the 139 million metric tons of plastic we produce every year could triple unless the world makes changes.
Anti-plastic activists, scientists, and a 55-country bloc of negotiators led by Rwanda and Norway that calls itself the “High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution” are pushing for caps on plastic production. Their argument is that cutting off plastics at the source is the only way to turn off the proverbial “tap” of pollution created during the “full lifecycle” of a plastic item, from the extraction of oil to make it, the energy required to shape it, and its eventual disposal in a landfill or recycling plant. Others are pushing to regulate what chemicals can be used to make plastics. And though it seems far less realistically achievable, a ban on single-use plastics has also been floated, including by the 14-nation Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) group.
\u201chttps://t.co/6SoYwpMWj7\u201d— Cate Bonacini (@Cate Bonacini) 1685601469
\u201chttps://t.co/a2NwIRMFpm\u201d— Cate Bonacini (@Cate Bonacini) 1685601469
The plastic treaty negotiations are breaking into three distinct camps, which I’ll call the “One Big Pledge” group, the “Bespoke Pledges” group, and “Saudi Arabia,” because it’s just Saudi Arabia.
The One Big Pledge group — primarily made up of the members of the 55-country High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution — wants an international, legally binding treaty that will “end plastic pollution by 2040” — however that target may be ultimately defined — by capping new plastic production at a “sustainable level,” likely by targeting single-use plastics; limiting the chemicals that can be used in the creation of plastics in order to reduce health hazards and encourage recyclability; and establish provisions for plastics at the end of their life to maximize reuse rather than leakage into the environment.
In a bit of pre-meeting drama, Japan ditched America to join the High Ambition Coalition, leaving the U.S. as “the only major developed country” that isn’t part of the group. High Ambition Coalition members also include Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Mexico.
The “Bespoke Pledges” group wants to take what The Washington Post calls a “less stringent” approach by letting countries “come up with their own pledges” — kind of like a children’s arts-and-craft project fair where everyone gets to make their own popsicle stick man, except instead of a popsicle stick man it’s a commitment to ending pollution and there are no penalties if yours sucks.
Some Democrats and assorted celebrities have protested that this approach is kind of lame, but the Biden administration is nevertheless pitching it as being more like the Paris Climate Agreement (which, of course, was notorious among activists for this very aspect of its structure). The U.S. is also insisting that it is being “just as ambitious” as the High Ambition Coalition even as others have deemed its position rather “underwhelming.” Hey, at least the American Chemistry Council likes it?
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia thinks the American plan of “come up with your own pledge and don’t worry about an enforcement mechanism” sounds basically great, but it could go for an even more hands-off treaty, too. Its proposal lists just two suggested “obligations” for signatories: “designing [plastics] for circularity” when possible and agreeing to share recycling tips with other countries.
For delegates, activists, and industry interests departing Paris this weekend, there was a distinct air of anxiety about how much work still lies ahead. Part of the issue was that negotiations in Paris got off to a slow — the rumor in the refillable water bottle fountain line is that it was an intentionally slow — start.
The biggest reason for the delay was an extended debate over the draft rules of procedure. First there was a kerfuffle about how voting blocs like the EU can cast votes on behalf of their member states. But that discussion gave some oil-producing countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Iran an opening to try to revise the rules in a much bigger way: requiring decisions to ultimately have a consensus rather than be put to a vote.
\u201cNo multilateral environmental treaty has ever been negotiated without the option of voting. \n\nBrackets in #INC2 #PlasticsTreaty rule 38 would be a disaster for the planet and the future of environmental governance. \n\nhttps://t.co/HXOvgVjZWr\u201d— Magnus L\u00f8vold (@Magnus L\u00f8vold) 1685436365
The distinction between “voting” and “consensus,” while procedurally in the weeds, is actually a significant one. As the rule is written now, if consensus is not achieved, decisions then go to a vote, which must pass with two-thirds support. Countries that supported the change included Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela; countries that backed voting as a final option included the U.S., EU, U.K., Canada, Norway, and Senegal, whose delegate explained the issue succinctly and to applause: “Consensus is what kills democracy,” he was reported as saying. “If one or two countries don’t agree, we’re stuck.” Without the option to vote, it’s likely any meaningful plastics treaty will be DOA.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s delegate, Camila Zepeda, was losing her patience at this point: “It’s a waste of time and energy ... We’ve heard arguments at length [that] don’t focus on the essential issue, plastic pollution,” she reportedly said. “Everyone, turn off your microphones, stop your speeches.”
\u201c#PlasticsTreaty: And just like that, another full day was spent disagreeing on rules of procedures in Paris. And still no discussion on plastics pollution \ud83e\udee0\u201d— Laura Mercier (@Laura Mercier) 1685466850
But if it was the intent of major oil-producing states to delay negotiations, it worked. After agreeing to disagree about the rule on Wednesday — essentially kicking the can down the road to INC-3 — states like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran continued to raise questions that seemed designed to run out the clock (the Iranian delegate’s concern about observing a reasonable bedtime, at least, was relatable). Mexico’s delegate finally snapped, waving her name placard above her head, scolding her colleagues that it was time to “roll up your sleeves and get to work,” and then grabbed her backpack and walked out of the room:
\u201cAs Saudi Arabia and Russia kept asking for the microphone, Mexico\u2019s delegate waved her name plate, said we have to go to these groups, put her rucksack on and walked out to applause and chants of \u201cMexico\u201d from some observers. Got her way. Session over. #INC2\u201d— Joe Lo (@Joe Lo) 1685479936
Attention then turned to what will likely be a crux of negotiations: the role of recycling and “circularity” in the eventual treaty. Anti-plastic activists are gunning hard for the first of the three classic R’s: to reduce the amount of plastic that gets made, period. Oil and chemical interests, though, wanted to focus on the third R: recycling.
There’s a reason even countries like Saudi Arabia (and the U.S.) are writing “circularity” into their obligations: proposals that push advanced plastic recycling, with the intent of extending the lifespan of plastics, will allow fossil fuel companies and states to keep extracting oil to make new plastics by taking the attention off the plastic caps being mulled by the High Ambition nations. There also isn’t an agreed-upon meaning of the term “circularity,” Inside Climate News points out, meaning countries and companies can use the eco-friendly buzzword without being nailed to a commitment they don’t intend to keep.
Additionally, there are lots of valid concerns about advanced recycling, from the heavy energy and emissions output required to extend the lifespan of plastics to the current technological inability to minimize the dangers of toxic chemicals produced in the process.
Some players have also have stressed that all the attention on recycling alone is too limited. “To focus on plastic waste in this treaty would be a failure because you have to look at plastic production to solve the crisis — including the extraction of fossil fuels and the toxic chemical additives,” Dr. Tadesse Amera, the co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, told Spain’s El País.
A global agreement on how to handle plastic pollution was still clearly a ways off on Friday as the conference wound down. But by the end of the week, the delegates could celebrate genuine progress toward formulating objectives, obligations, and implementation tactics, and had additionally mandated a zero draft text of the treaty be written by the chair, which will be considered at INC-3. Activists applauded the step, which due to the delays, had not been a given.
There remain major hurdles to clear, however. If there is a single major takeaway from INC-2, it’s that oil-producing countries are becoming worried enough about the treaty’s direction that they’re beginning to drop the cooperative veneer and drag their heels. Even a relatively “underwhelming” plan like United States’ voluntary pledge proposal could potentially be at risk of failing if the consensus group ultimately wins out. “We may have to conjure up some additional days to finalize these talks,” one participant told the Earth Negotiations Bulletin on Wednesday. A hypothetical “INC-6” entered the vocabulary.
In the meantime, the delegates, lobbyists, activists, and observers are on their way back to their respective countries to catch up on sleep, detox from all the chocolate that was consumed, and prepare for INC-3 in Nairobi in November. The clock is ticking but if there is a glimmer of hope for the anti-plastics team, it’s that the oil interests are outnumbered. As Yvette Arellano — the founder and executive director of the Houston-based environmental justice group Fenceline Watch — told me by email from the ground in Paris, “They know once this starts going, it’s only gonna catch more public interest and global momentum.”
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Current conditions: Bosnia’s capital of Sarajevo is blanketed in a layer of toxic smog • Temperatures in Perth, in Western Australia, could hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend • It is cloudy in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are scrambling to prevent a government shutdown.
The weather has gotten so weird that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is holding internal talks about how to adjust its models to produce more accurate forecasts, the Financial Timesreported. Current models are based on temperature swings observed over one part of the Pacific Ocean that have for years correlated consistently with specific weather phenomena across the globe, but climate change seems to be disrupting that cause and effect pattern, making it harder to predict things like La Niña and El Niño. Many forecasters had expected La Niña to appear by now and help cool things down, but that has yet to happen. “It’s concerning when this region we’ve studied and written all these papers on is not related to all the impacts you’d see with [La Niña],” NOAA’s Michelle L’Heureux told the FT. “That’s when you start going ‘uh-oh’ there may be an issue here we need to resolve.”
There is quite a lot of news coming out of the Department of Energy as the year (and the Biden administration) comes to an end. A few recent updates:
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, does not expect to meet its 2025 or 2030 emissions targets, and is putting the blame on policy, infrastructure, and technology limitations. The company previously pledged to cut its emissions by 35% by next year, and 65% by the end of the decade. Emissions in 2023 were up 4% year-over-year.
Walmart
“While we continue to work toward our aspirational target of zero operational emissions by 2040, progress will not be linear … and depends not only on our own initiatives but also on factors beyond our control,” Walmart’s statement said. “These factors include energy policy and infrastructure in Walmart markets around the world, availability of more cost-effective low-GWP refrigeration and HVAC solutions, and timely emergence of cost-effective technologies for low-carbon heavy tractor transportation (which does not appear likely until the 2030s).”
BlackRock yesterday said it is writing down the value of its Global Renewable Power Fund III following the failure of Northvolt and SolarZero, two companies the fund had invested in. Its net internal rate of return was -0.3% at the end of the third quarter, way down from 11.5% in the second quarter, according toBloomberg. Sectors like EV charging, transmission, and renewable energy generation and storage have been “particularly challenged,” executives said, and some other renewables companies in the portfolio have yet to get in the black, meaning their valuations may be “more subjective and sensitive to evolving dynamics in the industry.”
Flies may be more vulnerable to climate change than bees are, according to a new study published in the Journal of Melittology. The fly haters among us might shrug at the finding, but the researchers insist flies are essential pollinators that help bolster ecosystem biodiversity and agriculture. “It’s time we gave flies some more recognition for their role as pollinators,” said lead author Margarita López-Uribe, who is the Lorenzo Langstroth Early Career Associate Professor of Entomology at Penn State. The study found bees can tolerate higher temperatures than flies, so flies are at greater risk of decline as global temperatures rise. “In alpine and subarctic environments, flies are the primary pollinator,” López-Uribe said. “This study shows us that we have entire regions that could lose their primary pollinator as the climate warms, which could be catastrophic for those ecosystems.”
“No one goes to the movies because they want to be scolded.” –Heatmap’s Jeva Lange writes about the challenges facing climate cinema, and why 2024 might be the year the climate movie grew up.
Whether you agree probably depends on how you define “climate movie” to begin with.
Climate change is the greatest story of our time — but our time doesn’t seem to invent many great stories about climate change. Maybe it’s due to the enormity and urgency of the subject matter: Climate is “important,” and therefore conscripted to the humorless realms of journalism and documentary. Or maybe it’s because of a misunderstanding on the part of producers and storytellers, rooted in an outdated belief that climate change still needs to be explained to an audience, when in reality they don’t need convincing. Maybe there’s just not a great way to have a character mention climate change and not have it feel super cringe.
Whatever the reason, between 2016 and 2020, less than 3% of film and TV scripts used climate-related keywords during their runtime, according to an analysis by media researchers at the University of Southern California. (The situation isn’t as bad in literature, where cli-fi has been going strong since at least 2013.) At least on the surface, this on-screen avoidance of climate change continued in 2024. One of the biggest movies of the summer, Twisters, had an extreme weather angle sitting right there, but its director, Lee Isaac Chung, went out of his way to ensure the film didn’t have a climate change “message.”
I have a slightly different take on the situation, though — that 2024 was actuallyfull of climate movies, and, I’d argue, that they’re getting much closer to the kinds of stories a climate-concerned individual should want on screen.
That’s because for the most part, when movies and TV shows have tackled the topic of climate change in the past, it’s been with the sort of “simplistic anger-stoking and pathos-wringing” that The New Yorker’s Richard Brody identified in 2022’s Don’t Look Up, the Adam McKay satire that became the primary touchpoint for scripted climate stories. At least it was kind of funny: More overt climate stories like last year’s Foe, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, and Extrapolations, the Apple TV+ show in which Meryl Streep voices a whale, are so self-righteous as to be unwatchable (not to mention, no fun).
But what if we widened our lens and weren’t so prescriptive? Then maybe Furiosa, this spring’s Mad Max prequel, becomes a climate change movie. The film is set during a “near future” ecological collapse, and it certainly makes you think about water scarcity and our overreliance on a finite extracted resource — but it also makes you think about how badass the Octoboss’ kite is. The same goes for Dune: Part Two, which made over $82 million in its opening weekend and is also a recognizable environmental allegory featuring some cool worms. Even Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a flop that most people have already memory-holed, revisitedThe Day After Tomorrow’s question of, “What if New York City got really, really, really cold?”
Two 2024 animated films with climate themes could even compete against each other at the Academy Awards next year. Dreamworks Animation’s The Wild Robot, one of the centerpiece films at this fall’s inaugural Climate Film Festival, is set in a world where sea levels have risen to submerge the Golden Gate Bridge, and it impresses on its audience the importance of protecting the natural world. And in Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow, one of my favorite films of the year, a cat must band together with other animals to survive a flood.
Flow also raises the question of whether a project can unintentionally be a climate movie. Zilbalodis told me that making a point about environmental catastrophe wasn’t his intention — “I can’t really start with the message, I have to start with the character,” he said — and to him, the water is a visual metaphor in an allegory about overcoming your fears.
But watching the movie in a year when more than a thousand people worldwide have died in floods, and with images of inundated towns in North Carolina still fresh in mind, it’s actually climate change itself that makes one watch Flow as a movie about climate change. (I’m not the only one with this interpretation, either: Zilbalodis told me he’d been asked by one young audience member if the flood depicted in his film is “the future.”)
Perhaps this is how we should also consider Chung’s comments about Twisters. While nobody in the film says the words “climate change” or “global warming,” the characters note that storms are becoming exceptional — “we've never seen tornadoes like this before,” one says. Despite the director’s stated intention not to make the movie “about” climate change, it becomes a climate movie by virtue of what its audiences have experienced in their own lives.
Still, there’s that niggling question: Do movies like these, which approach climate themes slant-wise, really count? To help me decide, I turned to Sam Read, the executive director of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, an advocacy consortium that encourages environmental awareness both on set and on screen. He told me that to qualify something as a “climate” movie or TV show, some research groups look to see if climate change exists in the world of the story or whether the characters acknowledge it. Other groups consider climate in tiers, such as whether a project has a climate premise, theme, or simply a moment.
The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, however, has no hard rules. “We want to make sure that we support creatives in integrating these stories in whatever way works for them,” Read told me.
Read also confirmed my belief that there seemed to be an uptick in movies this year that were “not about climate change but still deal with things that feel very climate-related, like resource extraction.” There was even more progress on this front in television, he pointed out: True Detective: Night Country wove in themes of environmentalism, pollution, mining, and Indigenous stewardship; the Max comedy Hacks featured an episode about climate change this season; and Industry involved a storyline about taking a clean energy company public, with some of the characters even attending COP. Even Doctor Odyssey, a cruise ship medical drama that airs on USA, worked climate change into its script, albeit in ridiculous ways. (Also worth mentioning: The Netflix dating show Love is Blind cast Taylor Krause, who works on decarbonizing heavy industry at RMI.)
We can certainly do more. As many critics before me have written, it’s still important to draw a connection between things like environmental catastrophes and the real-world human causes of global warming. But the difference between something being “a climate movie” and propaganda — however true its message, or however well-intentioned — is thin. Besides, no one goes to the movies because they want to be scolded; we want to be moved and distracted and entertained.
I’ve done my fair share of complaining over the past few years about how climate storytelling needs to grow up. But lately I’ve been coming around to the idea that it’s not the words “climate change” appearing in a script that we need to be so focused on. As 2024’s slate of films has proven to me — or, perhaps, as this year’s extreme weather events have thrown into relief — there are climate movies everywhere.
Keep ‘em coming.
They might not be worried now, but Democrats made the same mistake earlier this year.
Permitting reform is dead in the 118th Congress.
It died earlier this week, although you could be forgiven for missing it. On Tuesday, bipartisan talks among lawmakers fell apart over a bid to rewrite parts of the National Environmental Policy Act. The changes — pushed for by Representative Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee — would have made it harder for outside groups to sue to block energy projects under NEPA, a 1970 law that governs the country’s process for environmental decisionmaking.
When those talks died, they also killed a separate deal over permitting struck earlier this year between Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. That deal, as I detailed last week, would have loosened some federal rules around oil and gas drilling in exchange for a new, quasi-mandatory scheme to build huge amounts of long-distance transmission.
Rest in peace, I suppose. Even if lawmakers could not agree on NEPA changes, I think Republicans made a mistake by not moving forward with the Manchin-Barrasso deal. (I still believe that the standalone deal could have passed the Senate and the House if put to a vote.) At this point, I do not think we will see another shot at bipartisan permitting reform until at least late 2026, when the federal highway law will need fresh funding.
But it is difficult to get too upset about this failure because larger mistakes have since compounded the initial one. On Wednesday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s bipartisan deal to fund the government — which is, after all, a much more fundamental task of governance than rewriting some federal permitting laws — fell apart, seemingly because Donald Trump and Elon Musk decided they didn’t like it. If I can indulge in the subjunctive for a moment: That breakdown might have likely killed any potential permitting deal, too. So even in a world where lawmakers somehow did strike a deal earlier this week, it might already be dead. (As I write this, the House GOP has reportedly reached a new deal to fund the government through March, which has weakened or removed provisions governing pharmacy benefit managers and limiting American investments in China.)
The facile reading of this situation is that Republicans now hold the advantage. The Trump administration will soon be able to implement some of the fossil fuel provisions in the Manchin-Barrasso deal through the administrative state. Trump will likely expand onshore and offshore drilling, will lease the government’s best acreage to oil and gas companies, and will approve as many liquified natural gas export terminals as possible. His administration will do so, however, without the enhanced legal protection that the deal would have provided — and while those protections are not a must-have, especially with a friendly Supreme Court, their absence will still allow environmental groups to try to run down the clock on some of Trump’s more ambitious initiatives.
Republicans believe that they will be able to get parts of permitting reform done in a partisan reconciliation bill next year. These efforts seem quite likely to run aground, at least as long as something like the current rules governing reconciliation bills hold. I have heard some crazy proposals on this topic — what if skipping a permitting fight somehow became a revenue-raiser for the federal government? — but even they do not touch the deep structure of NEPA in the way a bipartisan compromise could. As Westerman toldPolitico’s Josh Siegel: “We need 60 votes in the Senate to get real permitting reform … People are just going to have to come to an agreement on what permitting reform is.” In any case, Manchin and the Democrats already tried to reform the permitting system via a partisan reconciliation bill and found it essentially impossible.
Even if reconciliation fails, Republicans say, they will still be in a better negotiating position next year than this year because the party will control a few more Senate votes. But will they? The GOP will just have come off a difficult fight over tax reform. Twelve or 24 months from now, demands on the country’s electricity grid are likely to be higher than they are today, and the risk of blackouts will be higher than before. The lack of a robust transmission network will hinder the ability to build a massive new AI infrastructure, as some of Trump’s tech industry backers hope. But 12 or 24 months from now, too, Democrats — furious at Trump — are not going to be in a dealmaking mood, and Republicans have relatively few ways to bring them to the table.
In any case, savvy Republicans should have realized that it is important to get supply-side economic reforms done as early in a president’s four-year term as possible. Such changes take time to filter through the system and turn into real projects and real economic activity; passing the law as early as possible means that the president’s party can enjoy them and campaign on them.
All of it starts to seem more and more familiar. When Manchin and Barrasso unveiled their compromise earlier this year, Democrats didn’t act quickly on it. They felt confident that the window for a deal wouldn’t close — and they looked forward to a potential trifecta, when they would be able to get even more done (and reject some of Manchin’s fossil fuel-friendly compromises).
Democrats, I think, wound up regretting the cavalier attitude that they brought to permitting reform before Trump’s win. But now the GOP is acting the same way: It is rejecting compromises, believing that it will be able to strike a better deal on permitting issues during its forthcoming trifecta. That was a mistake when Democrats did it. I think it will be a mistake for Republicans, too.