A federal judge on Monday ordered the resumption of permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities by the Biden administration. This follows the government’s pause of the process to analyze how the exports affect climate change, national security and the economy.
A federal judge in Louisiana ruled the administration could not delay consideration of projects involving LNG exports while a 16-state legal challenge is decided in federal court, The Guardian reported.
Trump appointee James Cain Jr., a United States district court judge, granted the coalition of states a preliminary injunction, putting the delays on hold.
“We remain committed to informing our decisions with the best available economic and environmental analysis, underpinned by sound science,” Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesperson, told The Associated Press in an email.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) expressed disagreement with the ruling and was in the process of evaluating next steps, meaning it was unlikely any of the LNG projects would be fast-tracked for consideration, reported The Guardian.
In January, the Biden administration delayed consideration of new U.S. LNG export terminals. Environmentalists welcomed the decision, as an increase in exports of fossil fuels contributes to the planet-warming emissions that cause climate change.
Louisiana, Texas, Alaska, Wyoming and West Virginia were among the states that sued to block the suspension of LNG exports, claiming the administration’s decision violated federal laws, including the U.S. Constitution, by banning exports to countries with which the U.S. does not have a free trade agreement.
“Pause or no pause, the science is clear: no sound analysis that accounts for the climate and environmental harm inflicted by LNG exports could possibly determine that these deadly facilities are in the public interest,” said Craig Segall, vice-president of environmental group Evergreen Action, as The Guardian reported.
Current LNG export authorizations to countries without a free trade agreement are currently at more than 45 percent of the domestic natural gas production in the U.S., according to the DOE. The agency added that, based on current LNG export capacity, the U.S. will remain the largest LNG exporter by a wide margin for a minimum of six more years.
“In every corner of the country and the world, people are suffering the devastating toll of climate change,” President Joe Biden said in January, as reported by The New York Times. “This pause on new L.N.G. approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
Just a few months before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the Biden administration appears to be accelerating its timeline to finalize a regulation that could protect 36 million workers from the harmful effects of exposure to extreme heat.
In a press briefing on Monday, a senior Biden administration official described the draft rule’s requirements as “common sense.”
“The purpose of this rule is simple,” said the official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity. “It is to significantly reduce the number of worker-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses suffered by workers who are exposed to excessive heat and exposed to these risks while simply doing their jobs.”
The draft rule requires employers to implement heat injury and prevention plans that grant workers access to drinking water, shade, rest areas, and breaks once the heat index hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Employers would also have to develop an acclimatization plan to help new employees to become accustomed to working in extreme heat, and train supervisors and employees in how to identify heat illness. (Notably, three out of four worker fatalities that stem from heat-related illness happen on the first week of the job.) Once the heat index exceeds 90 degrees F, additional breaks and increased heat-illness symptom monitoring would also be required. The proposed rule includes a requirement that employers evaluate these plans for potential updates at least once a year.
These regulations would apply to all employers overseeing outdoor and indoor work where OSHA has jurisdiction, which includes most private-sector employers and workers in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., but doesn’t cover some workers at state and local government agencies, self-employed workers, or independent contractors. The draft rule also exempts workplaces where there is no reasonable expectation of exposure to the initial heat trigger, and indoor working conditions where temperatures are kept below the 80 degree F threshold. Furthermore, it excludes situations where employees are exposed to temperatures over the standard threshold for short periods of time, among other exceptions.
On Tuesday, OSHA released the draft text of a proposed rule on preventing heat injury and illness amongst the U.S. workers. Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
Advocates who have been fighting for national heat regulation for years are praising the move. Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project, a New York City worker center for low-wage, immigrant workers, said her group “applauds” the proposed rule.
“The Biden administration is moving to protect the lives of workers,” said Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, which aims to reduce health inequities among immigrant communities. “This effort is particularly critical as states such as Texas and Florida are not only failing to protect workers from the heat but pursuing legislation that will cause undue harm to workers.” Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott passed a law that blocked cities from enacting their own heat protections for workers. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar law into effect this past spring.
OSHA first announced that the agency would begin developing a federal heat stress rule in 2021, following a summer of record-breaking temperatures. Typically, the federal rulemaking process is fairly lengthy, and experts and organizers who spoke to Grist last month worried that the Biden administration would let the proposed heat regulation linger under review for another year or longer — at which point, depending on the outcome of the presidential election in November, the rule could be nullified by a new administration or a Republican-controlled Congress. But the surprise release of the proposed rule this week appears to signal a readiness from the Biden administration to advance the regulation, potentially with the goal of finalizing it before the end of the year.
Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, said he feels certain, following a visit from a top OSHA official to his home state in June, that finalizing a federal heat standard is the agency’s top regulatory priority. “I think it’s clear that President Biden and his administration are responding to the climate crisis, are responding to what workers are asking for, and they’re expediting this because workers just can’t wait seven or eight years,” Casar said.
Experts expect that the OSHA rule could face legal challenges. “There are always technical quibbles,” said Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, “and sometimes, some courts will pick up on those quibbles.” Gerrard pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule, which regulated smog by taking aim at smokestack emissions, as an example of a successful legal challenge based on the argument that federal officials neglected to address public comments on the draft plan. Potentially, going forward, “people who want to challenge rules will take a look at the comments on the draft rule and complain if any of the comments wasn’t thoroughly responded to.”
The draft heat rule is now subject to a public comment period and a subsequent final review by the White House. Given the highly politicized nature of heat regulation, it is likely that OSHA will receive a considerable amount of comments on the proposed standard, which could potentially draw out the process of finalizing the regulation. A spokesperson from OSHA said the agency “cannot speculate” as to when the rule may be finalized, but that it was moving “swiftly and responsibly” to ensure workers have necessary protections.
“All workers deserve safety and an advocate for their rights,” said Guallpa. “We are heartened to see the federal government stepping up to require basic protections from extreme weather.”
The Supreme Court of the United States has overturned a 40-year ruling — Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — that instructed lower courts to give deference to federal agencies when federal laws are seen as ambiguous. The decision means agencies will have a harder time regulating the environment, workplace safety, public health and other major issues.
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the court “gravely erred” when it gave agency regulators deference in the interpretation of federal laws back in 1984.
“Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” Roberts wrote, as Inside Climate News reported. “Courts do.”
The Biden administration has argued that resolving legal ambiguities involves policymaking that is better decided by political players than judges. In response, Roberts said the elected officials of Congress expect courts to interpret the meaning of laws, which can be changed by Congress.
“To the extent that Congress and the Executive Branch may disagree with how the courts have performed that job in a particular case, they are of course always free to act by revising the statute,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.
However, Congress has increasingly included environmental and health-related policy within budget legislation that leaves its intent open to interpretation. This means the overturning of Chevron will give more power to courts and less to federal agencies with expertise on the matters.
The decision makes it potentially easier for those who oppose federal regulations to initiate new litigation to challenge them, bringing increased uncertainty to industries and business, reported The New York Times.
“If Americans are worried about their drinking water, their health, their retirement account, discrimination on the job, if they fly on a plane, drive a car, if they go outside and breathe the air — all of these day-to-day activities are run through a massive universe of federal agency regulations,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University expert in administrative law, as The New York Times reported. “And this decision now means that more of those regulations could be struck down by the courts.”
The decision is a big victory in a long drive to reduce federal government power.
The ruling could bolster conservative efforts to counter rules by Biden’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to limit human-caused global heating from oil and gas, vehicles and power plants, reported CNN.
“There is no substantive area that this doctrine does not touch,” said Kent Barnett, a professor at University of Georgia School of Law specializing in administrative law, as CNN reported.
Over the years, courts have invoked Chevron to uphold regulations, and it has become one of administrative law’s most-cited cases. Industry advocates have called for courts to abandon it as an instrument of government overreach.
“What would happen in a world without Chevron? If this Goliath of modern administrative law were to fall?” wrote associate Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, then a judge in a federal appeals court, in an immigration case in 2016, as reported by Inside Climate News. “It seems to me that in a world without Chevron very little would change — except perhaps the most important things.”
In most cases involving Chevron deference, agencies are using broad legal authority given to them by Congress before the recognition or understanding of climate change.
Depending on the case, agencies have been given differing degrees of direction from Congress. For instance, vehicle rules in the Clean Air Act are more explicit than power plant regulations.
In almost all cases involving challenges to Biden policies, the opposition has found what they view as mistakes in the legal interpretation of agencies or legal ambiguities.
“It’s very hard to write statutes in technical, controversial areas and not have a shred of ambiguity,” said Heinzerling in an interview before the Supreme Court decision, as Inside Climate News reported. “Even if someone is really trying to be careful, people with enough money and enough lawyers can, after the fact, really bring ambiguity out of something that was intended to be clear.”
The overturning of Chevron means the burden of legal interpretation of regulatory law has been placed on judges, who usually look to knowledge of the most recent technology and science in the interpretation of regulatory law.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan issued a biting dissent, saying “a cornerstone of administrative law” had been removed by the decision.
Chevron deference “has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds — to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest,” Kagan wrote.
Kagan added that federal agencies had been tasked by Congress to address regulatory interpretation, which usually involves technical or scientific subject matter.
“Agencies have expertise in those areas,” Kagan wrote in the dissent. “Courts do not.”
Biologists have created small hotspot shelters that operate like little saunas to help vulnerable and endangered amphibians fight off a fast-spreading and deadly fungal disease that has been a major threat to amphibians for decades.
Researchers from Macquarie University and the University of Melbourne developed the shelters as a way to help amphibians ward off chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease of the skin.
As explained by Amphibian Ark, a conservation group, the fungi that cause the disease can grow in the skin of an infected amphibian. The fungi inhibit the ability for water to move through the amphibian’s skin, leading to heart failure. Outbreaks of chytridiomycosis have led to major declines in some amphibian species around the world, particularly in Australia, Mexico, Central America, the Andes region of South America and the western U.S., Amphibian Ark reported.
Globally, 90% of amphibians that are threatened by chytridiomycosis have become extinct in the wild or altogether, and 124 affected species have seen population declines of 90% or higher, Macquarie University reported.
In response, researchers found a low-cost way that they determined to be effective in improving the frogs’ resiliency to the disease. They used whatever materials were already available, such as bricks or PVC, to build small shelters for the amphibians. The idea is that the shelters will become warm enough that the fungal disease will not be able to grow or spread.
“The whole thing is like a mini med spa for frogs,” Anthony Waddle, lead author of the study and a Schmidt Science Fellow at Macquarie University’s Applied BioSciences, said in a statement. “In these simple little hotspots, frogs can go and heat up their bodies to a temperature that destroys the infections. As with many human diseases, such as influenza, chytridiomycosis is seasonal. Winter is a particularly vulnerable time for frogs, given there are few opportunities to heat themselves up. By making hot spots available to frogs in winter, we empower them to cure their infections, or not even get sick at all.”
In a 15-week test with vulnerable green and gold bell frogs (Litoria aurea), which have experienced more than 90% shrinkage of their native habitat in Australia, the researchers found that the unshaded shelters they built were around 4.5 degrees Celsius warmer than shaded shelters. The frogs that used the unshaded shelters were more effective at warding off the fungal disease compared to frogs that used the shaded shelters.
These frogs also showed improved immunity to the disease after recovery, making them less vulnerable to the fungi in the future. After being re-exposed to the fungus, frogs that had recovered in the shelters had an 86% survival rate in the study, compared to a 22% survival rate in frogs that had not been previously infected. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature.
“Lowering mortality rates and boosting their immunity to chytridiomycosis is the key to protecting amphibians from this disease, which is now endemic around the world,” Waddle explained.
Because the shelters are made with simple and affordable materials, they are easier to scale by both wildlife professionals and everyday people at home who want to help vulnerable species.
Although the shelters can help the frogs adapt to the widespread fungal disease, the authors noted in the study that such habitat intervention is only one part in preventing extinctions of the species vulnerable to this disease.
“Habitat protection alone cannot protect species that are affected by invasive diseases, but simple manipulations to microhabitat structure could spell the difference between the extinction and the persistence of endangered amphibians,” the study concluded.
The Supreme Court on Monday weakened a law protecting federal regulations from lawsuits, granting the companies governed by those rules more time to challenge them. The move effectively eliminates any statute of limitations on rules issued by a wide range of federal agencies, potentially placing even long-standing regulations in legal peril.
That ruling came just days after the court, in a seismic decision, overturned the Chevron doctrine. The decades-old legal precedent provided the basis for regulations governing countless aspects of daily life, from the environment to labor protections. These decisions, coupled with two others issued last week, could sharply curtail the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies to limit air pollution, govern toxic substances, and set climate policy.
“This term, a series of decisions unlike any before in American history,” has resulted in “an unraveling of the responsibility that expert agencies have to protect millions of Americans from harm,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel at the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund.
Although these lawsuits challenged the power of a range of agencies, from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Department of Commerce, the decisions will have widespread impacts on those issuing climate policies. The EPA in particular has drawn scorn from conservatives who have long argued that its regulations pose an undue burden on everything from power generation to construction.
In one decision after another, the court’s conservative justices largely agreed. In its most far-reaching ruling, handed down Friday, they threw into question the future of environmental and climate regulations by overturning the precedent that gave federal agencies authority to interpret laws based on their expertise and scientific evidence. It will be years before the full impact of its decision to scuttle Chevron becomes clear, but it could prompt lawsuits aimed at regulations designed to mitigate climate change.
“There’s no question that there will be a flood of new challenges to settled policies by virtue of this decision,” Sean Donahue, an attorney who represented the Environmental Defense Fund in the case, told reporters on Friday.
The twolawsuits that led to the decision stemmed from a Commerce Department regulation requiring fishing companies to pay the cost of having third-party observers aboard each vessel to prevent overfishing. What started as a squabble over a narrowly focused rule expanded into a larger question of whether Chevron should remain in place. The doctrine originated with the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron v. NRDC (which gave the petroleum company greater leeway when applying for air pollution permits), and hinges on the idea that regulators have expertise and experience that judges typically don’t. It has been used to successfully defend federal actions under Republican and Democratic administrations.
“This is not a radical idea,” Harvard law professor Jody Freeman wrote recently. “Implementing health, safety, environmental, financial, and consumer protection laws requires a great deal of day-to-day legal interpretation which depends significantly on subject matter expertise.”
Children play on a trampoline outside their grandparents’ home in the shadow of the James H. Miller Jr. coal-fired power plant in Adamsville, Alabama. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images
The lower courts rejected the fishing companies’ arguments and upheld the regulations in question, citing Chevron. But the Supreme Court’s conservative justices, in a 6-3 decision, struck down the idea that courts should defer to regulators. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Courts do.”
The effect of this ruling will take years to discern, but legal scholars and climate and environmental activists said it could jeopardize current and future climate policies because it expands the power of courts to review and strike down regulatory guidelines or efforts.
“This decision shifts power dramatically away from agencies towards the courts,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “And in doing so, tilts the scales against regulation.”
The decision is a victory for business interests and anti-regulatory activists who framed Chevron as an example of governmental overreach by an expanding “administrative state.” Conservative organizations like the Koch network have long supported efforts to dismantle Chevron, and attorneys linked to that organization represented plaintiffs in one of the two cases that ended it.
Although the Supreme Court hasn’t applied Chevron to a case in more than a decade, the doctrine is essential to how lower court judges — who decide the majority of cases involving federal regulations — rule on any challenges to an agency’s actions. (Justice Elena Kagan, during oral arguments, noted that jurists cited Chevron in more than 17,000 cases over four decades. An analysis of lower court opinions from 2003 to 2013 found that agencies citing Chevron prevailed in more than 70 percent of cases, upholding a wide range of regulations issued by a host of agencies.)
Lawmakers and regulators, meanwhile, relied on the “reliable, predictable framework for judicial review” that Chevron provided, Burger said. Congress knew what to expect from courts when writing broad laws and allowing regulators to interpret and implement them. Agencies like the EPA and Interior Department could, in turn, issue rules knowing that the doctrine would support their authority to do so.
“Now, it’s very unclear what’s going to happen in any individual case,” he said. Without Chevron, it is “more likely that judges will say that a regulation is either outside an agency’s authority or not authorized by a statute.” That poses a particular threat to current or future rules related to the environment and climate change, two policy realms that involve ambiguities and scientific, economic, and technical considerations, he said.
That threat is compounded by the decision the court issued Monday in Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. That ruling creates a risk that courts could soon face a deluge of lawsuits challenging even decades-old regulations.
As with Chevron, the issue at the heart of Corner Post had nothing to do with climate or environment. The suit, filed in 2021, argued that a 2011 regulation establishing debit card swipe fees was unreasonable. Because federal law states that challenges to regulatory laws must be filed within six years of the law’s adoption, the plaintiffs added a third party, Corner Post, a truck stop that opened in 2018. The plaintiffs argued that the statute of limitations should not apply because Corner Post did not exist when the regulation was adopted.
In a 6-3 decision the court agreed and said the six-year timeline should instead begin at the moment someone is harmed by the rule — effectively eliminating a statute of limitations for any federal regulation. That means any regulation, covering any topic, could be challenged in court regardless of how old it is.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned in her dissent that the Corner Post ruling, coupled with the court’s decision to discard Chevron, will unleash a “tsunami of lawsuits against agencies” that could “devastate the functioning of the federal government.” According to the advocacy group Public Citizen, the time frame eliminated by the Corner Post decision has in the past prevented challenges to regulations limiting oil and gas extraction on public land and establishing minimum wages for farm workers, among other things.
No less troubling, the Supreme Court made clear on Thursday, in a suit specifically involving the EPA, that it will stop regulations even as they are being litigated in lower courts. That’s precisely what it did in Ohio v. EPA when it paused the agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule and its stringent smokestack emissions requirements. The court majority ruled, in a lawsuit brought by Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and others, that the EPA failed to “reasonably explain” its policy and placed it on hold pending the outcome of more than a dozen lawsuits. Environmental and climate activists worry that future challenges to federal policies could similarly “short-circuit the normal process of judicial review” by appealing directly to the Supreme Court.
Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice, called the decision a “frontal assault on the EPA.” He pointed out that unlike cases involving Chevron deference, the agency’s authority to implement the Good Neighbor rule was clear under the federal Clean Air Act and that “the EPA is required to issue rules like this.” The ruling suggests that in the future, any federal regulations, even those issued under clear legal authority, could face similar attacks.
“It casts a pall on just about any new regulation,” Sankar said.
Climate and environmental activists also took exception to how the court decided the case. By placing the matter on its emergency docket — which typically is reserved for minor procedural issues — and acting before lower courts have issued decisions, the Supreme Court brought what one expert called “procedural strangeness” to its decision-making. The ruling suggests future environmental policies could face similar challenges on the emergency docket.
“It’s really hard to say that there are any rules that aren’t subject to this kind of attack,” Sankar said.
The court also took a step, in a case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission, to sharply curtail the ability of federal agencies to enforce regulations and levy fines. SEC v. Jarkesy revolved around George Jarkesy, a conservative radio show host and hedge fund manager accused of misleading investors. The SEC brought the case before an administrative law judge — a type of jurist who specializes in highly technical areas of law and decides cases without a jury. Jarkersy was found to have violated SEC rules, fined $300,000, and ordered to “disgorge nearly $685,000 in illicit gains.” He then sued the agency,arguing that the government violated his Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury.
The court agreed, ruling on Thursday that a defendant facing civil penalties by the SEC “has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers.” In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that position threatens the ability of more than two dozen agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the EPA, to enforce regulations and impose fines.
“Make no mistake,” she wrote. “Today’s decision is a power grab.”
The high court has on several occasions in recent years shown a willingness to curtail the government’s ability to take bold steps to address environmental and climate challenges. Last year it limited some clean water protections, and in 2022 it restricted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in West Virginia v. EPA. The trend could continue next year when justices hear a case challenging the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock law that requires environmental assessments for major infrastructure projects.
Patton from the Environmental Defense Fund says that it’s no coincidence the court has decided to take up so many environmental cases and take such aggressive steps to roll back the government’s efforts to reduce pollution and mitigate climate change.
“There are lots of powerful polluters who have long tried to unravel and weaken the laws that were enacted by Congress,” she said. “What’s new and different is that we have a 6-3 super majority on the Supreme Court that is solicitous and open to the most extreme arguments.”
That, climate activists warn, means it will only grow harder for government agencies to take the steps needed to address the climate crisis.
In the time it takes you to read this sentence — say, four seconds — the world produces nearly 60 metric tons of plastic, almost entirely out of fossil fuels. That’s about 53,000 metric tons an hour, 1.3 million metric tons a day, or 460 million metric tons a year. Those numbers are fueling widespread and growing contamination of Earth’s oceans, rivers, and the terrestrial environment with plastic trash.
In March 2022, the United Nations’ 193 member states got together in Nairobi, Kenya, and agreed to do something about it. They pledged to negotiate a treaty to “end plastic pollution,” with the goal of delivering a final draft by 2025. The most ambitious vision espoused by member states in the negotiating sessions that have taken place so far would require petrochemical companies to stop making so much of the darn stuff by putting a cap on global plastic production.
Given the existential threat this would pose to fossil fuel and chemical companies, you might expect them to be vociferously opposed to the treaty. Yet they claim to support the agreement. They’re even “championing” it, according to statements from a handful of industry groups. The American Chemistry Council has repeatedly “welcome[d]” progress on the treaty negotiations, while an executive from the International Council of Chemical Associations told Plastics Today in April that the industry is “fully committed” to supporting an agreement.
So what exactly do plastic-producing companies want from the treaty? To answer this question, Grist sifted through dozens of public statements and policy documents from five of the world’s largest petrochemical industry trade organizations, as well as two product-specific industry groups. These documents included press releases reacting to treaty negotiating sessions and longer position statements detailing the industry’s desired pathway to a “world without waste.”
Much of what these groups have published is vague — many documents call for “targets,” for example, without saying what they should be. Grist reached out to all of the groups for clarification, but only two agreed to answer questions about the policies they support.
What we found is that, although they fall far short of what so-called “high-ambition” countries and advocacy groups would like to get out of the treaty, industry groups’ proposals to bolster recycling and waste collection could cause a significant reduction in mismanaged plastic waste — even in the absence of a cap on plastic production. According to a policy analysis tool developed by researchers at the University of California, the elements of the treaty that industry groups support, cobbled together, could cut global plastic pollution by 43 million metric tons annually by 2050 — a 36 percent reduction below business-as-usual estimates.
Meanwhile, a realistic production cap could cut annual pollution by 48 million metric tons all by itself. Excluding a production cap from the treaty will make it much harder to rein in plastic pollution, said Douglas McCauley, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the creators of the policy tool. “It means you really have to ramp up your ambition on what some of the other policies would need to do,” he told Grist.
These numbers matter, because the plastic industry’s influence over the treaty negotiations seems to be growing stronger. At the most recent round of talks — held in Ottawa, Canada, at the end of April — nearly 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel lobbyists registered to attend. That’s 37 more than were registered for the previous session, and more than the number of representatives from European Union member states.
At the same time, several delegations promoted solutions on the industry’s terms. Malaysia warned about the unintended economic consequences of limiting plastic production, and India said the treaty should focus on pollution while considering plastics’ utility to modern society. Given the power of the plastics industry and the tendency of international negotiations to cater to the lowest common denominator, it’s possible that the treaty will strongly reflect these industry priorities.
How the industry sees the problem
To understand the industry position on the plastics treaty, it’s important to understand how plastic makers conceptualize the plastics crisis. While they agree that pollution is a scourge, they don’t think the solution is to reduce society’s production and use of plastic. After all, plastics come with myriad benefits. They’re inexpensive, lightweight, and widely used in important sectors like clean energy and medicine — their “unmatched properties and versatility have allowed for incredible innovations that conserve resources and make more things in life possible,” as the Plastics Industry Association has put it. America’s Plastic Makers, an arm of the American Chemistry Council, says policymakers should ensure that the material stays “in our economy and out of our environment.”
The way to do this, according to industry groups, is through “plastics circularity,” a concept that seeks to keep the material in use for as long as possible before it’s thrown away. Generally, this means more recycling. But circularity can also refer to scaled-up systems allowing plastic to be reused, or better infrastructure for waste collection. As plastic makers see it, the plastic treaty’s function should be to increase circularity while retaining the social and economic benefits derived from plastic products.
Perhaps the biggest problem faced by circularity proponents is plastic’s abysmal recycling rate. At present, the world only recycles about 9 percent of all plastic it produces; the rest gets sent to landfills or incinerators, or winds up as litter. What’s more, in most cases the material can only be reprocessed once or twice — if at all — before it has to be “downcycled” into lower-quality products like carpeting. Although some experts believe it’s impossible to recycle much more plastic due to technological and economic constraints, plastic makers say otherwise. Indeed, plastics circularity hinges on the possibility of a better recycling rate.
From left: Recycling bins for plastic, paper, and foam; a recycling symbol on a plastic bag. Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images; Joseph Winters / Grist
The industry’s first solution: Recycling targets
To that end, several industry groups — including the World Plastics Council, the self-described “global voice of the plastics industry” — are advocating for “mandatory minimum recycling rates” as part of the treaty, as well as higher targets for recycled content used in new products.
This could mean that countries, regions, or other jurisdictions would set legally binding quotas for the amount of plastic recycled within their borders and then converted into new items. Plastic makers typically favor targets that are set at the local or national level and that differentiate based on the type of plastic, since some types are harder to recycle than others.
Industry groups also want recycling targets to be “technology-neutral,” meaning they should count plastics processed through controversial “chemical recycling” techniques. Although these techniques do not yet work at scale, the industry says they will one day be able to break down mixed post-consumer plastic into their constituent polymers using high heat and pressure, and then turn those polymers back into new plastic products. Environmental experts oppose chemical recycling, pointing to evidence that it is primarily used to burn plastics or turn them into fuel.
The two policies — on plastics recycling and recycled content — could be mutually reinforcing, with the latter creating a more reliable market for the recycled material generated by the former. Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, told Grist via email that recycling and recycled content targets would “create demand signals and provide added certainty for companies to make additional investments for a circular economy, so more plastic products are reused or remade into new plastic products.”
Plastics Europe and the World Plastics Council declined to be interviewed for this article. They did not respond to questions about their support for specific recycling and recycled content targets, although Plastics Europe has voiced support for “mandatory data and reporting objectives for all stages of the life cycle of the plastics system.” For the U.S., America’s Plastic Makers supports a 30 percent recycled content requirement in plastic packaging by 2030, and for 100 percent of plastic packaging to be “reused, recycled, or recovered by 2040.”
The industry’s second solution: Infrastructure and design changes
Additional policies supported by industry groups could indirectly facilitate an increase in the plastics recycling rate by raising money for recycling infrastructure. These policies typically involve systems for “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, requiring companies that make and sell plastics to help pay for the collection and recycling of the waste they generate, as well as the cleanup of existing plastic pollution. Every industry group Grist reached out to says it supports EPR as a part of the treaty, although some specifically note in their policy documents that such policies should be adopted at the local or national level, rather than globally. Some groups, including the American Chemistry Council and Global Partners for Plastics Circularity — an umbrella group supported by a dozen plastics associations and companies — also call more vaguely for additional financing through “public-private partnerships and blended finance.”
Clockwise from top left: Plastics-treaty delegates strive to get through details of the text; the delegates gather for discussions; pro-plastic messaging seen in hotels in Ottawa during negotiations over the global plastics treaty. IISD / ENB / Kiara Worth
For plastic packaging — which accounts for about 36 percent of global plastic production — a European industry consortium called the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging supports “mandatory legislation on product design” to make products easier to recycle. It doesn’t back any specific design elements, but points to ideas laid out by the Consumer Goods Forum, an industry-led network of consumer product retailers and manufacturers. These ideas include using clear instead of colored plastics, limiting the use of unnecessary plastic wrap, and ensuring that any adhesives or inks applied to plastic packaging don’t render it nonrecyclable. Plastics Europe additionally supports technical and design standards for biodegradable and compostable plastics intended to replace those made from fossil fuels.
Many groups also say they support targets for “pellet containment,” referring to the tiny plastic pieces that are melted down and shaped into larger items. These pellets are notorious for spilling out of manufacturing facilities or off of cargo ships and into waterways; in Europe, 20 truckloads of them escape into the environment every day. Several trade groups say in their public statements that they support an industry-led program called Operation Clean Sweep to help companies achieve “zero resin loss” by “fostering a venue for precompetitive collaboration and peer-learning opportunities.”
However, Operation Clean Sweep has been around since 1991 and has not yet achieved its goal; some policymakers have recently called for stricter regulations on plastic pellet loss.
The industry’s third solution: Application-based regulations
In addition to capping plastic production, many countries’ delegates — along with scientists and environmental groups — would like the treaty to ban or restrict some of the most problematic plastic polymers, as well as certain chemicals used in plastics. They call these “chemicals and polymers of concern,” meaning those least likely to be recycled, or most likely to damage people’s health and the environment. Potential candidates include polyvinyl chloride, widely used in water pipes, upholstery, toys, and other applications; expanded polystyrene, or EPS, the foamy plastic that’s often used in takeout food containers; and endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates, bisphenols, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
The general idea of identifying problematic chemicals and polymers in the plastics treaty is very popular; observers of the negotiations say it’s been one of the areas of greatest convergence among delegates. Industry groups are also supportive — but only of a very specific approach. According to the World Plastics Council, the treaty shouldn’t include “arbitrary bans or restrictions on substances or materials,” but rather regulations based on the “essential use and societal value” of particular types of plastic.
Salvatore Laporta / KontroLab / LightRocket via Getty Images; Getty Images; Joseph Winters / Grist
For instance, polystyrene used in packing peanuts and takeout containers is virtually never recycled and might be a good candidate for restriction. But the Global Expanded Polystyrene Sustainability Alliance — a trade group for EPS makers — points to evidence that, in Europe and Japan, the material can be recycled at least 30 percent of the time when it’s in a different format — namely, insulation for products like coolers, as well as big pieces used to protect fragile shipments.
In a press release, the group said this distinction in polystyrene formatting demonstrates the need to assess plastics’ “individual material applications and uses independently.”
“We’ve got five major types” of polystyrene, said Betsy Bowers, executive director of the Expanded Polystyrene Industry Alliance, a trade group representing the U.S. EPS market. “Some of them can be recycled, and some of them can’t.”
Plastics Europe has said an application-based approach could also consider plastic products on the basis of “leakage,” how easily the products become litter; the feasibility of redesigning them; or “effects on human or animal health.” That said, the organization does not support restricting plastic-related chemicals as part of the treaty, beyond what is already spelled out in existing international agreements like the Stockholm Convention. The International Council of Chemical Associations, whose members include individual chemical manufacturers and regional trade groups, does not support any chemical regulation as part of the treaty.
In an email to Grist, the American Chemistry Council said it supports a “decision-tree approach” to prevent specific plastic products from leaking into the environment. The organization said in a letter sent to President Joe Biden last May that it opposes “restrictions of trade in chemicals or polymers” because they would “make U.S. manufacturers less competitive and/or jeopardize the many benefits plastics provide to the economy and the environment.”
The International Council of Chemical Associations, the Plastics Industry Association, and the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging initiative did not respond to Grist’s request to be interviewed for this story, or to questions about the policies they support.
The impact of the plastic industry’s favorite policies
While it’s clear that self-preservation is at the heart of the petrochemical industry’s agenda for the plastics treaty, the policies it supports could have a positive impact on plastic pollution. According to the policy analysis toolcreated by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Santa Barbara, a suite of ambitious policies to hit recycling and recycled content rates of 20 percent, reuse 60 percent of plastic packaging (where applicable), and dedicate $35 billion to plastics recycling and waste infrastructure could prevent 43 million metric tons of plastic pollution annually by midcentury. Most of this reduction would come from the infrastructure funding.
McCauley, one of the creators of the tool, said these policies are certainly better than nothing. They can bring the world “closer to a future without plastic pollution,” he told Grist, although he emphasized that recycling is not a silver bullet.
The policy tool takes for granted that higher recycling and recycled content rates are achievable, but this might not be the case. Bjorn Beeler, executive director and international coordinator for the nonprofit International Pollutants Elimination Network, said a 20 percent recycling rate would be “nearly impossible” to reach, given the relatively low cost of virgin plastic and the petrochemical industry’s projected expansion over the coming decades. Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup, estimated the maximum possible recycled content rate for consumer product packaging would be about 5 percent, due to insurmountable technological constraints related to plastics’ toxicity.
Experts tend to favor plastic production caps as a much faster, reliable, and more straightforward way to reduce plastic pollution than relying on recycling. According to McCauley’s policy tool, capping plastic production at the level reached in 2019 would prevent 48 million metric tons of annual plastic pollution by 2050 — even in the absence of any efforts to boost recycling or fund waste management. “It’s possible to be effective without the cap,” said Sam Pottinger, a senior research data scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a contributor to the policy tool. “But it requires a huge amount of effort elsewhere.”
The future of global plastic pollution
Global annual rate of mismanaged waste, million metric tons
There’s no reason the plastics treaty couldn’t incorporate a production cap in addition to the industry’s preferred recycling interventions. Some experts say this would form the most effective agreement; according to the policy tool, a production cap at 2019 levels plus the suite of recycling targets and funding for waste infrastructure could prevent nearly 78 million metric tons of annual plastic pollution by 2050. Bumping up the funding for recycling and waste infrastructure to an aggressive $200 billion, in combination with the production cap and other policies, would avert nearly 109 million metric tons of pollution each year.
“We need to use all of the tools in our toolbox,” said Zoie Diana, a postdoctoral plastics researcher at the University of Toronto who was not involved in creating the policy tool. She too emphasized, however, that governments should prioritize reducing plastic production.
What the industry doesn’t like to talk about
The case for a production cap goes beyond plastic litter concerns. It would also address the inequitable impact of toxic pollution from plastic manufacturing facilities, as well as the industry’s contribution to climate change. In April, a study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that plastic production already accounts for 5 percent of global climate pollution, and that by 2050 — given the petrochemical industry’s plans to dramatically ramp up plastic production — it could eat up one-fifth of the world’s remaining carbon budget, the amount of emissions the world can release while still limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). To achieve international climate goals, some environmental groups have estimated that the world must reduce plastic production by 12 to 17 percent every year starting in 2024.
Air pollution from a petrochemical refinery in Baytown, Texas. Jason Fochtman / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
“Whether the treaty includes plastic production cuts is not just a policy debate,” said Jorge Emmanuel, an adjunct professor at Silliman University in the Philippines, in a statement describing the mountains of plastic trash that are harming Filipino communities. “It’s a matter of survival.”
Petrochemical companies, for their part, do not deeply engage with these arguments — at least not in their public policy documents. They claim that plastics actually help mitigate climate change, since the lightweight material takes less fuel to transport than alternatives made of metal and glass. And industry groups’ public statements mostly do not address environmental justice concerns related to plastic use, production, and disposal, except to vaguely say that the treaty shouldn’t harm waste pickers — the millions of workers, most of them in the developing world, who make a living collecting plastic trash and selling it to recyclers.
The fifth and final round of negotiations for the plastics treaty is scheduled to take place in Busan, South Korea, this November. Although many observers, including a group of U.S. Congressional representatives and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, have called for conflict-of-interest policies to limit trade groups’ influence over the talks, these requests face long odds. The dozens of countries advocating for production limits may have to defend their proposals against an even larger industry presence than they did at the last session in Ottawa.
For a fun and successful garage sale outing, keep an open mind and embrace the reuse potential of items. We’ve got eight tips to help you find and get the best deals.
The first hurricane of the 2024 season, “extremely dangerous” Hurricane Beryl — the earliest-ever Category-4 hurricane — headed toward the Windward Islands Sunday night, bringing strong winds and flash flooding on Monday, according to the United States National Hurricane Center.
Beryl made landfall Monday morning on Carriacou Island in the Grenadines as a Category 4 with heavy rain, 150 miles-per-hour maximum sustained winds and life-threatening storm surge, reported CNN. It is the strongest hurricane to make its way through the area since National Oceanic and Atmospheric data began in 1851.
“Hurricanes don’t know what month it is, they only know what their ambient environment is,” Jim Kossin, a First Street Foundation science advisor and hurricane expert, told CNN. “Beryl is breaking records for the month of June because Beryl thinks it’s September.”
The deluge from Hurricane Beryl caused power outages, and its storm surge brought flooding for portions of Grenada, Barbados, the Grenadines and Tobago on Monday, the National Hurricane Center said.
The quick strengthening of Beryl due to the unusually warm ocean waters was a sign that the 2024 hurricane season would be abnormally severe.
Kossin said Beryl’s record-breaking strength combined with the ocean heat “certainly have a human fingerprint on them.”
The hurricane-force winds brought by Beryl extended 40 miles from its center, with tropical-storm-force winds reaching 125 miles.
The National Hurricane Center said Beryl’s “life-threatening storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 6 to 9 feet above normal tide levels.”
After the strong hurricane’s landfall, waves could also churn up life-threatening rip currents and surf and threaten fishers and small vessels.
Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Amor Mottley warned people to be “extremely vigilant” in the face of potential flash flooding in Barbados and the Windward Islands.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for St. Vincent, the Grenadines and Barbados, Grenada and Tobado, while Jamaica was under a hurricane watch. Martinique, Saint Lucia and Trinidad were under tropical storm warnings.
More than 400 people had taken refuge in hurricane shelters in Barbados Sunday night, Ramona Archer-Bradshaw, the country’s chief shelter warden, told CBC News, as CNN reported.
Airports in Saint Lucia, Grenada and Barbados were closed on Sunday.
Beryl’s path is unclear, but it will continue over the Caribbean Sea into Thursday as a major hurricane.
Hurricane Beryl’s next expected landfall is around the Yucatan Peninsula sometime around Friday morning. If the storm stays together over land long enough to reach the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters, it could pose a threat to northeast Mexico or the Gulf Coast of the United States.
“Beryl is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane as its core moves through the Windward Islands into the eastern Caribbean,” the National Hurricane Center said, as reported by Reuters.
