Monday, July 12, 2021

 

Just 25 mega-cities produce 52% of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions


New research published by the open access publisher Frontiers inventories greenhouse gas emissions of 167 globally distributed cities. The study shows that just 25 mega-cities produce 52% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the studied cities.

FRONTIERS

Research News

In 2015, 170 countries worldwide adopted the Paris Agreement, with the goal limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C. Following the agreement, many countries and cities proposed targets for greenhouse gas mitigation. However, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2020 shows that, without drastic and strict actions to mitigate the climate crisis, we are still heading for a temperature increase of more than 3°C by the end of the 21st century.

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities presents the first global balance sheet of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted by major cities around the world. The aim was to research and monitor the effectiveness of historical GHG reduction policies implemented by 167 globally distributed cities that are at different developmental stages.

While only covering 2% of the Earth's surface, cities are big contributors to the climate crisis. But current urban GHG mitigation targets are not sufficient to achieve global climate change targets by the end of this century. "Nowadays, more than 50% of the global population resides in cities. Cities are reported to be responsible for more than 70% of GHG emissions, and they share a big responsibility for the decarbonization of the global economy. Current inventory methods used by cities vary globally, making it hard to assess and compare the progress of emission mitigation over time and space," says co-author Dr Shaoqing Chen, of Sun Yat-sen University, China.

Key findings

    1. The top 25 cities accounted for 52% of the total urban GHG emissions.

    2. Cities in Europe, Australia, and the US had significantly higher per capita emissions than cities in developing areas.

    3. Stationary energy and transportation were the two main sources of emissions.

    4. Of the 42 cities that had time-series traceable data, 30 decreased the annual GHG emissions over the study period. Though in several cities, there was an increase in emissions.

    5. 113 out of the 167 set varying types of GHG emission reduction targets, while 40 have set carbon neutrality goals.

The biggest polluters

First, the authors conducted sector-level GHG emission inventories of the 167 cities - from metropolitan areas such as Durban, South Africa, to cities such as Milan, Italy. Then, they analyzed and compared the carbon reduction progresses of the cities based on the emission inventories recorded in different years (from 2012 to 2016). Lastly, they assessed the cities' short-, mid-, and long-term carbon mitigation goals. The cities were chosen from 53 countries (in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania) and were selected based on representativeness in urban sizes and regional distribution. The degree of development was distinguished based on whether they belonged to developed and developing countries according to the UN classification criteria.

The results showed that both developed and developing countries have cities with high total GHG emissions, but that megacities in Asia (such as Shanghai in China and Tokyo in Japan) were especially important emitters. The inventory of per capita emissions showed that cities in Europe, the US, and Australia had significantly higher emissions than most cities in developing countries. China, classified here as a developing country, also had several cities where per capita emissions matched those of developed countries. It is important to note that many developed countries outsource high carbon production chains to China, which increases export-related emissions for the latter.

The researchers also identified some of the most important sources of greenhouse gas emissions. "Breaking down the emissions by sector can inform us what actions should be prioritized to reduce emissions from buildings, transportation, industrial processes and other sources," says Chen. Stationary energy - which includes emissions from fuel combustion and electricity use in residential and institutional buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial buildings - contributed between 60 and 80% of total emissions in North American and European cities. In one third of the cities, more than 30% of total GHG emissions were from on-road transportation. Meanwhile, less than 15% of total emissions came from railways, waterways, and aviation.

Lastly, the findings show that the levels of emissions increase and decrease varied between the cities over the study period. For 30 cities, there was a clear emission decrease between 2012 and 2016. The top four cities with the largest per capita reduction were Oslo, Houston, Seattle, and Bogotá. The top four cities with the largest per capita emissions increase were Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Johannesburg, and Venice.

Policy recommendations

Of the 167 cities, 113 have set varying types of GHG emission reduction targets, while 40 have set carbon neutrality goals. But this study joins many other reports and research that show that we are a long way off achieving the goals set by the Paris Agreement.

Chen and colleagues make three key policy recommendations. First: "Key emitting sectors should be identified and targeted for more effective mitigation strategies. For example, the differences in the roles that stationary energy use, transportation, household energy use, and waste treatments play for cities should be assessed."

Second, development of methodologically consistent global GHG emission inventories is also needed, to track the effectiveness of urban GHG reductions policies. Lastly: "Cities should set more ambitious and easily-traceable mitigation goals. At a certain stage, carbon intensity is a useful indicator showing the decarbonization of the economy and provides better flexibility for cities of fast economic growth and increase in emission. But in the long run, switching from intensity mitigation targets to absolute mitigation targets is essential to achieve global carbon neutrality by 2050."

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Robots to the rescue after nuclear disaster
Lesley Stahl 
 CBS News

More than 10 years have passed since a monster earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan and triggered what became, after Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
© Credit: CBSNews robotsmain.jpg

When three of its six reactors melted down, hot fuel turned to molten lava and burned through steel walls and concrete floors. To this day, no one knows exactly where inside the reactor buildings the fuel is. And it is so deadly, no human can go inside to look for it. So, as we first reported in 2018, the Japanese company that owns the crippled plant has turned to robots

Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
 Reactors two and three at the Daiichi Power Plant / Credit: CBS News

There are four-legged robots, robots that climb stairs and even robots that can swim into reactors flooded with water. They're equipped with 3D scanners, sensors and cameras that map the terrain, measure radiation levels and look for the missing fuel.


This is part of a massive clean up that's expected to cost nearly $200 billion and take decades.

Lesley Stahl: Has anything like this cleanup, in terms of the scope, ever happened before?

Lake Barrett: No, this is a unique situation here. It's never happened in human history. It's a challenge we've never had before."It was truly Hell on Earth."

Lake Barrett is a nuclear engineer and former Department of Energy official who oversaw the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, Three Mile Island. He was hired as a senior adviser by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company that owns the plant and is in charge of the effort to find the missing fuel.

He's also advising on the development of new robots like this six-legged spider robot that engineers are designing to hang from scaffolding and climb onto equipment. He describes them as...

Lake Barrett: Very advanced working robots that will actually be the ones with long, muscular arms and laser cutters and such that will go in and actually take the molten fuel and put it in an engineered canister and retrieve it.

Lesley Stahl: Should we think of this as a project like sending someone to the moon?

Lake Barrett: It's even a bigger project in my view. But there's a will here to clean this up as there was a will to put a man on the moon. And these engineering tasks can be done successfully.

Lesley Stahl: Why not just bury this place? Why not do what they did at Chernobyl? Just cover it up, bury it, and just leave it here all-- you know, enclosed?

Lake Barrett: Number one this is right next to the sea. We're 100 yards from the ocean. We have typhoons here in Japan. This is also a high earthquake zone. And there's gonna be future earthquakes. So these are unknowns that the Japanese and no one wants to deal with
.
Lake Barrett, who oversaw the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, Three Mile Island / Credit: CBS News

The earthquake that caused the meltdown measured 9.0, The most powerful ever recorded in Japan and triggered a series of tsunami waves that swept away cars, houses and entire towns. Killing more than 15,000 people.

At Fukushima Daiichi, the enormous waves washed over the plant, flooding the reactors and knocking out power to the cooling pumps that had kept the reactor cores from overheating. Lake Barrett took us to a hill overlooking the reactors where the radiation levels are still relatively high.

Lesley Stahl: So this is actually right where-- where it all happened? The heart of the disaster, right here?

Lake Barrett: Correct. There's reactor number one, reactor number two, reactor number three. And when the earthquake happened, 100 miles away, these buildings all shook and these towers all shook. But the design was such that they were safe. But 45 minutes later, waves were racing in, tsunami waves, from the earthquake, and there were seven waves that came in at 45 feet high. And put the station in what we call "station blackout." They had no power. And the cores got hotter inside, and hotter, and hotter again until the uranium started to melt.
© Provided by CBS News Fukushima's ghost towns 04:14

Lesley Stahl: How many tons of radioactive waste was developed here?

Lake Barrett: Probably 500 to 1,000 tons in each building.

Lesley Stahl: So how long will it be lethal?

Lake Barrett: It will be lethal for thousands of years.

Lesley Stahl: What we're talking about really is three meltdowns?

Lake Barrett: Yes. It was truly Hell on Earth."No one is gonna send a worker in there because they'd be overexposed in just a matter of seconds."

The meltdowns triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of everyone within a 12-mile radius – about 160,000 people in all. Weeks later, TEPCO officials engaged in so-called kowtow diplomacy – allowing townspeople to berate them as they prostrated themselves in apology.

Thousands of workers were sent to the countryside to decontaminate everything touched by radiation including digging up dirt and putting it in bags – lots of bags.

But while much of the evacuation zone has been decontaminated, there are still entire neighborhoods that are like ghost towns, silent and lifeless with radiation levels that remain too high.

At the plant they're capturing contaminated groundwater, about 150 tons a day, and storing it in tanks, as far as the eye can see.

Lake Barrett: Water is always the major challenge here. And it's going to remain a major challenge until the entire cores are removed.

The closer workers get to the reactors, the more protective gear they have to wear, as we discovered.© Provided by CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl and Lake Barrett suit up / Credit: CBS News

We were zipped into Tyvek coveralls and made to wear two pairs of socks and 3 pairs of gloves.

Lake Barrett: Okay, we've got tape.

Not an inch of skin was exposed. The layers of protection include a mask...

Lesley Stahl: It's a little loose.

Lake Barrett: We'll tighten it up.

...That often fogged up.

Lake Barrett: How do you feel?

Lesley Stahl: Good.

And a dosimeter to register the amount of radiation we'd be exposed to.

We were ready for battle. We went with a team of TEPCO workers to unit three, one of the reactors that melted down on that March day, 10 years ago, that the Japanese call, simply 3/11.

Lesley Stahl: Lake!

Lake Barrett: There you are, Unit 3.

Lesley Stahl: Watch it. Step.

Lake Barrett: These are shield plates because there's cesium in the ground.

In the years since the accident, much of the damage to the building has been repaired.
© Provided by CBS News

But it's still dangerous to spend a lot of time here. We could stay only 15 minutes.

Lesley Stahl: There's this number I've been seeing, 566.

Lake Barrett: Right. That's telling you the radiation level that we're in. It's fairly high here. That's why we're gonna be here a short time.

Lesley Stahl: How close are you and I, right this minute, to the core?

Lake Barrett: The-- the melted cores are about 70 feet that way.

Lesley Stahl: Seventy from here--

Lake Barrett: From here.

Lesley Stahl: --is the melted core?

Lake Barrett: Correct, that's right over in here. We don't know quite where other than it fell down into the floor.

Lesley Stahl: So if you sent a worker in right now to find it, how long would they survive?

Lake Barrett: No one is gonna send a worker in there because they'd be overexposed in just a matter of seconds
.
 Provided by CBS News

Enter the robots.


Lesley Stahl: This is the robot research center.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. This is for remote control technology development.

In 2016, the Japanese government opened this $100 million research center near the plant where a new generation of robots is being developed by teams of engineers and scientists from the nation's top universities and tech companies.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata is the center's principal researcher.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: This is our newest robot, J-11.

Lesley Stahl: So, number 11. And it's an obstacle course.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. the operators use the camera image in front of the robot. But it's so many hours required to train. Because it looks very easy, but it's quite difficult.

They also train here in this virtual-reality room where 3D data taken inside the reactors by the robots is projected onto this screen. Operators, using special glasses, can go where no humans can.

Lesley Stahl: So we're actually walking through--

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Uh-huh.

Lesley Stahl: --a part of a reactor.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Uh-huh. You feel some immersive experience.

Lesley Stahl: Y-- so as if you're in there.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: I actually wanna duck. I mean, that's how real it feels to me. Like here we're going under this thing. I have to duck.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Ah, yes.

© Provided by CBS News

But even with all the high-tech training and know-how, the robots have run into problems. For the early models, it was the intense levels of radiation - that fried their electronics and cameras.

Lake Barrett: Their lifetime was hours. We hoped it would be days, but it was for hours.

Lesley Stahl: Tell us what happened to the robot named Scorpion. This is a highly sophisticated, and I gather everybody thought this was the answer.

Lake Barrett: That was gonna be the first robot we were going to put inside the containment vessel, which is where we need the information the most 'cause that's where the core is.

This is Scorpion, whose mission cost an estimated $100 million. It was designed to flatten out and slither through narrow pipes and passageways on its way to the core. And, like a scorpion, it raises its tail.

Lake Barrett: The tail would come up with a camera on top with lights. Because you have to have its own lights. It's all dark inside. There're no regular lights. So that was the plan. And we had great expectations and hope for that. We all did. Took a year to prepare, and it was hard work.

But when Scorpion went inside, it hit some debris and got stuck after traveling less than 10 feet.

Lesley Stahl: I can't imagine the frustration l-- levels.

Lake Barrett: Well, but you learn more from-- from failure sometimes than you do from success.

They had more success with this robot named Little Sunfish, which was designed to swim inside one of the reactors flooded with water. In preparing for Little Sunfish's mission, engineers spent months doing test runs inside this enormous simulation tank, fine-tuning the propellers, cameras, sensors and 65 yards of electric cable -- all built to withstand intense levels of radiation.
© Provided by CBS News Little Sunfish / Credit: CBS News

They used nuclear reactor number five to help plan the mission. It didn't melt down when the tsunami hit and is nearly identical to the one Little Sunfish would scout. Finally, in 2017, the swimming robot made its foray into the heart of the reactor. To look for the missing fuel. Barrett took us into unit 5 to show us how it maneuvered through the labyrinth of pipes and debris inside the reactor.

Lake Barrett: The Little Sunfish came down on the edge and it swam underwater down through this little entryway here underneath the reactor vessel.

Lesley Stahl: Is this the route Little Sunfish took?

Lake Barrett: Yes this is. The Little Sunfish swam thru this portal, down into this area, it went around the side. It went down through this grating, which was gone. We are standing directly underneath the reactor vessel. Molten fuel came through here and it jetted out under very high pressure. And then it came out slowly like a lava in a volcano, and it fell down and burned its way through this grating down to the floor.

This is what Little Sunfish saw as technicians guided it through the pipes and hatchways of the flooded interior. It beamed back images revealing clumps of debris, fuel rods, half-destroyed equipment and murky glimpses of what looks like solidified lava -- the first signs, TEPCO officials say, of the missing fuel.

Lake Barrett: These robotic steps so far have been significant steps. But it is only a small step on a very, very long journey.

Lesley Stahl: This is gonna take you said decades with an "S." How many decades?

Lake Barrett: We don't know for sure. The goal here is 40-- 30-- 40 years. You know, I personally think it may be even 50-- 60, but it's--

Lesley Stahl: Oh, maybe longer.

Lake Barrett: It, well, it may be longer. But the reality is this is a challenge that's never been dealt with before. But every step is a positive step. You learn from that and go forward to another step.

The next step, announced in April by the Japanese government, is a controversial one: releasing into the Pacific Ocean the more than one million tons of contaminated wastewater stored at the site. The government says the water will be treated to remove all dangerous isotopes and diluted to well below safety standards for drinking water. But the plan – which is set to begin in two years and will take decades to complete – has infuriated local officials and Fukushima's fishing community, as well as Japan's neighbors, South Korea and China.

Produced by Richard Bonin and Ayesha Siddiqi
This pizza chain owner who pays $16 an hour says there's no labor shortage, just a shortage of businesses willing to pay a decent wage

ztayeb@businessinsider.com (Zahra Tayeb) 20 hrs ago
Co-founder of &pizza Steve Salis (left) and CEO Michael Lastoria (right). Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The CEO of restaurant chain &pizza says there's no labor shortage, only a wage shortage.

He's been paying employees $16/hr since before the pandemic and says he's fully staffed.

He said he'd received more than 100 applications for each job this year.


Business owners say they're struggling to find staff. Not so the CEO of &pizza, a restaurant chain in Washington, DC, who claims that he's been bombarded with job applications.

Michael Lastoria told Insider that business was booming at the pizza chain's 51 locations and all were fully staffed. He said that the secret was paying staff a proper wage.

The crippling US labor shortage has been felt in all corners of the economy, including hospitality and ride-hailing. It's caused some businesses to slash opening hours, cut production, and raise prices. Nearly half of US restaurant owners said they struggled to pay their rent in May because staffing shortages hurt their revenues.

But it hasn't knocked &pizza, Lastoria said.

While opening 12 new locations this year, Lastoria said he'd received well over 100 applications for each job. "Our new locations are fully staffed and we plan to open another 15 by the end of the year," he said.

Lastoria said he'd been able to dodge the labor shortage by leveraging an employee-centric business model that involves paying staff $16 an hour on average, among other benefits.

"We are living proof that the claims that business owners are making about the impossibility of paying people enough money to live on are false," Lastoria said. Those claims were designed to protect the old corporate mindset that permits shockingly high executive pay and staff exploitation, he said.

Employees working at &pizza are entitled to benefits such as paid leave for activism and healthcare, Lastoria said. "We built this company around taking care of workers because without them we wouldn't exist," he said.

The fact that the average minimum wage worker has to work 79 hours a week to afford rent for a one-bedroom apartment is the real crisis, Lastoria said. "There isn't a labor shortage, there is a shortage of business owners willing to pay a living wage.


"The idea that wages couldn't possibly rise even once over the past 12 years while prices went up, while inflation went up and while the cost of living went up, has resulted in the 'shortage' [business owners] are experiencing today.

"Higher wages lead to greater consumer spending and greater workforce productivity, things every company benefits from."


A competitive labor market has led to workers "rage-quitting" their jobs to protest poor pay and working conditions. A former employee at Dollar General recently told Insider how she rage-quit her job in the spring of 2021 because of the fraught work environment. Similar incidents have occurred at McDonald's, Chipotle, Hardee's, and Wendy's locations around the US.

Lastoria said: "If you aren't paying your employees enough to cover basic survival costs, what possible incentive could a person have to take that job?"

THIRD WORLD USA

New study finds that it can be hard to

eat healthy when relying on US food

assistance programs


10 July 2021
USDA

Nearly nine out of 10 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants face barriers in providing their household with a healthy diet throughout the month, based on a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) study.

The study, Barriers that Constrain the Adequacy of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Allotments, conducted in 2018, finds that 88% of participants report encountering some type of hurdle to a healthy diet.

The most common, reported by 61% of SNAP participants, is the cost of healthy foods. Participants who reported struggling to afford nutritious foods were more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity. Other barriers range from a lack of time to prepare meals from scratch (30%) to the need for transportation to the grocery store (19%) to no storage for fresh or cooked foods (14%).

“No one in America should have to worry about whether they can put healthy food on the table for themselves or their children,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “[This] report makes clear we still have work to do to ensure all Americans not only have food to eat, but access to nutritious foods.”

“SNAP benefits are a nutrition lifeline for millions of Americans,” said Stacy Dean, USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services. “So it’s vital that the program helps enable participants to achieve a healthy diet amidst the real world challenges they face. The study findings released today indicate that we’re not yet there.”

USDA is dedicated to enhancing the nation’s food safety net, ensuring SNAP participants not only have enough to eat but also access to nutritious foods. As directed by Congress in the 2018 Farm Bill, the department is currently re-evaluating the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which is used to set SNAP benefit amounts.

Since it was first introduced in 1975, the value of the TFP has stayed the same, adjusting only for inflation. In the meantime, our understanding of nutrition has evolved significantly, and there have been major changes to the food supply, consumption patterns, and the circumstances of SNAP participants, resulting in an out-of-date food plan. The ongoing re-evaluation will help ensure the TFP affords families a realistic, healthy diet on a budget.

In good times and tough times, SNAP is the most far-reaching, powerful tool available to ensure that all Americans, regardless of background, can afford healthy food. Nearly 42 million Americans – a large portion of whom are children, people with disabilities, and the elderly – currently rely on SNAP benefits each month. Participating in SNAP has been shown to increase food security and have a positive impact on participants’ health.

The infographic can be downloaded here

TheCattleSite News Desk



UK
Govt bill ‘would allow Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists to sue universities’

“It is shocking that the Conservatives are introducing a new law to give Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers and people harmful to public interest the opportunity to sue their way to a platform at universities," Labour said.

Government plans to protect free speech in universities across England and Wales could allow Holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers to sue the colleges that did not give them a platform.

The warning by Labour comes as the party promised to vote against the ‘hate speech bill’, which they say is very divisive and harmful, according to The Guardian.

Universities UK have also expressed serious concerns about the Tories’ bill and its potential consequences.

Free speech bill


According to the newspaper, the government argues the bill would let the Office for Students implement measures which ensure freedom of speech in higher education settings.

The measures would include “a complaints system and redress for breaches of free speech duties through the introduction of a statutory tort, extending duties on free speech to students’ unions and creating a role of director of freedom of speech and academic freedom at the OfS.”

Under the bill, university staff could also sue if they think they were denied promotions or new jobs because of their opinions.

‘Shocking’


Kate Green, shadow education secretary, said: “It is shocking that the Conservatives are introducing a new law to give Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers and people harmful to public interest the opportunity to sue their way to a platform at universities.”

She added the government is wasting time whilst supporting those whose only goal is to spread hate and division.

Universities UK, representing 140 universities, said there is “significant concern over what the unintended consequences of this bill could be.”

“This bill could make it easier for those who promote conspiracy theories or ‘alternative facts’ to speak on university campuses – as well as provide them with the opportunity to take the university or students’ union to court if they feel they have been denied a platform,” the organisation said.

It added the bill could “lead to courts becoming filled with minor disputes, while incurring significant cost, time and reputational damage to universities, and ultimately detracting from their efforts to champion freedom of speech”.
G20 recognizes carbon pricing as climate change tool for first time

Efforts to acknowledge carbon prices as a way to tackle global warming were previously rebuffed by the U.S. Trump administration


By David Lawder
Saturday, 10 July 202

VENICE, Italy, July 10 (Reuters) - G20 finance leaders recognized carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique on Saturday, taking a tentative step towards promoting the idea and coordinating carbon reduction policies.

The move marked a massive shift from the previous four years when former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration routinely opposed the mention of climate change as a global risk in such international statements.

The communique, issued on Saturday after a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in the Italian city of Venice, which is threatened by rising sea levels, inserted a mention of carbon pricing among a "wide set of tools" on which countries should coordinate to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Such tools include investing in sustainable infrastructure and new technologies to promote decarbonization and clean energy, "including the rationalisation and phasing-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and, if appropriate, the use of carbon pricing mechanisms and incentives, while providing targeted support for the poorest and the most vulnerable," said the communique from the financial leaders of the world's 20 major economies.

The statement was issued just days before the European Union was scheduled to unveil a controversial carbon-adjustment border tax on goods from countries with high carbon emissions.

"It is the first time in a G20 communique you could have these two words 'carbon pricing' being introduced as a solution for the fight against climate change," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters. "We have been pushing very hard to have these two words ... introduced into a G20 communique."

Those efforts met strong U.S. resistance for most of Trump's presidency, during which the United States quickly withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.

At a summit in Saudi Arabia in 2020, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin agreed to a G20 reference to climate change, but not as a downside risk to global growth. Instead, it was included in a reference to the Financial Stability Board's work examining the implications of climate change for financial stability.

The carbon pricing mention on Saturday marks the influence of the Biden administration, which immediately rejoined the Paris agreement in January and has set out ambitious carbon reduction targets and clean energy and transportation investment plans.

But while supporting emissions reductions, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Friday for better international coordination on carbon-cutting policies to avoid trade frictions.

The EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) would impose levies on the carbon content of imported goods in an effort to discourage "carbon leakage," the transfer of production to countries with less onerous emission restrictions. Critics of the measure worry that it could become another trade barrier without reducing emissions.

(Reporting by David Lawder Editing by Paul Simao)

 

Ronald Sanders | CARICOM commands wide trust in Haiti’s crisis


Published:Sunday | July 11, 2021 | 

People try to recover usable material from a burned-out car during a protest a day after the murder of President Jovenel Moïse in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
People try to recover usable material from a burned-out car during a protest a day after the murder of President Jovenel Moïse in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
 
 

Haiti was in a constitutional and political crisis before the assassination of its President Jovenel Moïse in the early hours of the morning of July 7. That crisis has worsened. It is now explosive unless representatives of the main political parties collectively agree on an interim, broad-based government to prepare the country for presidential, legislative, and municipal elections due to be held in September.

Fuel was poured on the fire of the crisis by Claude Joseph, who has declared himself as prime minister. There is no legal or other basis for Joseph’s action. He was appointed ‘interim Prime Minister’ by Moïse for 30 days in May. The appointment was renewed for another 30 days, until July 5 when Moïse published a decree, appointing Ariel Henry as the new prime minister with power to form a government, including representatives of opposition parties and civil society.

Joseph acknowledged the appointment of Henry by publicly congratulating him and departing the official office and residence. Now, there is a sudden about turn.

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

In the meantime, in an interview with Le Nouvelliste, a daily newspaper printed in Haiti, Mr Henry insisted that he, and not Mr Joseph, is the prime minister. At best, in this turbulent situation, it is Ariel Henry who should be responsible for governmental affairs while he works swiftly on establishing a broad-based interim and national government.

The international community should not delude itself that anything but an interim government, comprised of political parties and civil society, will be acceptable to the Haitian people. If a few powerful governments attempt to support a power grab and not a broad-based interim government, they will condemn Haiti to worse unrest than has been the case in recent years.

It should be recalled that Moïse had been running Haiti by decree since January 2020. There is no national assembly, and the normal institutions of government are not functioning as required by the Constitution.

CARICOM Heads of Government were right when, at the conclusion of their regular meeting from July 4 to 6, they expressed their “grave concern over the untenable situation in Haiti which is in the throes of a protracted, political, constitutional and humanitarian crisis”. The leaders were almost prescient in stating that they were “particularly alarmed by the precipitous deterioration of security, calling into question the State’s ability to protect the people of the country”. Little did they know that the State had become unable even to protect the president of the country.

COMING WEEKS CRUCIAL

What happens in Haiti in the coming weeks will determine if the country is to be plunged into further chaos, or stability will be established.

Earlier this year when there were cries for an interim government in Haiti, including by top members of the US Congress, the US government, which has long exerted huge influence in Haiti’s politics, had indicated that it did not support the idea. It called, instead, for Moïse to abandon his ambition to hold a controversial referendum to change the country’s constitution as he saw fit, and to concentrate on holding the September elections.

However, when the presidency of Michel Martelly had come to an end in 2016 with no successor because of the failure to hold elections, an interim government was installed by agreement of all political parties in the National Assembly. Having led the delegation of the Organization of American States that helped to broker that agreement, I can testify to its wide support. That agreement, which included Martelly, allowed for the formation of an interim government which oversaw a period of relative peace and stability, including elections that brought Moïse to office in 2017.

At that election, marred by Hurricane Matthew that devastated the country less than a month before, only 21 per cent of the electorate voted. Moïse secured 55.67 per cent of that small number of 21 per cent, accounting for his unpopularity from the start of his presidency when almost 80 per cent of the electorate did not vote.

For peace to prevail, the Haitian people must have confidence in the governance of the country over the next few months, including the impartiality and independence of the elections’ machinery which, at the moment, is populated by persons handpicked by Moïse and his party. If there is no change in this situation, it is most unlikely to be accepted by opposition parties and by civil society.

COME TOGETHER

The stakeholders in Haiti have to come together to agree on an interim government and re-establish, as best they can, some of the key institutions of government, especially the judiciary and electoral council. One of the critical decisions surrounds whether free and fair elections can possibly be held in September. On any objective analysis, the answer would be that such elections are not possible.

The country would accept an interim, national government delaying the election date until independent and transparent machinery is established. It is hardly likely that they will accept elections – two months from now in the hands of persons they did not elect and who were not approved in accordance with the country’s constitution.

The problem is that no country or organisation can proffer itself to help Haiti through this crisis. The Haitian government has to issue an invitation. In the absence of an interim government, no invitation will be issued to an organisation that commands wide trust from the Haitian stakeholders.

There are few organisations that command such trust amongst Haitians – CARICOM is probably the one that enjoys the widest confidence.

On July 6 – even before Moïse’s assassination – CARICOM leaders expressed their “support for dialogue between the contending parties” and repeated “the Community’s willingness to extend its good offices in attaining a Haitian-led peaceful resolution to the current impasse”. This would entail both facilitation and mediation.

The UN and other international organisations should provide CARICOM with the resources it would need to undertake this vital role. Haiti is a CARICOM country. What happens in it has consequences for the region.

- Sir Ronald Sanders is Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the US and the OAS. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and at Massey College in the University of Toronto. The views expressed are entirely his own. For responses and previous commentaries, log on to www.sirronaldsanders.com

Florida-based doctor arrested in connection with murder of Haitian president

Issued on: 12/07/2021 - 04:26
Haiti's Police General Director Leon Charles speaks during a press 
conference in Port-au Prince on July 11, 2021 Valerie Baeriswyl AFP

Text by :NEWS WIRES

The head of Haiti's national police announced Sunday that officers arrested a Haitian man accused of flying into the country on a private jet and working with the masterminds and alleged assassins behind the killing of President Jovenel Moïse.

Police Chief Léon Charles identified the suspect as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, without giving any personal information about him, though it appears he has been living in Florida. The chief also gave no information on the purported masterminds.

Charles said the alleged killers were protecting Sanon as the supposed president of Haiti, adding that officers found several items at his house, including a hat emblazoned with the logo of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four automobile license plates from the Dominican Republic, two cars and correspondence with unidentified people.

"We continue to make strides,” Charles said of police efforts to solve the brazen attack early Wednesday at Moïse’s private home that killed the president and seriously wounded his wife, Martine Moïse, who was flown to Miami and remains hospitalised.

Charles said a total of 26 Colombians are suspected in the killing of the president. Eighteen of them have been arrested, along with three Haitians. He said five of the suspects are still at large and at least three have been killed.


“They are dangerous individuals,” he said. “I'm talking commando, specialised commando.”

The chief said police are working with high-ranking Colombian officials to identify details of the alleged plot, including when the suspects left Colombia and who paid for their tickets.

Charles said Sanon was in contact with a firm that provides security for politicians and recruited the suspects, adding that the suspect flew into Haiti with them in early June. The men's initial mission was to protect Sanon, but they later received a new one: arrest the president, the chief said.

“The operation started from there,” he said, adding that an additional 22 suspects joined the group and that contact was made with Haitian citizens.

Charles said that after Moïse was killed, one of the suspects phoned Sanon, who then got in touch with two people believed to be the intellectual authors of the plot. He did not identify the masterminds or say if police knew who they are.

The chief said Haitian authorities obtained the information from interrogations and other parts of the investigation.

It was not immediately clear if Sanon had an attorney.

Sanon has lived in Florida, in Broward County and in Hillsborough County on the Gulf Coast. Records show he has also lived in Kansas City, Missouri. He filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and identifies himself as a doctor in a video on YouTube titled “Leadership for Haiti.”

In the video, he denounces the leaders of Haiti as corrupt, accusing them of stripping the country of its resources, saying that “they don’t care about the country, they don’t care about the people.”

He claims Haiti has uranium, oil and other resources that have been taken by government officials. “With me in power, you are going to have to tell me: ’What are you doing with my uranium? What are you doing with the oil that we have in the country? What are you going to do with the gold?’”

He also added: “This is a country with resources. Nine million people can’t be in poverty when we have so much resources in the country. It’s impossible. ... The world has to stop doing what they are doing right now. We can’t take it anymore. We need new leadership that will change the way of life.”

The announcement of Sanon's arrest was made hours after hundreds of Haitians sought solace in prayer at early Sunday church services as a political power struggle threatened to further destabilize their fragile country.

Roman Catholic and Protestant church leaders asked for calm and told people to remain strong as anxiety about the future grew, with authorities providing no answers or theories about who masterminded the killing by a group of gunmen early Wednesday at the president's home.

Martine Moïse, the president's wife, was critically injured and was transported to Miami for treatment.

“Facing this situation, we will not be discouraged... You must stay and fight for peace,” Father Edwine Sainte-Louis said during a sermon broadcast on TV that included a small picture of Moïse with a banner that read: “Haiti will remember you.”

Prosecutors have requested that high-profile politicians including presidential candidate Reginald Boulos and former Haitian Senate President Youri Latortue meet officials for questioning as the investigation continues.

Authorities also said they plan to interview at least two members of Moïse’s security detail.

Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph is currently leading Haiti with the help of the police and military, but he faces mounting challenges to his power.

Ariel Henry, whom Moïse designated as prime minister a day before he was killed, has said he believes he is the rightful prime minister, a claim also backed by a group of legislators who are members of Moïse's Tet Kale party.

That group also supports Joseph Lambert, head of Haiti’s dismantled Senate, as the country’s provisional president.

Haiti, a country of more than 11 million people, currently has only 10 elected officials after it failed to hold parliamentary elections, leading Moïse to rule by decree for more than a year until his death.

While the streets were calm on Sunday, government officials worry about what lies ahead and have requested U.S. and U.N. military assistance.

“We still believe there is a path for chaos to happen,” Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press.

Pentagon chief spokesman John Kirby said on Fox News Sunday that the Pentagon is analyzing the request to send troops to Haiti and that no decisions have been made.

He said a team, largely comprising agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, were heading down to Haiti “right now" to help with the investigation of the assassination.

‘’I think that’s really where are our energies are best applied right now, in helping them get their arms around investigating this incident and figuring out who’s culpable, who’s responsible and how best to hold them accountable going forward,’’ Kirby said.

The United Nations has been involved in Haiti on and off since 1990. The last U.N. peacekeeping mission arrived in 2004 and all military peacekeepers left the country in 2017.

But a stabilisation group stayed behind to train national police, help the government strengthen judicial and legal institutions and monitor human rights.

That mission ended in 2019 and was replaced by a political mission headed by an American diplomat, Helen La Lime.

In addition to helping normalise the country, the U.N. peacekeeping force played an important role after a devastating 2010 earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people and after Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

But U.N. troops from Nepal are widely blamed for inadvertently introducing cholera, which has afflicted over 800,000 people and killed more than 9,000 people since 2010.

Some troops also have been implicated in sexual abuse, including of hungry young children.

Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert and Duke University professor, said questions over Moïse’s assassination could remain unanswered for a long time.

“There are so many potential players who could be behind it,” he said, adding that the political strength of Pierre, the interim prime minister, is an open question. “There is going to be some jockeying for positions of power. That is one big worry.”

In Port-au-Prince, resident Fritz Destin welcomed a priest's sermon urging people not to be discouraged.

“The country needs a lot of prayers,” he said. “The violence makes life a little uncertain.''

(AP)

Haitian police arrest assassination suspect with 'political' aim


Issued on: 12/07/2021 - 


Port-au-Prince (AFP)

Haitian police announced Sunday they had arrested a Haitian national "who had political objectives" in recruiting the gunmen who assassinated President Jovenel Moise last week.

"This is an individual who entered Haiti on a private plane with political objectives," said Leon Charles, head of the Haitian National Police.

Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, who is of Haitian nationality, arrived in the island nation in June accompanied by several Colombians, according to details provided at a press conference.

Several Haitian ministers were also at the conference.

"The mission then changed," Charles said, explaining that the intent had originally been to arrest Moise, and the operation was mounted from within the country.

"Twenty-two other individuals entered Haiti," Charles said.

Eighteen Colombian citizens have been arrested since Wednesday. By interrogating them, the Haitian police learned that Sanon had recruited 26 team members via a Florida-based Venezuelan security company named CTU.

"When we, the police, blocked the progress of these bandits after they committed their crime, the first person that one of the assailants called was Charles Emmanuel Sanon.

"He contacted two other people that we consider to be the masterminds of the assassination of President Jovenel Moise," Charles said, without disclosing the identity of the two other suspects.

Members of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), State Department, Justice Department, National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security arrived Sunday in Haiti and met with the director general of police.

According to Haitian authorities, the 28-member hit squad burst into Moise's family home Tuesday night and opened fire on him and his wife, Martine.#photo1

The president was killed and his wife gravely injured. She was airlifted to a Miami hospital for treatment.

Moise's assassination has plunged already troubled Haiti -- the poorest country in the Americas -- into chaos.

Amid deep uncertainty over its political future, the international community has called on the impoverished Caribbean country to go ahead with presidential and legislative elections slated for later this year.

The US delegation met Sunday with the main actors in Haiti's government.

"I met with the US delegation and together we welcomed the resolution of the Senate that chose me as interim president of the Republic," Joseph Lambert, president of the Haitian Senate, tweeted Sunday evening.

The delegation also met with interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who says he is still in charge.

No police officers were injured during the operations to arrest the Colombian alleged mercenaries, three of whom were killed in the process.

© 2021 AFP
Doubts raised about who was behind the assassination of Haiti’s president

Police claims that Jovenel Moïse was killed by a mainly Colombian hit squad thrown into doubt

Haitians gather at the US embassy in hopes of visas amid fear and uncertainty following the assassination of the country’s president. Photograph: Orlando Barría/EPA

Tom Phillips , Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá and Jean Daniel Delone in Port-au-Prince
Sat 10 Jul 2021 14.08 BST

Questions have been raised over Haiti’s official narrative for the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse, who was gunned down at his mansion in Port-au-Prince last Wednesday.

Haitian police and the politicians who stepped into the political vacuum created by Moïse’s killing have claimed he was shot at about 1am by members of a predominantly Colombian hit squad who had stormed the president’s hillside residence. “Foreigners came to our country to kill the president,” police chief Léon Charles alleged after the shooting.


Haiti requests US troops to protect infrastructure after assassination


However, opposition politicians and media reports in Haiti and Colombia are now casting doubt on that version, as uncertainty grips the Caribbean country and the streets of the capital remain eerily quiet amid fears Haiti is lurching into a new phase of political and social upheaval.

On Friday, Steven Benoit, a prominent opposition politician and former senator, told the local radio station Magik9: “The president was assassinated by his own guards, not by the Colombians.”

A report in the Colombian magazine Semana, citing an anonymous source, suggested the former Colombian soldiers had travelled to Haiti after being hired to protect Moïse, who had reputedly been receiving death threats, rather than kill him.

Further adding to the mystery, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo claimed a source had told it that security footage from the presidential compound showed the Colombian operatives arriving there at between 2.30 and 2.40am on Wednesday. “That means they arrived one and a half hours after the crime against the president,” the source was quoted as saying.

Earlier on Friday Colombian authorities named 13 of the alleged Colombian mercenaries whom Haitian security officials have captured and claim were involved. They included Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, a former member of an elite unit of the Colombian army called the urban counter-terrorism special forces group, which specialises in handling hostage standoffs and the protection of VIPs.

Grosso, 41, is alleged to have arrived in Haiti with 10 former soldiers on 6 June after travelling through the resort town of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. A second group of ex-soldiers arrived in Haiti about a month earlier via Panama.

Haiti’s police chief told journalists 15 Colombians had been arrested in the aftermath of the president’s killing as well as two US citizens of Haitian descent, who have been named as 35-year-old James Solages and 55-year-old Joseph Vincent. Three Colombians were killed while eight suspects remained at large, Charles said, adding: “We urge citizens not to take justice into their own hands.”



Haiti: crowds protest after arrest of Jovenel Moïse assassination suspects – video

The presence of such a large number of foreigners among the Haitian leader’s alleged killers has shocked many, particularly in Haiti itself. But Colombian guns-for-hire have been turning up in war zones around the world, including Yemen, Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, for years. Many were once trained by US soldiers and, having spent years battling insurgent groups or drug traffickers within Colombia, go on to find work with US-based private military contractors.

“After so many years of warfare, Colombia just has a surplus of people who are trained in lethal tactics,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defence oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a thinktank. “Many of them have been hired by private firms, often in the Middle East, where they make a lot more money than they did in Colombia’s armed forces. Others have ended up being hired guns for narco-traffickers and landowners, as paramilitaries. And now, for whoever planned this operation, in Haiti.”

A headline in El Tiempo on Friday said: “Colombian mercenaries: trained, cheap and available.”

The wife of one of the arrested Colombians told local radio that her husband, Francisco Eladio Uribe, had been hired by an agency to travel to the Dominican Republic to provide security to wealthy families but had not been given specific details of his mission. “He was a very good soldier, husband and partner,” she said, admitting, however, that her spouse had been investigated for his role in the forcible disappearance and murder of civilians, who were later passed off as guerrillas to inflate combat kills and receive bonuses.

Conflicting claims over the president’s assassination and controversial calls from Haiti’s elections minister, Mathias Pierre, for US military intervention to protect key infrastructure have left many of Haiti’s 11 million citizens suspicious and on edge.


‘It’s shocking’: Haiti struggles to piece together story of president’s murder

Paul Raymond, a 41-year-old schoolteacher from Port-au-Prince, said he was convinced the president had been betrayed by members of his own security team, who have reportedly been summoned to explain why they failed to protect him. “This was planned by people who know him and people who know the house,” Raymond claimed, voicing bewilderment that none of Moïse’s bodyguards were reportedly injured during the assault. “Not even his dogs!” Raymond added.

Alfredo Antoine, a former congressman, said he suspected the murder was the work of powerful Haitian oligarchs. “They killed him because they didn’t want their interests [harmed],” he claimed.

Jake Johnston, a Haiti specialist from the Center for Economic and Policy Research thinktank, said sending US troops was not the solution to the political upheaval. “To think that foreign intervention is a solution to this is mind-boggling,” said Johnson, pointing to a centuries-long history of foreign meddling in Haiti, including an almost two-decade US occupation that followed the 1915 assassination of its president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.

“The last intervention of the United Nations brought cholera and killed thousands of people,” said Kinsley Jean, a youth leader and political activist. “This is not what we need right now.”