Getting a plastic treaty right will take time
The UN Chemical Weapons Convention (COP) Meeting – Planning a Nuclear Nuclear Nuclear Collider in Seoul, South Korea, April 13-24, 2002
Negotiators in Busan, South Korea, were unable to thrash out a United Nations treaty to drastically cut plastic pollution. One fundamental difference blocked agreement: some nations aim to reduce production of non-essential plastics; others, particularly those who make petrochemicals, prefer to focus on waste management. Participants are expected to reconvene next year to try again. The United Kingdom and many other European and African countries pushed for a pledge to reduce production that was legally binding, but some argue they should not have done so.
The outcome of the meeting was predictable. International agreements can take years to finalize. This is particularly true of complex accords that involve the regulation of individual chemicals and chemical products. Talks on the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention took more than a decade, from start to finish, before the agreement opened for signatures in 1993.
The makings of a text for a plastics treaty are now in place and negotiators will reconvene within a year to continue talks. Although delegates’ frustrations are justified, the commitment to continuing the discussions and the ambition of most participating countries to secure a strong agreement are positive, says Samuel Winton, a researcher at the Global Plastics Policy Centre at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who is studying the negotiations as they unfold.
It has been hard for scientists to access talks on the treaty. It’s partly due to the lack of meeting rooms, which can’t accommodate the many accredited observers allowed to attend the talks. Another reason, according to researchers at the Centre for Science and Environment, a think tank in New Delhi, is that some decisions were made in closed groups of countries that did not permit observers to attend. It is not a good development because it endangers trust in what should be transparent.
It will include a list of named products to be regulated. Chemical and products will be exempt from the treaty if certain criteria are met, but this is yet to be defined.
The treaty will have some kind of funding attached. Who will make a contribution, what the fund should be used for and what it is intended to do remain to be agreed. Some of these questions might end up being parked until after the treaty text has been finalized and the first conference of the parties (or COP meeting) is held. We know from COP meetings on other topics that it is extremely difficult for participants to reach an agreement when there are too many issues in contention.
Homo erectus, I presume? Footprints show ancient hominins crossed paths in a lake shore in Kenya
This is an area in which a role for scientists will be crucial, both to help define terms and to do research to bridge any knowledge gaps.
Some 1.5 million years ago, two ancient hominin species crossed paths on a lake shore in Kenya. Their footprints in the mud were frozen in time and lay undiscovered until 2021. The impressions are thought to be from Homo erectus, a forebear of modern humans and the more distant relative of Paranthropus boisei. The two individuals walked through the lake area within hours or days of each other — leaving the first direct record of different archaic hominin species coexisting in the same place.
Political deal-making has pressed pause on Norway’s controversial plan to allow seabed mining for valuable minerals. SV, a small environmentalist party, demanded the move in return for its support of the governing party’s budget. The WWF Norway is in a case with the government. Proponents say deep-sea mining is vital to power the green transition and maintain energy security, while opponents claim that it will ruin the environment.
Source: Daily briefing: Homo erectus, I presume? Footprints show ancient hominins crossed paths
Patchen Barss: A New Perspective on Penrose’s Mathematician and the Origins of Cosmic Acceleration
Patchen Barss had extraordinary access to the personal life of Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist who helped to establish the theory of black holes. Nature reporter Davide Castelvecchi wrote that the book depicts the mathematician as in equal parts influential and contentious. The book was written to discuss the cost of genius and how others often do the same.
Criminal groups in mexico are recruiting chemistry students for the purpose of making the drug fentanyl. Crackdowns on the trade in precursors from China have put the gangs under pressure, and they hope to develop the ability to produce these raw materials in-house. Students enroll in chemistry classes to gain skills related to the illegal trade. A chemist anonymous says that students ask him when they can learn how to synthesise pharmaceutical drugs.
How do you solve a problem like dark matter? Or explain why the Universe is built the way it is? Physicists have always been told to smash two particles together as hard as they can. But the current generation of massive colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, haven’t produced the flood of new particles some scientists were expecting. There is a new variant of the collider theme which uses particles that have never been smashed together before.
