The US is fumbling the UN plastics treaty

Nov. 25 marks the beginning of the last meeting that the United Nations Environment Programme has scheduled to negotiate a plastic pollution treaty. The goal is to create a legally binding agreement to rein in the over 350 million metric tons of plastic waste the world creates per year. Negotiations are supposed to wrap up this year and end with a finished treaty. But from what happened at prior meetings , this outcome is iffy. The latest draft of the treaty still has over 3,000 notes requesting changes. It’s also behind schedule—the draft should have been at this stage by the second or third meeting in the series. The November plastics treaty meeting, in Busan, South Korea , is the fifth. And then came the US presidential election. The reelection of Donald J. Trump, whose policies on fossil fuels and deregulation have alarmed environmentalists, suggests that the US will not