Greenhouse Gas Smuggling? It's A Thing

   There's now a global treaty to ban HFCs, a 
chemical for air conditioners and refrigerators
because they are extremely potent greenhouse
gases. But illegal smuggling of this gas
is a thing, and a subject of crackdowns

 We've all heard of smuggling migrants, drugs, contraband, what have you across the U.S./Mexican border.  

But greenhouse gases?

It's a thing. Who knew?

The U.S. Justice Department tells us Michael Hart, 58, of San Diego has become the first person prosecuted under a 2020 federal law aimed at phasing out a terribly potent greenhouse gas. 

Prosecutors said Hart purchased this stuff in Mexico,  hit it under a tarp and tools in his truck, then sold the gases online at places like Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp.   

No, Hart wasn't somehow selling carbon dioxide or methane, which hardly anybody would want to buy anyway. 

It was stuff called hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs which are used big time in air conditioning and refrigeration. Or at least they were until recently, when it became clear this gas was worsening climate change. 

THE BACKGROUND

Back in the day, another chemical, chlorofluorocarbon, or CFCs were used in air conditioning and refrigeration and stuff like that.  But CFS were found to be wrecking the ozone layer, especially above the South Pole. 

That put humans at higher risk of illnesses like skin cancer and cataracts, and also messed with the ecosystem. So, in the late 1980s, in a rare model of global cooperation, the Montreal Protocol was enacted, which banned the worldwide use of CFS.

The Montreal Protocol worked: The Ozone Layer has been repairing itself ever since this international treaty went into effect. 

We still needed air conditioning and refrigeration and such, so it was on to the HFCs, which were widely used in the 1980s and 1990s.

But oops! HFCs turn out to be an incredibly potent greenhouse gas.  It's 1,000 times more effective at trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere than that old stuff that was destroying the Ozone Layer. Also about 1,000 times worse than carbon dioxide for doing the same thing. 

So the United States banned HFCs and signed on to an amended to the international Montreal Protocol, called the Kigali Amendment. 

Getting rid of HFCs is another rare moment of agreement. Business interests like it because they feel it will make the United States more competitive in a global economy. (We're manufacturing alternatives to HFCs)  Environmentalists like the ban on this stuff because, well, climate change. 

There's always holdouts, though, which brings us back to the smuggling. 

The United Nations Environment Program says an illicit trade in HFCs spans the globe, as I guess there's still a lot of demand to repair existing refrigerators and air conditioners using this gas.  The European Union over the years has seized hundreds of metric tons of HFCs, Chemical and Engineering News reported back in 2021.

Organized crime groups do most of the smuggling because HFCs are often more profitable than illicit drugs.

Of course, the U.S. Justice Department's prosecution of a HFC smuggler is welcome and I hope for more such actions.  But the problem probably won't fade away until appliances and machinery using HFCs wear out to the point they have to be replaced.

Those replacements will mostly use safer substances that don't add much added risk to the climate. 

Until I suppose they find something wrong with the new stuff, too.