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. 

Biden's Climate Plan Steers The U.S. Onto A New Course

President Joe Biden has sweeping plans to tackle 
climate change. The proof will be in the pudding. Let's
see, and hope, that most of his policy
package goes forward.

Well, he's taking a stab at it.   

President Joe Biden held "climate day" Wednesday in which he unveiled plans to sharply redirect how this nation manages its energy resources in the age of climate change. 

As Biden has been doing since he took office a week ago, he took a number of executive orders to mostly undo the executive actions of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

In doing so, though, Biden is seeking to seriously change how energy is created and used across the broad economy. The plan has a major jobs component, and also includes dealing with the link between climate and social justice. 

Fossil fuels are taking a clear hit, while renewables win big with Biden's plans.  As the Associated Press reports, the president, for starters, is pausing oil and gas leasing on federal land, and targeting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. 

Under his plan, Biden would double the nation's offshore wind energy, and the federal vehicle fleet would be all-electric.  

Overall, Biden's goal is to eliminate pollution from fossil fuel from power plants by 2035 and from the entire U.S. economy by 2050.

In that regard, the wind is at Biden's back, so to speak.  For fans of the free market, the economy is headed in that direction anyway, driven by changing buying patterns in industry and among consumers. 

The solar and wind energy industry has mostly been booming, oil and gas have been "meh" at best. (Oil and gas business is expected to rebound after Covid and its attendant recession fade, but this industry is not expected to grow above pre-Covid levels.

And coal is basically fading away. 

Pretty much everybody assumes Biden is about to be hit with political blowback, as his plans don't exactly help the oil, gas and coal industry. 

However, the risks from climate change on the whole is bigger than fossil fuel companies, and Biden insists his climate-friendly moves are a job maker, not a job killer.

"When I think of climate change and the answers to it, I think of jobs.....We're going to put people to work. We're not going to lose jobs. These aren't pie-in-thy-sky dreams. These are concrete actionable solutions. And we know how to do this," Biden said. 

I can see how that might come true. The fact of the matter, though, is some people in the fossil fuel industry will need to find other lines of work.  That might not be too difficult, especially if we enter into a "Roaring 20s" economy once the pandemic finally fades. 

Still, Republicans will try to make hay out of the likely job losses in fossil fuel industry. They will probably say that Biden is killing "real American jobs" and only suggesting the clean energy jobs are lame. Appealing to their base, maybe they'll hint these new jobs are not "manly" perhaps. 

A more real problem is that regions that have a lot of fossil fuel employment might not recover easily as the industry fades, but then other parts of the United States will do better. 

Generally speaking, most of the fossil fuel industry jobs are in "red" states, so this could further exacerbate our terrible political divide.

When I say that, I'm not minimizing the climate risk at all. Biden does need to combat climate change shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world. 

After all, the costs are too high. Even if you want to think America First, we already are first, at least in 2020, for weather disasters, most of which were made worse by climate change.

The world suffered 50 weather related disasters each costing $1 billion in 2020, according to Aon an insurer broker. Of those, at least 22 of them were in the United States - 27 if you go by Aon's count. 

These are the highest numbers for billion dollar disasters on record. And yes, all the figures are adjusted for inflation. 

There has been and always will be huge weather disasters, with or without climate change. But the trend is clearly going up, and that's partly due to climate change. 

Biden's bet is the cost of investing in climate change mitigation is worth the investment to prevent some future deaths and destruction. Climate change is sort of Biden's Covid fight, writ large. 

For more details on the Biden Administration's climate plan, click here.