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Nations, Fighting Powerful Refrigerant That Warms Planet, Reach Landmark Deal
- PaulHoule 10y agoFor three decades the U.S. has been the primary scofflaw on this issue. Both Greenpeace and the LaRouche organization agree that we should use propane as a refrigerant because it is (i) cheap, (ii) highly efficient, (iii) non-toxic, and (iv) is not an extreme global warming gas. So does everybody else, but in the U.S. we have long had this idea that the risk of fire is vastly greater than all of the other ways you can get killed. Thus kids get run over in the suburbs because they drive fast on wide streets designed to take the largest firefighting vehicles with ease. Thus we legislate that fabrics contain carcinogenic fire retardants, etc.
- tunap 10y agoThere are plenty of alternatives, but none are as financially rewarding(nor as efficient?) as the latest-greatest-soon-to-be-banned designer chemicals. Lucrative patent revenues, intervals of obsolescensed hardware & retooling/retraining/recertification is highly profitable = good for balance sheets & economic data sets. I find it telling that no chemicals are specified in the article, just the generic term "hydrofluorocarbons". Perhaps the warm fuzzy do-good feeling would be chilled by mentionng that the current approved(mandated) refrigerant R410A, the replacement to R-22, is already slated for replacement due to it's adverse effects to the environment.