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The U.S. Ratifies A Climate Treaty | Earth Wise

October 14, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate voted 69-27 in favor of ratifying a key international climate agreement aimed at curbing global warming. The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which has been ratified by 137 other countries so far, ends the use of climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons that are 1,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere. This is the first international climate treaty that the U.S. has joined in 30 years.

The Kigali Agreement was established in Kigali, Rwanda in 2016 to phase out HFCs, which have been the replacements for CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in air conditioners and refrigerators. CFCs were found to be depleting the ozone layers that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. HFCs do not deplete the ozone layer, but they have been a significant contributor to global warming.

The U.S. ratification of the treaty is largely symbolic. The American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, passed by Congress in 2020, gave the EPA authority to regulate HFCs and the agency has already been doing so. However, the Senate action shows that the U.S. is back on the international climate bandwagon.

Failure to ratify the Kigali Amendment would have closed segments of the chemical and manufacturing industries to U.S. producers after 2023 because the Montreal Protocol prohibits trade with countries not party to it or its amendments.

Environmental advocates are hopeful that the U.S. can move forward on other climate actions. A next step would be to focus on methane, the second leading driver of climate change after carbon dioxide.

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Senate Votes to Ratify the Kigali Amendment, Joining 137 Nations in an Effort to Curb Global Warming

Photo, posted June 13, 2017, courtesy of UNIDO via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Ozone Recovery Back On Track | Earth Wise

March 15, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2019, we reported that new emissions of chlorofluorocarbons from eastern Asia were threatening the recovery of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. An unexpected spike in CFC emissions was threatening to undo the progress made under the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty under which every country in the world agreed to phase out the production and use of the ozone-eating chemicals by 2010.

In 2018, a team of scientists reported the spike in emissions of the particular formulation CFC-11 that began in 2013. By 2019, a second team reported that a significant portion of the emissions could be traced to the Shandong and Hebie provinces in China where there were small factories using the chemical to manufacture foam insulation used in refrigerators and buildings.

Recently, in two papers published in Nature, the same two research teams reported that the global annual emissions of CFC-11 into the atmosphere have declined sharply. They traced a substantial fraction of the global emission reductions to the very same regions of eastern China where they had previously reported the original spike.

The results are very encouraging. If CFC-11 emissions had continued to rise, or even just level off, there would have been real problems with ozone depletion. Two independent global monitoring networks – one operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one led by MIT called the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment – are doing a good job of detecting threats to the world’s protective ozone layer. However, the Chinese sources only accounted for about half of the CFC-11 entering the atmosphere. We still don’t know where the rest of it is coming from.

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Reductions in CFC-11 emissions put ozone recovery back on track

Return of an Old Threat

Photo, posted July 29, 2015, courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Climate-Friendlier Coolant

November 18, 2016 By WAMC WEB

Recently, negotiators from more than 170 countries reached a legally binding accord in Kigali, Rwanda to cut the use of hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs, which are chemical coolants used in air conditioners and refrigerators. HFCs are just a small percentage of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but they are supercharged greenhouse gases that have 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide.

Microgrids For The Powerless

November 26, 2015 By WAMC WEB

There are 1.3 billion people worldwide who don’t have access to electricity. These days, some of them have acquired hundred-dollar solar panels that produce about five watts of power. That allows them to power a couple of LED lamps in the evening and to charge a mobile phone. But that’s about all they can do with so little power.