Senate Approves Kigali Amendment 69-27 - Why The Environmental Bipartisanship? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[hatrack]

With broad bipartisan support, the Senate on Wednesday ratified by a 69-27 vote a global treaty that would sharply limit the emissions of super-pollutants that frequently leak from air conditioners and other types of refrigeration.
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The treaty — known as the Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol — compels countries to phase out the use of the potent hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are hundreds to thousands of times as powerful as carbon dioxide in speeding up climate change. The United States became the 137th country to ratify the amendment — and negotiators said the move would encourage the remaining nations to follow suit. The earlier Montreal Protocol clamped down on the production of ozone-depleting substances.

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Most U.S. industrial makers of air conditioning had already been pushing for the adoption of the treaty in the name of American jobs and competitiveness. “The Senate is signaling that Kigali counts for the jobs it will create; for global competitive advantage it creates; the additional exports that will result and it counts for U.S. technology preeminence,” Stephen Yurek, president of the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute said in a statement. He said that U.S. manufacturers already supply 75 percent of the world’s air-conditioning equipment and that global demand was “exploding.”

Still, many senators opposed the action. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said domestic legislation was adequate. “We did it here, we did it right. We don’t need to get entangled in another United Nations treaty,” he said. Barrasso also complained that “this treaty is especially bad because it doubles down on the practice of treating China as a developing country.” Like all other developing countries, under the treaty China gets a grace period before it must reduce HFCs.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/21/kigali-amendment-senate-super-pollutants-climate/

[jimfields33]

1. I think this was just procedural.

New refrigerators, new air conditioners, and any other appliance that needs Freon or other environmentally dangerous substances have already been replaced years ago. I don’t think this changes anything other than getting it on the books.