The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week issued a final rule to slash the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 40 percent by 2028 while decrying the chemical a "climate super-pollutant."The rule dovetails with earlier efforts under the 2020 American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act to reduce the production and consumption of these chemicals by 85 percent by 2036.
A hefty hidden tax on current air conditioners, paid through maintenance contractors, to save the planet from scorching hot temperatures, like we're having now, but which the news tells us every day is due to man-caused climate change.
"Service technicians say that replacing refrigerant lost from a leak now costs upwards of $800, about double what it did a year ago," Mr. Lieberman wrote. "Moreover, EPA’s HFC quotas tighten in the years ahead, so the ratchet will keep turning, surely causing homeowners’ bills to increase further still."
And while the environmental benefits of phasing out HFCs have become conventional wisdom, these, too, have been challenged.
"The U.S. HFC phasedown program, bolstered by domestic innovation to develop alternative chemicals and equipment, is paving the way for the United States to tackle climate change and strengthen global competitiveness," Joe Goffman, principal deputy assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, in a statement.
Read through that dude's title and tell me we don't have enough administrators.
Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Benjamin Zycher, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, penned a critical op-ed in the Washington Examiner when EPA first unveiled a proposal (pdf) to begin curbing HFCs back in 2021.
"The HFC phaseout makes no sense as part of a larger international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the pair wrote. They performed a calculation based on the EPA’s estimate that slashing HFCs in the United States would eliminate the equivalent of 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
About the same as Kerry's world travels, private or commercial jets, and/or private yachts.
"The 4.7-million-ton equivalent reduction would be 17 one-thousandths of 1 percent, the temperature effect of which would be undetectable," they argued.
"This phaseout has nothing to do with environmental protection and everything to do with classic Beltway rent-seeking by a special interest group. It should be rejected," they wrote.
Do I detect a pattern? Gas stoves? Internal combustion vehicles? Gas-fired power plants? Gates 'baby nuke' in Wyoming? Coal-fired anything?
