Free Republic

The Biden administration boasted in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report released Thursday about the unprecedented prosecution of a California man for “smuggling greenhouse gases” across the border from Mexico and selling them online. Michael Hart, 58, was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in September to charges related to transporting refrigerants into the US to peddle on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and other online vendors between June and December 2022. Biden’s EPA touted the crackdown on Hart, the first-ever person charged for climate change-related bootlegging of refrigerants — namely, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs) — without the agency’s approval, in its report. When...

On December 27, 2020, the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act of 2020 was enacted as section 103 in Division S, Innovation for the Environment, of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (H.R. 133 (116th): Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 [Including Coronavirus Stimulus & Relief]). The AIM Act authorizes EPA to address hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by providing new authorities in three main areas: to phase down the production and consumption of listed HFCs, manage these HFCs and their substitutes, and facilitate the transition to next-generation technologies through sector-based restrictions. Read the AIM Act (42 U.S. Code section 7675)

WASHINGTON — With energy legislation shelved in the United States and little hope for a global climate change agreement this year, some policy experts are proposing a novel approach to curbing global warming: including greenhouse gases under an existing and highly successful international treaty ratified more than 20 years ago. The treaty, the Montreal Protocol, was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals that were blowing a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. But as the signers of the protocol convened the 22nd annual meeting in Bangkok on Monday, negotiators are considering...