Climate negotiations banning other greenhouse gases by Eben Harrell | November 29, 2010 | + Tweet As the next round of international climate change negotiations begin in Cancun tomorrow, optimism is low that the talks will lead to a major breakthrough among countries trying to reduce emissions. But on the eve of the summit, environmentalists applauded the initiative of a consortium of nearly 400 private companies to ban hydrofluorocarbons, another contributor to global warming, in their refrigeration.
Attention during climate negotiations tends to focus on carbon dioxide. But there are other short-lived gases that are even more powerful, though there are fewer of them. Hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are currently used by many companies for refrigeration. The warming effect of these HFCs is at least 1,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. (Click here to read preview in time for Cancun.)
A multi-company group that signed a pledge to ban HFCs was co-chaired by Unilever and Tesco and includes Coca-Cola, Carrefour, Ahold, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, General Mills, L’Oréal, Wal-Mart, and others, according to a press release announcing the agreement by Greenpeace. In the press release, Greenpeace, which has been pressuring against HFCs for nearly two decades, declared it hoped participating companies "will be well on the way to full implementation by 2015." Greenpeace also declared that policymakers in Mexico should ban HFCs and agree on incentive measures to encourage natural refrigeration solutions.
The switch from HFCs to substitutes that are 100 times less potent as climate warmers could offset almost a decade’s worth of expected increase in warming due to the rise in carbon dioxide emissions, according to an op-ed in The New York Times by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and David G. Victor, professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
"This is an extremely important first step, and will pave the way for big changes across the industry," said Amy Larkin, Director of Solutions at Greenpeace. "Now, national and international policymakers must match the goals of these corporations by banning HFCs and transitioning to cost-effective and easy-to-implement climate-friendly alternatives."
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