EPA is Coming For Your Air Conditioning

Gina McCarthy

Gina McCarthy is coming for your air conditioners

You’re not supposed to burn any coal or oil. You should probably avoid natural gas too, since it’s composed of hydrocarbons. Don’t drive your car unless it’s one of those battery powered ones that hasn’t caught fire yet. Get rid of those incandescent light bulbs all over your house. Clean all the steak and ground beef out of your fridge because cows are too flatulent. Have you checked all of these off your list? Good. Then you are finally doing your part and helping to end global warming.

Oh, we forgot one more thing… we’re going to need to confiscate your air conditioning. (Daily Caller)

EPA Chief Gina McCarthy wants the world to stop using hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in air conditioners and other consumers products as part of President Barack Obama’s plan to fight global warming.
McCarthy is so determined to make this happen, she’s taking the lead role at an ongoing United Nations summit to expand the current global treaty covering ozone-depleting substances. The EPA chief hopes that her agency’s recent HFC regulations will convince other countries to join the U.S. in limiting the chemicals…
“Solutions are here, and it’s time to amend the Montreal Protocol to reflect that,” McCarthy wrote, adding that phasing out HFCs would avert 0.5 degrees Celsius of global warming by the end of the century.

Maybe it’s just me, but the same moment you’re telling everyone how much warmer it’s getting might not be the best time to take away their air conditioner. But leaving that aside for the moment, I’m not sure why McCarthy is invoking the Montreal Protocol here since it was put in place to protect the ozone layer. Hydrofluorocarbons don’t impact the ozone layer to my knowledge. There have been plans in the works for a while to replace these substances in air conditioning but you’re looking at moving to ammonia or dimethyl ether or one of a few other options. That’s not only an expensive switch, but the cooling efficiency goes down.

Congress should immediately vote to outlaw the use of HFCs for human comfort by the Federal government. All such HFCs should be immediately reclaimed and replace with a nice, global warming, ozone safe refrigerant like, say ammonia. I would love to hear Obama's explanation as he veto's the legislation.

UPDATE: Oh, and no extra money should allocated for the change over. Take it out of current budget.