Protecting the environment with intelligence
Amid preparations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate talks in Bonn this week, the Montreal Protocol quietly announced a decision to fund China’s phase-out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), a move which will keep eight billion tonnes of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. To put that into perspective, eight billion [...]
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog describing how environmental laws are often poorly enforced and not accorded a high enough priority so it’s refreshing to now report on a shining example of effective enforcement – the work being done various US Government agencies in Miami to curb illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances [...]
LONDON: As the European Commission considers revisions to the F-Gas Regulation, the piece of legislation regulating hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a new report published today shows that HFCs can realistically be banned in most new cooling equipment in the European Union by 2020. Used as cooling agents in refrigeration and air-conditioning, and as blowing agents for foams [...]
A report examining the prospects and viability of an early phase-out of fluorinated greenhouse gases.
I spent last week in Canada attending one of the regular meetings of the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund (MLF), the body established to help developing countries meet their commitments under the global ozone treaty. The Montreal Protocol celebrates its 25th anniversary this September and the MLF’s Executive Committee meets two to three times a year, [...]
This week saw the death of one of the great scientific pioneers of modern environmentalism – F Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who, along with his student Mario Molina, identified the link between CFCs and ozone destruction and in doing so not only helped to alert the world to an environmental disaster but became [...]