sorta
QuotePulling data from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's atmospheric monitoring network, Lei Hu from the University of Colorado Boulder and her colleagues demonstrated that from 2008 to 2014, the elimination of these substances had the equivalent climate impact of reducing CO2 emissions by 170 million tons per year. Projecting forward, the researchers found that the continued implementation of the Montreal Protocol and its amendments could shave some 500 million tons of CO2 off our carbon footprint annually by 2025, compared with 2005 emissions levels.
For context, 500 million tons of CO2 is roughly a quarter of what we need to cut to meet our Paris Climate Agreement target, of reducing emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025. It's also close to the annual US emissions from the entire agriculture sector.
There is a catch:
http://gizmodo.com/saving-the-earths-ozone-layer-went-even-better-than-exp-1797831572
It is nice to see positive results from banning CFCs. I have to wonder what would have happened if the science supporting the CFC ban came around 25 years later; would entrenched interest constantly sight the 2% of the studies that deny the ozone problem?
This might be a new study, but people have been saying for years that cutting CFCs has been the single most effective measure we've taken to reduce our climate footprint.
There were some huge advantages there:
- alternatives were available that were not significantly more expensive for the developed world. In India, the extra cost continues to be a barrier and as Indians install AC, they are installing the more-damaging systems. Probably one of the best spends anyone could make right now is to subsidize Indian AC industry so they could bump up to the more expensive systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/upshot/indias-air-conditioning-and-climate-change-quandary.html
- there are very few point sources for this. Basically, rather than having to control the habits of every company and every consumer across every economy in the world, you only had to control a handful of manufacturers and get them to spec their equipment to use less-damaging gasses.
As Upton Sinclair said
QuoteIt is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
And that's a key reason that climate is more politicized in the US than CFCs. If the Exxon and Koch Industries were multi-billion dollar CFC conglomerates, I think the CFC debate might have gone differently.