State Department Plans to Tap Montreal Protocol for Urgent Climate Duty

The U.S. State Department is working feverishly on a proposed amendment to the Montreal Protocol that would tap the highly successful international treaty for urgent climate duty.

Facing a May 4 deadline, State Department officials are meeting with their counterparts from across the administration this afternoon at the White House, and there is high expectation that they will secure the approval they need to go forward.

The goal is to use the Montreal mechanisms to phase out a class of man-made "super greenhouse gases" that have a global warming potential many thousands of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2. They are now used in small amounts, but their proliferation in coming decades is projected to grow astronomically.

Left unchecked, these gases – hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs – would add up to 25 times the current total U.S. emissions to the global burden by 2040, largely because of their use in ever greater numbers of automobile air conditioners and refrigerators in the developing world. They could effectively negate reductions in CO2 currently being contemplated.

Over the 20 years of its existence, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has tackled more than 90 similar gases, reducing their use by 97% globally, and policymakers believe it offers the best avenue for immediately phasing out these super GHGs.

State is collaborating with the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to beat the amendment deadline. With an administration only 100 days old, many unfilled positions within it, and the need for swift interagency cooperation, the effort to get government-wide agreement on the amendment has been challenging.

"The United States is fully engaged and ready to lead and determined to make up for lost time, both at home and abroad," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared this week before a meeting of the major polluting economies of the world.

"The president and his entire administration are committed to addressing this issue [climate change], and we will act."

The first chance the State Department will have to make good on the encouraging rhetoric is by successfully introducing the amendment by the May 4 deadline.

The amendment has the support of Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, who are leading leading the charge on climate legislation in Congress. In an April 3 letter addressed to the president, they wrote:

"We believe there are compelling reasons to take the approach that has worked so well and amend the Montreal Protocol to include a phase down a HFCs. ... The Montreal Protocol framework has parties and staff with the technical expertise to phase-down HFCs, effective mechanisms for technology transfer, and a Multilateral Fund to assist developing countries with their phase-downs."

HFCs represent an emergency within the climate emergency, and there is growing unanimity in Washington to let the Montreal Protocol do what it already does best: regulate, phase out and destroy specialized gases like HFCs used by the refrigeration and air-conditioning industries.

"You give the Montreal framework a job to do, and it does it," said Durwood Zaelke, the founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development who directs the organization's fast-action climate mitigation strategies.

"It's a miracle treaty, really. They've got trained units in every developing country, boots on the ground ready to go."

To mobilize this tested global mechanism, however, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol is needed, because the treaty's authority is restricted to ozone destroying substances. Greenhouse gases, including HFCs, currently fall into what insiders call the "Kyoto basket" – "Kyoto" being the governing international climate treaty whose future extension and efficacy is still far from certain.