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Post date: Oct 15, 2016 1:31:21 PM
Nations, Fighting Powerful Refrigerant That Warms Planet, Reach Landmark Deal
By CORAL DAVENPORT OCT. 15, 2016
Secretary of State John Kerry, who spoke on Friday to negotiators in Kigali, Rwanda, said that efforts to limit
the use of hydrofluorocarbons are “the biggest thing we can do in one giant swoop.”
Credit Cyril Ndegeya/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
KIGALI, Rwanda — Negotiators from more than 170 countries on Saturday reached a legally binding accord to counter climate change by cutting the worldwide use of a powerful planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.
The talks in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, have not drawn the same spotlight as the climate change accord forged in Paris last year. But the outcome could have an equal or even greater impact on efforts to slow the heating of the planet.
President Obama called the deal “an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis.”
Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to fellow negotiators in Kigali, said, “It is likely the single most important step we could take at this moment to limit the warming of our planet and limit the warming for generations to come.”
“It is,” Mr. Kerry added, “the biggest thing we can do in one giant swoop.”
While the Paris agreement included pledges by nearly every country to cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels that power vehicles, electric plants and factories, the new Kigali deal has a single target: chemical coolants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.
A version of this article appears in print on , on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Nations Target A Powerful Gas In Climate Pact.
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