I had to do a project on this in 8th grade during our climate change unit. What I found was actually very interesting.
Since I already wrote a paper on it I don't wanna repeat myself so imma just copy and paste it at the bottom if you wanna read the whole thing, or u can just read my bullet points:
- CFCs are also known as Chlorofluorocarbons, and they were banned in 1996 because they were progressively making a hole in the ozone layer
- Russia was supposed to also ban these, but the issue was that they had to pay off the workers, and they needed $50 million and they only have $14m
- Since the war with Ukraine, they haven't really been focused on that
- The Russian Mafia is also smuggling different CFCs into countries like the USA and Great Britain
- Operation Cool Breeze was set to stop these smugglers, and it's still going on to this day (I think)
Here's the whole paper I wrote with my sources:
Chlorofluorocarbons
CFCs (also known as chlorofluorocarbons) circulate through the troposphere for a while until they eventually get into the stratosphere, where they are broken down by UV rays and release chlorine particles, which interact with the ozone particles and are able to thin out and (as proven before) break a hole in the ozone layer (Fred Pearce). But CFCs are still greenhouse gases, and heat up the atmosphere just like all the others, too. Also, the ozone layer is very close to recovering, but that still doesn’t mean that CFCs should still be used and/or manufactured still.
There isn’t an exact way that CFCs are emitted, since it has been banned since 1996 (Halons in 1994) (AGU), but before they were banned, they were used for things such as refrigerants and spray paint and other foams. Now, most of the world uses hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). However, Russia ignored these deadlines and CFCs are still being produced and Russia is accounting for half of the world’s CFC emissions.
Russia is warming 2.5x faster than the rest of the world, and there have been permafrost meltings and huge forest fires to show for it. These permafrost meltings can also lead to an even bigger catastrophe, which is that when this permafrost melts, it will release more carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that it would’ve been safely trapping inside.
The reason that Russia is still producing CFC gases is because they didn’t have money to pay off the factory workers. They need $50 million to pay off the workers, but they only have gathered $36 million from the other countries, and before they get the $14 million, there’s not much they can do about that (Pearce). However, they can technically pay for it but all of their funding is going into the war. And if you think about it, if there wasn’t a war going on they will probably worry about this issue more, since it is significant and they should really be looking into it.
Another issue with CFCs in Russia is that the Russian mafia is actually getting involved with it, and is smuggling CFCs into different countries, such as Great Britain and America, which they are mostly targetting (Pearce). Great Britain has denied that they were taking in smuggled CFC gases, but it was later shown and proved that some CFC gases did, in fact, reach Great Britain. However, there are more CFCs reaching the US. Bootlegged CFCs are sold by the Russian mafia on the US black market since they are cheaper than recycled ones that are required by the law if you are using CFCs (Begley). However there was a FBI/CIA operation called Operation Cool Breeze (not to be confused with Project Cool Breeze, which is a project in Charleston where they’re giving free AC to senior citizens), which is where they are working on catching CFC smugglers. They’ve caught 8 as of the 2000’s, and their search is still continuing.
Smuggling CFCs started as early as 1996, since people could realize it was a way of making money. As a 1996 New York Times article stated, smuggling CFCs was actually more profitable than cocaine, and you could sell a $42 canister of Freon for as much as $550. And even though the government is still trying to continue Operation Cool Breeze to catch these CFC smugglers, it looks like that isn’t going to scare them, and they are going to keep smuggling these ozone-fearing gases until they get caught (justice.gov).
CFC gases have a really big international policy, which is that they are completely banned. The reason why is because they were not just bad for the atmosphere in the sole fact that they are greenhouse gases, but also because they have the ability to thin out and even make a hole in the ozone layer, which they have already done near the Antarctic. Almost every single country in the world has followed these policies, except Russia.
There aren’t many domestic policies in Russia because, as you know, they didn’t even follow the international one. This is also the reason why they don’t have many nonprofits about the issue or such. However, with all that said, that doesn’t mean that they’re not trying to keep manufacturing CFCs. Since there isn’t much to do with them in the first place, because HFCs exist and because they’re, y’know, banned worldwide, there isn’t much point in manufacturing them at all. Russia is technically trying to stop the production of CFCs, but because they are too poor of a country and (most importantly) because of other issues such as the war, they haven’t gotten to it yet (Pearce).
However, (mostly) the rest of the world has moved onto less disruptive HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), which don’t tease the ozone layer as much as its harmful alternative did. When you think about it, that’s really what everyone’s worried about when it comes to CFCs, so HFCs really can’t be that bad. Right?
Wrong. HFCs might not ruin the ozone layer, but instead they have another similar ability to CFCs, which is that they warm up the atmosphere up to tens of thousands times faster than CO2 (McMillan). The only reason why the atmosphere hasn’t been overtaken by HFC particles and the planet isn’t a thousand times hotter than it is right now is because HFCs aren’t as popular as CO2.
In order to stop this, we need to stop using greenhouse gases that end with -fluorocarbons as a whole. And partially Russia did say that they would do this by agreeing to the Montreal Protocal, which was a treaty that around 200 countries joined, and it was to phase out ozone-depleting greenhouse gases, such as CFCs (Wikipedia). Russia joined them, but then didn’t phase out their CFCs. So even though the Montreal Protocol is for a good cause and lots of countries joined it, its effects on Russia won’t be seen until they follow it for good.
Fred Pearce. “The Hole That Will Not Mend.” New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15520973-300-the-hole-that-will-not-mend/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.
Hurst, D. F., et al. “Emissions of Ozone‐depleting Substances in Russia during 2001.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, vol. 109, no. D14, July 2004, p. 2004JD004633. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1029/2004JD004633.
“Montreal Protocol.” Wikipedia, 30 Nov. 2024. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Montreal_Protocol&oldid=1260378776.
US EPA, OAR. Basic Ozone Layer Science. 5 June 2017, https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer-science.
Conley, Heather A., and Cyrus Newlin. Climate Change Will Reshape Russia. Jan. 2021. www.csis.org, https://www.csis.org/analysis/climate-change-will-reshape-russia.
“Russian Mafia to Dump Outlawed CFCs on UK.” The Independent, 20 July 1996, https://www.the-independent.com/news/business/russian-mafia-to-dump-outlawed-cfcs-on-uk-1329645.html.
Begley, Sharon. “Holes In The Ozone Treaty.” Newsweek, 24 Sept. 1995, https://www.newsweek.com/holes-ozone-treaty-182842.
Louise McMillan. “Taking the Heat out of Coolants – What You Need to Know about Hydrofluorocarbons.” Environmental Protection Authority, 27 Nov. 2023, https://www.epa.govt.nz/community-involvement/science-at-work/hfcs.
What Is the Concentration of CFCs in the Atmosphere, and How Much Do They Contribute to Global Warming? | MIT Climate Portal. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-concentration-cfcs-atmosphere-and-how-much-do-they-contribute-global-warming. Accessed 11 Dec. 2024.
#007: 01-09-97 - Nation-Wide Enforcement Initiative Snares Smugglers of Banned Refrigerant That Destroys Ozone Layer. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/1997/January97/007enr.htm.
McGrath, Morgan McFall-Johnsen, Jenny. “Greenhouse Gas Smuggling Was as Lucrative as Cocaine in the ’90s. It’s Back — and the US Government Is Cracking down with 2 New Arrests.” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/greenhouse-gas-black-market-smuggling-hfc-arrests-crackdown-global-warming-2024-3. Accessed 11 Dec. 2024.
