Man Charged With Smuggling Greenhouse Gases Into US (cnn.com) 94
In a first-of-its-kind prosecution, a California man was arrested and charged Monday with allegedly smuggling potent, greenhouse gases from Mexico. From a report: Michael Hart, a 58-year-old man from San Diego, pleaded not guilty to smuggling hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs -- commonly used in air conditioning and refrigeration -- and selling them for profit, in a federal court hearing Monday. According to the indictment, Hart allegedly purchased the HFCs in Mexico and smuggled them into the US in the back of his truck, concealed under a tarp and tools. He is then alleged to have sold them for a profit on sites including Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp. [...] Hart has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges including conspiracy, importation contrary to law and sale of merchandise imported contrary to law. The charges carry potential prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years.
HFCs, which are also used in building insulation, fire extinguishing systems and aerosols, are banned from import into the US without permission from the Environmental Protection Agency. These greenhouse gases are short-lived in the atmosphere," but powerful -- some are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near-term. "The illegal smuggling of hydrofluorocarbons, a highly potent greenhouse gas, undermines international efforts to combat climate change," said David M. Uhlmann, the assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "Anyone who seeks to profit from illegal actions that worsen climate change must be held accountable," he added. "Today is a significant milestone for our country," said US Attorney Tara McGrath in a statement. "This is the first time the Department of Justice is prosecuting someone for illegally importing greenhouse gases, and it will not be the last."
HFCs, which are also used in building insulation, fire extinguishing systems and aerosols, are banned from import into the US without permission from the Environmental Protection Agency. These greenhouse gases are short-lived in the atmosphere," but powerful -- some are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near-term. "The illegal smuggling of hydrofluorocarbons, a highly potent greenhouse gas, undermines international efforts to combat climate change," said David M. Uhlmann, the assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "Anyone who seeks to profit from illegal actions that worsen climate change must be held accountable," he added. "Today is a significant milestone for our country," said US Attorney Tara McGrath in a statement. "This is the first time the Department of Justice is prosecuting someone for illegally importing greenhouse gases, and it will not be the last."
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Man Charged With Smuggling Greenhouse Gases Into US"
What a ridiculous statement. Along those likes, a HUMAN is greenhouse gases, they expel CO2, a greenhouse gas, like all animals. Natural gas is a greenhouse gas. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. He smuggled CFC's, probably to sell for AC use by people who may not have the resources to replace their entire system. "Hart posted the refrigerants for sale on OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace and other sites, and sold them for a profit." That particular refrigerant is not legal. And yeah, he didn't do it for free.
So, man charged with smuggling an illegal product into the country. Like happens countless thousands of times with any number of illegal products, and also legal products that are just not legal to import or smuggle in without permission/taxes/etc.
Yawn.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
So presumably, whenever there's a news report about someone caught "smuggling drugs" into this country, you make a similar post about how silly the article is because aspirin is also a drug?
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Only if they titled it so ridiculously.
Usually such reports would say "Man charged with smuggling cocaine into US" it wouldn't be "Man charged with smuggling death and dispair into US" or the reverse, "Man charged with smuggling party good times into US"
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It's OK to smuggle drugs into California, pretty soon you'll be sued if you try to smuggle gasoline into the state although.
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There was a huge bust in my neighborhood because they were growing pot but only paying taxes on a fraction of it. Cops with black body armor and two helicopters flying around my neighborhood for several hours. It was nuts! And I made sure to check that I had paid this season's installment of my property taxes.
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The headline is dumb because the dude wasn't smuggling something that was intended to be used as GHGs, he was smuggling refrigerants that happen to be GHGs. In your analogy, it would be like a headline reading "Man arrested after smuggling South American bioproducts into US".
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Don't ruin it for them. They just want to mod me down without even comprehending the point I was making. Even the followup post I made which explained it even more clearly.
Oh well. Gotta push that narrative.
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I'll agree the headline is a bit sensational (I'm shocked!). But it's not entirely wrong, because the whole reason HFCs are becoming banned substances in the US [npr.org] is because they are potent GHGs and need to be eliminated. They aren't banned because they're useless (as refrigerants they're awesome!), or dangerous, or made from the tears of endangered lem
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whenever there's a news report about someone caught "smuggling drugs"
If the drugs are illegal, then your analogy doesn't fit because the smuggled CFCs are not illegal to possess or use, and not even illegal to import. But a permit to import is required, and he didn't have one.
This is more like someone caught smuggling aspirin.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
The news report is a bit silly here because the primary reason for prosecution is not that the substance is a greenhouse gas, it is that it is prohibited from import. You might consider the difference pedantic.
The analogy is someone is caught for smuggling drugs and news reports are about "person prosecuted for importing a psychoactive substance"; while psychoactive substances are legally and routinely imported (coffee beans, tobacco, legal medicines). Nobody is prosecuted on the grounds of importing a psychoactive substance, because this is not the crime that is defined in law and enforced by courts. Smugglers are prosecuted for import of substances that are prohibited for private possession and/or import. Nobody is even prosecuted for "importing cocaine"; smugglers are prosecuted for lack of compliance with rules guiding possession and import of cocaine; cocaine is imported, detained and used legally when following certain regulations, for use in hospitals (though according to literature it's mostly considered obsolete https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651... [mdpi.com] )
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Those specialized in ORL surgeries. Once, someone commented to me it was used only for mostly in cases of allergies to other products.
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No one gets 45 years for smuggling drugs, or for that matter, for smuggling live bodies. If you look at the list of charges, they're a damned long stretch, making it sound like he was a massive smuggling op, not someone who had the wrong tank in the back of his truck.
If you move your household from Mexico to Arizona and bring along your fridge, have you committed a crime?
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Interesting)
What a terrible analogy. None of the EPA phased out refrigerants are illegal to sell, there are just limits placed on how much can be manufactured and imported based on specific phase-out dates. The only gas mentioned by name in the article is R-22, which was commonly used in old home air conditioners and some large commercial equipment. You can still legally* buy it for roughly $1.3k for a 30 LBS cylinder, per the current wholesale prices I have access to.
This guy got in trouble because he wasn't smart enough to order his gas directly from China, where no one bats an eyebrow.
* An EPA certification is required if you're going to actually use the stuff, but anyone can buy it for resale purposes if you're thinking freon is the new stonks.
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Looking at the regulations [epa.gov], it seems you can only import or buy USED HCFC-22 and not virgin.
And while you may be able to see the wholesale prices, that's probably because you are in a business that is registered and has a craptop of paperwork on file -- or are dealing thru one. The recordkeeping requirements to "buy" this stuff is detailed and onerous.
Re: Ridiculous (Score:2)
Sackler family ring a bell?
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How well did prohibition of alcohol go when that was tried? There was a lot of smuggling of alcohol in from Canada when that was in place. How much alcohol from Canada is brought into the USA now? My guess is that it's not zero but it's also something people would rarely smuggle in to avoid paying the proper taxes on it or whatever. If we ended the prohibitions on many drugs, regulating them for purity and such like we do with alcohol than ban them, then we'd see far fewer deaths from overdose and crimi
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, this falls into the second category (for the most part) legal product that you have to get permission/taxes etc. It's kind of like moonshine or smuggling cigarettes into NYC. According to the press release there was also 1 count for importing some hcfc 22 which apparently became illegal in 2020.
But most of the stuff he was accused of is also an example of how rules and bureaucracies just grow and grow once they get started: Montreal Protocol got rid of ozone depleting CFCs. Great. It did its job
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My favorite example of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy is the UN Committee on Decolonization [wikipedia.org]. It was founded in 1961 when a third of the world wasn't self-governing.
Today, there are almost no territories that are involuntarily non-self-governing.
Yet the bureaucracy has grown by 400% since 1970.
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Tell us you didn't read the article but with more words.
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Something illegal crossed the US border? I’m told that’s the most important crime of our time. Well next to women having bodily autonomy. But I digress.
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> HUMAN is greenhouse gases, they expel CO2,
Please come back when you've completed 8th grade.
Wow indeed.
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It is ridiculous.
News / media write headlines designed to absorb as many eyeballs as possible.
They could have simply wrote " Man charged with importing refrigerant without a license " but that wouldn't :|
have been quite the attention grabbing headline would it
At least they didn't write "Man contributes to the doom / extinction of the human species by importing material detrimental to the atmosphere " . . . . :|
Re:Translation: Some dude helped fix AC units... (Score:5, Informative)
And who is the real enemy here? The guy trying to keep his old car running or the government?
The government doesn't prohibit people from buying, selling, or using CFCs. It just controls production and limits imports.
The guy in TFA was importing without a permit. He could've applied for a permit and paid the appropriate fees and excise taxes.
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The government doesn't prohibit people from buying, selling, or using CFCs. It just controls production and limits imports.
That last sentence means effectively banned.
He could've applied for a permit and paid the appropriate fees and excise taxes.
Totally why people smuggle them when they could just manufacture these nonexistent things locally with just a permit and taxes. LOL. Idiot.
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It just controls production and limits imports.
That last sentence means effectively banned.
No. It just means you'll pay a higher price.
In other words, the external costs (damage to the climate) are internalized (come from your wallet).
Totally why people smuggle them
People buy smuggled CFCs to save money, not because the CFCs are unavailable.
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That last sentence means effectively banned. No. It just means you'll pay a higher price.
And at what point do you think that means "just for rich people", and excludes poor people who actually need to just survive? I don't think you even know the latter exists.
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Oh no, how will all those impoverished classic car collectors keep their AC running
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That last sentence means effectively banned.
Clearly your education was banned at some point if that is how you parse an English sentence.
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He could've applied for a permit and paid the appropriate fees and excise taxes.
Yep, basically the real life, less cutesy version of part of the plot from that Wonka movie I finally got around to watching. The big established players bought favorable laws so no upstarts can easily compete. I believe over on Reddit they refer to this as "late stage capitalism".
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Why do you hate your neighbors so much? F that beater car's $h!t AC unit that's gonna vent the GHGs within a year. Put it in the dump. Your false equivalency is just stupid.
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Next you're going to be on about cold air in your car being a human right.
Well, here in Florida it can get downright unsafe to drive a vehicle without working air conditioning when the weather is such that you need it and heat at the same time to keep condensation from forming on the interior windows.
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Looks like this guy decided to bring into the US some old school refrigerants like R-22 to allow people with older cars or AC units to keep them working.
R-12 was phased out of cars in the early 90s. Most of the vehicles that used R-12 have since been converted to R-134a or are rusting away in a scrap yard.
Yes, there are still a few R-22 home AC systems out there chugging along, but usually they've become leaky because they're near the end of their lifespan and it's not really cost effective to repair the leaky parts (most often the indoor evaporator coil) on a system that's on borrowed time as it is. Plus, due to the high cost of refrigerant people with l
Is it? (Score:2)
Re:Is it? (Score:5, Informative)
fluorocarbons have been illegal for a while
Fluorocarbons are legal, and the specific fluorocarbons he imported are also legal.
It is only illegal to import them without a permit, and he didn't have one.
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He not only imported HFCs, he also imported HCFCs (R22 according to TFAs). IRRC, you can only legally use recycled HCFCs. TFAs were not specific on whether that was virgin R22 or used.
Sensational headline (Score:5, Interesting)
CFCs are *ozone depleting*, and AFAIK may or may not also be GHG; but are primarily regulated due to their ozone layer impact. That these chemicals are harmful to the ozone layer is an entirely different topic, with far less controversy and politics swirling around it. Headline is just going for clicks by making it sound like he got arrested for having CO2 cartridges or breathing out too much water vapor--like the author of the headline.
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Man Charged With Smuggling Puppy-Killing U235 Into US
Giant Domino: this article on cnn.com
Small Domino Tipped Over: septembers hear about myspace
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Actually, Freon, etc, are definitely very powerful greenhouse gasses. The flaw and the reason it is sensationalist is that even if you released very single cubic inch of Freon ever manufactured into the atmosphere, it would be like peeing into the ocean. That has more-or-less already happened, most of the Freon ever made has already been released. The total is completely infinitesimal.
As you note, even this tiny amount was enough to enlarge the ozone hole for a while until it br
Re: Sensational headline (Score:2)
Except that the guy was smuggling HFCs, not CFCs (like Freon). HFCs are regulated because they are powerful greenhouse gases. Your argument about Freon may be true for Freon, but HFCs will have a significant global warming impact without regulation.
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Except that he was also smuggling HCFCs (R22), which do deplete the ozone as well as being greenhouse gases.
Re: Sensational headline (Score:5, Informative)
The charge is for smuggling HFCs, not CFCs. HFCs do not deplete ozone, and are replacements for ozone-depleting CFCs. However, HFCs are major greenhouse gases, thousands of times more powerful than CO2. Without controls, they are projected to have a significant global warming impact (0.28-0.44C by 2100), detailed here:
https://acp.copernicus.org/art... [copernicus.org]
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Yeah, I didn't flip back to the article and relied on my memory instead. I typed the wrong *FC. All things considered though, I still think it's better that /. is not reddit.
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He also smuggled R22, which is a HCFC, and does deplete the ozone.
I ate ... (Score:1)
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Not as long as you keep the air conditioning in your car on closed circuit and don't open the windows and doors.
The reason there's a market: (Score:2, Interesting)
Older air conditioners. Over the years, they've kept changing the allowed refrigerant in air conditioners, each one requiring a completely incompatible system. Need your AC serviced.... Oooooh, sorry, you need the whole system tossed out and replaced with an entirely new one because the refrigerant can't be obtained any more. (Happened to us twice in our San Jose home.)
This isn't to say there wasn't good reason for the change. But it's sure have been nice if they just changed it once.
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What would the resources in general and greenhouse in particular impact be of requiring all houses to be torn down and replaced with this year's re-designed "green" houses?
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But it's sure have been nice if they just changed it once.
Oh if only we could develop everything with perfect foresight. But we can't. Turns out it wasn't a good idea to put radon in Chocolate to give you an inner glow, or that Cocaine was a good ingredient for a soft drink.
We adapt everything over the years over and over again as new information emerges. The fuel in your car has changed some 10+ times over the years. You're not building your house out of asbestos (I hope). At some point you probably retrofitted an earthing safety system in your house (or you mayb
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Radon in chocolate? I don't know how that could even work. It's an inert gas.
The amount of cocaine in Real Old Real Coca-Cola was small enough I doubt it had any effect more serious than the caffeine that's in it now. For various reasons, it's probably just as well it's gone now.
Yes, the fuel in my car has changed multiple times over the years. Probably more than that since until recently I lived in California. HOWEVER... each fuel change did not require me to scrap my car and buy a brand new one, or e
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Every 10-20 years they (meaning a conglomerate of industry focus groups, big chem companies, and the government) declare that the Old, Commoditized Planet Destroying Refrigerants (OCPDR's) are too bad for the environment, but they've invented New Patented Miracle Refrigerant (NPMR) that is better. The NPMR also happens to be expensive, and it also "happens to be" incompatible with all the refrigerant systems out there,
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Wildcat HVAC people in my area are using R290 to re-charge old R-22 systems, and they work just as well or better than they did on R-22, meanwhile having literally the best possible GWP available, and saving old, functional HVAC systems. But this is illegal in the US because R290 is not approved
What is R290? It's propane. Propane is flammable and systems designed to use it need to take that into account. That's why it's not a good idea to use it in a system designed for R-22 (which isn't flammable).
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David M. Uhlmann, EPA Assistant Admin is a moron (Score:1, Informative)
David M. Uhlmann, EPA Assistant Admin said an ignorant and wrong thing. The gas in question is used anyway, legally by permit. There was no "saving the climate" caused by the arrest, no reduction of HFCs used in this world.
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It's not legal to use it in a new system or produce more of it. It's "used" legally only in systems that it was installed in before the law. Reducing the consumption of it will absolutely reduce the amount used and released.
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You think those tanks of it in Mexico will just evaporate into a pocket dimension?
Get a clue, no reduction in amount is happening nor will happen. It will be used and/or released anyway. Applicances having it will release it, tanks having it will release it or get used to charge appliiances that will release it.
That's how the real world works.
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Making less of it means less of it gets released. Pretty basic stuff.
5-20 years... (Score:2, Insightful)
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He won't get anywhere near that amount.
This is a common mistake that news outlets make. They look at the statute for each charge where it says the person shall be punished for a term not to exceed X years and then say that person faces X years in prison. What they don't ever read or mention is the sentencing guidelines which the judge generally has to follow unless there is a justifiable reason to depart from them
https://www.sentencing.us/ [sentencing.us]
First reaction I had was (Score:2)
Dammit, stop eating those Tacos or they don't let you back in!
Re: Can we put Congress in prison for this? (Score:3)
I agree with nearly all of what you say - nuclear is a great option and I'm always frustrated that's it's not a larger player in the U.S. energy landscape. However, the U.S. government is working to both reduce natural gas emissions and get people off of fossil fuels. Most evident is the solar tax incentive, incentives for using renewables, incentives for electric cars, and strong regulations on methane emissions across the oil and gas industry. I wish pushing nuclear power was part of that portfolio.
And? (Score:2)
*Taylor Swift flies away in her private jet, cackling maniacally.*
I cant breathe (Score:2)
Phew (Score:1)
I do it too (Score:2)
I take a deep breath, cross the border line and exhale.
nothing will change. corporate polluters will walk (Score:2)
If only they had any kind of track record of criminal prosecution of greenhouse gas emitters. Sure, they issue fines and such, but no one ever gets prosecuted. This guy got hosed because he made the mistake of not being a fortune-500 company, not because he broke the law.
Companies are busted for cheating emissions tests all the time, whether vehicular or at factories and power plants, and there are almost never criminal prosecutions for doing so. Heck, just take a drive on a freeway some time and count t
Who damaged the plane more last year... (Score:2)
this guy importing the refrigerant to refill the closed-systems of a few old cars, or "climate czar" John Kerry jetting around the planet on large multi-engine jets to discuss climate change with various people (instead of just video chatting them) or Taylor Swift jetting round the planet to dance and sing (when all her fans could just watch her on You Tube)?
This has NOTHING to do with saving the planet, and everything to do with elites demonstrating their good intentions and value by trampling on poor and