After all-night negotiations, nearly 200 nations signed a new climate change deal


After overnight negotiations, 197 nations signed a climate change deal announced Saturday morning to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a greenhouse gas with more serious environmental effects than carbon emissions. HFCs are used in refrigeration and air conditioning technologies, and many climate scientists believe limiting their use is the single best way to slow climate change.
The deal, which is legally binding (unlike the recently ratified Paris climate change agreement), has a separate set of rules for developed and developing countries; the former will begin cutting HFC use in 2019, reaching an 85 percent cut of current use levels by 2036. The latter can continue expanding their HFC use until 2024 or 2028 and then must begin gradual cuts from that point forward.
President Obama hailed the new deal as "an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis" in a Saturday statement.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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