from legal riots
The Californian was arrested for smuggling air conditioning gas into the hot state.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report this week indicting a California man for “smuggling greenhouse gases” from the Mexican border and selling them online.
The agency announced that this was the first “arrest related to climate change.”
Michael Hart, 58, was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in September to transporting refrigerant into the United States between June and December 2022 and peddling it on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and other online vendors.
The Biden-led EPA report touted its crackdown on Hart, the first person ever to be charged with climate change-related theft of refrigerants, known as hydrochlorofluorocarbons, without the agency's approval. (HFC)) and the person charged.
When U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath filed charges against the San Diego resident earlier this year, she vowed that “this will not be the last” such case.
“We are using every means possible to protect our planet from the harm caused by toxic contaminants, including filing criminal charges,” the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California said.
As a reminder: HCFCs are important in refrigeration and air conditioning systems. They were originally produced to replace “ozone-depleting” chlorofluorocarbons.
These compounds have been added to the long list of evil “greenhouse gases” as part of pseudoscientific climate believers.
As mentioned earlier, HCFC is the abbreviation for hydrochlorofluorocarbons. These gases are composed of chlorine, carbon, fluorine and hydrogen. They are a gas that can be classified as a transition gas because they are used to replace CFCs as part of plans to reduce emissions of ozone-depleting gases. HCFCs are gases used to make other chemicals.
Although they have lower ozone depletion potential than CFCs, they have high global warming potential. Therefore, these gases will be phased out. Their use is declining in developed countries, especially under the Montreal Protocol. The protocol aims to reduce the baseline to 90%.
The report also highlights a long list of penalties and fines against Americans and their business enterprises.
In addition, the EPA reported $1.7 billion in administrative and judicial penalties, the highest level since 2017.
The agency's environmental enforcement work also completed 1,851 civil cases, charged 121 criminal defendants, and distributed more than £225 million in “pollution abatement” funding to “overburdened communities,” the report said. By the end of 2024, there were approximately 480 open criminal investigations into environmental projects.
The results represent a 3.4% increase in civil cases and a 17.6% increase in criminal charges compared to 2023, according to the Associated Press.
In its fiscal year 2024 report, EPA also noted that collaborative efforts to “implement EPA's national priorities” resulted in “a 12 percent increase in criminal leads uncovered due to referrals from EPA headquarters and regional offices.”
If any member of the Biden administration could read American sentiment correctly, this entire report would have been buried during the Christmas news hiatus.
But then again, no one in the government seems to understand the citizens of this country. So we're going to enjoy a second scoop of news from President Donald Trump.
It seems that what the Biden EPA wants to create most is the political environment. Hot Air's David Strom says Biden will shift more money to climate fanatics after leaving office.
Biden says we should expect more climate funding from him before he leaves office. I guess there were more beds to be feathered, but there was so little time that he had to hurry.
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