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Lest someone conclude that environmental regulation never works and only serves to make people's lives worse without addressing the actual problem:
CFC refrigerants are banned, the ozone layer is recovering, and modern fridges are perfectly fine.
Leaded petrol is banned, lead is no longer being constantly spewed in people's faces, and modern petrol cars are perfectly fine.
SO2 and NOx emissions are restricted, acid rain has been greatly reduced, and modern vehicles are perfectly fine.
DDT is banned, bird populations have recovered, and food production is perfectly fine.
These aren't just random examples – these four were some of the biggest environmental problems of the 20th century, and they have all been solved with minimal harm to consumers. (The others were nuclear energy (which wasn't a problem at all, the only problem with nuclear powerplants is that we don't build enough of them) and anthropogenic climate change (which hasn't been solved because no laws that would actually solve it have been enacted).)
Regulators were overeager to promote CFLs which ended up not being very good, but in time LED technology was developed and incandescent lightbulbs have now been completely phased out in favour of much more efficient lighting, so the original goal has in fact been achieved. LED lighting is still not a perfect substitute due to colour problems, but this is a technical problem that will be solved eventually.
It's good to point this out, but I'd also say that the existence of sensible environmental regulation doesn't make batshit insane regulation any less awful.
This proposal, if enacted, would involve a significant decline in the American standard of living.
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Isn't the primary use of this for killing carriers of malaria? And malaria is controlled in America... from extensive past use of DDT? Isn't this still a huge active problem in Africa? A cursory search suggests that it is, with articles as recent as last year about the ongoing conflict.
That's the only thing it's used for today. Back in the old days they sprayed that shit on everything.
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LED lights should still go in the 'against' column, as their significant advantages could have easily lead to adoption even without regulation. And unlike your positive examples, the primary cost of incandescents wasn't external.
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Not to mention these guys and these guys and smog in Los Angeles
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As a professional in the relevant fields, the replacement refrigerants lead to significantly more mechanical failures and for hydrocarbon refrigerants an added safety hazard. Also, letting the cat out of the bag just leads to more refrigerants getting phased out seemingly to generate market demand through planned obsolescence- r-134a and r-410a are themselves replacements for older refrigerants phased out for environmental reasons which have phaseout dates set, themselves for environmental reasons.
It’s also annoying and leads to more consumer downtime to have 10+ kinds of refrigerants floating around- I have had to leave customers with non-working equipment because their unit used an oddball refrigerant for environmental reasons.
How big is the harm overall? From an outside perspective, things seem to be working fine. Is there a possibility the field will converge on a smaller number of standard refrigerants?
It seems the replacement refrigerants are being replaced because they contribute to global warming. I would expect that once ozone depletion and global warming are dealt with, there won't be any reason to introduce new refrigerants any more.
Edit: Is the danger from hydrocarbons theoretical or are they actually regularly exploding or catching fire?
Not hydrocarbons, but ammonia leaks in big plants (like hockey rinks) kill workers with some regularity.
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The issue is that every time the industry reaches a consensus on a smaller number of standard refrigerants, they get replaced for ostensibly environmental reasons. Some of these refrigerants are strictly speaking inferior to their predecessors(eg R-410a is a much worse refrigerant than R-22 because higher operating pressures cause more leaks and also prevent temporary repairs from holding), and for others the difference is merely arbitrary. Commercial refrigeration tends to feel it worse than HVAC or domestic applications because technical reasons plus a wider variety of manufacturers(due to factories for many different types of equipment buying and selling each other for decades), so walk in product loss and outside ice purchases- which can both be near-ruinous for a small business- are at higher than normal levels with equipment new enough that the actual repair is covered by warranty.
In operation? No. While being worked on? Yes, they are significantly more dangerous to open the system.
I offer no particular judgement as to whether all of the above stuff is worth it or not- omelets and eggs and all that- but this particular example of successful environmental regulations does not happen to be frictionless.
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