"The Day Invisible Gases Vanish into the Sky: The Silent Terror of CFC Regulations and Global Warming"

"The Day Invisible Gases Vanish into the Sky: The Silent Terror of CFC Regulations and Global Warming" The CFC issue is portrayed in the text as "environmental destruction that cannot be stopped by environmental taxes alone." Environmental taxes are indirect regulations that aim to reduce consumption and emissions by raising prices. However, the author believes that for substances like CFCs—which have a massive warming effect once released into the atmosphere—price-based incentives alone are insufficient. This is where direct regulation, backed by penalties, becomes necessary. Fluorocarbons have been widely used in air conditioners, refrigerators, freezing equipment, and insulation materials. While certain fluorocarbons were once regulated due to their ozone-depleting properties, the HFCs used as alternatives have now become problematic as potent greenhouse gases. Some of these substances have a global warming potential thousands to tens of thousands of times greater than that of carbon dioxide. In Japan today, the Fluorocarbon Emission Control Act, the Home Appliance Recycling Act, and the Automobile Recycling Act mandate the recovery of refrigerants when equipment is disposed of. However, recovery rates remain insufficient, and there are still cases where refrigerants are released into the atmosphere without being recovered. In other words, invisible gases continue to leak silently into the sky. The difficulty of this problem lies in the fact that it is not simply a matter of “people will stop using them if the price goes up a little.” The real issue is who will reliably recover the refrigerant left inside the equipment, and when. Therefore, direct regulations combining inspection requirements, recovery obligations, record-keeping, and penalties are essential. The CFC problem is not a form of pollution as obvious as black smoke rising from a chimney. It is invisible, odorless, and quietly spreads into the atmosphere. The accumulation of these invisible gases is gradually raising the Earth’s temperature.