The Senate on Wednesday voted in favor of ratifying a climate treaty limiting the use of highly potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), although the U.S. has already taken steps to comply with the terms of the accord.
In a vote of 69-27, the Senate voted to ratify the Kigali Amendment, which calls for phasing down HFCs. HFCs are frequently used in appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators and can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of warming the planet.
While the approval of the treaty is a big symbolic step, the country already has laws in place along similar lines.
One reason such a measure may have been able to gain bipartisan traction is support from industry, which has already been transitioning toward alternatives.
Wednesday’s action was also bipartisan, with 21 Republicans joining Democrats in supporting it.
And while the U.S. is already moving toward the treaty’s goals, University of Michigan environmental policy professor Barry Rabe said that Wednesday’s move may give the U.S. more climate credibility on a global stage.
“Just in the initial years of this decade, the U.S. has really begun to move from the position of a global laggard, certainly on HFCs and certainly on methane, into more of a leadership role and I think that would be further cemented or underscored by ratification of Kigali,” Rabe said.
He also said it’s important to maintain credibility for trading partners going forward.
Read more about the vote here.