Pirate's Cove

The NY Times has been on a big kick the past few months about how evil air conditioning is. I’m still waiting for them to simply turn their own A/C off and party like it’s 1499 with the windows open. And here’s another!

The chief executive of the century-old company from America’s heartland shifted nervously on the witness stand here as he tried to explain how a trusted senior vice president had been caught on a wiretap buying half a million dollars in smuggled merchandise, much of it from China.

But the contraband purchased by Marcone, a St. Louis-based company that claims to be the nation’s largest authorized source for appliance parts, was not counterfeit handbags or fake medicines. It was a colorless gas that provides the chill for air-conditioners from Miami to Mumbai, from Bogotá to Beijing.

Under an international treaty, the gas, HCFC-22, has been phased out of new equipment in the industrialized world because it damages the earth’s ozone layer and contributes to global warming. There are strict limits on how much can be imported or sold in the United States by American manufacturers.

But the gas is still produced in enormous volumes and sold cheaply in China, India and Mexico, among other places in the developing world, making it a profitable if unlikely commodity for international smugglers.

How sad is it that in order for people in 3rd world shitholes developing nations have to rely on smugglers to get air conditioning? 1st world government and the UN have created a situation in which coolants that are supposedly giving the planet a fever are spiking in price, hence, smuggling. Oh, and

On June 26, Mr. Garcia was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison.

For “smuggling” a product that can help those around the world who can’t afford more modern A/C to have the same benefits as those who can afford it, all because of a fake issue in which the disciples of Gore and Hansen refuse to change their own behavior. They just force others to practice it.