Near the end of his first term, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that aimed to reduce harmful, planet-warming pollutants emitted by refrigerators and air conditioners. The bipartisan measure brought environmentalists and major business groups into rare alignment on the contentious issue of climate change and won praise across the political spectrum.
Five years later, the second Trump administration is reversing course, as it moves to loosen a federal rule — based on the 2020 law — that requires grocery stores, air-conditioning companies and others to reduce powerful greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment.
The shift in approach has upended a broad bipartisan consensus on the need to quickly phase out domestic use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and are considered a major driver of global warming.
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