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Small island nations stand first in the path of catastrophic impacts of global warming. Unless something is done, these nations face literal extinction in the certain sea level rise of coming decades.

As the innocent victims of a crisis they did nothing to create, they are the most persuasive advocates for climate action. But they are also the least powerful of nations on the globe, occupying a moral high ground that's about to be swallowed up by the sea.

Earlier this month they issued a formal plea for help in the form of a proposed amendment to an existing international treaty. The amendment would enable the world to take swift and decisive action against a powerful class of warming gases called HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons.

Known as super greenhouse gases, HFCs are projected to add an enormous greenhouse gas burden in the next 30 years as their use in refrigerators and air conditioning systems grows in developing countries unless something is done immediately. On top of the warming power of CO2, HFCs are an emergency within the climate emergency.

In Geneva, around formal UN conference tables and careful discussions, the small island nations' amendment was a central topic of discussion during the week-long Open Ended Working Group meeting of parties to the Montreal Protocol earlier this month.

The amendment was introduced by Mauritius and the Federated States of Micronesia. By the end of the meeting, eight other island nations had signed on as co-sponsors: the Seychelles, Kiribati, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Comoros, Madagascar and Palau — places few Americans could locate on a map, ten small nations out of 195 treaty signatories.

The existential clarity of these islands' vulnerable position did little to persuade the big polluting nations to come to their rescue. Even the United States remained non-committal.

"The U.S. delegation said good things, but they never came out and said, 'We support the amendment and we will take leadership,'" said Durwood Zaelke, founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who attended the talks.

"Controlling HFCs is the single greatest near-term climate opportunity the Obama administration has, and with it, the U.S. can create tremendous momentum going into Copenhagen."

For now, the U.S. and many of the assembled nations are caught in opportunism and red tape, eyeing economic advantage and future negotiating room instead of heeding the plea from the island nations to move forward with a proven solution.

The U.S. State Department's effort to combat a class of "super greenhouse gases" many thousands of times more potent than CO2 hit a speed bump at the White House yesterday, jeopardizing its chances of meeting a May 4 deadline.

The goal of the effort is to use the Montreal Protocol to phase down the global use of hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs. While currently used only in small amounts for air-conditioning and refrigeration, these gases are projected to grow astronomically in coming decades.

In response to the White House delay, Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to get behind the State Department plan.

"We understand that your administration is considering offering an amendment to the Montreal Protocol next week that would provide authority to regulate HFCs. We strongly support such an amendment," they wrote.

Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, leading the push for climate legislation in the House, also supported the State Department plan in a letter sent earlier this month to the White House.

Left unchecked, HFCs would add up to 25 times the current total U.S. emissions to the global burden by 2040, largely because of their use in ever greater numbers in the developing world. They could effectively negate all reductions in CO2 currently being contemplated.

Over the 20 years of its existence, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has tackled the phase out of more than 90 similar gases, and policymakers believe it offers the best avenue for immediately handling HFCs.

Earlier this month in Bonn, Todd Stern, the United States' chief climate negotiator, described the Montreal Protocol as "the most successful environmental treaty that we have," and he listed it first among five building blocks for a successful international climate treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

The State Department, EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Pentagon are among the agencies behind the plan to amend the Montreal Protocol so it can regulate HFCs, and expectations for success were high going in to an interagency meeting at the White House yesterday.

But the plan hit stiff resistance from a White House economist who attended the meeting, three sources closely involved in the process tell SolveClimate.

The growing global demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration – humanity's need to cool things off – is ironically now emerging as one of the biggest potential contributors to future global warming.

A class of gases known as HFCs – hydrofluorocarbons – used by the refrigeration industry to cool people in their cars and homes and to keep food from spoiling, is turning out to be the primary culprit.

Developed to replace the gases responsible for depleting the ozone, HFCs have a powerful worsening effect on global warming and have created another challenge for lawmakers to confront, an emergency within an emergency.

Each molecule of these man-made gases, often called F-gases, has a global warming potential (GWP) many thousands of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2, thus earning them the nickname "super GHGs."

New projections indicate that unless these gases are rapidly phased out with available alternatives that are benign by comparison, they could negate the impact of all other emissions reductions efforts now being contemplated. By 2040, the international NGO Environmental Investigation Agency estimates HFCs will have added 180 gigatons CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere.

"If we control these gases internationally, we will prevent the release of the equivalent of 25 years of total U.S. emissions" said S.F. LaBudde, campaign director at the Environmental Investigation Agency. "It could hinge on getting the HFC provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill right."

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