The report released recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change laid out the drastic reductions in coal, oil and gas consumption necessary to avoid catastrophic warming of the planet. But to stave off the most disastrous damage, we need to swear off another product, too: hydrofluorocarbons, better known as HFCs. And banishing them shouldn’t be so hard, relatively speaking.

In a bitter irony, these chemicals, used to cool, have also been driving global temperatures up. Used in refrigerators and air-conditioners since the 1980s, HFCs are extremely potent contributors to the earth’s warming. One HFC, 134a, used in most American refrigerators traps 1,300 times more heat than carbon dioxide does . Another, 410a, used in most American air-conditioners, is worse. Around the world, as more people rely on air-conditioning to cope with severe heat, the HFCs that routinely leak out of appliances and into the atmosphere have become the fastest-growing type of greenhouse gas emitted in every country on earth.

There is a seemingly simple solution to this feedback loop: Stop making and using HFCs. But so far, we’ve been unable to do it — not for scientific reasons, but for political ones. Just as we do with fossil fuels, we already have alternatives to HFCs that don’t contribute to warming. For cooling, a range of substances including ammonia, propane and iso-butane can do the trick.

Yet, instead of moving forward, our country has been reversing the steps it has already taken toward solving the HFC problem. This year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would not be enforcing a 2015 rule that prohibited the use of HFCs. The E.P.A. has also proposed weakening an Obama-era effort to limit HFC leaks from appliances.