Climate change is often compared to the ozone crisis and the success of the Montreal Protocol, with people asking the question: “If humanity solved the ozone problem, why can’t we solve climate change?”
At first glance the question seems really straightforward. After all, the Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as one of the most successful international environmental agreements ever created. Nations across the globe united to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the chemicals responsible for damaging the ozone layer and creating the infamous “hole in the ozone,” leading to rising cancer rates and other dangerous health effects.
So, if countries were able to cooperate on an issue that threatened humanity before, why has climate action stalled in comparison?
The Answer
The Montreal Protocol succeeded partly because it was focused on replacing a very narrow set of chemicals. Further, the chemical industry already had substitute chemicals ready to go. The companies producing CFCs were not being asked to destroy their entire business model overnight, they were being asked to switch to a slightly more expensive product that they could still profit from. With enough financial incentives from governments around the world, the industries responsible for CFC’s began endorsing the transformation to alternatives. This allowed for legislation to be passed without much resistance.
Unlike the ozone crisis, climate change is tied directly into the backbone of the global economy. Oil and gas are not limited to one narrow industrial use as they fuel transportation, electricity production, manufacturing, plastics, shipping, and countless other sectors that modern society depends on. Solving climate change entails disrupting one of the most vital industries in human history, with no universally scalable and convenient replacement ready to fully substitute fossil fuels across every sector of the economy..
Though fully replacing fossil fuels is made impossible by the dependence of certain crucial sectors of the global economy, cutting back on consumption and embracing alternatives like nuclear would serve to buy time while this transition could be made feasible. So why did no such effort occur?
Well to start, the climate change threat was not immediate, as was the case with the ozone hole. Politicians and world leaders had little incentive to act immediately to prevent problems that would arise decades after their tenure. Further, renewable energies such as solar and wind were still expensive and not universally reliable, as geography played a huge role in their output.
This left nuclear power as one of the only large-scale low-carbon alternatives capable of consistently replacing fossil fuel electricity generation at the time. However, nuclear power plants required massive initial investments to construct, not to mention that not every country has the knowledge to build nuclear fission reactors. All of these factors combined made it difficult for world leaders to justify moving away from cheap fossil fuels, and towards unproven energy sources.
To add to these factors, massive lobbying from the fossil fuel lobbies stifled any meaningful debate on how governments could lead successful transitions away from oil and gas. Just like cigarette companies during the smoking crisis, the oil and gas industry spent decades pouring massive amounts of money into controlling public opinion and shaping the narrative surrounding climate change.
Some campaigns sought to convince people that climate change was either exaggerated or naturally occurring. Others promoted slower transitional energy sources in ways that bought the industry more time, while simultaneously hindering alternatives like nuclear energy that could have more rapidly replaced fossil fuels in the energy sector.
Electricity generation only accounts for roughly 25% of the United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions. Even if oil and gas companies lost dominance in electricity generation, they would still maintain enormous influence and profit through fuel for vehicles, industrial machinery, plastics, and countless petroleum-based products that modern society still relies upon. Even partial adaptation would still leave these corporations with massive markets and extraordinary wealth.
The fossil fuel industry, however, prioritized avoiding losses in their profits and a reduced market share. The industry’s efforts to protect their profits resulted in a fractured fight against climate change, as opposed to the unified front against CFCs.