Election news (particularly the latest installment in Donald Trump’s misogyny and his they’re-rigging-the-election theme) quickly overwhelmed the news Saturday about the historic amendment to the Montreal Protocol agreed to by more than 170 nations in Kigali, Rwanda. Which is too bad. Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t engaging in hyperbole when he said, “It is likely the single most important step we could take at this moment to limit the warming of our planet and limit the warming for generations to come. [...] It is the biggest thing we can do in one giant swoop.”
That step, which mandates a phase-out of heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons used for air conditioning and refrigeration, will have a bigger impact, many experts have said, than the Paris climate agreement. That’s in part because, unlike the Paris pact, the Kigali amendment, which took seven years to negotiate, is binding on all parties, focuses on only one thing not a broad range as the Paris pact does, sets firm deadlines and imposes sanctions for violations.
Still, a few environmental advocates say they are not convinced that the amendment will result in cutting one degree Fahrenheit from the rise in average global temperature resulting from climate change, as Kerry and other negotiators have said. But nobody disputes that it will make a big difference and make easier the Paris goal of keeping the rise at or below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
There are many stories relevant to the amendment: The quiet but strong and early diplomacy made by Barack Obama to make it happen. The science of cooling. The unintended consequences of substituting one set of chemicals for another. The changes in economic well-being that is bringing air conditioning and refrigeration to nations emerging from poverty. The rationale behind giving poor emerging economies more extended deadlines than the wealthy developed economies for complying with the amendment.
The matter I want to spotlight, however, is how in the 1970s and ‘80s—in what almost seems like a dry run for corporate-funded climate denial—a propaganda campaign smeared scientists and challenged the very idea that a relatively small amount of molecules of a widely used, supposedly benign chemical could have a dangerous impact on the Earth’s atmosphere.
First, a little background.
The Kigali Amendment, as noted, is not a new treaty but it still may require two-thirds ratification from the Senate, which these days would almost surely be impossible even though it is an amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol already ratified unanimously by the Senate in 1988. The protocol got every nation on the planet—all 197 of them—to agree to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the chemicals then most commonly used as the cooling agent in air conditioners and refrigerators.
Non-toxic and non-flammable CFCs seemingly had made good replacements for the ammonia, propane, methyl chloride and sulfur dioxide used for mechanical cooling previously. However, there was a serious drawback: They ate atmospheric ozone, the stuff that shields the earth from ultraviolet rays.
Their replacement, hydrofluorocarbons, also eat ozone, but far less so. However, they also have a pernicious consequence not considered important when they were adopted as a CFC replacement. As a greenhouse gas, HFCs are more potent than carbon dioxide and methane. And not just a little bit. Scientists have developed a gauge called global warming potential (GWP) measuring how much heat a chemical traps in the atmosphere over 20, 100 and 500 years. Over 20 years, compared with carbon dioxide at 1, methane has a GWP of 72-84, nitrous oxide a GWP of 289, and HFC-3 a GWP of 12,000. While there is a lot more CO2 than HFCs in the atmosphere, molecule for molecule, HFCs trap vastly more heat. (It should be noted that CFCs are a highly potent greenhouse gas, too.)
By the mid-1980s, CFCs escaping into the atmosphere had depleted about 4 percent of the ozone globally and punched a springtime hole in the polar regions, especially over the Antarctic. The long-term results of continuing to use CFCs, according to scientists—cataracts, sunburns, skin cancers, plant damage and devastating effects to plankton, a key element in the oceanic food chain and reproductive cycle. Severe ecological changes are quite likely.
What CFCs were doing was revealed publicly in 1974 when F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina published "Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine Atom-Catalyzed Destruction of Ozone" in Nature. They hadn’t conducted any experiments of their own. Rather, sparked by the efforts of an Irish amateur scientist, James Lovelock, they had looked at existing data and calculated the long-term consequences of CFCs rising into the higher reaches of the atmosphere. You can see a good explanation here. They were awarded the Nobel prize in 1995 for their work.
By 2050, they figured, 30-50 percent of the ozone would be gone. Once their work was published, they did what few scientists dare for fear of what it will do to their careers: They went to the media and called for a ban on CFCs. Little did they expect the response. They were meddling with what was then an $8 billion industry, with 600,000 employees. And that industry fired up its propaganda machine.
Twelve years ago, Jeffrey Masters, director of Meteorology at Weather Underground wrote an excellent essay explaining what happened next. The industry’s techniques will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the climate change “debate.”
• First, initiate a public relations campaign challenging the scientific claims:
DuPont, which made 1/4 of the world's CFCs, spent millions of dollars running full-page newspaper advertisements defending CFCs in 1975, claiming there was no proof that CFCs were harming the ozone layer. Chairman Scorer of DuPont commented that the ozone depletion theory was "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense." (Chemical Week, 16 July 1975).
The aerosol industry also launched a PR blitz, issuing a press release stating that the ozone destruction by CFCs was a theory, and not fact. This press release, and many other 'news stories' favorable to industry, were generated by the aerosol industry and printed by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine, Business Week, and the London Observer (Blysky and Blysky, 1985). The symbol of Chicken Little claiming that "The sky is falling!" was used with great effect by the PR campaign, and appeared in various newspaper headlines.
Such biased news reporting is hardly unusual in American journalism; several studies have shown that press releases are the basis for 40 - 50% of the content of U.S. newspapers (Lee and Solomon, 1990; Blysky and Blysky, 1985). The material appears to be written by the paper's own journalists, but is hardly changed from the press release.
Lament the costs and ignore the benefits.
Companies and associations said entire industries would fail, inflation would grow, jobs would be lost. At Pennwalt, the third largest U.S. maker of CFCs predicted "economic chaos."
• Hire a respected (or seemingly respected) scientist to dispute the evidence or interpret it in a way that favors industry:
CFC industry companies hired the world's largest public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton, who organized a month-long U.S. speaking tour in 1975 for noted British scientist Richard Scorer, a former editor of the International Journal of Air Pollution and author of several books on pollution. Scorer blasted Molina and Rowland, calling them "doomsayers", and remarking, "The only thing that has been accumulated so far is a number of theories." Molina's response was, "The gentleman is good at attacking. But he has never published any scientific papers on the subject."
In addition, Masters wrote:
• Trumpet discredited scientific studies and myths supporting your point of view as scientific fact.
• Point to the substantial scientific uncertainty, and the certainty of economic loss if immediate action is taken.
• Use data from a local area to support your views, and ignore the global evidence.
• Disparage scientists, saying they are playing up uncertain predictions of doom in order to get research funding.
• Disparage environmentalists, claiming they are hyping environmental problems in order to further their ideological goals.
Dr. Fred Singer [who later made a lucrative living as a paid climate change denier] commented on environmentalists' reaction to Molina and Rowland's work linking CFCs with ozone depletion as follows: "The ecofreaks were ecstatic. At last, an industrial chemical--and produced by big bad DuPont and others of that ilk."
• Complain that it is unfair to require regulatory action in the U.S., as it would put the nation at an economic disadvantage.
• Claim that more research is needed before action should be taken.
• Argue that it is less expensive to live with the effects.
In 1987, the Reagan Administration officials advocated a "Personal Protection Plan" as an alternative to controlling CFC emissions. Scoffers noted that if each American bought 2 bottles of sunscreen, a hat and pair of sunglasses, the bill would come to $8 billion for the nation. They also asked how Americans would go about putting sunscreen and hats on cows and stalks of corn, since plants and animals are adversely affected by UV light, as well.
By then, however, proof of the disaster from rising CFCs had become apparent when the destruction of ozone over the Antarctic became so severe during the austral spring that it was dubbed a “hole,” though the actual depletion only reached 70 percent. Also by then, Du Pont had come up with other chemicals whose impact on the ozone was minuscule compared to CFCs: Hydrofluorocarbons. It therefore dropped its opposition to a gradual ban.
Today, although Dupont makes public statements about doing something regarding climate change, and publicly favoring President Obama’s climate initiatives, it remains among the most ardent funders of professional climate change deniers.