We managed to get good international treaties restricting the emissions sulphur dioxide and other emissions causing acidification and ozone-depleting chemicals. What makes it so much more difficult to get one that would restrict climate change?
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I believe it is the severity and ubiquity of GHG emissions that makes a treaty challenging. For nations to adjust they must rethink entire industries and mobilize the vast majority of their populace. Both acid rain and ozone-depletion were solved by using treaties that targeted very specific industries and only a small amount of chemicals. Acid rain was brought under control not by reducing total burning of fuel, but by using technology to reduce or capture sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide output. This technology was implemented on vehicles, but more importantly on coal burning power plants by using Flue Gas Desulferization. Ozone depletion was brought under control by limiting the free radical catalysts that would get emitted into the atmosphere. The primary cause: choloroflorocarbons (CFCs) which were a part of refrigeration and aerosol sprays. By regulating the industries that produced such items, the world reacted quickly to the dangers of a depleted ozone layer without feeling significant economic pains. You can see how the daunting task of overall reduction of GHGs is far more complex. The economic, social, and political woes are immense and inertia is too high. Every industry will be affected. Rich countries will be tried as growing countries like China bully their way through and ignore international calls. No one wants to lose their edge or their significance. |
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What makes it so more difficult? The nature of the problem. Ozone depletion was caused by using certain type of substances. The technology was developed so as to eliminate them and use others instead. Not big deal. But climate change is at the core of how countries work and live, and what choices they made in the past and will do in the future in terms how the energy for the country is produced and used. Thus quite difficult to just get rid of everything that emits greenhouse gases in all countries at the same time. It is not China's fault to have the largest coal reserves on Earth; or Canada to have tar-sands, or countries in the Middle East and the Pacific (Asia) to be sit on huge volumes of natural gas and oil. Those are their resources, what they have at hand, and although may seem obvious, what they would use as energy sources. Meanwhile, other countries, with not the same amount and type of resources, need to generate electricity and heat. Who goes first? Who is brave enough to tear down all the electricity generation plants and substitute them with solar panels, or other technologies? Which country has enough resources as to do that without stopping the economy or interrupting people's lives? At which economic cost, paid by whom? And at the same time, eliminating any vehicle that uses fossil fuels. It is just unrealistic. Climate change is, in some way, more a problem of disconnected timelines. That of the fossil fuel extraction, production and use; that of the emissions concentrating in the atmosphere; that of provoking an intensified greenhouse effect; that of increasing the temperatue and shifting the climate... and that we use for our decision making, our investments, our analysis, etc. It is not that the technology does not exist; it is not that the are out of economic resources to do something. And the ideas might continue to further complicate the panorama. Does this answer help understand why? |
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To add to Chris's comments, another difference is the timescale and evidence base for acid rain/ozone vs climate change. The effects of acid rain (and to an extent ozone depletion) are pretty much instantaneous with immediate consequences, whereas there are still huge uncertainties with the timescale and impact predicted from climate change. The science are also much clearer with acid rain and ozone layer, with specific and direct cause-effect relation, unlike climate change having such a broad range of causes and indirect consequences (sea level, glaciers, weather patterns etc). All these, coupled with the costs, economic sectors and international diplomacy involved, makes it far more difficult to achieve an international consensus. |
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