• answer in this chapter seems to be no, because of cold war thinking
• separate is it happening from is is a problem
  

• pollution caused more clouds (so the earth reflected more heat) causing global cooling
• increasing carbon dioxide levels would keep heat from radiating out into space, causing global warming
• studies in the late 1970s began to reach scientific consensus that warming was going to be the problem
  

  The hole in the ozone layer

• ground level ozone is a dangerous pollutant
• stratospheric ozone protects us from UV radiation, which in high doses can be deadly and in low doses causes skin cancer and contributes to global warming
• punching a hole in the ozone layer was considered as a weapon
  
• hole in the ozone layer discovered by scientific experiments at the south pole and from satellites
• in the upper atmosphere ozone is constantly being created and decaying. Certain chemicals, particularly CFCs used in air conditioning and aerosol cans, cause reactions that cause stratospheric ozone to decay faster
• we got very quickly to clear scientific data about the problem
  
• if this had continued the ozone layer would have gotten thinner and thinner all over the earth
• international agreements to stop producing those chemicals--1987 Montreal Protocol
• countries agreed to stop using CFCs
• this was easier to address because:
• the science was clear
• alternatives were possible
  
• chemical engineers went out and found alternative chemicals (green chemistry) that worked better
  
• people did change their behavior, stopped using aerosol cans for many things
  
• this is working
  
• a much easier issue than global warming because there are easy substitutes

The problem of the commons, which was analyzed in the early 1980s via game theory

• if harm to the environment affects everyone, why should one nation or group pay the cost of fixing it, letting others have the benefits while paying nothing
  
• the Soviet Union isn't likely to cooperate so the US should not bear the burden
• economists believed we could adapt to a warmer climate
• the CIA was putting a lot of effort into trying to make long-term predictions of Russian crop yields (not very successfully) and the impact of changes on the cold war
  
• famines in Africa showed political responses were a larger factor than environmental changes
• a democratic capitalist society would have an advantage in its ability to adjust

Carl Sagan (astronomer and TV personality) championed the theory of nuclear winter in the 1980s

• enough nuclear explosions could change the climate so drastically as to wipe out human life
• Sagan's purpose was to argue for arms control
• the Soviets picked up on the idea, discrediting it with politics and weak science
  
• the reaction of experts was to be even more dubious about catastrophe theories

the experts resisted worrying about climate change in the 1980s

• People were fed up with catastrophe theories
• more people will read your book if you make a dramatic argument for catastrophe
• the environment is complex and we think of it as returning to a steady state
• it is hard to come up with scientifically reliable predictions about tipping points
  
• influential economists focused on the ability of a healthy political/economic system to adapt and didn't worry about climate change
  
• fears that AIDS was a military experiment gone wrong--
• the idea we can harm ourselves dramatically with our science and technology gets discredited because it is used for propoganda
• do we really have enough control through science and technology to change the world?
  

Climate change issues got tangled in the cold war, which slowed international progress towards solutions