What the Biden administration can learn about fighting climate change from the global effort to protect the ozone layer.
This camp in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region for internally displaced persons of the Yazidi minority includes air-conditioned tents, a necessity in a place that gets vey hot., a series from Future Tense in which experts suggest specific, forward-looking actions the new Biden administration should implement.
The world has done it before. After Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and colleagues demonstrated that substances used in refrigeration and other widely used applications depleted the ozone layer, the nations of the world came together and signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Ronald Reagan called it “a model of cooperation” and went on to: “It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects.
There are many reasons why it worked so well: It is legally binding and was signed by 197 nations as well as entities such as the European Union. And it tackles one well-defined, albeit complex, problem that had some clear technological solutions. After some initial resistance , industry got on board and unleashed an innovation dynamic that led to the virtual elimination of the original culprit—ozone-depleting substances.
The Biden administration should follow this playbook. It should form an international working group on technological and social innovations in the domain of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, or HVAC, following the successful model of the Montreal Process. Such a working group will pave the way for essential breakthroughs toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions—17.5 percent ofcome from buildings, the majority of them from the HVAC sector.
In the context of a warming planet, this sector represents a classical Catch-22 scenario. Due to a warming planet, the demand for HVAC grows, which in turn leads to more CO2 emissions, contributing to further warming of the planet. To break this positive feedback loop, we need technological innovation toward net zero HVAC.
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