Why didn't the solutions to acid rain and the ozone hole run into a conservative buzzsaw?

You really seem to have no concept of cost and proportion. Having the government controlling our energy sector and picking winners and losers is a recipe for economic disaster particularly when the anti-energy crowd is trying to wean us off of ANY energy in spite of their pretending to be reasonable. If you think solar is the solution, think again and learn a little about it.

Acid rain wasn't solved by the US because there was nothing to solve. It was an exaggerated problem. Back in the 1970s scientists claimed that sulfur in the emissions of power plants was causing the rain to become more acidic. This was causing the forests to turn into bogs. In fact, it was causing the rain to turn acidic but did not cause any significant deforestation. I still don't have a problem with removing the sulfur. I don't have a problem with the government regulating emissions but the government bureaucracy is like an avalanche that always gets bigger and bigger and our prosperity, freedoms will and have suffered. We have to decide how much we want to spend on keeping our environment clean.

Trying to restrict growth, punish industry and limit our competitiveness is not a way to save the planet. China will gladly take any of the jobs you and your buddies send to them and they will do it emitting far more CO2. No Thanks.

That is simple, and the reason is one that warmists should think long and hard about before labelling skeptics with hate words like "denier." The same people who are skeptical about global Warming today supported action against CFC's, SO2, Lead in gasolene, Y2K, DDT and Asbestos, just to name a few, because the science was proven, the causality clear and the theory accepted because all these were in accord with common sense.

Global Warming is not: We have a 0.6ºC estimated increase in global average temperature over the last Century, disputed by many because of faulty proxies for actual temperature readings, but even if accepted is nothing to worry about: we had a 0.5ºC increase the previous Century (pre-industrial) natural recovery from the little ice age. The increase during industrial age is therefore a disputed 0.1ºC over the natural warming. Can you see why rational, scientifically trained human beings question the doomsday predictions of a politically activist minority of scientists?

So your question is a god one: you got consensus action in the past because the problems were real and recognised as such. Global Warming has yet to achieve this status - it is either not real, or it is so slow and subtle that it won't be proved for decades yet. In either case it is nothing for this generation to panic about.

1) The solutions to both those problems ran into a conservative buzz saw, but eventually, the environmental solutions were implemented.

2) There is a matter of scale here. Replace the "billions" that those programs cost, and put in "trillions". Even after inflation, those controversial programs were child's play compared to regulating CO2. The movement of industry overseas due in part to environmental regulations has become obvious. However, with CO2 regulation, we are talking about something orders of magnitude worse.

3) Since the cost of what is being proposed is orders of magnitude greater, so is the opposition.

4) The science supported the effectiveness of the proposed solutions to address acid rain and ozone. That is not the case in CO2 regulation. It is doubtful that regulating CO2 will have any effect on the climate.

5) Acid Rain and ozone holes are undesirable. However, global warming would be a good thing.

6) The efforts to control acid rain and ozone holes were true grass roots movements that were about protecting the environment. The anti CO2 movement is an industrial/government sponsored movement designed to push nuclear power and implement global Fascism. Increasing use of nuclear power would be environmentally disastrous.

You really should not compare the acid rain and ozone environmental movements with global warming. They only have a mechanism in common. Beyond that, ozone and acid rain control are environmental movements, and CO2 regulation is anti environmental. People who are really concerned about the environment are fighting against CO2 regulation.

Aerosol and fridge manufacturers did not have enough $ and PR and lobbyists to overcome the science back then. Also, the news media were not concentrated and run be people who enforce their own political/idealogical agendas through the "news" (e.g. Fox News). The aerosol and lead in petrol people tried to stop change (remember the "we can't afford to change the engines on cars, without lead the engines will sieze up" cries? or the "there is no subsitute for CFCs, it will make refigeration impossible").

The tobacco lobby delayed significant action by decades. The same tactics, often the SAME PEOPLE are now employed to do likewise for climate change. See "Merchants of Doubt- How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. I've also provided a link to a video. This covers past and current cover-up and delaying strategies. Once you've read/watched this you can see when you are being spun by PR.

Limbaugh and Rohrabacher were in denial then about CFCs, and are still in denial now.

I think the problem is one of the importance of the issue, and hence the strength of the opposition to any action on it. There's a lot more at stake for Exxon than there ever was for the CFC manufacturers, who could cope by switching to making alternative refrigerants. Relatedly, following on from Dana, there is the skill with which some politicians have managed to construct a "total package" out of religious fundamentalism, giving money to the rich, opposing government action of all kinds (except for giving money to the rich), and neglecting the environment.

I can't speak to"acid rain" (but I think it too was at best overblown.) But the idea of a hole in the ozone was rather recently found and all the "solutions" benefited a chemical company whose patent on Freon was expiring. The natural cycle at the south pole is that ozone, which is created by the sun, dissipates during the winter. kinda obvious. The "hole" repairs itself in the summer. Guess what? A natural cycle.

This is a good test of the "What else could it be, let's ban it and find out" experiments. The CFC experiment was not all that conclusive. Do you also remember (you're probably too young, let me remind you) the other experiments that didn't turn out best to listen to the "experts"? Y2K? DDT? Doomsday motivation has always been a scam weapon. It isn't always the best policy to just grin and bear it while awful mush is forced down your throat. Sometimes it's best to try to find alternatives within the economy instead of creating a new economy.

They did to some degree, but conservatives at the time found a solution they could live with - as you say, they invented cap and trade as the preferable solution to government regulation. And to their credit, it worked great. The actual costs of the sulfur dioxide cap and trade program was only 20-30% of the EPA's original projected cost, and that's not even counting the benefits.

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085

If you include the benefits (something which AGW deniers always refuse to do when evaluating the costs of carbon cap and trade), according to the Office of Management and Budget, "the Acid Rain Program accounted for the largest quantified human health benefits – over $70 billion annually – of any major federal regulatory program implemented in the last 10 years, with benefits exceeding costs by more than 40:1."

http://www.epa.gov/capandtrade/documents/ctresults...

These were policies supported and implemented by Presidents Reagan and HW Bush. Not exactly liberals! Yet there are virtually no Republican politicians today who support a carbon cap and trade system, most falsely claiming it would cripple the economy.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/economic-impacts-o...

So what happened over the past 2 decades that these previous Republican policies are now considered evil socialism? It's an excellent question, and a difficult one to answer. A parallel is "Obamacare" which is very similar to the Republican health care proposal in 1993, which was co-sponsored by Bob Dole, Ted Stevens, and Orrin Hatch, among other Republican socialists of the time.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/0223...

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2010/Febru...

So one possible answer is that today's Republicans have shifted much further to the right than the Republicans of 2 decades ago. Or perhaps they're just stronger idealogues, less interested in passing legislation which will help the country and more interested in appealing to Teabagger extremists. There was a lot more bipartisan compromise 20 years ago - today Republicans see compromise as a dirty word.

Probably the main reason is that the USA became a wealthy country by relying on massive consumption of cheap fossil fuels without having to pay for the associated carbon emissions or environmental damage. Now we're hooked. The oil industry is absolutely bloated with profits and able to easily buy (mostly conservative, but a few moderate) politicians. Not only will reducing carbon emissions be a more difficult task than CFCs or SO2, but there are also very powerful vested interests against it, which have a lot of control over our political process. Far more than they should. The oil industry has also launched a massive misinformation campaign which has now been taken over by the right-wing media echo chamber, as Portland Joe demonstrates so well. There was no such misinformation campaign for CFCs or SO2 because there wasn't the money behind it.

Ultimately carbon is a more difficult problem due to greed, power, addiction, wealth, and corruption. Two decades ago, conservatives were interested in actually governing and getting things done. Today conservatives are more interested in getting and maintaining power, and obstructing progress. Until voters punish them for it, their policy will continue to be obstructionism. It's a great time for conservatives without morals - they get to block all attempts at progress from liberals, line their pockets with oil industry money, tell the voters a bunch of convenient lies, and get rewarded for it with more power. And they'll be dead before we face most of the consequences for their immoral behavior.

*edit* you have to love the denier contradictions. jim z says acid rain wasn't a problem, Rich says Y2K and DDT weren't problems, and All Black says we addressed all 3 of these issues because of the consensus that they were a problem. Hilarious!

Also as usual, jim is babbling incoherently. Putting a price on carbon emissions is neither 'controlling the energy sector' nor 'picking winners and losers'. It's internalizing the currently external costs of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions. It's no more 'controlling' than the SO2 cap and trade system. It's probably just a buzzword he heard on Rush Limbaugh, just like 'freedoms'. I'm still trying to figure out what freedoms we lose when we have to actually pay for our carbon emissions. Oh right, it's the freedom to emit as much carbon as we want for free. That's in the Bill of Rights, isn't it?

Oh, and by the way, China is going to implement a carbon cap and trade system within the next 4 years. It will be embarrassing when they get a cap and trade system in place before the USA.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/22/cont...

There was a time before the current GOP/Teabag/Fox 'News' hijacked the Republican party. These new guys are crazier than a $%^& house rat. At this point these characters are going to bring down the entire United States to some kind of 3rd world level with their foolishness..if we allow them to continue their attacks on science and reason. Who are these guys?

CO2 is not SO2, CO2 is not "cyanide", CO2 is not a pollutant and you're attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist based on doomsday scenarios from flawed computer models.