How we were made to forget what humanity is capable of through the joint action of world governments working with scientists, not businesses

1. The ozone holes were real. The threat was real, and as global, existential, and imminent as we were told.
2. Humanity correctly assessed the threat, took action.
3. The threat was successfully averted, and the damage done is beginning to be restored.

All of it happened at the very end of the XX century.

In 1984 British scientists discovered a rapid significant thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica: the systematic decline in the amount of spring ozone since the late 1970s led to the fact that in 1984 the ozone layer above the Halley Research Station in Antarctica was only 2/3 as thick as in previous decades.

In 1985 they published their discovery that aerosols used by human industry are eating away at holes in the Earth’s ozone layer.in Nature. Their data, quickly confirmed by independent team of scientists quickly, with satellites showing that the area of thinning, the “ozone hole,” extended over a vast region of 20 km², provided a considerable shock to the world. Their conclusion that the breakdown products of man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the cause of ozone layer loss was also confirmed and expanded upon by other researchers in 1986.

In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was adopted, containing global industrial measures to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals and introduce ozone-restoring chemicals, and was ratified by 197 of the 197 countries in the world — the first universal ratification in history, i.e. an agreement accepted by all countries in the world.

In 1989 the protocol entered into force — five years after scientists discovered the problem.

By 2009, 20 years after the protocol came into effect, 98% of the chemicals banned by the protocol had been phased out, and scientists have recorded the beginning of the restoration of the ozone layer. The noise in the media has long gone, as there is nothing to make noise about anymore. It came and go. But scientists continue to do their job, as they did it before it became news on a planetary scale.

Currently, the restoration of the ozone layer continues:

Ozone layer recovery on track to avoid 0.5°C of global warming If current policies remain in place, the ozone layer is expected to recover to 1980 (pre-hole) values ​​by around 2066 over Antarctica, by 2045 over the Arctic, and by 2040 for the rest of the world. Changes in the size of the Antarctic ozone hole, especially between 2019 and 2021, were largely due to meteorological conditions. However, the Antarctic ozone hole has been slowly decreasing in area and depth since 2000. UN 2023 Report

And because the threat was sudden, real, global and imminent, it was a perfect news story with the best target audience possible: everybody. And almost everybody on Earth did hear about it. Yet its resolution was more of a slow-boil, gradually taking shape over 20 years—horrible for making it news. This is why many fewer people actually got the follow up and developed a feeling that it just disappeared instead.

Now, that your basic curiosity is satisfied, I hope that in place of an answered question you have more new questions that are more interesting. Like, why can’t we solve collective problems like this any more?

Behind the particulars of a story of detecting and fixing ozone holes is the first time that humanity as a whole has consciously acted. It is a story of the last and the finest hour of humanity’s finest hours. It is scientific, constructive, rational and optimistic, and in historic times very recent—which is probably what made it so easy to lose sight of. Because less than 40 years after, just seeing the words “optimistic, realistic, and recent” in the same sentence immediately creates the sensation that the conversation to follow won’t be connected to reality. It seems too good to be true or like science fiction, of the old school extinct kind that tried to imagine a better future, a future to look forward to, or even worse—as the beginning of another bullshit corporate ad pitch to a Saudi Prince. If we do not entertain “optimistic, realistic, recent” even as a fantasy today, then how are we supposed to cope with it being a functional part of our reality? The ozone layer story is a material proof that we didn’t just dream holding the keys to a better future, we actually had them before we traded it for a dream-like state of the endless present, stripped of any concept of the future yet also constantly terrified of it.

Yet at the same time, we are contemporaries of an entirely different reality:

• In three years all of humanity was able to collectively recognize what was going on, what they were doing wrong, how important it was, what they needed to do and agreed to do it.
• In five years, it began to act.
• In 25 years, it completed all the necessary work.

The ozone hole problem demonstrated the ability of human civilization to make collective decisions, act together, and solve global problems:

1. Science discovered a threat to humanity, the source of which is human activity, and proposed a way to correct the situation.
2. The media amplified the scientists’ alarm signal, conveying it to all of humanity.
3. At the international level, it was decided to adopt the measures proposed by scientists throughout the world.
4. The governments of countries implemented the decisions taken, eliminating the source of harm from human activity and taking measures to eliminate the damage caused, the progress of which continues to be closely monitored by scientists.

Through governments that listen to science and are connected in the system of international relations, humanity had the opportunity to define common interests, make common decisions, and act together.

Alas, the first successful response of united humanity to a global challenge turned out to be the only one.

Only two international agreements in history have achieved universal ratification:

1. the pioneering Montreal Protocol of 1987,
2. the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992, another threat to the Earth’s own habitat created by human industrial activity.

As with the threat to the ozone layer, the problem of climate change is a problem for humanity in both its causes and its consequences: collective emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases, by destroying the ozone layer and exacerbating the greenhouse effect, are spoiling and destroying the habitat for all – which can only be solved by a common effort. Therefore, by successfully organizing to stop the destruction of the ozone layer and begin its restoration, this experiment had to be repeated to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

But while the Montreal Protocol solved its problem, and humanity dealt with the threat of ozone holes without consequences in 20 years by correcting its mistakes in a timely manner, global warming has not even been slowed down in 30 years, which is evident from the fact that the average annual temperature of the Earth’s climate continues to grow at exactly the rate predicted by Exxon climatologists in 1982.

You may notice, that among the actors in the victory over the threat to humanity – scientists, governments, and the media—there were no corporations or billionaires. No business at all. Manufacturers were simply carrying out orders they received from society. But that was about to change: as the ozone layer drama was unfolding, business interests were already beginning to take precedence in politics everywhere, wrapped in the insidious idea of neoliberalism.

And of the heroes in the fight for the ozone layer, the media proved to be the weakest link. Media sensationalism, useful at first, when it was necessary to trumpet the threat, failed the public when it was time to follow up on the success of global collective action, when the governments of the world, following scientists’ lead, literally saved us all. We don’t notice its success because it was so successful, and there is no money in saying that governments and government employees (like scientists) are doing their job and that the system works exactly as everyone would like it to work. The money was elsewhere: telling society that collective problem-solving is impossible, that governments only make things worse and will only hinder them, only business truly serves people through the magic of the market.

This perfectly complemented the neoliberal propaganda of “nothing can be done,” learned helplessness—while business erected insurmountable barriers to any action that might jeopardize their only real goal: profits in the green zone next quarter.

The different fates of each of humanity’s attempts to solve and act together indicate the dramatic nature of the change of eras that occurred at the end of the 20th century.

The history of the return of a safe ozone layer is an example of how adult intelligent beings act, aware of their interests and using the opportunities of science and the state available at their stage of civilization development. There is nothing unrealistic in this and there should not be.

However, in the first quarter of the 21st century, the very possibility of simply acting logically and rationally in the interests of all humanity in politics, and especially international politics, looks like a fantasy: for people, and collectively, for governments, to act wisely and effectively, and follow science? Are you living in communism or something? Have you ended up in the world of Star Trek or something?

Alas, the norm in politics in the modern world has become that it is difficult to achieve correct decisions, impossible to implement, and only changes for the worse are easy and always implemented. It would seem that all the components of the ozone hole success story are in place by now for climate change: scientists have discovered the problem, notified world governments, and are continuing to study it.

The media also do their job, albeit not very well, but at least everyone has heard about the climate crisis. And, it would seem, all the same components of the global project to restore the ozone layer: scientists, the press, governments – on the ground, doing something—so why does the engine run, but the car doesn’t move?

Because at the same time as the Montreal Protocol, a global reboot of the economic base occurred – socialism in the countries of the Soviet bloc and social democracy in the countries of the West were replaced by neoliberal capitalism, and in the following decades the socio-political superstructure rebooted under the conditions of the new old economic base: the economy continued to work, but stopped solving problems: houses are being built, but homelessness is growing; food is being produced in excess, but hunger is growing. The resource of industrial goods is decreasing to the periodicity of their renewal set by marketers.

Collectively, humanity can set tasks and find solutions, but closed tasks are exhausted markets. With the replacement of the collective will of humanity by the logic of the market – humanity has lost the ability to complete tasks and, in principle, to complete anything – to the point that the United States must now be in a continuous state of war only for the sake of constantly maintaining military orders, which was clearly demonstrated in 2021, when the military-industrial complex desperately fought against Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. And just six months later, the orders returned—the United States opened an order for arms supplies to Ukraine, for the same amount that it had previously allocated annually for military orders for Afghanistan.

Wherever the new market fundamentalism won out, as in the UK under Thatcher, the US under Reagan and post-Soviet Russia under Yeltsin, governments voluntarily surrendered the power to steer societies and retreated to the role of guardians of markets and stewards of business interests. And business needs only two things: that demand does not cease and that profits grow – and over the following decades, virtually all Western and post-Soviet countries were reshaped to suit the interests of business: social needs began to turn into permanent needs, the provision of which becomes more expensive, and the results worsen—this is why political speeches and debates from 1990s 30-35 years later make it feel like the time has frozen since.

In 1987, in Montreal, humanity caught the last train of the old world order, and therefore the threat of destruction of the ozone layer was not only stopped, but also the restoration of the damage began. Social and global problems that were unresolved at the beginning of the neoliberal era became insoluble in the following decades.

And if the threat to the ozone layer had been discovered just a couple of years later, we would probably have seen “a market solution” for the ozone layer: in 1987, facing the threat of losing the ozone layer, governments did not feel obligated yet to assess costs of ozone layer destruction against the cost of its restoration, nor to consult with the producers of destructive aerosols.

But just a couple of years later, and, with all the businesses concerned invited to the round table with the governments, they could have probably come up with a business-friendly and maybe even fiscally prudent solution to ozone layer threat, and instead of banning dangerous freons, they would invest in ozone restoring technologies, or “saved the jobs” in freon and “added some jobs” in freon removal—and in 2025 we would probably still be living in a constant need to patch up the ozone layer that we continue to destroy.

To justify the embrace of the neoliberal era, its ideologues told a story of ineffective, slow, indecisive governments vs. agile, creative, responsible and effective businesses. That story was a deliberate hoax.

In reality, when countries of the world faced an existential threat, they acted rationally, decisively and effectively—because no other interests interfered with them doing so. Whereas in every other major societal or civilizational issue, the progress on which was stalled or thwarted, there have always been a special interest allowed to participate.

Turns out, people behave most adequately and rationally not in the pursuit of profit and market relations, but in situations where there is no commercial component in principle – and there is room for other values ​​and priorities, threats are assessed differently, views on problems are broader, the moral component gains weight and attention is paid to long-term consequences.

And with the advent of the profit motive, bouquets of motivations, prioritization, a broad outlook, morality, and long-term prospects are all pushed to the periphery. Professional myopia is included: focus on maximizing profit in the shortest possible time. The planning horizon is a year or two, for real visionaries and captains of industry – 5 or even 10. But ultimately, the main thing for everyone is the profit indicators for the year. The entire capitalist system is tailored for this race. And capitalism, in turn, has bent almost the entire civilization to its priorities: all societies and states.

And the force of capitalist gravity, like physical gravity, distorts space-time itself: people included in this system, living in the rhythm of this race, not only do not see further than five years ahead, because such horizons are irrelevant to capitalism – in the distorted time-space in which they live, people who look into the future for 10 years, 20, 30, or even speak in terms of generations – about the future for a generation, two, three ahead – look strange, some kind of irrational weirdos, holy fools, as if they have nothing to do. As a result, life in such conditions feels dynamic, but from year to year it remains unchanged.

Although if you break out of the capitalist gravity, space-time smooths out, and it becomes clear that the future in 30-40 years is not in another dimension, but literally in front of us, to meet it you don’t even have to do anything – it is coming to us itself, and most of those reading this today, I want to believe, will meet it, albeit old. And from this point of view, it doesn’t matter so much whether we are talking about 4 years or 40, what matters is that both moments will happen in your life. And if a problem 40 years from now will hurt us – we will hurt in the “now”. If in 40 years we will be fine – we will also be fine in the “now”. So why is what will happen in 4 years taken seriously, and in 40 – as if it were to happen in a parallel reality?

If we are to set priorities, then it is better to prepare a stable, comfortable and safe world for old age – and not a crazy dystopia.

It is clear that from the point of view of the individual, all this is not very convincing for natural reasons. But for this, people have society, people have institutions, people have science, people have governments, people have technologies – everything to compensate for the individual inability of a person to live in the long term with mechanisms that in the long term are only better revealed and show themselves more effectively.

And human civilization showed its best results precisely during the period of the “struggle of systems”, when there was not only an arms race, but also a race to demonstrate each system’s usefulness to the world. And so the most successful examples of international cooperation took place in the “analog” era from 1950-1980s.

For example, the eradication of smallpox: the idea was the Soviet Union, the organizational platform was the WHO, and the funding was the USA. 20 years of work: a global campaign to vaccinate every last person on Earth – and the terrible scourge of humanity, smallpox, disappeared by 1980. Modern people don’t even remember it, but it didn’t disappear on its own – it was again an organized collective international effort. Non-commercial, which is important! It’s scary to think what would have happened if, in addition to Big Oil, there had been a commercial sector of Great Smallpox.

Humanity was smarter while the Soviet Union existed. And not because the Soviet Union itself was necessarily smarter, but because its existence forced the competing bloc to be smarter. For example, competition between systems launched a space race that reached the Moon and drove science, technology and education.

And in the “digital age,” the age of information and the Internet, tasks have become smaller, and cooperation is more difficult, and tourism has become the hope for the development of space.

That is why we need to know about the unnoticed finest hour of civilization and remember that what now seems like science fiction has already been reality.

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