Professor Reiner Grundmann has published a paper in Geoscience on Ozone and climate governance: An implausible path dependence

Professor Grundmann's paper compares the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change. This is based on talk he gave last year at a conference in Paris to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol.

Many observers and commentators have used the case of ozone science and politics as a role model for climate science and politics. Two crucial assumptions underpin this view: (1) that science drives policymaking, and (2) that a unified, international science assessment is essential to provide "one voice" of science that speaks to policymakers.

I will argue that these assumptions are theoretically problematic and empirically questionable. We should realize that both cases, ozone and climate, are profoundly different and only have superficial similarities. Ozone science developed late, but efforts to protect the ozone layer happened swiftly. The relation between carbon dioxideand climate change has been studied for many decades, but efforts to control global warming have failed so far. I will discuss the linear model of the scinece-policy relationship and use the typology of tame and wicked problems to explain this stark difference.