Trickle Down Episode 17: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 3 (Sample)
Just a couple years after Thomas Midgley, Jr. invented leaded gas in the 20s, he followed up that achievement by inventing chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, which were sold by Du Pont under the brand name of Freon. The crown jewel of his work was the creation of Dichlorodifluoromethane, or CFC-12. This substance allowed for more people to experience the wonders of electric food refrigeration as well as indoor air conditioning.
For over 40 years everyone assumed the Freon was perfectly safe, and in fact safer than other chemicals used in refrigeration. It wasn’t until the 1970s, years after Midgley had died, that the horrible truth was discovered: CFCs were eating away at the Earth’s ozone layer. The ozone layer is a region in the stratosphere that absorbs 97 to 99 percent of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light, which otherwise would potentially damage life. The deterioration of this protective layer threatened all life on earth with increased risk of cancer and other ecological problems. People realized the extent of the damage in 1985 when it was discovered that there was a massive hole in the Ozone layer above the Antarctic. This emergency situation led in 1987 to the creation of an international treaty called The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Because of this agreement, which was signed by all of the members of the United Nations and has an extremely high compliance rate, climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2040 and 2066. One possible apocalypse averted because of global cooperation.
This is the story of one guy who just wanted to make money for himself and the companies he worked for (specifically Frigidaire, General Motors, and DuPont), and how his second big invention eventually forced the entire world to pull off a massive effort to avoid global ecological disaster.
Christie, Maureen. The ozone layer: A philosophy of science perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer." 1993.
McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001.
Wilson, Eric Dean. After cooling: On freon, global warming, and the terrible cost of comfort. Simon and Schuster, 2021.
Cox, Stan. Losing our cool: Uncomfortable truths about our air-conditioned world (and finding new ways to get through the summer). The New Press, 2010.
Molina, Mario J., and F. Sherwood Rowland. "Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes: chlorine atom-catalysed destruction of ozone." Nature 249, no. 5460 (1974): 810-812.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.
In the early 1970s, the chemist Mario Molina made a profound discovery.
So profound, that it would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
But it also made him profoundly depressed.
According to his work, there was a hidden danger in chlorofluorocarbons, an industrial product invented by Thomas Midgley Jr.
These chemicals were used all over the world in refrigerators, air conditioning, and spray cans, and they were sold on the basis of their safety.
But they appeared to be floating all the way up into the stratosphere.
There, through a complex series of chemical reactions, they, according to his calculations, degrade the ozone layer, the part of the stratosphere that protects the Earth from the most brutal radiation from the sun.
The situation was so dire that even if all the CFCs on the market magically disappeared in an instant, Things wouldn't get better for decades.
Molina checked his math over and over again, with the help from his colleagues.
But the cruel equations always produced the same result.
If something did not change how humanity lived, and soon, it would be much harder to live on planet Earth.
The night that Mario Molina confirmed his discovery, he told his wife this, The work is going well, but it looks like the end of the world.
I'm Travis View, and this is Trickle Down, the podcast about what happens when bad ideas flow from the top.
With me are Julian Field and Jake Rokitansky.
Episode 17, Earth's Most Destructive Organism, Part 3.
So for this episode, I'm going to get into the second half of the terrible legacy of Thomas Midgley Jr.
Just a couple years after he invented leaded gasoline in the 20s, he followed up that achievement by inventing chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were sold by DuPont under the brand name of Freon.
The crown jewel of his work was the creation of dichlorodifluoromethane, or CFC-12.
This substance allowed for more people to experience the wonders of electric food, refrigeration, as well as indoor air conditioning.
For a solid 40 plus years, everyone assumed that Freon was perfectly safe, and in fact safer than other chemicals used in refrigeration.
It wasn't until the 1970s, years after Midgley had died, that the horrible truth was discovered.
CFCs were eating away at Earth's ozone layer.
That's bad because the ozone layer absorbs about 97 to 99 percent of the sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light, which otherwise would potentially damage life.
The deterioration of this protective layer threatened all life with increased risk of cancer and other ecological problems.
People realized the extent of the damage in 1985 when it was discovered that there was a massive hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic.
This emergency situation led in 1987 to the creation of an international treaty called the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Because of this agreement, which was signed by all the members of the United Nations and has an extremely high compliance rate, climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2040 and 2066.
One possible apocalypse averted because of global cooperation.
In 2017, the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the Montreal Protocol, quote, perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.
Let's never do it again.
Yeah, it's very hard to get the entire world to agree on something, but in the 80s and 90s, all the nations of the world held hands in unity to reverse the horrible destruction that Thomas Midgley Jr.
wrought upon our fragile Earth.
God damn it.
You have to teach people who don't speak English what a Thomas Midgley Jr.
is.
Sorry, there's this guy from Ohio.
Yeah, we got this guy over here.
If you have three Thomas Midgley's Juniors and take away one Thomas Midgley Junior, how many Midgley Juniors do you have left to destroy the planet?
And what of Thomas Midgley Senior?
Yeah, what's going on with that guy?
I hope he's happy.
Well, he's dead, I mean, for sure, at this point.
Look what you made.
Look at your rotten kid, Thomas Midgley Sr.
So, this is the story of one guy who tried to make money for himself and the companies he worked for, specifically Frigidaire, General Motors, and DuPont, and how he eventually forced the entire world to pull off a massive effort to avoid global ecological disaster.
You know, horrifying and inspiring, kinda.
It's like Armageddon, except when they finally look through the telescope, it's just like some guy in suspenders, like, heading full speed for Earth.
With, like, a pipe.
It should be there soon!
George Bush being told by his advisor, another Thomas Midgley Jr.
has hit the World Trade Center.
The story of CFCs and its regulation is complex and ongoing, but for my purposes, I'm just going to focus on the creation of CFCs, the discovery of their danger in the 70s, and the relatively short-lived efforts by industry to protect their profits right up until around the discovery of the ozone later and a little afterwards.
It's really impossible to get the whole story in the podcast episode, but I'm mostly focusing on what impressed me, which is the sheer intellectual and organizational effort required to discover and correct the damage done by Thomas Midgley Jr.
Of course, I want to talk about, you know, the industry's hijinks to fight against the science, because DuPont and company, they tried to pull off their old tricks, casting doubt, hiring PR firms, paying off scientists.
But after it was discovered that the damage of unstopped CFC use would become more and more apparent within a generation, not just like a generation or two from now, industry mostly got in line with ecological efforts.
Not completely.
They're like, oh, wait a second, it's going to affect me?
Oh, well this changes everything!
Yeah, I guess it's just harder to profit on a Mad Max planet, so they folded after it was proven that the danger was serious and immediate.
Yeah, meet us over in Lead Town.
Our mayor is a butterfly!
The invention of leaded gasoline in the 1920s by Thomas Midgley Jr.
was met with some resistance from social reformers, health boards, and workers' rights organizers.
That resistance collapsed, which allowed leaded gasoline to be used with few questions for several decades.
But there was some resistance there.
On the other hand, the invention of CFCs was met with no resistance at all.
This wasn't because CFCs are less dangerous in the long term, but rather because no one knew about the interaction between CFCs and the ozone layer, so the harm was caused by negligence rather than malice or indifference.
The environmental crime of CFCs were more manslaughter than murder, not that that should give any comfort to those of us who might be affected.
The real inspiration for the invention of CFCs was a drop in sales at Frigidaire, a division of General Motors.
Middle-class consumers were still fine with cooling their food in ice boxes rather than electric refrigerators.
This was partly due to the fact that refrigerators were still pretty pricey and involved the risk of toxic refrigerant leak.
Artificial refrigeration requires the use of chemicals that have a very low boiling temperature.
The exact temperature varies from chemical to chemical.
The low boiling point allows them to collect heat from the surrounding area.
To use these chemicals as a refrigerant, you have to pressurize them to keep them in their liquid state, then send them through pressurized tubing.
The tubing and surrounding area becomes cold because the refrigerant has absorbed the heat.
Refrigerators from the late 1800s until 1929 used chemicals that were very toxic like ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide.
These were less than ideal.
There were actually several fatal accidents that occurred in the 1920s because of methyl chloride leakage from refrigerators.
Hey there!
You've been listening to a sample clip of Trickled Down.
This is a side project that I've been working on.
that like, okay, I like cold food. I like, you know, keeping, you know, things like dairy longer,
but I'm not willing to risk my life. Hey there, you've been listening to a sample clip of Trickle
Down. This is a side project that I've been working on. It's a 10 episode series about
misinformation and bad ideas that flow from high authority sources.
I think it's fascinating and I mean it's a way for I guess me to explore the way people who should know what they're talking about don't always actually.
I'm not gonna lie uh some of it's kind of a bummer but um if you're anything like me that's actually more of a reason to dive into the subject matter.
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