Tackling toxins: Case studies of industrial pollutants and implications for climate policy

Abstract

As scholars race to address the climate crisis, they have often treated the problem as sui generis and have only rarely sought to learn from prior efforts to make industrial operations greener. In this paper, we consider what can be learned from other shifts away from polluting substances. Drawing on literatures on corporate regulatory strategies and evolving regulatory interactions, we argue for a focus on configurations of regulatory scrutiny and industrial reform, which we then consider through case studies of several major industrial pollutants. We consider the phaseout of ozone-depleting substances, which has often been cited as a model for mitigating climate change, plus three other cases: per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), leaded fuel, and mercury. We highlight four configurations of regulatory scrutiny and industrial reform: (1) progressive substitution (of ozone-depleting substances); (2) regrettable substitution (in the first waves of PFAS regulation); (3) knock-on substitution (in the phaseout of leaded fuel); and (4) narrow substitution (in the case of mercury). These configurations, and the processes that generated them, provide novel lenses for understanding climate mitigation and confronting obstructionism. They point to the diversity of positions that corporate actors may take in the face of potential or actual public regulation, and the possibility of notable divides across and within given industries, which can facilitate meaningful reforms.