Ronald Reagan: Climate Hero

Washington, D.C., August 1, 2024 – The most successful multilateral environmental treaty of all time drew Ronald Reagan’s support despite opposition from his more conservative advisers, because the costs of doing nothing—as analyzed by Reagan’s own economic team—far outweighed the costs to industry of banning the key chemical damaging the ozone layer. The internal White House cost-benefit analysis that helped tip the scales in interagency debates over the 1987 Montreal Protocol on the Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer is among a new set of declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project.

Despite his zeal for deregulation and conservative business principles, President Reagan understood the gravity of the ozone problem and the environmental ramifications for the planet, according to the newly published records. At the urging of the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Reagan overruled Cabinet opposition within the Domestic Policy Council to ensure adoption of the final set of U.S. objectives for the treaty. Reagan’s Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, played an especially important role in blocking efforts by the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Management and Budget to subvert or weaken the ozone treaty.

The documents in this Electronic Briefing Book were obtained by the Archive under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), published in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, or discovered during archival expeditions to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Together, these records fill a critical gap in the history of Reagan’s assertive stance on international environmental issues, which was detailed in an earlier Electronic Briefing Book on “U.S. Climate Change Policy in the 1980s.” Among other things, they reveal the previously underreported influence of the Council of Economic Advisers in swaying cabinet negotiations and Reagan’s personal involvement in the treaty negotiations via handwritten guidance.

A Multilateral Success

Nearly four decades ago, a May 1985 Nature report published the alarming finding that a massive hole had opened in the ozone shield and that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were to blame for the breakdown. Nine months after formal diplomatic negotiations on the issue began in December 1986, dozens of nations met in Montreal in September 1987 to sign an agreement that would significantly reduce CFCs in the atmosphere. In his statement on the signing of the treaty, Reagan called the Montreal Protocol a “model of cooperation” and “an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy.”[1] The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone layer officially entered into force on January 1, 1989.

Since the implementation of the Protocol, the EPA has estimated that Americans born between 1890 and 2100 have avoided approximately 2.3 million skin cancer deaths.[2] More recently, an October 2022 scientific assessment sponsored by the United Nations (UN), the European Commission and U.S. federal agencies reported that not only is the ozone layer on track to recover within decades but that the global phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals is also benefiting efforts to mitigate climate change.[3] In June, a Nature Climate study found that levels of the harmful ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) have fallen faster than expected—a result attributed to “the efficacy of the Montreal protocol.”[4]

As the only UN treaty ratified by every country on the planet, the Montreal Protocol is a powerful and successful example of environmental multilateralism, and a re-examination of the circumstances of its negotiations provides a useful framework for studying the state of international environmental negotiations at present. As the authors of the treaty said, the Montreal Protocol demonstrated “that nations are capable of undertaking complicated cooperative actions in the real world of ambiguity and imperfect knowledge.”[5]

Standing in sharp contrast to today’s partisan gridlock over a comprehensive climate policy, the Montreal Protocol has been a “true champion for the environment over the last 35 years,” according to Meg Seki, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Environment Program’s Ozone Secretariat.[6]

Conservatives have not always stood in “lock-stop opposition” to the climate and environment agenda, however,[7] and the declassified records featured here show that even conservative stalwarts like President Reagan appreciated the need to address global environmental challenges, in particular those related to human-driven degradation of the atmosphere.[8] Despite its overall ideological adherence to small government and free market economics, the Reagan administration demonstrated significant U.S. leadership in tackling the risks posed by the production and use of ozone-depleting chemicals. 

The Backstage Debates

The lead U.S. negotiator to the Protocol, Richard Elliot Benedick, later wrote a comprehensive history of the treaty negotiations that is critical for understanding the underlying scientific issues involved as well as the complex domestic politics and international diplomacy surrounding the talks.[9] In both in his book and in a subsequent oral history interview[10], Benedick, who recently passed away at age 88, argued that U.S. leadership was vital to the successful negotiation of a strong ozone treaty with a clear and firm timetable for reducing the production of CFCs.[11]

The declassified record demonstrates, however, that there were strong disagreements within the Reagan administration over the treaty negotiations and that 1986 and 1987 were marked by intensive interagency debates over the U.S. position on the ozone treaty. Throughout these deliberations, State Department and EPA representatives working on the issue reported to a special senior-level working group of the White House Domestic Policy Council chaired by Attorney General Ed Meese. The rationale behind DPC’s major involvement in formulating the U.S. ozone policy was that the negotiation of an environmental treaty on CFCs and similar chemicals would require domestic implementing regulations. But while the DPC was responsible for the preparation of the options paper for the President, State took the lead in formulating arguments in defense of a strong and effective U.S. negotiating position.

The DPC was co-chaired by Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, who, along with representatives from the departments of Commerce, Agriculture, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and parts of the White House Staff, had “serious doubts” that State Department and EPA leadership on the matter was either “good politics or good policy.” (Document 1) In early 1987, these treaty skeptics began to “reopen basic questions about the scientific evidence and the possible damage to the U.S. economy from imposing additional CFC controls,” despite volumes of data and scientific analysis being generated by the EPA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In addition to undermining the basic science surrounding the damage to the ozone layer, Hodel’s antiregulatory coalition opposed key provisions in the proposal, specifically a second-stage reduction of about 30 percent in CFCs (to make the total cutback 50 percent). EPA and State argued that a “20 percent protocol” would be a “weak protocol” and in some ways “worse than no treaty at all because it would convey a false sense of having taken sufficient action.” But the other U.S. agencies, along with the European Commission, Japan, and the Soviet Union, staunchly opposed the second phase.[12]

Meanwhile, the State Department was concerned that a dysfunctional DPC would result in an about-face by the U.S. regarding the goals it had pressed for in the negotiation, therefore risking “the embarrassing loss of international credibility, as well as domestic political backlash” and “unilateral U.S. controls.” (Document 3) The last point was driven by the likelihood that, if an international agreement was not reached, the courts would compel EPA to impose unilateral reductions, which would hurt U.S industry. To head off the rear-guard effort by Hodel and his coalition, Secretary of State George P. Shultz wrote to Attorney General Meese laying out the serious repercussions of such a reversal. He proposed the issue be taken “to the President without further delay.” (Document 3) Meese pushed back on Shultz, however, in favor of “airing [the] views from all interested officers in the President’s Cabinet.” (Document 4)

Cancer Deaths Outweigh Economic Cost

A “major break” in the interagency debates came in May 1987 when the President’s Council of Economic Advisers produced a cost-benefit analysis of the CFC control option, which the National Security Archive is publishing here for the first time. (Document 2)[13] The study concluded, despite any scientific or economic uncertainties, that the financial benefits of avoiding future deaths and skin cancer “far outweighed” the cost of CFC controls as estimated by industry and even the EPA. Furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis concluded that the “additional 30% reduction in CFCs also appears to be economically justified on the basis of current knowledge.” The CEA, which was “initially skeptical of the wisdom of regulation to protect the stratospheric ozone layer” (as the DPC noted in its talking points that summer) (Document 5), ultimately helped to sway administration officials who were watching the controversy unfold and overcome Hodel’s rear-guard efforts.[14]

With the federal agencies still in disarray throughout the summer of 1987, Benedick said it had become clear that President Reagan would ultimately have to decide on the provisions of the treaty. On June 18, 1987, the morning of a “crucial DPC meeting” with the President,[15] Reagan wrote the following entry in his daily diary:

"Then a meeting of the Domestic Council. I'm faced with making a decision on instructions to our team on what we seek world wide in reduction of FluoroCarbons that are destroying the Ozone layer. Right now I don’t have the answers."[16]

What happened during the period between the June 18 meeting, when Reagan did not “have the answers,” and his June 24 sign-off on all the State Department positions, overruling the dissenting Cabinet members, remains something of a mystery. Benedick credited the change to “the personal and behind-the-scenes interventions” of Shultz, who was “decisive in preventing dramatic reversal of U.S. policy.”[17] The cost-benefit analysis from Reagan’s economic advisers must have also played a major role. Finally, conservative forces within the Reagan administration—and even Reagan’s own popularity—were at a low ebb at that moment in June 1987, with daily congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal dominating the front pages and television news.

With Reagan’s decisions finalized on June 26 (Documents 7 and 8), the State Department had won every policy battle—a fact reflected in the DPC options paper, which shows Reagan’s handwritten initials next to every State- and EPA-supported option (Document 6). The White House, led by Chief of Staff Howard Baker, was certainly aware of the skeptical views held by members of the Cabinet and for reasons of confidentiality wanted no part of this internal debate leaked to the press. Talking points for Baker’s call to Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead recommended that the Chief of Staff push State Department negotiators to ensure that treaty participation was “well above the 50%” of countries involved that State Department “negotiators have in their heads now.” (Document 9)

In a decision that “was deliberately not publicized”[18]—presumably due to the President’s small government ideology, or, as Benedick suggested, to spare Hodel’s coalition from further embarrassment—Reagan overruled the dissenting Cabinet members to approve the U.S. goals for the treaty.[19] The President’s centrality in cabinet negotiations would “allow the United States to play a leadership role in dealing with this problem,” according to Whitehead’s letter of July 16, 1987, adding that the international agreement would be “a major victory” for Reagan. (Document 10) Following the adoption of the Montreal Protocol on September 16, 1987, which largely conformed to U.S. objectives, Reagan submitted the treaty to Congress for ratification in April 1988.

On September 18, 1987, two days after the adoption of the protocol, Reagan wrote the following in his daily diary:

"Then at 10 A.M. Lee Thomas came in to brief me on agreement we have negotiated with 23 Nations to reduce carbo flurocarbons—in our effort to stop reducing the Ozone layer. This is an historic agreement."[20]

“Best Accidental Climate Treaty”

Today, the Montreal Protocol is hailed as the most successful environmental treaty to date, but it also deserves recognition as the “Best Accidental Climate Treaty.”[21] By phasing out the production of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances, the Montreal Protocol prevented between 0.5 and 1 degree Celsius of global warming by 2100, according to NOAA.[22] Additionally, the success of the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the treaty—in which countries agreed to gradually phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), another greenhouse gas pollutant—bolsters the Montreal Protocol’s standing as a successful, flexible environmental treaty that continues to incorporate and consider changing climate science and solutions.

While climate scholars and practitioners agree that negotiations needed to address climate change are exceedingly more complex than protecting the ozone layer, the protocol’s achievements hold valuable lessons for present and future climate negotiations. As Benedick wrote in his final chapter of Ozone Diplomacy, the multilateral and domestic negotiations that led to the successful enactment of the Montreal Protocol suggest several elements of a “new kind of diplomacy” for addressing global ecological threats like climate change, including the centrality of science in the negotiations; the willingness of governmental action despite a level of scientific uncertainty; a well-informed public; and multilateral diplomacy between countries.[23]