Let's take the short five-minute film mentioned above as our starting point. Lochhead used footage from his documentary for its trailer The Hole: How Ronnie and Maggie saved the world [6] to summarise the story and thus give the main documentary internet visibility. As in the feature film, 'Maggie' Thatcher and 'Ronnie' Reagan are at the heart of the story in the trailer. They are more or less depicted as pilgrims, who attempt to convince their foreign counterparts to "save the world" (the expression chosen in the title). But while Thatcher and Reagan were powerful actors indeed in international diplomacy, it would also be a gross misrepresentation to present them as key players in ozone diplomacy.

​

        Firstly, their roles as leaders did not involve them spending more than a few hours at most in negotiations. Secondly, their decisions were obviously shaped by the power relations driven by their national public opinion and administration. Lochhead points out that scientific elites and 'consumerists' put Reagan under a certain amount of domestic pressure which was all the more decisive because certain conservative members of his administration were refusing progress. [7] However, he does not mention the pressure on Thatcher exerted by leading British ozone scientists (the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was first documented by British scientists in 1985), her Environment Secretary, the House of Lords and British environmental groups. This combined pressure played a key role in the Iron Lady finally agreeing to sign the Montreal Protocol in September 1987 and then taking on the mantle of eloquent spokeswoman in international discussions to plead the cause of the ozone layer with other Western countries and advocate financial compensation for developing countries.

​

     In fact, the documentary only focuses on Thatcher's 'green period' which lasted for two years at most. This was from late 1987 to late 1989, when long-range transboundary air pollution (acid rain) and threats of ozone depletion and global warming were making headlines, and the Green Party's were becoming increasingly popular with British voters (the Green Party UK obtained a historic 15% in the June 1989 European elections). However, Lochhead does not mention the fact that the British Prime Minister had opposed signing a binding treaty on ozone-depleting substances (chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, tetrachloromethane, hydrobromofluorocarbons, etc.) until the final months of the Montreal Protocol negotiations. In this respect she fully went along with the views of the British chemical industry and negotiators from Western and Southern European countries and Japan. [8] Indeed she was to actually oppose ambitious climate change policies after her resignation in 1990.

​

        The choice of actors to be central to the narrative is political in nature as is the description of the factors that that lead them to act. Three narrative effects seem to me to be particularly problematic as they tend to depoliticise events and/or discourage viewers. Firstly, Lochhead chose two political stars for his film in Thatcher and Reagan. The choice of famous individuals (or making lesser-known figures into stars or heroes) is a recurrent feature of productions aimed at the general public and documentaries are no exception. Observational eco-documentaries - like the film Demain (2015) - escape this to an extent by focusing on everyday local practices but authoritative eco-documentaries often chose actors the general public knows to achieve a phenomenon of identification. [9] Such choices become very problematic when people are given a central narrative role on the pretext that they are famous and this is even worse when they are presented as providential individuals. Unfortunately, this is the case with Ozone Hole: How We Saved the Planet where viewers are consequently largely reduced to just being spectators of politics - or more precisely, spectators of 'an incarnation of politics centred on the most influent policy-makers'.

​

       Secondly, Reagan and Thatcher were clearly also chosen because of their proverbial anti-environmentalism and the antipathy they provoked among environmentalists. They may not have been placed at the centre of the narrative just to please a right-wing audience seeking to assuage their environmental conscience (in fact this is actually quite likely...) but they were obviously made the subject of the film for comedic purposes! By some trick or irony of history, Reagan and Thatcher "have become the most unlikely ecowarriors in history" as Lochhead jokes. [10] And yet what responsibility is left when history is a farce?

​

     Thirdly, documentary filmmakers frequently use biographical elements to make the identification process work. This is a familiar technique - that of storytelling which consists of interweaving individual and collective narratives and combining a personal story with broader elements of history. However, this involves many dangers including the psychologisation of the action. Lochhead succumbs to this when he explains that Reagan was sensitive to the ozone layer problem because he enjoyed spending long hours in the sun on his Californian ranch which had led to him undergoing surgery on his nose for a skin cancer. This illness was the most feared consequence of ozone depletion. This may indeed have played a role in Reagan's understanding of the problem and indeed all decision-making results from a trade-off between multiple 'instincts'. However, the psychological elements which are evoked cannot be presented as the most important factors in a president's decision-making. [11] Moreover, and above all, the central narrative position assigned to these highly idiosyncratic and accidental elements relegates ideological positions and political commitment to a less important position.

​

Above and beyond world leaders' discourse, multiple actors construct long-term dynamics

​

       The lines suddenly shifted between the summers of 1986 and 1987, creating favourable conditions for all the major polluting countries to sign the Montreal Protocol. Close observation of this moment reveals the lasting action of people involved who clearly played a more decisive role than the heads of state.

​

        Firstly, influential individuals and institutions with varied profiles that are sometimes close to the highest decision-making bodies jointly promote a rapid, demanding and coordinated response on the global scale. This involves the differentiated (between industrialised and industrialising countries) and definitive rejection of the use of ozone-destroying substances in the medium term. This international 'ecological epistemic community' has been gradually constructed since the early 1970s. It federates various actors with specific reasons to wish to politicise the -then hypothetical - destruction of the ozone layer. A major challenge for atmospheric chemists was to gain recognition for their scientific discipline which had been marginal in the field of atmospheric sciences until then. NASA's objective was to achieve its 'environmental turnaround'. As for the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) launched in 1972, it aimed to become a key international institution. This informal community also includes negotiators from different countries with technocratic profiles along with members of national expert and regulatory agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [12]

​

       Next are the US chemical companies. The USA banned CFCs in aerosol cans as early as 1977 at a time when most European Economic Community countries and also Japan refused to do the same. Therefore, these companies made a sustained effort to develop technological substitutes for CFCs in collaboration with experts from government departments and scientific agencies like the EPA. In the summer of 1987, DuPont de Nemours, the world's largest CFC producer, and some of its US counterparts gave up on their strategy of opposing a binding international treaty because they took very seriously the possibility that states would adopt it without their consent. However, they also thought it possible that this constraint could actually become an opportunity in the medium term. US industry was ahead of its overseas competitors in developing substitutes and hoped to obtain patents and develop new markets in the main growth sectors affected by the new regulations namely air conditioning, refrigeration, insulation and electronics. [13] The future was to prove US industrialists right. Also, the work on modelling stratospheric chemistry carried out by researchers at DuPont de Nemours and other major polluting companies also played a role. They confirmed the danger of a rapid and significant destruction of the ozone layer thus helping to convince their leaders of the need for a binding international treaty to deal with this issue.

​

        As we can see, in the case of ozone, as with the vast majority of cases documented by the social sciences, the transition from a socio-technical controversy to sustainable governance requires the development of a representational framework and normative tools which work for a multitude of actors. The writer and director of Ozone Hole: How We Saved the Planet focuses on Thatcher's political speeches, and emphasises the persuasive role played by one of Reagan's close associates, George Shultz, who is said to have convinced Reagan to change his views behind closed doors along with, and played by "environmental lawyers, economists, and scientists" who aimed to end apathy about ozone policy in the early 1980s and are said to have built "such a robust case that the President simply could not ignore it". [14] Lochhead also rather satisfactorily documents the long-term contribution of the ecological epistemic community -particularly atmospheric scientists - whose work was indeed particularly decisive regarding ozone in terms of awareness-raising, diplomacy and promoting the precautionary principle. [15] However, he avoids the long dynamics inherent to the public-private technological innovation we have just described. In other terms, he sets aside the 'material' dimension of the problem and, generally speaking, this dimension urgently needs to be rehabilitated.

​

        Lochhead could also have looked at actors that historians have tended to discuss less. He emphasises the influence of popular television culture (advertising, soap operas) but almost completely overlooks civil society contributions from journalists (the 'fourth estate'), intellectuals and artists. And yet their views as expressed in the general media, satirical press cartoons, popular science or environmental magazines have played an important role. This particularly involves 'translating' scientific uncertainties about the extent of the destruction of the ozone layer into "considerations about what prudent political action may imply". [16]

​

       Lochhead does not make more reference to the losers in this whole story either. These include the producers and users of the products affected by the regulations. These include also the scientists who opposed the theory of ozone depletion and the use of the precautionary principle (yet most of these, including the two leading British 'sceptics', the meteorologist Richard Scorer and the renowned geochemist James Lovelock, author of best-sellers on the Gaia hypothesis, were to take the side of pro-regulation atmospheric scientists shortly after 1985 when instrumental measurements of changes in Antarctic ozone concentrations grew in importance). [17]

​

        These points are important. This is because the choice of main 'characters' in the narrative and the importance given to them are political choices beyond just the question of historical rigour which requires the maximum number of relevant actors to be taken into account. Such political choices create a hierarchy of actors' powers of action and thus distribute the cards of power.

​

Can lessons be learnt from 'history'?

​

        After history as farce comes history as tragedy. After the ozone layer, we now need to deal with climate change, the 'new ecological disaster'. If we are to believe the last part of the film and the last sentence of the trailer - "it's that simple, folks!" - it would not be a particularly complicated task. [18] The idea underpinning this is that if the two main proponents of neo-liberalism and sworn enemies of the Greens agreed to protect the ozone layer in the 1980s, why wouldn't the heads of state of today do likewise regarding the climate? This conjecture is simplistic but nonetheless worth taking seriously. Using past experience to inform decisions regarding action in the present is possible to a certain extent. In this case, it even seems a rather promising approach because the institutional expertise and governance modalities for climate change were broadly modelled on those for the ozone layer. There is only a past history dating back a few years as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988, and the first Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate occurred in 1995. However, analyses have shown that mimetic reproduction of action on ozone framework for the climate quickly became impossible and would in any case have been incapable of involving States, territories and industrialists to an extent which would have been equal to the importance of this issue. [19]

​

       Firstly, climate change policies have been constructed within a geopolitical framework that has moved away from the framework of the ozone layer as time has gone on. The growth of the major emerging economies and, more generally, increased multipolarity have reshuffled the cards. The universal cooperative action advocated by Thatcher and many heads of state in the late 1980s in response to global environmental risks has become mere 'fiction' again. [20] The US is now demanding firm commitments from China regarding the climate as was the case with 1987's international ozone layer while China is 'playing at' presenting itself as a developing country. However, the implications and reception of these discourses are no longer the same. [21] In fact, the only relevant geopolitical lesson to be learnt from the ozone affair is that US engagement is decisive in environmental matters and indeed in many other areas. The diplomatic weight of the leading economic, scientific and military power clearly has much greater influence than that of the European Union. The EU has become the locomotive of climate diplomacy but only advances at the speed of a steam engine. [22]

​

       Secondly, in addition to these geopolitical dissimilarities, the material and social changes linked to reducing the emissions responsible for climate change are quite different in their diversity and scope from those linked to the ozone issue. This represents my more fundamental objection to the documentary's epilogue. Clearly, we could make lists of climate-friendly industries that need to be spurred on (renewable energy production, insulation materials, low-carbon vehicles, etc.). These represent substitutes for old technologies which need to be encouraged and also we could possibly strive to reproduce the regulatory and financial tools that were set up for the ozone issue. [23] However, this kind of approach relying mainly on technological solutions has already shown its limits in the field of climate change (economic thresholds, rebound effects or resistance from citizens), even though these climate-friendly technology has benefited from significant investment. Also changes in individual practices remain slow and can even be detrimental to the climate. In other words, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions represents much bigger a challenge to capitalism that abandoning ozone-depleting substances did. [24] Air conditioning is an edifying example. This industry has stopped using CFCs but has continued to grow rapidly (world air conditioner sales have quadrupled since 1990). This growth has been accompanied by increased energy consumption and emissions of HFCs - the substitutes for CFCs and HCFCs - which are powerful greenhouse gases like their predecessors.

​

        As a corollary to the impossibility of duplicating the "ozone policy miracle" which the UNEP Director General Mostafa Tolba believed in [25], one of the approaches suggested making up for the obvious failures of climate governance between 1990 and 2010 was precisely to move away from the stratospheric ozone policy model. Instead of mainly targeting the most polluting factories in industrialised countries (the logic underpinning the Montreal Protocol which was based on the logic of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for the climate), the full spectrum of technologies concerned by regulations in the mobility and building sectors (etc.) was broadened. Also, alternative approaches to the simple set of technological standards driven by new actors gained ground at a time when international climate negotiations were not progressing. In particular, for the last ten years or so, emphasis has been placed (even in IPCC reports - although the response remains poor) on changes to individual practices regarding food, tourism and even work, and on reconfiguring territories and related services. The aim of this reconfiguration is to jointly develop infrastructures, technologies and citizens' practices in terms of mobility, heating, energy production and consumption and so forth. [26]

​

      Finally, the history of climate policies seems to show that a very high level of citizen involvement and commitment is necessary if we are to see the emergence of mitigation policies which correspond to the importance of the issues at stake. Such citizen involvement requires pressure (public mobilisations, awareness-raising through various media, pressure to make ecology a core electoral issue, legal proceedings, etc.) and also everyday consumption practices need to change. Lochhead dismisses this hypothesis out of hand and is thus able to renew the model of the head of state saving the climate in a providential manner. Indeed, both the film and its trailer end with images of factory chimneys and exhaust pipes before showing Barack Obama and other government officials at the COP21 conference in Paris at the end of 2015. [27] As I mentioned earlier, this model disempowers viewers (… unless, of course, they themselves are members of highest level decision-making bodies). Besides, not only does the documentary's subtitle "how we saved the planet" contradict its demonstration that an enlightened elite's actions were the crucial factor, but it also gives viewers a clean conscience on environmental matters.

​

The political power of the scientific image and its artistic variations

​

        Most authoritative eco-documentaries adopt a highly 'rationalist' view of policy action which tends to consider that robust scientific knowledge necessarily leads to people's assent and even inevitably to action. However, regarding the environment (at least), historians have shown that a strong and widely accepted scientific consensus is often less of a decisive factor than the windfall effects that change offers and how strongly the actors concerned have a sense of danger and urgency. The IPCC's conclusions thus have a high level of consensual acceptance within the scientific community and the policy arena, but political action is still far below the level recommended by experts. Conversely, the Montreal Protocol was signed despite the absence of a robust scientific consensus - with the precautionary principle being invoked precisely because there was no satisfactory scientific evidence. [28]

   How greatly people adhered to this precautionary principle owed much to the communication of scientific images and images 'derived' from these depictions (satirical drawings, superimposed images, artists' drawings of the globe, etc.) which could be interpreted by a broad audience as proving there was an imminent danger. The numerical simulations of the hole in the ozone layer broadcast by NASA from the end of 1985 onwards (see Figure 1 below) [29] were undoubtedly the most emblematic scientific images. The sense of danger and urgency is at its most compelling when people fear their short-term health is directly affected. The modelled image of the ozone hole's force derives precisely from its capacity to generate such a sense of immediate health risk. This is achieved by the image provoking the following double psychological response: 1/ it shows the fragility of the Earth; 2/ it makes people aware of the vulnerability of the skin which was itself in danger of being "pierced", analogously to the anti-UV shield the ozone layer represents and which is there to protect the skin. The artists who started producing images derived from the hole in the ozone layer rapidly understood and exploited this mechanism.