My teaching and textbook1 have always covered many physics‐related social issues, including stratospheric ozone depletion and global warming. The ozone saga is an inspiring good‐news story that's instructive for solving the similar but bigger problem of global warming. Thus, as soon as students in my physics literacy course at the University of Arkansas have developed a conceptual understanding of energy and of electromagnetism, including the electromagnetic spectrum, I devote a lecture (and a textbook section) to ozone depletion and another lecture (and section) to global warming. Humankind came together in 1986 and quickly solved, to the extent that humans can solve it, ozone depletion. We could do the same with global warming, but we haven't and as yet there's no sign that we will. The parallel between the ozone and global warming cases, and the difference in outcomes, are striking and instructive.

Topics
Electromagnetic spectrum, Atmospheric chemistry, Atmospheric structure, Air pollution, Global warming, Educational aids, Education, Teaching, Lectures, News and events
1.
Art Hobson, Physics: Concepts & Connections, 5th ed. (Pearson Addison‐Wesley, New York, 2010).
2.
Throughout this article, all details concerning the history of the negotiations over stratospheric ozone depletion come from Richard Benedick's wonderful and highly recommended account Ozone Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991).
3.
The quotations are from the TAR's “Summary for Policymakers,” available at www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data.htm.
4.
Art
Hobson
, “
The plausibility of global warming
,”
Phys. Teach.
48
,
77
–
78
(Jan.
2010
).
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5.
See, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists' survey “Voices of Federal Climate Scientists” (2006), available at www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/federal‐climate‐scientists.html.
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© 2010 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2010
American Association of Physics Teachers
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