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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29134 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Firstly, those examples which I just listed were examples in which the forces of capital were neutral (CFCs, gay rights)

For an even more cynical interpretation I'd like to point out that CFC ozone damage was first discovered in a research paper in 1974. The CFC patent expired in 1978. Things didn't get rolling on a CFC ban until the 80s.

Sure these things take time, but I think the forces of capital saw the introduction of new patentable refrigerants as an opportunity.

The CFC patent expired in 1978.

I don't know what patent you refer to, but R-12 was invented in 1928 and in general the classic CFC refrigerants go back no later than the 1930s. They were not just out of patent but long out of patent. That the environmentalists now find something wrong with every replacement between the time of mandate and the time of adoption, so we're on a treadmill, is certainly an opportunity for the chemical companies but they're not driving the bus.

According to wiki:

"In 1978 the United States banned the use of CFCs such as Freon in aerosol cans, the beginning of a long series of regulatory actions against their use. The critical DuPont manufacturing patent for Freon ("Process for Fluorinating Halohydrocarbons", U.S. Patent #3258500) was set to expire in 1979"

citing DeSombre, Elizabeth R. (2000). Domestic Sources of International Environmental Policy: Industry, Environmentalists, and U.S. Power. MIT Press. p. 93

U.S. Patent #3258500

That's a patent for a particular manufacturing process. The chemicals were in use before that patent (as the patent's text states).

Yeah, the quote I pasted said that as well.

I have no particular horse in the race, I was only seeking to clarify what DradIsPing was conflating. He was hewing close to what happened but mispoke(typed).

I don't know how valuable the manufacturing process was, how unique or difficult it was to manufacture CFCs without access to the proprietary process, and whether once it was off patent if everyone could have mass produced CFCs cheaply undercutting DuPont's margin.

If the process itself was so important, it amounts to the same thing as a patent for CFCs. From a business perspective.

The fact that refrigerators were in a thing prior to the 1970s seems to indicate that it wasn't that valuable?

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