Assignment task:
Because of an earlier unilateral ban on aerosols using ozone-depleting chemicals, the United States was ahead of members of the European Community and Japan in finding substitutes for CFCs in aerosol cans. In fact, its use of ozone-depleting chemicals was already on the decline thanks to increasing technology which helped make the reductions proposed by the international community less costly for the US. As a result, it joined Canada and the Nordic states in supporting such a ban. Western Europe and Japan did not yet have technological alternatives to CFCs and fearing the costs associated with acquiring that technology and the damage it would do to their economy, Western Europe and Japan rejected a ban on aerosols in the early 1980s. The Soviet Union initially resisted the idea of a CFC phase-out fearing it would be unable to develop new technologies to replace CFCs. It sited its slumping economy as a major reason for its inability to do so. China and India, who were minor producers at the time but were already gearing up for major production increases, also feared that the transition to ozone-safe chemicals would be too costly without noncommercial access to alternative technologies. Because of its dominant role in world politics at the time, the United States eventually pressured the other states into joining the ban on CFCs despite the potential market disadvantages those countries faced. Based on the above scenario, which theory best explains why each country decided to pursue or reject the reduction of CFS.