What Can We Do About Ozone Loss

Offers a simple explanation of the environmental issue of ozone loss, and explores some possible and proven ways to address the problems it causes.

In the 1970s the world became aware of a huge danger: the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer by CFCs escaping into the atmosphere, and the damage this could do to human health and the food chain. So great was the threat that by 1987 the UN had succeeded in coordinating an international treaty to phase out emissions; which, over the following 15 years has been implemented. It has been hailed as an outstanding success. It needed the participation of all the parties: governments, industry, scientists, campaigners, NGOs and the media, and is a model for future treaties. This volume provides the authoritative and comprehensive history of the whole process from the earliest warning signs to the present. It is an invaluable record for all those involved and a necessary reference for future negotiations to a wide range of scholars, students and professionals.

'Imagine the pride of earning the Nobel Prize for warning that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer. Then imagine that citizens, policymakers, and business executives heeded the warning and transformed markets to protect the earth. This book is the story of why we can all be optimistic about the future if we are willing to be brave and dedicated world citizens.' MARIO MOLINA, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and Professor, University of California This book tells how the Montreal Protocol, the most successful global environmental agreement so far, stimulated the development and worldwide transfer of technologies to protect the ozone layer.Technology transfer is the crux of the 230 international environmental treaties and is essential to fighting climate change. While debate rages about obstacles to technology transfer, until now there has been no comprehensive assessment of what actually works to remove the obstacles. The authors, leaders in the field, assess over 1000 technology transfer projects funded under the Montreal Protocol s Multilateral Fund and the Global Environment Facility, and identify lessons that can be applied to technology transfer for climate change."

This book is the first comprehensive history of international efforts to protect the ozone layer, the greatest success yet achieved in managing human impacts on the global environment. Its arguments about how this success was achieved are both theoretically novel and of great significance for the management of other global problems, particularly global climate change. The book provides an account of the ozone-depletion issues from the first attempts to develop international action in the 1970s to the mature functioning of the present international regime. It examines the parallel developments of politics and negotiations, scientific understanding and controversy, technological progress, and industry strategy that shaped the issue's development and its effective management. In addition, the book offers important new insights into how the interactions among these domains influenced the formation and adaptation of the ozone regime. Addressing the initial formation of the regime, the book argues that authoritative scientific assessments were crucial in constraining policy debates and shaping negotiated agreements. Assessments gave scientific claims an ability to change policy actors' behavior that the claims themselves, however well known and verified, lacked. Concerning subsequent adaptation of the regime, the book identifies a series of feedbacks between the periodic revision of chemical controls and the strategic responses of affected industries, which drove rapid application of new approaches to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals. These feedbacks, promoted by the regime's novel technology assessment process, allowed worldwide use of the chemicals to decline further and faster than even the boldest predictions, by nearly 95 percent within ten years.

While many people have heard about the gaping hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, this seasonal hole is only one part of ozone depletion. There are signs that this hole may be shrinking as a result of recent efforts to limit certain kinds of pollution. More troubling is the overall depletion scientists have detected worldwide. Readers will find no gaps or holes in this succinct and straightforward discussion of the issue.

Humankind has dramatically altered the composition of the atmosphere during the past 150 years, chiefly by increasing the concentrations of naturally occurring greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and, in the last half century, by introducing new ones. Excessive amounts of greenhouse gases trap heat, which the earth would normally radiate back to space, thereby affecting the energy-storage capacity of the atmosphere and oceans. In recent decades the ozone layer has been severely damaged by man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Though their use is now prohibited, they will remain in the atmosphere for many decades and, with their effects exacerbated by global warming, will continue to destroy ozone for many years to come. The greatest concern for our well-being during the next millennium is that a modified climate now seems inevitable. How much can we afford to let it change? This highly accessible book introduces and explains the processes causing these interrelated environmental crises, examines the measures currently being formulated to tackle them, and considers how effective such measures are likely to be.