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The Healing Ozone is Good News For Everyone But Climate Deniers (Daily Read - Carl Pope)
Before there was climate denial there was "Ozone Man," writes Carl Pope.
The Republican party’s long, messy divorce from reality began in October 1992, when President George H.W. Bush derided then Vice-Presidential candidate Al Gore as “Ozone man”, someone who would put us "up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American."
Bush was referring to Gore’s early warning about the public health threat posed by growing concentrations of CFC, chemical refrigerants used in refrigerators and air conditioners, which were rapidly degrading the ozone layer which screens the earth from dangerous UV solar radiation.
Ironically, Bush as Vice President had five years earlier submitted for Senate ratification the Montreal Protocol, phasing out CFC production in response to Gore’s concerns. And only a few months earlier the Bush Administration itself had agreed to strengthen that Montreal Protocol concluding that this would "constitute a major step forward in protecting public health and the environment from…stratospheric ozone depletion."
Thirty years later, this month, we got some remarkable good news. The World Meteorological Organization forecast that the ozone hole is not only shrinking, but will be fully healed in most of the world by 2040. While the net effect of historic CFC degradation of the ozone layer will still be an increase in cancer cases – several hundred thousand by 2100 – researchers estimate that without the Montreal Treaty an additional 400 million people would have suffered from skin cancer.
This is an astonishing demonstration both of the damage reckless technology can wreak, and the human ability to respond and dramatically limit the actual costs.
Republicans have long since stopped celebrating such progress. Bush’s “ozone man” jibe was the beginning of a steady Republican retreat from the two key lessons of the ozone layer threat: 21st century technology is powerful enough, misused, to disrupt the stability of climate and other systems on which civilization depends; and collective human cooperation combined with innovative technology and functioning markets can limit and even repair such damage.
The lessons of the recovery of the ozone layer can be summed up in eight simple words: "We caused these problems; we can solve them."
And it's a stark reminder of why the Paris Agreement is so important: Working together, we can reverse the damage we've caused -- if we just do it.
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