An entire book deserves to be written on how the world’s big chemical companies have cynically sought to undermine the science of climate change with the sole aim of raking in more profit but on World Ozone Day it’s important to focus on the positives and consider why the global ozone regime remains as relevant as ever
Amid preparations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks, the Montreal Protocol quietly announced a decision to fund China’s phase-out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), a move which will keep eight billion tonnes of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, not far off China’s annual CO2 emissions
I travelled to Miami to record interviews with key agencies - Department of Justice (DoJ), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) - for a training film on combating illegal trade in ODS which EIA is producing in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme
I spent last week in Canada attending one of the regular meetings of the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund (MLF), the body established to help developing countries meet their commitments under the global ozone treaty
This week saw the death of one of the great scientific pioneers of modern environmentalism – F Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who, along with his student Mario Molina, identified the link between CFCs and ozone destruction
Today is World Ozone Day. Or, to put it more long-windedly, the ‘International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer’. However, it probably won’t have escaped attention that the hole in the ozone layer, the cause of global consternation in the 1970s and ’80s, is on track for (near total) recovery by around 2050