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25th Anniversary of Ozone Hole Announcement Prompts Comparison In 1985, scientists announced in the journal Nature that pollutants were thinning the ozone layer that protected the earth from a large portion of the sun’s radiation. Within two years, the U.N. adopted a resolution against CFCs.
While the ozone hole still exists due to the tenacity of the pollutants in question, the quick international response to the problem stabilized it.
A recent issue of Nature featured reflections on the comparative inaction on climate change from one of the scientists responsible for the discovery of the ozone hole.
Jonathan Shanklin said that the difference between that problem and the one of climate change is that there was a clear link between the pollutants in question and the problem as well as between the hole and cancer rates. Further, eliminating the use of CFCs didn’t require any radical changes in peoples’ ways of life. By contrast, wrote Shanklin, the evidence for man-made climate change is more complex and public perception is “that civilization will collapse unless they abandon cars and radically change their lives in other difficult ways. Not surprisingly, there is confusion and resistance.” |
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