After the past few months have been marked by environmental disasters, the news regarding the hole in the ozone layer, once the most feared environmental hazard to mankind, lets you breathe easy. It should be completely gone from most parts of the world within two decades thanks to decisive action by many governments to phase out the degrading substances, the Guardian reports, citing the UN. The loss of the ozone layer, which resulted in human exposure to the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, is on track to be fully restored by 2040 in large parts of the worldwhile it will completely recreate itself over the Arctic by 2045 and over Antarctica by 2066.
Since the fear of ozone depletion in the 1980s, the ozone layer has steadily improved as a result 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that has helped eliminate 99% of ozone-depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as solvents and refrigerants. The UN says the measures taken against the ozone layer are also a weapon against it climate crisis: CFCs are also greenhouse gases, and their continued and uncontrolled use would have raised global temperatures by as much as one degree Celsius by mid-century, compounding an already catastrophic situation in which the gases that warm the planet have not yet diminished . “Measures against ozone create a precedent for climate protection measures‘ said Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, who today presented the progress report produced every four years. “Our success in phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals shows us what urgent can and should be done to move away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and thereby limit temperature rise.”
next article
“Paint on the Senate? They make us feel like criminals while nobody cares about the climate in there.” Last generation activists speak out
