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A12 EARTH DAY
Saturday 23 april 2022

Cleaner Earth: Healing ozone hole,

less smog, more eagles

a hole over Antarctica,
which not only threat-
ened increased skin can-
cer cases, but cataracts
and widespread changes
to ecosystems around the
globe, said University of
North Carolina atmospher-
ic scientist Jason West.
"It's the first time we cre-
ated a planet-killing prob-
lem and then we turned
around and solved it,"
Stanford's Jackson said.
In 1987, the countries of the
A squadron of brown pelicans glides over the ocean waves off world signed the Montreal
Sandbridge beach in Virginia Beach, Va., in 2019. Protocol, a first of its kind
Associated Press treaty that banned the
ozone-munching chemi-
By SETH BORENSTEIN lot that needs to change cals.
AP Science Writer quickly. But it's wonderful to At this point every nation in
With climate change, plas- remind ourselves that other the world has adopted the
tic pollution and a poten- people in the past have treaty, 99% of the ozone-
tial sixth mass extinction, succeeded and that so- depleting chemicals have
humanity has made some ciety has succeeded too, been phased out, "saving
incredible messes in the both nationally here in the 2 million people every year
world. U.S. and also internation- from skin cancer," United
But when people, political ally." Nations Environment Pro-
factions and nations have Here are the four successes gramme Director Inger An-
pulled together, they have mentioned most often and dersen said in an email.
also cleaned up some of a key aspect that so many The ozone hole over Ant-
those human-caused en- ecological wins have in arctica worsened for a
vironmental problems, in- common. couple decades, but over
cluding healing the ozone HEALING THE OZONE HOLE the last several years it has
hole, clearing perpetu- Fixing ozone depletion was slowly started to heal in fits
ally smoggy air and sav- by far the top choice of and spurts.
ing many species from the scientists, officials and en- The United Nations Environ-
brink of extinction. vironmental policy experts. ment Programme projects
For Earth Day, "It was a moment where that the ozone " will heal
The Associated Press asked countries that usually completely by the 2030s."
more than 25 environmen- compete with each other While activists point to
tal scientists and policy ex- grasped the collective the Montreal Protocol as
perts, including two former threat and decided to im- a hope and example for
U.S. Environmental Protec- plement a solution," former the fight against climate
tion Agency chiefs and the EPA chief Carol Browner change, it's not quite the
current director of the Unit- said in an email. same.
ed Nations Environment Scientists in the 1970s had In the case of the banned
Programme, to share their discovered that a certain ozone-sapping chemi-
top stories about environ- class of chemicals, often cals the corporations that
mental problems that the used in aerosol sprays and manufactured them also
world fixed. refrigeration, was eating made their replacements.
"There are some amazing away the protective ozone But with climate change
success stories," said Stan- layer in Earth's atmosphere "it's more of an existential
ford University environmen- that shields the planet from threat to the oil and gas
tal scientist Rob Jackson. harmful ultraviolet radiation companies," Jackson said.
"It's easy for us to get tunnel linked to skin cancer. CLEANER AIR AND WATER
vision with everything go- The ozone layer was thin- In the United States and
ing wrong, and there is a ning everywhere, creating much of the industrial-
ized world, the air is much
cleaner and clearer than
it was 50 or 60 years ago
when major cities like Los
Angeles were choked with
smog and even more dan-
gerous microscopic par-
ticles in the air.
And lakes and rivers were
dumping grounds, espe-
cially around Ohio, Michi-
gan and Canada.q