Ozone crisis: The 15 year evolution of a sudden global emergency
Sharon L. Roan, a science journalist, has written an informative and insightful account of how stratospheric ozone depletion has come to be recognized as a global environmental issue of critical importance. Starting with the analytical work of Rowland and Molina in the early 1970s - their findings first identified chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) release as a threat to the ozone layer - Roan traces in a lively and highly readable fashion the ensuing 15 years of scientific research and debate, political controversy, industrial skepticism and tactics, and, finally, a reasonable degree of international consensus. The author recounts some of the milestones in the ozone story, with settings as varied as university laboratories, industrial meetings, congressional hearings, scientific expeditions to the Antarctic and Arctic, and the series of international negotiating sessions culminating in the Montreal Protocol in 1987. But, as Roan states, the ozone issue remains very much unfinished; even the 50-percent CFC reduction mandated by the Montreal agreement is believed to be wholly inadequate now. Evidence of a more rapid ozone depletion than was earlier estimated suggests that a total CFC ban is the only defensible response. Dealing with the economic burden such a ban may impose on poor countries is a policy challenge that will also confront the United States if we restrict carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate greenhouse warming.
- OSTI ID:
- 6407759
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: For Review by Joel Darmstadter (Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C. (USA)); in Environment, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Mar 1990)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
OZONE LAYER
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
ANTARCTICA
ARCTIC REGIONS
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
CARBON DIOXIDE
ECONOMICS
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
GLOBAL ASPECTS
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
LOSSES
ORGANIC CHLORINE COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC FLUORINE COMPOUNDS
OZONE
STRATOSPHERE
ANTARCTIC REGIONS
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON OXIDES
CHALCOGENIDES
CHEMISTRY
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
LAYERS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC HALOGEN COMPOUNDS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
POLAR REGIONS
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