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On saving the stratosphere and your leftovers.
“If the stratosphere were at a horizontal distance rather than a vertical one, you could drive a car there in a matter of minutes … Yet for thousands and thousands of years, humans had no idea that their thin shell of an atmosphere was bounded above by this aeronautical desert. We are surrounded by an alien world for our entire history and yet had not the slightest clue it existed.”
– Simon Clark in Firmament: The Hidden Science of Weather, Climate Change, and the Air That Surrounds Us
Dear Reader,
Why care about the stratosphere? This “aeronautical desert” that is so close and yet so far? Because that, as Mike Sowden tells us in his Everything is Amazing newsletter, is where we faced what was once our biggest threat. And where we saved the world.
Hyperbole? Nope.
You might remember the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer, caused by the release of chloroflorocarbons (CFCs), used as a common refrigerant and in aerosols such as hairspray and deodorant. If not repaired, this hole, computer models told us, would have doubled the intensity of UV radiation at the Earth’s surface, sent rates of skin cancer and cataracts soaring, ruined crops, and devastated wildlife. What’s more, the vegetation die-back would have triggered a massive release of even more carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, we all got together, met in Montreal, and hammered out an agreement to get our act together and repair the hole. Was it easy? Hell no. It took negotiation, a zillion small compromises, massive push-back against corporate interests (imagine!), blood, sweat, and tears.
But we didn’t give up. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 brought us back from the brink of disaster, and today, well, who’s worried about the hole in the ozone layer? If you are, you can stop. It’s well on its way to repair. (But of course, there’s plenty else to worry about.)
Reader, we know how to do this — how to come together and commit to saving the world. I know what team I want to be on when it happens. The winning one.
Collaboratively,
Dot
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