The hole in the ozone layer continues to close. It’s a triumph… that is useless in the face of climate change

23.2 million square kilometers. That’s what the ozone hole measures today, according to the latest estimates from NASA and NOAA. It is, in case there is any doubt, sensational news. After the 2021 scare, the data is better than last year and continues the general downward trend of the last 30 years.

The fight against the ozone hole happens to be one of the most successful international efforts in the history of environmental protection. Why don’t we manage to learn from this success to curb CO2 emissions and, with them, climate change?

The problem of the ozone layer. From the time Mexican chemist Mario Molina discovered that chlorofluorocarbons could destroy ozone in the atmosphere until it was discovered that the layer of this gas (the portion of the stratosphere that protects our planet from ultraviolet rays) was disappearing, more than a decade passed.

But, when it was demonstrated, no one could put themselves in profile: on the one hand, a huge hole was forming over Antarctica; on the other, we had more than a century of measurements that confirmed the same idea: without the ozone layer we would have a serious problem with the Sun.

In 1987, the Montreal conference banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). With an incontestable success, it is not wrong to remember it. If we had done nothing, the hole would be 40% larger than in 2008 and leave 25 million square kilometers exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun. On the other hand, with its pluses and minuses, the trend has been downward: the ozone layer has been getting smaller and smaller.

An important success… to a very simple game. Montreal was a historic milestone and the coordination work of all the countries of the world was very important. However, if we look closely, it was very simple. CFCs were produced by very specific chemical companies that reached substitution agreements with governments and took advantage of the situation to introduce more expensive technologies to the market (and increase costs) with a solid environmental justification behind it.

It was easy to align interests and incentives. It was mind-blowing because we didn’t know we could do it on a planetary scale in such a short time, but the job itself was relatively straightforward. With climate change, the task is much more difficult, devilishly difficult.

An insufficient model. As Carlos Méndez, vice president at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), explained to the BBC a few years ago, “in the case of climate change, these (greenhouse) gases are involved in a series of processes that define the current way of life around the planet […] That greatly increases complexity, especially the economic implications.”

The Montreal model is problematic. Indeed, sticking too closely to that process can backfire: it can generate excessive expectations or give the impression that it is something of simple political will. It is clearly insufficient. But he’s still an inspiration. The central question is what we do with it. And in that question we play much more than we can think.

Source: Engadget