How Diplomacy Closed The Ozone Hole

Your Planet, Your Health

In this episode, Ralph and Luc spotlight an environmental success story: the Montreal Protocol's role in healing the ozone layer. We draw comparisons to the pitfalls of the IPCC's COP process and try to derive a diplomatic blueprint for climate policy.

We look into the science of how ozone and chlorine works in the stratosphere, the history of the activist scientists (Sherwood Roland and Mario Molina) who first sounded the alarm about CFC's destruction of the ozone layer, and the work of technocrats in devising their replacement. We also examine the geopolitical dynamics that were foundational to this planetary victory.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlz8O0_fkh4
Sources:
• We sample clips from the 2019 PBS documentary Ozone Hole: How We Saved the Planet, written and directed by Jamie Lochhead — notably interviews with Mario Molina, Joan Roland (widow of Sherwood), Lee Thomas (administrator at the EPA), Crispin Tickell (adviser to Margaret Thatcher) and Bob Watson (NASA).
https://www.pbs.org/show/ozone-hole-how-we-saved-planet/

• We also sample clips from this 2021 interview with Susan Solomon (the atmospheric chemist who demonstrated CFC’s impact on ozone) and Stephen Andersen (leader of the Montreal Protocol and co-chair of its Technology and Economic Assessment Panel), by the Future of Life Institute, in which they share their roles in the closing of zone hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hwh-uDo-6A

• We cite elements from the 1998 book Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet, by Richard Elliot Benedick.

• We cite the 2002 book Ozone Connections: Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance, by Penelope Canan and Nancy Reichman.

• We cite the 2019 book The Ozone Layer: From Discovery to Recovery, by Guy P. Brasseur.

• We cite the 2021 Nature article The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink, by Paul J. Young, Anna B. Harper, Chris Huntingford, Nigel D. Paul, Olaf Morgenstern, Paul A. Newman, Luke D. Oman, Sasha Madronich & Rolando R. Garcia.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03737-3

• We refer to insights from the 2021 book Cut Super Climate Pollutants Now!: The Ozone Treaty’s Urgent Lessons for Speeding Up Climate Action, by Alan Miller, Durwood Zaelke and Stephen Andersen.

• We also cite from the 2023 book 35th Anniversary of Protecting the Ozone Layer, by Marco Gonzalez and Stephen Andersen.

Read more at:
https://ozone.unep.org/ozone-timeline
and
https://csl.noaa.gov/assessments/ozone/2022/downloads/twentyquestions.pdf

Chapters:
0:00:00 Introduction: COP 28 Wrap-up
0:02:49 Science of the Ozone Layer
0:04:30 History of CFCs: Thomas Midgely’s invention and subsequent uses (1930s)
0:08:21 Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina’s Research shows CFCs' dangers for ozone (1970s)
0:17:42 Consumer Boycott of CFCs: All in The Family
0:24:05 Consumer Boycott of CFCs: children’s Entertainment led Mc Donald’s to change its packaging from foam to cardboard
0:29:51 Sherwood Rowland coins the term “ozone hole”
0:32:04 Ozone concentrations in the Antarctic were so low that the scientists thought it was a measurement error
0:33:53 Susan Solomon’s model explains how CFCs caused the ozone hole (1980s)
0:38:18 Scientists fly an airplane into the ozone hole
0:39:31 Global Diplomacy: First Framework, the Vienna Convention (1985): a modest start
0:40:45 Global Diplomacy: The Montreal Protocol’s "start and strengthen" amendment process
0:46:51 Geopolitics of the Montreal Protocol - comparing nations' relation to CFC production in the 1980s
0:59:51 Global Diplomacy: Stephen Anderson on the effectiveness of involving engineers to work on replacements (industry released their patents)
1:04:34 Stephen Andersen presents technological innovations that came as the fruit of his Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) and why it worked
1:17:31 Ronald Reagan's Administration contained factions that disagreed on whether to act on ozone
1:22:50 Margaret Thatcher's surprisingly collaborative response
1:25:21 2016 Kigali Amendment bans HFCs - the Montreal Protocol takes on greenhouse gases
1:32:11 World avoided scenarios: How effective has this process been? What do we estimate would have happened otherwise?
1:37:33 Comparing what worked with ozone to the climate change movement: distinctions between Montreal Protocol and COP and lessons to learn
1:47:01 Closing Phytoplankton Song