ENVIRONMENT: International Green conventions yet to prove effective

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 1996 (IPS) - The good environmental news for 1996 is that this week the industrialised countries halted the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals that destroy the mantle of ozone that surrounds the planet, protecting it from the sun’s harmful ultra-violent radiation.

The bad environmental news for 1996 is that the production of carbon dioxide — a major contributor to the warming of the planet — is much higher than predicted.

Does this mean that the ozone layer is improving even as global warming is getting worse? Not so far. Preliminary data for 1995 show that both the ozone layer and the global climate have fared worse than expected.

This is despite the fact that two international environmental laws have been in place for some time to prevent these very environmental disasters — the 1987 Montreal Protocol for Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the 1992 Frame Convention on Climate Change.

“In an ideal world, the good news would be just so. But climate change and ozone depletion are not isolated phenomona. More carbon dioxide warms the lower atmosphere and causes higher ozone depletion,” says Kalee Kreider from Ozone Action, a Washington-based environmental group.

Many companies have substituted ozone-depleting CFCs with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). But both chemicals contribute to global warming.

“Conventions work to eliminate specific chemicals. Unfortunately, the real world is complex and interactive, so progress on one chemical can be cancelled by increased production of another chemical,” adds Kreider.

Scientists from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) say that the data from 2,000 land-based weather-monitoring stations around the world show that ?995 was the hottest year of the 130 years for which statistics are available.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported in September that the seasonal “hole” that opens up in the ozone layer over the Antarctic at winter’s end was twice the previous year’s diameter — roughly the area of Europe.

This is about the same size as the hole that was opened up the year that Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. Scientists blamed a rapid increase in the size of the ozone hole that year on the ash and gases released by the volcano — and predicted that the hole would soon return to a more normal size.

ENVIRONMENT: International Green conventions yet to prove effective

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 1996 (IPS) - The good environmental news for 1996 is that this week the industrialised countries halted the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals that destroy the mantle of ozone that surrounds the planet, protecting it from the sun’s harmful ultra-violent radiation.
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