If good intentions and good ideas were all it took to save the deteriorating atmosphere, the planet's fragile layer of air would be as good as fixed. The two great dangers threatening the blanket of gases that nurtures and protects life on earth-global warming and the thinning ozone layer--have been identified. Better yet, scientists and policymakers have come up with effective though expensive countermeasures.
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(3) CFCs-first fingered as dangerous in the 1970s by Sherwood Rowland and Mario M01ina, two of this year's Nobel-prizewinning chemists--have been widely used for refrigeration and other purposes.
(4) If uncontrolled, the CFC assault on the ozone layer could increase the amount of hazardous solar ultraviolet light that reaches the earth's surface, which would, among other things, damage crops and bring disasters to environment.
(5) Thanks to a sense of urgency triggered by the 1985 detection of what has turned out to be an annual "hole" in the especially vulnerable ozone over Antarctica, the Montreal accords have spurred industry to replace dangerous CFCs with safer substances.
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(7) Nonetheless, observes British Antarctic Survey meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin: "It will be the middle of the next century before things are back to where they were in the 1970s."
(8) Even that timetable could be thrown off by international smugglers who have been bringing illegal CFCs into industrial countries to use in repairing or recharging old appliances.
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(10) Developing countries were given more time to comply with the Montreal Protocol and were promised that they would receive ＄ 250 million from richer nations to pay for the CFC phaseout. At the moment, though, only 60% of those funds has been forthcoming. This is a critical time.
(11) It is also a critical time for warding off potentially catastrophic climate change Waste gases such as carbon dioxide, Methane and the same CFCs that wreck the ozone layer all tend to trap sunlight and warm the earth. The predicted results: and eventual melting of polar ice caps, rises in sealevels and shifts in climate patterns.
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(13) The encouraging precedent is the Montreal Protocol for ozone protection, which showed how quickly nations can act when they finally recognize a disaster. A related lesson is that if CFCs do disappear, it will be partly because chemical manufactures discover they can make a profit by selling safer replacements.
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(15) If that happens, then all nations, from the rich to the poor, may end up working to save the atmosphere for the same reason they've polluted it: pure economic self-interest.
[A] Says Nelson Sabogal of the U. N. Environment Program: "If developed countries don't come up with the money, the ozone layer will not recuperate."
[B] But that doesn't mean these problems are anywhere close to being solved. The stratospheric ozone layer, for example, is still getting thinner, despite the 1987 international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals by the year 2006.
[C] The same process may ultimately be what mitigates global warming. After long years of effort, manufacturers of solar-power cells are at last close to matching the low costs of more conventional power technologies. And a few big orders from utilities could drive the price down to competitive levels.
[D] Yet the CFCs already in the air are still doing their dirty work. The Antarctic ozone hole is more severe this year than ever before, and ozone levels over temperate regions are dipping as well. If the CFC phaseout proceeds on schedule, the atmosphere should start repairing itself by the year 2000, say scientists.
[E] Last year alone 20 000 tons of contraband CFCs entered the U. S.--mostly from India, where the compounds are less restricted.
[F] Until recently, laggard governments could to scientific uncertainty about whether global warming has started, but that excuse is wearing thin. A draft report circulating on the Internet has proclaimed for the first time that warming has indeed begun.
[G] The good news is that this gloomy scenario may galvanize the world's governments into taking serious action. For example, though it's now more costly to generate electricity from solar cells than from would otherwise have to be spent in the future combating the effects of global warming.