How We Solved the Hole in the Ozone – A scientist’s first-hand account shows the world can tackle a global environmental crisis.

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1. Excerpt from the article.

   >By Susan Solomon

   >Just the year before, I’d been happily sitting at my desk in my warm and cozy office, where I studied stratospheric chemistry using computer models. The kingpin molecule in that chemistry is ozone, a highly reactive gas produced from oxygen that has unique abilities to absorb high-energy ultraviolet light. Earth’s fragile ozone shield stands between us and oblivion from the sun’s damaging rays and is what first allowed life to crawl out of the protective ocean and walk on land. A “layer” of ozone formed naturally in the stratosphere as oxygen evolved on Earth, some 10 to 30 miles over our heads. 

   >But human activities can release a range of chemicals that eat away at it. The most damaging of these are compounds containing chlorine and bromine. Scientists had been expecting some ozone depletion due to human use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chemicals—a small percentage, and a hundred years in the future, a “future” problem.

   >Then, in 1985, the British Antarctic Survey shocked the world by publishing [a scientific paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/315207a0) declaring that an unexpected “hole” had formed in the ozone layer above their station. They reported a 50 percent loss of ozone, happening now, a wake-up call of outsized proportions. Scientists scrambled madly to figure out if the British measurements were correct, and if so, were humans the cause?

   >That’s what led me to that southbound flight in 1986. I was part of a team of researchers on our way to [gather the data](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/JD092iD07p08329) that would provide the first proof that chlorofluorocarbons were more effective at destroying ozone in the extremely cold Antarctic than anywhere else (including the Arctic, which is almost always warmer). The study of atmospheric chemistry had completely missed some critical extreme cold-temperature chemical reactions and therefore vastly underestimated the seriousness of the environmental problem.

2. A handful of chemicals that were not that necessary for modern life and Western lifestyles were banned.

   That’s profoundly different from climate crisis.