Month 11, Day 9: The Air, The Air is Everywhere

The New York Times offers an alternate route to the regulation of some types of greenhouse gases. The international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting gases in order to protect the ozone layer (so we wouldn’t all get skin cancer) may be applicable to hydroflourocarbons as well. That would be a nice piece of news.

It seems entirely reasonable that the Montreal Protocol should expand its scope to include hydrofluorocarbons. While the agreement was originally developed to limit the atmospheric release of ozone-depleting chemicals, signatory nations should focus on the larger objective: protecting the planetary ecosystem and the human civilization it supports. When the threat to our ozone layer was first discovered, of course, there were both political and industry voices raised in denial — but decades later scientific modeling has demonstrated conclusively that the Montreal Protocol was implemented just in time to allow our atmosphere to restore itself. Expanding the scope of the treaty may give us a precious few years’ worth of breathing room in which to develop meaningful actions on atmospheric CO2 emissions — and ways to convince the ideologically driven “climate zombies” who are entering the House of Representatives that climate change is a genuine threat to us all.

Warren Senders