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But the virtues of the agreement, eventually ratified by all countries, are more widespread than their impact on the ozone hole. Many of these chemicals are powerful greenhouse gases. So as a major secondary benefit, the reductions in the last three decades have eased the warming and could cut the age. By 2050, global temperatures will be 1 ˚C lower than average temperatures.
Now, a new study in Nature highlights another key, if unwanted, bonus: reducing the stress caused by ultraviolet radiation from the sun to plants, inhibiting photosynthesis, and slowing growth. The Montreal Protocol prevented the “destruction of forests and arable land,” which would add hundreds of billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere, said Anna Harper, a tenured professor of climate science at the University of Exeter and author of the paper. in an email.
The Nature paper, published on August 18, found that if ozone-depleting substances continued to rise by 3% annually, additional UV radiation would reduce the growth of trees, grasses, ferns, flowers and crops around the world.
The world’s plants would absorb less carbon dioxide, and in this century they would release 645 billion tons of carbon from the earth into the atmosphere. This can increase global warming to 1 ˚C over the same period. It would also have a devastating impact on agricultural yields and food supply around the world.
The effect of rising CFC levels on plants and direct warming in the atmosphere could have been temperatures around 2.5 ˚C higher in this century. Serious warming projections for 2100, the researchers found.
“Although originally intended as an ozone protection treaty, the Montreal Protocol has been a very successful climate treaty,” says Paul Young, a climate scientist at Lancaster University and the other author of the article.
All of this raises a question: why can’t the world establish an aggressive and effective international pact explicitly designed for climate change? Some scholars believe that there are decisive lessons in the success of the Montreal Protocol, but they are largely forgotten. They are important as they accelerate global innovation and approach the next UN climate conference.
Looks fresh
At this point, the planet will continue to heat up for decades to come, no matter what said the UN climate report he warned last week. But how much it gets worse depends on how climate pollution can be aggressively reduced in the coming decades.
To date, nations have not been able to reach an agreement with the Kyoto Treaty and the Paris climate agreement with sufficiently ambitious and binding commitments to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. The countries will meet at the next UN conference in Glasgow in early November, with the explicit aim of furthering those goals under the Paris agreement.
The wise have written long papers and whole books Examining the lessons of the Montreal Protocol and commonalities and differences Efforts on CFCs and greenhouse gases.
The common view is that the importance is limited. CFCs were much easier to solve because they were produced by a single sector — most of them from major companies like DuPont — and used in a limited set of applications.
On the other hand, almost all components in all sectors of the country pump greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels are the energy source that drives the global economy, and most of our machines and physical infrastructure are designed around them.
But Edward Parson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said it’s time to revisit the lessons of the Montreal Protocol.
As the risks of climate change become more apparent and more severe, more and more countries are pushing for stricter rules, and more and more companies are moving closer to the stage like DuPont: from constantly debating scientific discoveries to inadvertently accepting these new rules. they were unavoidable, so they had better make their operation and earn profits.
In other words, we are reaching a point where it may be feasible to make more proscriptive rules, so it is essential to use them to create effective opportunities.
Strict rules, enforced consistently
Parson is the author Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy, An in-depth history of the Montreal Protocol published in 2003. He points out that the elimination of ozone-depleting compounds was a more complex problem than is often estimated, as much of the world’s economy was based in one way or another.
He added that one of the most persistent misunderstandings about the agreement was that the industry had already developed alternative products and was therefore more willing to eventually join the agreement.
On the contrary, the development of alternatives took place after the establishment of regulations. Rapid innovation continued as the rules became tougher, and industry, experts, and technical organizations determined how much progress could be made and how quickly. This creates better and more alternatives “over and over again in positive opinion,” Parson says.
The new market also helped with nonprofit opportunities. Many of these companies made a lot of money by switching to new products.
This suggests that the world should not wait around for innovations that will be cheaper and easier to tackle climate change. Countries need to set rules that reduce emissions more and more, forcing industries to know cleaner ways to generate energy, grow food, produce products, and move things and people around the world.
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