TORONTO -- More than 30 years of united action to address a worrying hole in the ozone layer has made a difference, but the world hasn’t learned a lesson when it comes to climate change, says a prominent environmental lawyer.
Dianne Saxe, who served as environmental commissioner of Ontario from 2015 to 2019, says a hole over Antarctica the size of North America that was discovered in 1985 has improved because the world listened to science.
“All the countries of the world got together and agreed that we had to take urgent action because the scientists told us that otherwise we’d be in severe trouble,” she said Monday on CTV’s Your Morning.
Canada led the way with the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which became the first United Nations treaty to receive universal ratification. It phased out the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, a type of chemical invented in the 1920s that was widely used in refrigerants, solvents and aerosol sprays, but caused serious breakdowns in the upper ozone layer of the atmosphere.
The chemical companies making CFCs “actually behaved fairly well in that circumstance,” said Saxe.
“They agreed that they could replace the CFCs they were making with other products, they could still make a good living and they would do much less damage.”
The playbook on climate change action has been markedly different, she says.
“We haven’t had the same co-operation, by and large, from the fossil fuel companies. Instead, they have funded a multi-decade campaign of obstruction and misleading, lying, attacking science and paying for politicians that oppose climate action. So we’ve had this very well-orchestrated campaign to create this illusion of doubt and the real fact of delay.”
There are two ozone layers. The one high in the atmosphere acts as a giant sunscreen for Earth, blocking out the sun’s most harmful radiation, protecting us from blindness and cancer.
Another layer, ground-level ozone, is caused by pollution, particularly from gas-powered vehicles, and leads to poor air quality. Saxe says we’ll have a “double win” if we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
“We reduce climate damage and we also dramatically reduce air pollution, which is an enormous human health threat and also reduces agricultural productivity.”
A record-breaking hole in the ozone layer that formed over the Arctic in the spring seems to have since closed.
More research is needed, says Saxe, but it’s believed it all has to do with changes in the way the air currents that drive the planet’s weather system are behaving.
What is clear is that “massive changes” are underway in the Arctic, including losses of ice, changes in species that live there, and extraordinary heat and fires, she says.
“The Arctic is changing in ways that is going to unravel and destabilize the climate for the rest of the world and especially for Canada.”
To this point, the effects have mostly been concentrated at the poles of the Earth, but without action, the impacts will become more widespread, says Saxe.
