Montreal Protocol and the ozone crisis that wasn't

Critical Opinion ^ | 13 Sep 2007 | Ben Lieberman

[Entrepreneur]

The international treaty to protect the ozone layer turns twenty this year and claims success. But is there really reason to celebrate?

Environmentalists have made many apocalyptic predictions over the past decades and, when they have not come to pass, have proclaimed that their preventive measures averted disaster -- as with the 1987 Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). The many lurid predictions of skin cancer epidemics, eco-system destruction and so on have not come true, and to Montreal Protocol proponents this is cause for self-congratulation.

But in retrospect the evidence shows that ozone depletion was an exaggerated threat in the first place and that the parade of horrors was never really on the cards. As the parties to the treaty return to Montreal for their 20th anniversary this week it should be cause for reflection, not celebration, especially for those who see it as a success story to be repeated for climate change.

The treaty came about over legitimate but overstated concerns that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, then a widely used refrigerant gas) and other compounds were rising to the stratosphere and destroying ozone molecules. These molecules, collectively known as the ozone layer, shield the earth from excessive ultraviolet-B radiation (UVB) from the sun. The 1987 Montreal Protocol led to a CFC ban in most developed nations by 1996, while developing nations were given an extension but are under pressure to curtail it.

So what do we know now? A 1998 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report said that "since 1991, the linear [depletion] trend observed during the 1980s has not continued, but rather total column ozone has been almost constant ..." This was too soon to be attributable to the Montreal Protocol as that same report noted that the stratospheric concentrations of the offending compounds were still increasing at the time of writing. In fact, they did not begin to decline until the end of the 1990s. This lends credence to the view, widely derided at the time of the Montreal Protocol, that natural variations explain the fluctuations in the global ozone layer more than CFC usage.

More importantly, the feared widespread increase in ground-level UVB radiation has also failed to materialize. Keep in mind that ozone depletion, in and of itself, is not of consequence to human health or the environment. It is the concern that an eroded ozone layer would allow more of the sun's damaging UVB rays to reach the earth that gave rise to the Montreal Protocol. But the WMO concedes that no statistically significant long-term trends have been detected, noting earlier this year that "outside the polar regions, ozone depletion has been relatively small, hence, in many places, increases in UV due to this depletion are difficult to separate from the increases caused by other factors, such as changes in cloud and aerosol." In other words, ozone depletion's impact on UVB over populated regions is so small as to be easily lost amidst the noise of background variability.

Needless to say, if UVB has not gone up, then the fears are unfounded: indeed, the much-hyped acceleration in skin cancer rates has not happened. For example, U.S. National Cancer Institute statistics show that malignant melanoma incidence and mortality, which had shown a long-term increase that pre-dated ozone depletion, had actually been leveling off during the time of the putative ozone crisis. Further, no eco-system or species was ever shown to be seriously harmed by ozone depletion. This is true even in Antarctica, where the largest seasonal ozone losses, the so-called Antarctic ozone hole, occur each year. Also forgotten is a long list of truly ridiculous claims, such as the one from Al Gore's 1992 book Earth in the Balance that, thanks to the Antarctic ozone hole, "hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fishermen catch blind salmon."

The Montreal Protocol has not made these problems go away -- they never occurred in the first place.

The parallels with climate change are striking. Again we face a real but hyped environmental problem. In both cases, virtually everything the public has been told that sounds terrifying is not true, and what is true is not particularly terrifying. Nor has Gore changed much. His claims of blind animals have been replaced by equally dubious assertions in his global-warming movie and book An Inconvenient Truth, including predictions of a massive sea level rise that would wipe away South Florida and other coastal areas.

Perhaps, decades from now, participants in the Kyoto Protocol, the climate change treaty modeled after the Montreal Protocol, will meet and congratulate themselves because none of their scary assertions came true. But how much will have been spent to save us from problems we didn't have in the first place?

The burden of that cost will, as ever, fall hardest on the poorest.

Ben Lieberman is a senior policy analyst for energy and environment at the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, DC.

[Entrepreneur]

This is a couple of years old, but very relevant to the cap & tax nonsense being discussed today. Twenty years ago, this was the crisis du jour. We were stampeded into the Montreal Protocol and it's done NOTHING but cost us money.

We do not need Republicans to try and negotiate compromises. We need Republicans to grow spines and just say no.

[Young Werther]

We didn't effect the ozone hole. But by changing the propellant gas that was used to spray on the foam insulation on the shuttle external tank we were able to reduce the ET reliability and kill the Colombia astronauts!

Phooey Al Gore!

[Catholic Canadian]

As far as I understand it, Ozone is created by sunlight in the upper atmosphere. Which means it would be logical that there would be a lack of Ozone at the poles, due to the fact that what little sunlight there is would hit the atmosphere at an angle and be less potent so to speak.

[Roccus]

Before the start of the Digital Age, you hardly heard of anyone with Alzheimer’s Disease. But since the advent of the PC and digital communications, the number of cases have skyrocketed at an alarming rate! Surely there is a correlation between the number of Alzheimer’s cases and all the digital bits escaping from vacant ports on PCs etc.