#Whos save the world tonight how to#

The ozone layer reduces how much radiation makes it to the surface of the Earth. The FLI award harks back to a crisis that unnerved - and galvanized - humanity in the 1980s and ’90s. The previous year, it went to Matthew Meselson for his work on the Biological Weapons Convention. In 2020, the institute gave its award to William Foege and Viktor Zhdanov, who played key roles in the smallpox eradication fight.

The award, which comes with a $50,000 prize for each recipient, is given to unsung heroes who made our world safer from existential or global catastrophic risks. The award went to three people who played a significant role in our triumph over the depletion of the ozone layer: atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon, geophysicist Joseph Farman, and Environmental Protection Agency official Stephen Andersen.

#Whos save the world tonight how to#

That was the thrust of the 2021 Future of Life Award from the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that studies how to reduce risks to our world. A major win for the environment and humanity Even with the complications and caveats, the world’s response to the ozone crisis should be seen as an instructive, even inspiring, success story - one that can perhaps inform our response to the climate crisis. And there have been unintended consequences in phasing out CFCs with a different chemical that has hurt our fight against climate change (more on this below).īut the damage we wrought last century has been reversed. Researchers have also raised suspicions that the rate at which atmospheric CFCs are falling suggests not all signatories to a treaty banning new production of CFCs are abiding by the agreement.

That progress hasn’t been without setbacks - the hole grew in 2020, following a 2019 when it was unusually small. “Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done - as a matter of urgency - to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases, and so limit temperature increase.” “Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. Should those policies remain in place, the report finds that the ozone layer is projected to return to its 1980 levels by 2040 as a global average, with thinner Arctic ozone recovering by 2045 and Antarctic ozone - the area where scientists first discovered a hole - recovering by 2066. Thanks to the most effective international environmental treaty ever implemented, nearly 99 percent of banned ozone-depleting chemicals like CFCs have been successfully phased out. A report released by the UN on January 9 found that the ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades. In short order, the international community marshaled its resources - scientific, economic, diplomatic - to mount a campaign to ban the chemical that caused the damage, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and to restore the ozone layer.įast-forward to today: The ozone is on the path to recovery, if not fully restored. Their discovery was cause for worldwide alarm and unprecedented action. By the mid-1980s, they observed that it was on track to be wiped out in the next few decades.

Starting in the 1970s, it had started plummeting. For decades, they’d been measuring the thickness of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, the layer of gas that deflects much of the sun’s radiation. In 1985, atmospheric scientists in Antarctica noticed something troubling.