the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

BEWARE SOLUTIONS THAT CREATE NEW PROBLEMS 35
and flown to the test site several months later, but those, too, showed an
alarming drop in ozone levels. Other research soon confi rmed a link be-
tween the disappearing ozone and the CFCs that were still being dumped
into the air.
In March 1987, a report by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration showed that CFCs were destroying ozone far more rapidly
than previously believed. The new mea surements showed that from 1969
to 1987, ozone levels above the United States fell 2.3 percent, with losses
of up to 6.2 percent in the winter. That smoking-gun study vindicated the
two California scientists, who eventually would share the 1995 Nobel
Prize for Chemistry with Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen. Du Pont, the
world’s largest CFC manufacturer, reacted to the 1987 NASA study by
promising for the first time to phase out production of the compounds.
Three weeks later, fifteen manufacturers of foam food containers pledged
to convert from CFCs to safer compounds by the end of the year.
That same year, at a United Nations–sanctioned meeting in Montreal,
scientists and offi cials from dozens of nations, including the United
States, forged an unprecedented agreement to phase out CFC propellants
and refrigerants. The so-called Montreal Protocol was the beginning of
the end of worldwide CFC production and use.
About sixty years passed between Midgley’s initial discovery and
that global ban—about the same time lapse that followed Midgley’s
leaded-gas discovery and its ban. During those sixty years, Rowland estimates,
the unrestrained use of CFCs depleted the ozone layer by 10 percent
worldwide. Another 5 percent loss is likely, he says, as the remaining
CFCs reach the upper atmosphere. Eventually, if the world stops sending
those molecular grenades aloft, the holes in the ozone layer may begin to
close.
A recent study by New Zealand researchers found that the ozone
hole over Antarctica shrank 20 percent between 2003 and 2004, from 11
million to 9 million square miles. While encouraging, the researchers also
warned not to read too much into the fl uctuation, which could have been