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This Year's Hole in the Ozone Is Twice the Size of the U.S.

If you’ve been looking to cast yourself into a deep hole from which you can never return (I have!), the one in the ozone layeris a prime choice right now.

earther.gizmodo.com

The hole in the atmosphere’s ozone layer just reached its maximum annual size, experts at European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (ECMWF) said on Tuesday. The extent of the hole over Antarctica reached 8.8 million square miles (23 million square kilometers) this year, making it one of the largest and deepest ozone holes in recent history. For context, that’s more than twice the size of the entire U.S.

The ozone is the part of the planet’s atmosphere that absorbs most of the dangerous incoming ultraviolet radiation from the sun. But humans’ penchant for using ozone-depleting substances for refrigeration and air conditioning caused a hole in that layer to open up annually each year. The alarming growth of the hole led world leaders to ban the ozone-depleting chemicals in the 1980s, but the ozone hole is still a huge problem that will take decades to totally heal.

To fully heal the ozone layer and protect all life on Earth from dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation, we’ve urgently got to stop putting chemicals into the atmosphere that mess with the ozone. A key way to do that is to ensure everyone in the world is adhering to the UN agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, under which nations pledged to rapidly phase out of using those chemicals altogether.

A Major Climate Treaty to Reduce Air Conditioning Emissions Just Went Into Force—Without the U.S.

While the world was still hungover from the major climate conference in Poland last month, a game-changing climate treaty quietly went into effect. The Kigali Amendment entered into force as the calendar turned to 2019 and with it, the world began to put the clamps down on some of the most potent greenhouse gases on Earth. Now if only the U.S. would sign on.

earther.gizmodo.com|Brian Kahn

The chemicals that replaced CFCs were insanely potent greenhouse gases. Pound for pound, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) warm the planet up to 11,700 times more than carbon dioxide. 

And ironically, as the planet heats up, the need for air conditioning will increase, resulting in more emissions tied to HFCs. To stave that off, countries proposed amending the Montreal Protocol to phase these chemicals out too. Doing so could cut global warming up to 0.4°C by 2100.

In 2016, the world agreed to the Kigali Amendment and since then, countries have been signing on. The amendment went into force last week with 65 countries ratifying it. Those ranks include industrial heavy hitters like European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as well as a host of developing nations, and the United Nations said it expects more to join the coming weeks. 

“All the relevant constituencies want it done,” David Doniger, the senior strategic director for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Earther. “The only one that doesn’t is a bunch of ideologues at [libertarian think tank] the Competitive Enterprise Institute, [and] there are ideologues in the administration who don’t like environmental regulations, who don’t like climate regulations, and who don’t like international agreements, environmental or otherwise.”

Congress could also step up its game, especially given the bipartisan agreement that phasing out HFCs is good for the planet and U.S. business interests. 

If the White House fails to act, Congress, including the climate-minded Democratic majority in the House, could if not ratify the amendment, at least pass legislation that mimics it.