Pretty basic

Diplomacy ahead of the UN climate conference in Durban augurs little progress

NEVER has the UN’s Kyoto protocol looked sorrier. In 2012 the five-year “commitment period” it brought into being—in which developed countries took on legally binding responsibilities to cut their industrial greenhouse-gas emissions against 1990 levels—will end. Already Japan, Russia and Canada have refused to repeat the exercise. America was never part of it. Of the important rich countries, only the Europeans, responsible for around 13% of global emissions, will consider a second go. If cutting global carbon emissions was its aim, the UN scheme has failed.

Yet it refuses to die. A UN climate conference will be held in Durban at the end of November, and the protocol’s future will dominate it. This was stressed in a recent statement from several powerful developing countries—Brazil, South Africa, India and China—who have formed a block called the “BASIC Group”. At a meeting in Brazil on August 26th-27th, “agreeing on the second commitment period” was apparently the main issue they discussed. It was hardly likely, they noted sharply, that a country would leave the Kyoto protocol because it wished to cut emissions faster.

The depletion of the ozone layer shielding Earth from damaging ultraviolet rays has reached an unprecedented low over the Arctic this spring because of harmful chemicals and a cold winter, the UN weather agency said Tuesday.

The Earth’s fragile ozone layer in the Arctic region has suffered a loss of about 40 per cent from the start of winter until late March, exceeding the previous seasonal loss of about 30 per cent, the World Meteorological Organization said.

The Geneva-based agency blamed the loss on a buildup of ozone-eating chemicals once widely used as coolants and fire retardants in a variety of appliances and on very cold temperatures in the stratosphere, the second major layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, just above the troposphere.

Arctic ozone conditions vary more than the seasonal ozone “hole” that forms high in the stratosphere near the South Pole each winter and spring, and the temperatures are always warmer than over Antarctica.

Because of changing weather and temperatures some Arctic winters experience almost no ozone loss while others with exceptionally cold stratospheric conditions can occasionally lead to substantial ozone depletion, UN scientists say.

This year the Arctic winter was warmer than average at ground level, but colder in the stratosphere than normal Arctic winters. UN officials say the latest losses – unprecedented, but not entirely unexpected – were detected in observations from the ground and from balloons and satellites over the Arctic.

(AFP) – Sep 16, 2010

GENEVA — The protective ozone layer in the earth’s upper atmosphere has stopped thinning and should largely be restored by mid century thanks to a ban on harmful chemicals, UN scientists said on Thursday.

The “Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010″ report said a 1987 international treaty that phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) — substances used in refrigerators, aerosol sprays and some packing foams — had been successful.

Ozone provides a natural protective filter against harmful ultra-violet rays from the sun, which can cause sunburn, cataracts and skin cancer as well as damage vegetation.

First observations of a seasonal ozone hole appearing over the Antarctic occurred in the 1970s and the alarm was raised in the 1980s after it was found to be worsening under the onslaught of CFCs, prompting 196 countries to join the Montreal Protocol.

“The Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 to control ozone depleting substances is working, it has protected us from further ozone depletion over the past decades,” said World Meteorological Organisation head of research Len Barrie.

“Global ozone, including ozone in the polar region is not longer decreasing but not yet increasing,” he told journalists.

The 300 scientists who compiled the four yearly ozone assessment now expect that the ozone layer in the stratosphere will be restored to 1980 levels in 2045 to 2060, according to the report, “slightly earlier” than expected.

Cutting out the chemicals

The international treaty drawn up to tackle ozone-destroying substances is gearing up to curb greenhouse gases. Jeff Tollefson reports.

Jeff Tollefson

“Ozone experts are exploring ways to curb powerful greenhouse gases of their own making under the Montreal Protocol, arguing that direct regulation would be faster and cheaper than using carbon markets under a global climate treaty.

The Montreal Protocol set a strong precedent for such an approach, having almost eliminated production of the once-ubiquitous chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that eat away at stratospheric ozone.”

DAVID EBNER AND JACQUIE MCNISH

February 11, 2008

CALGARY and TORONTO — Signalling a major shift, Canada’s biggest carbon-dioxide emitters are calculating the costs of climate change as they brace for new environmental legislation and tougher disclosure standards.

The world has to build on the model of a successful climate treaty – the Montreal Protocol on Ozone

“Technology is not an unsolvable problem, given time and incentives, neither is financing. The real challenge is policy. Will it really be possible for policy makers to get their act together in due time? To be very short, they have to, otherwise humanity will not be able to curb climate change.”