Rocket emissions in the upper atmosphere can damage the ozone layer but are neither measured nor regulated. It’s a policy gap we have to close if the space industry is to grow sustainably.
People buy produce at a wholesale market in Nakuru, Kenya, on Dec. 24, 2022.
James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Many developing nations have little cold storage and lose much of their perishable food before it gets to markets. Climate-friendly refrigeration can provide huge environmental and social benefits.
Molina, who died on Oct. 8, ‘thought climate change was the biggest problem in the world long before most people did.’ His research on man-made depletion of the ozone layer won the 1995 Nobel Prize.
A crowd observes the world’s first Earth Day on April 23, 1970, in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.
(AP Photo)
When the current crisis passes, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a different kind of future.
Temperatures are warming faster in the Arctic than anywhere else in the world. Water and sewer pipes in Iqaluit, Nunavut, are cracking during the winter as the ground shifts.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
For several years, emissions of CFCs have been rising, in apparent defiance of a global ban in place since 2010. A new global detective effort has traced the source to two eastern Chinese provinces.
Pollution in Shandong province, source of much of the ozone-depleting gas.
Wu Hong / EPA
Dozens of cities, states and nations are enacting bans and restrictions on single-use plastic bags and other items. A legal expert explains how a global treaty could build on these efforts.
Applying nitrogen fertilizer to corn at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, a research site in Michigan.
NSF
Fertilizer is a key source of nitrogen pollution which fouls air and water worldwide. Current regulations target farmers, but focusing on producers could spur them to develop greener products.
Researchers release a balloon carrying instruments to measure ozone levels above Antarctica.
Kelli-Ann Bliss/NOAA
Almost 30 years ago the world responded to the realisation that our ozone layer was in trouble. The resulting Montreal Protocol was a rare example of global cooperation, but there’s no room for complacency.
False-color image of ozone concentrations above Antarctica on Oct. 2, 2015.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Earth’s ozone layer shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Nations have been working to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals since the 1980s, but recent studies show that there is still work to do.
Suspected infestation of Macrophomina phaseolina, a “novel” soil pathogen, in the non-fumigated buffer zone of a strawberry field.
Julie Guthman
California produces 90 percent of the US strawberry crop, but growers face curbs on toxic chemicals that have helped their industry expand. Can a system centered on mass production become more sustainable?
Sunrise over the Earth. Hydrofluorocarbons were created to protect the ozone layer, but their stable nature makes them an extremely potent greenhouse gas.
NASA
Australia has ratified an agreement to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a manmade compound once hailed as the saviour of the ozone layer. What went wrong?
The Montreal Protocol is finally closing the hole in the ozone layer.
Clouds over Australia’s Davis Research Station, containing ice particles that activate ozone-depleting chemicals, triggering the annual ozone hole.
Barry Becker/BOM/AAD
The treaty to limit the destruction of the ozone layer is hailed as the most successful environmental agreement of all time. Three decades on, the ozone layer is slowly but surely returning to health.