The Daily Environment Report reports that "The 1989 Montreal Protocol, the international agreement to protect stratospheric ozone is both a success and an incomplete work, according to sources in industry, government and an environmental group."
Drusilla Hufford (acting director of EPA's Stratospheric Protection Division), John Passacantando (executive director of the environmental group Ozone Action), and David Stirpe (executive director of the industry-sponsored Alliance for Reasonable Atmospheric Policy) all say that the greatest success of the Montreal Protocol is that the world's nations joined together to address the ozone depletion issue."
So is this how the Montreal Protocol should be judged? The fact that a bunch of nations signed a treaty? What about the environmental benefits?
According to the article, the scientific measure of success is that atmospheric levels of ozone depleting chemicals have declined. But is this even a measure of success?
If the treaty was a success then there should be less ozone depletion occurring, right? That was, after all, the purpose of the treaty. So why not report this measurement? Simple. No one has any idea what's really happening with the ozone layer-- not in 1986 and not now.
The Montreal protocol a success? I'd say it's more like the emperor has no clothes. There's nothing like EPA, the enviros and industry patting each other on the back for accomplishing who knows what!
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