Stephen Luntz in IFL Science:
The story starts in 1974 when Professor F. Sherwood Rowland proposed that CFCs, whose use was rapidly expanding, might pose a threat to the ozone layer. Rowland would subsequently share the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this work, but at the time, CFC manufacturers hit back that the claims were “purely theoretical”. Technically speaking they were right. No one really knew if CFCs would actually have these effects in the upper atmosphere, a region of the planet we had barely begun to study.
Unfortunately, others pointed out, if the theory was right, damage to the ozone layer would expose the surface to so much ultraviolet radiation, little life would survive above ground or in the upper layers of the ocean. Even lifeforms not directly under threat depend on more vulnerable species for food or pollination – total ecosystem collapse was a real possibility.
Doing nothing would be the ultimate gamble.
The manufacturers established lobby groups arguing no action be taken until we had proof. DuPont’s chair called the idea CFCs might damage the ozone layer “science fiction”. Carter, and the majority of the US Congress, feared by the time the evidence was in it might be too late.
More here.
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