Ozone Defense

Getting large numbers of nations to agree on anything, especially delicate policy issues, is no easy job. But now that scientists have convinced policymakers that the earth's ozone layer is in grave danger, governments are moving with unusual speed and resolve. Meeting in Helsinki last week, representatives from 86 countries said they favored a total ban on certain chlorofluorocarbons, man-made chemicals believed to be destroying the ozone, / by the end of the century at the latest. That goes far beyond the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which called for a 50% cut in CFC manufacture by 1999.

At Helsinki the conferees were following the lead of the U.S. and European Community, which agreed to a similar proposal earlier this year. The new sense of urgency stems from the growing recognition of the importance of the stratospheric ozone layer. It absorbs some of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, which has been linked to skin cancers and cataracts.

The Helsinki accord calls on industrialized countries to create a U.N. fund that would help the developing world adapt to life without CFCs, which are used, among other things, as refrigerator coolants and blowing agents for making plastic foam. Just how this would be done was not specified. Still, Norway's Environment Minister Sissel Ronbeck announced that her country would contribute 0.1% of its gross national product, or about $88 million, if others would do the same.

Now that nations have agreed on a timetable for meeting the ozone threat, environmentalists hope that governments will turn their attention to more intractable ecological problems. At the Helsinki conference, West Germany's Environment Minister Klaus Topfer declared that the next urgent task is to put limits on the emission of carbon dioxide and methane, which are believed to be contributing to potentially dangerous global warming.