Planetary Catastrophe Averted

In the 1970's scientists predicted the loss of the planet's ozone layer.  Without that layer civilization would have been lost. 

[H]ad we done nothing, by the year 2060..." says Thaller. "That would have destroyed agriculture. Crops would have failed all over the world. You couldn’t have livestock outside. People couldn’t have lived outside. We very nearly destroyed civilization, and your grandchildren would have lived through that."

The chemical industry denied there was a problem but a large hole in the ozone layer opened over Antarctica, and the chemical industry gave in.  The result was the Montreal Protocol.  This international agreement among nations prevented an apocalypse. 

The ozone layer acts like a shield reducing the amount of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation to safer levels. By the late 1970s scientists proved chemicals used in fridges, air conditioners, and aerosol cans were damaging this ozone shield. But the chemical industry argued the science was uncertain, and more research was needed. Then, in 1985, a gigantic hole appeared in the ozone layer over Antarctica, allowing dangerous levels of UV radiation to reach the surface. By 1987 the Montreal Protocol was created to reduce the amounts of those chemicals.

The chemical industry responded, and catastrophe didn't happen.

I've posted about this before.  NASA has recently shown that the ozone hole is indeed receding and the apocalypse has been averted.  This is an example of how it should be done.  Scientists are listened to.  International action is taken.  Apocalypse averted.  Unfortunately, with regard to global warming, something as real as was the loss of the ozone layer, politics has intervened and the international agreements, the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, have been largely ignored and action limited.  This portends a planetary tragedy on the par with what would have happened without the Montreal Protocol that prevented the loss of our ozone layer. 

The danger to our planet from global warming is as real as was the loss of the ozone layer.  Climate deniers such as most of the Republican Party as well as our Donald Trump, are children playing with matches.  We have to take the impending catastrophe seriously, now.