Word: cfc
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Soon after the ozone hole over Antarctica was confirmed in 1985, many of the world's governments reached an unusually rapid consensus that action had to be taken. In 1987 they crafted the landmark Montreal Protocol, which called for a 50% reduction in CFC production by 1999. Three years later, as signs of ozone loss mounted, international delegates met again in London and agreed to a total phaseout of CFCs by the year 2000. That much time was considered necessary to give CFC manufacturers a chance to develop substitute chemicals that do not wipe out ozone...
...grim news spurred new public warnings and calls for faster action. In Denmark an Environment Ministry spokesman went on television to urge fellow Danes not to panic -- but to use hats and sunscreen. German Environment Minister Klaus Topfer called on & other countries to match Germany's pledge to stop CFC production by 1995. Greenpeace activists in Britain met with Prime Minister John Major and implored him to halt the manufacture of all CFCs immediately...
...vote, found the evidence alarming enough to justify a faster phaseout. "Now that there's the prospect of a hole over Kennebunkport," Senator Al Gore said, "perhaps Bush will comply with the law." William Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said that the U.S. might seek to end CFC production as early...
What also frightens scientists is the fact that CFCs remain in the atmosphere for decades after they are emitted. In their original research, Rowland and Molina estimated that CFCs can last 100 years or more. Even if CFC production stopped today, researchers believe that stratospheric levels of chlorine would continue to rise, peaking during the first decade of the next century and not returning to anything like natural levels for at least a century...
...Soviet Union and East European countries. In the meantime, plastic-foam manufacturers in the U.S. say they will stop using CFCs in their products, and Vermont has decreed that the chemicals must be eliminated from auto air-conditioners in new cars sold in the state after 1993. Major CFC suppliers like Du Pont are developing substitutes that are much less harmful to the ozone...