🚀 go-pugleaf

Greig Ebeling <eggsoft@sydney.dialix.oz.au> wrote in article
<5eaejm$pjj$1@coffee.DIALix.COM>...
> "Colin Seftor" <cseftor@crosslink.net> wrote:
> 
> >If you are talking about the amount of UV increase at the current 
> >time, you may have a point.  But in environmental problems such 
> >asthis, one must think about the problem in a long-term way. 
> 
> You are right, Colin.  The precautionary principle has some merit.  
> 
> However, considering that there is no significant bio effect at
> present (or in the near future) the ban on ozone would be more
> economically efficient if:
> 
> 1. Existing CFC stocks could be released into the atmosphere, rather
> than collected and incinerated (at great expense to the community).
> 
> 2. Industry in developing countries, particularly if they are foreign
> funded, be banned from using CFCs, as in developed countries.
> 
> My complaint is that not that we should not have responded to ozone
> depletion, but that we apparently over-responded in panic, and failed
> to implement a solution in an economically efficient manner.
> 
> ...Greig 
> 

We'll, I'm not sure the economic cost that's being imposed now 
is larger than the one that we would have had to pay if the
Montreal Protocol had not been implemented or if the phase-out
had been spread out over a longer period of time.

If I'm not mistaken, the process of CFC buildup leading to ozone 
decrease and, therefore, UV increase was not linear.  If we had 
"gradually" or "gently" implemented restraints, the CFC buildup 
would still be continuing (rather than peaking and now, hopefully, 
decreasing).  The ozone decrease would then become more rapid, 
UV would then increase more rapidly,  the costs to the economy 
(not to mention the environment) would then increase rapidly, and 
the situation would snowball.

To use an old phrase, you have to pay the piper now or later.  
Unlike you, I think we would have to pay a lot more (economically,
environmentally, and medically) later if we don't pay up front now.

I do agree with you that more attention needs to be focused on
what developing countries do in terms of controlling CFC's. 
Unfortunately, I don't see how we can ban them from using the
chemicals (how could we ever control that when, short of war,
we can't stop Libya, Iraq, or whoever from making chemical 
weapons?).  But, since we can't control them, I think that 
makes an even stronger case for us controlling ourselves.

Colin Seftor