The way to decrease the pollution

        Accounting to Stephen Leahy in “Climate Change: Chemical LobbyWeakening Ozone Treaty,” the Montreal Protocol was an action taken by 24 countries in order to protect the environment from being destroyed further. Its purpose was to keep the equivalent of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Also, with the protocol, the ultraviolet radiation maximum value is lower. Besides, emissions of ozone-damaging CFC refrigerants have been replaced with much less damaging chemicals-HCFCs and HFCs. However, HCHCs and HFCs also will do damage to the environment. Therefore, in 2008, more countries joined the multilateral action and decided to reduce emissions of ozone-damaging HCFCs. Asides from HCFCs, many countries also take action on decreasing emissions of HFCs. In short, the Montreal protocol is an example of decisive multilateral action on environment threats.

        In the reading, the author said the Montreal Protocol is a “decisive multilateral action on environmental threats” and it helps the environment a lot. As far as I am concerned, I agree with the statement that the Montreal Protocol is a decisive multilateral action on threats, but I don’t think that some evidence or some ideas in the reading are correct completely.

       First of all, the author said that without the protocol, UV maximum would be 30 in Washington. However, the author did not say how the value was measured. For example, Washington is a small place and it cannot represent all over the world. In a word, the evidence has some problems in it.

       Second, more countries cooperate to keep emissions of HCFCs declined, so they decided to trim 10 years and accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs from now until 2030. However, the way is not a good one to completely protect the earth from being polluted. The way is just to decrease the possibility of polluting the environment and cannot keep the earth completely unpolluted.  For instance, we should completely stop to use the HCFC rather than short the time of phasing out HCFCs. In the beginning, not using the HCFCs may be difficult, but we have to act in this way. In short, a good way to protect the environment is not to use the HCFC chemicals.

        Third, what the author said is that total emissions of chemicals have slowly declined since ozone-damaging CFC refrigerants were replaced with much less damaging chemicals. However, less damaging chemicals will still cause a problem to our surroundings. When using less damaging chemicals, we just slowly pollute the environment. We should find the better way to solve our problems such as, alternative materials or substances which will not do any damage to our environment.  In a word, replacing CFCs with other chemicals is wrong.

         In conclusion, the author did not say how the UV maximum value was measured. Furthermore, not only should we decrease the use of the HCFC chemicals but we should not use the HCFCs at all. Finally, we have to find other substances, but not chemicals, to replace the CFCs. Therefore, I disagree with some ideas in the reading.

Reference:

Leahy, S. (2008.September 16). Climate Change : Chemical Lobby Weakening Ozone Treaty, Inter press Service, Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=43888