FIXING THE HOLE IN OUR SKY
JUST AS IT SEEMS THAT humans have done irreversible damage to the planet’s atmosphere and set Earth on an inexorable path to a climate-based Armageddon, there’s a sign high in the sky over Antarctica that offers hope.
Kids during the last quarter of the 20th century grew up with the ozone hole looming large and ominously over their lives. When this potentially catastrophic ‘tear’ in the planet’s stratosphere, more than 10km above Antarctica, was discovered by scientists in 1985, it quickly set global alarm bells ringing.
Ozone is a gas that forms a kind of atmospheric blanket around the Earth to keep out much of the Sun’s UV radiation. Without it, life as we know it would never have evolved on this planet. The Antarctic hole quickly became recognised as
