Free Republic

Ozone layer 'sacrificed' to lift re-election prospects By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor 23 November 2003 President George Bush has brought the international treaty aimed at repairing the Earth's vital ozone layer close to breakdown, risking millions of cancers, to benefit strawberry and tomato growers in the electorally critical state of Florida, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. His administration is insisting on a sharp increase in spraying of the most dangerous ozone-destroying chemical still in use, the pesticide methyl bromide, even though it is due to be phased out under the Montreal Protocol in little more than a year. And...

Pacman of the Antarctic - goodbye ozoneBy Andrew Darby August 22, 2003 It's beautiful, but dangerous - this cloud puts on a stunning light show over the Antarctic but it is a grim warning that this year's hole in the ozone layer could be the biggest yet. The stratospheric cloud is an ozone-eater, spotted recently by Australian scientists at Mawson station. Chemical reactions in such clouds convert normally inert man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into ozone destroyers. Dr Andrew Klekociuk, an atmospheric scientist with the Environment Department's Antarctic Division, said the first signs of cooling of the lower stratosphere, where the ozone...

President George Bush is targeting the international treaty to save the ozone layer which protects all life on earth from deadly radiation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.New US demands - tabled at a little-noticed meeting in Montreal earlier this month - threaten to unravel one of the greatest environmental success stories of the past few decades, causing millions of deaths from cancer.The news comes at a particularly embarrassing time for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who pressed the President in their talks in Washington last week to stop his attempts to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol which sets out to...