Champions of Ozone Layer Protection

Abstract

The Montreal Protocol is universally recognized as a scientific, diplomatic, regulatory, business, and technology cooperation success. It is a scientific success because early evidence was persuasive enough that governments took precautionary action. It is a diplomatic success because it demonstrated that countries can work together to resolve global environmental security threats. It is a regulatory success because the treaty was crafted to assure ozone protection but made flexible to allow each country to craft domestic approaches that are appropriate to national, industrial, and consumer situations. It is a business success because new technology was commercialized rapidly enough to replace, at affordable prices, the previous uses of ozone-depleting substances. Foremost, it is a technology cooperation success because industry put protection of the ozone layer above competitive concerns and generously shared non-proprietary information.