Disaster avoided.   If the world didn’t agree to cut back on ozone destroying chemicals that produce the annual polar ozone holes dangerous UV radiation would have increased a whopping 650 per cent by the year 2065 a new NASA study has found. By then two thirds of the protective ozone layer would have vanished creating a global ozone hole.

Five minutes of summer sun would burn skin in the mid-latitude regions like New York, London, Toronto. And it would be far worse in other regions.

And because those same chemicals are potent greenhouse gases the Earth would be 4 degrees warmer by then well past the critical tipping tip of 2 degrees scientists say we dare not exceed.

The world would have become a “real horrible place”, said NASA scientists.

I covered this in an IPS article last September  and how world leaders took a precautionary and averted catastrophe:

“In hard economic times, protecting the environment is often seen as a luxury — or ignored completely. But had that attitude prevailed 20 years ago when it came to taking action to protect the ozone layer, skin cancer rates would have soared and climate change would be even more dramatic than it is today. “