The Denver Post

Diplomat negotiated landmark ozone pact

- By Trip Gabriel

A May 1985 report in the journal Nature was alarming. High above Antarctica, a massive hole had opened in the ozone shield that protects life on Earth from the sun’s ultraviole­t rays.

The finding confirmed what scientists had warned of since the 1970s: Atmospheri­c ozone was being broken down by the wide use of chlorofluo­rocarbons, chemicals known as CFCS, which were found in aerosol sprays, refrigerat­ion and air conditioni­ng.

Slightly more than two years later, dozens of nations meeting in Montreal signed an agreement to significan­tly reduce CFCS, which the Environmen­tal Protection Agency estimated would prevent 27 million deaths from skin cancers.

“This is perhaps the most historical­ly significan­t internatio­nal environmen­tal agreement,” Richard Benedick, the chief U.S. negotiator, said at the time.

Ever since, the Montreal Protocol, as the pact is known, has stood as a milestone of collective action in the face of a planetary environmen­tal threat, as well as a rebuke of the lack of internatio­nal resolve to tackle the more dire and complex threat of climate change.

Benedick, who was a career diplomat in the State Department when the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and who patiently wore down opposition from foreign nations while withstandi­ng powerful internal critics in the Reagan administra­tion, died March 16 in Falls Church, Va. He was 88.

His daughter, Julianna, said he suffered from advanced dementia.

It is no small paradox that a global treaty to address atmospheri­c pollution was negotiated during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was elected as a champion of business and a sworn enemy of government regulation­s.

But support for addressing the threat of CFCS to human health was possible because environmen­tal issues were less bitterly partisan than they would later become and because U.S. industry, chiefly Dupont, the largest maker of the chemicals, preferred an internatio­nal treaty to the possibilit­y of more draconian cuts by Congress.

Benedick, described as energetic and dogged by colleagues, was instrument­al to the success. “He was a tenacious guy; he was like a terrier with a bone,” John Negroponte, then an assistant secretary of state who was Benedick’s superior and ally, said in an interview. “I don’t think it would have happened without him.”

In the Reagan administra­tion, leaders of the State Department and the EPA favored regulating CFCS. But in the middle of the internatio­nal talks, strong opposition emerged from then-interior Secretary Donald Hodel and William Graham Jr., the White House science adviser.

Hodel said Americans worrying about skin cancer from ozone loss should not expect more government regulation, but should try “personal protection,” namely, hats, sunglasses and sunscreen.

In the end, Reagan came down on the side of Benedick and the State Department, overruling the anti-regulatory faction in his administra­tion. Among the reasons suggested for the decision was that Reagan recently had a cancerous growth removed.

The Montreal Protocol, which required cutting the use of CFCS by half, was signed by 24 countries in September 1987. It was ratified unanimousl­y the next year by the U.S. Senate. In 1990, the protocol was toughened to phase out CFCS entirely eventually. Today, nearly every country in the world has banned them.

Concentrat­ions of longlived ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphe­re have gradually declined, with the ozone hole above Antarctica expected to heal by the 2060s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheri­c Administra­tion.

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