Opinion: Sherwood Rowland, the scientist who saved the world
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It’s not often you can say that someone saved the world -- and mean it literally.
But that’s the case with F. Sherwood Rowland. The UC Irvine chemist, who died Saturday at 85, was one of three scientists who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry, The Times reported, for their work ‘explaining how chlorofluorocarbons, ubiquitous substances once used in an array of products from spray deodorant to industrial solvents, could destroy the ozone layer, the protective atmospheric blanket that screens out many of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.’
In hindsight, it seems straightforward: Bad stuff was eating away a vital part of Earth’s environment. So get rid of it.
But it wasn’t so simple in 1974, when Rowland and fellow scientist Mario Molina published their concerns in the journal Nature.
As The Times says, the findings ‘were met with scorn by the chemical industry and even by many scholars. For a decade, Rowland and Molina persevered to prove their hypothesis, publishing numerous scientific papers and speaking to sometimes hostile audiences at scientific conferences. It took almost 15 years for the international scientific community and chemical industry to accept the pair’s findings.’
Hmmm, starting to remind you of a little something called ‘climate change,’ is it?
But here’s something of a vital difference between the ozone debate and the current climate change one:
Manufacturers began to phase out chlorofluorocarbons in the late 1980s, prompted by the discovery of an ozone ‘hole’ over Antarctica that formed each winter in response to weather conditions and the falling worldwide levels of ozone. The Montreal Protocol, a landmark international agreement to phase out CFC products, was signed by the United States and other nations in 1987. The protocol was proof that nations could unite to address common environmental threats, Rowland contended. ‘People have worked together to solve the problem,’ he said.
Rowland was right then. Nations did unite to address a common environmental threat.
But have we taken that lesson to heart? Will we accept the scientific consensus on climate change and work together to save the planet?
Or will it continue to be a political football, at least in the United States, where too many politicians are opting for short-term partisan gains at the risk of the planet’s future?
Donald Blake, a colleague of Rowland’s at UC Irvine, told The Times that Rowland considered the phase-out of CFCs his greatest achievement.
It would be a shame if Rowland won the ozone battle -- but the rest of us lost the war for Earth’s survival.
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--Paul Whitefield
