People who lived through the 1980s can categorically say they had fun watching MTV on those box TVs, and the big boys had big hair. Oh, I wish I were born at the time, but I like my generation and the time we came. Even though someone like me wasn't born in the 1980s, I came and saw a lot of them with one common fear: " How to keep the ozone layer from completely being destroyed.”
The threat to the ozone layer was on the minds of anyone who cared about the planet and worse of all, I suspected that it was a bigger concern because people didn't want to lose what they had. We were scared that not die completely by 2050 because that was the time scientists said we were going to destroy the ozone layer.
People were scared of the collapse of ecosystems, the increasing rate of skin cancer amongst other types of cancer, and soon life wasn't going to exist anymore. But is it just me, or am I not hearing much about that same ozone layer that kept people on their feet?
To quickly explain, the ozone layer is a gaseous belt between the Earth's Troposphere and Stratosphere. It protects the Earth and all it has in it by preventing UV-B and UV-C from penetrating into the Earth's surface from the sun. You will assume that something this powerful should be strong but in reality, it is fragile as well.
The fear began in 1985 when scientists discovered a large loss of ozone in Antarctica during spring, with a big hole being created as about 40% of the layer had vanished. Upon investigation, they learned that it was caused by Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and while it is not harmful on the ground, it came with greater risk in the atmosphere as the sun breaks them down to form chlorine which then binds to ozone to form oxygen and chlorine monoxide. This reaction is a long chain of reactions happening continuously because these CFCs can live up to 150 years in our atmosphere, which means that if we released new CFCs to the atmosphere, it was going to add to the previous ones there.
At the time, the world was using a whole lot of CFCs as it was seen in a lot of things like refrigerators, Styrofoam, air conditioning units, spray cans, and so on. While scientists predicted 50 years from the discovery, it became shocking news and a call for immediate action when they noticed that about 50% had been depleted in 1987.
First, the use of those CFCs in our daily lives needs to end. Countries that didn't have alternatives were assisted with them and the switch began. In fact, to combat ozone depletion, every nation signed a treaty. Immediately after the signing, companies that created CFCs and other chemicals began to fade them off quickly.
Since this signing and actions, the ozone layer has stopped growing rather it has began shrinking, and scientists believe that by the year 2065, it should have recovered completely. So we are done with CFCs but we began to use hydro fluorocarbon (HFCs) and while they do not deplete the ozone layer, they are a major source of greenhouse gas and it now looks like we are solving one problem and making another.
Reference
https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/information-ozone-and-ozone-depletion
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-ozone-hole-over-the-antarctic-grew-rapidly
https://www.nextias.com/blog/ozone-layer-depletion
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/Ozone
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation