Hole in the Ozone Due To CFCs, Not CO2

To the editors:

The political cartoon drawn by Sakura M. Christmas on Oct. 14 is a typical misrepresentation of a serious environmental issue.

The cartoon shows a yawning globe of the Earth grasping onto the Kyoto Accords, the expanding mouth of the globe representing the ozone hole. Let’s get the facts straight here. The ozone hole is created by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); CFCs have been successfully phased out of many developed countries due to the Montreal Protocol signed by many nations in 1987. The primary ozone hole still exists in the Antarctic because CFCs have a very long residence time in the atmosphere.

On the other hand, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 comes from the work of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which specifically deals with “greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol,” including Carbon Dioxide. If the cartoonist wanted to make a real political statement, she should have drawn a globe that was sweating while clinching onto the Kyoto Accords (but, of course, many other cartoonists have done this in other newspapers).

Ultimately, the ozone hole has nothing to do with the Kyoto Protocol; cartoonists, as well as editorialists, should research the issue they express before they put it down on pen.

Matthew S. Moon ’05

Oct. 15, 2003