What happened to that hole in the ozone layer?

• Tweet

• Tweet

Carbon emissions have taken over our environmental consciousness with such effect that other more local environmental toxins have become largely ignored. So much moral posturing goes on these days, surely any company worth its salt and operating with true environmental concerns will be focusing on more than just reducing carbon emissions, or atleast talking a bit more plainly about what it is actually doing.

Will preserving our neutrality on a single high-profile pollutant: carbon dioxide really ‘save the environment’?  What ever happened to concerns over benzene, sulphur, lead, nitrogen, ozone, and all the particulate matter that conspires to enhance the greenhouse effect, damage our environment and human health. Yes, you might be reducing your carbon emissions but how are you really doing that? and what are some of the more tangible benefits associated with your commitment?

Contribute to the global picture by dealing with more tangible local pollution problems / Photo by Stephen Chapman

Remember CFCs?

A widening hole in the ozone was all the rage not so long ago.  An entire generation grew up with this concern in the same way that children grow up today learning about the effects of carbon emissions.  CFCs have been replaced by CO2 in terms of public concern, but just because we don’t hear about the ozone layer anymore does this mean the concern has gone away? Has the ‘hole’ in the ozone fixed itself yet? Have skin cancer rates fallen as a result?

Carbon emissions are not tangible

Every pollutant seems to be bundled under carbon emissions these days but the problem is we can’t see them. Smog hovering over the city is visible, respiratory illnesses and skin cancer are tangible, eutrophication and contamination of water sources are clear results of pollution. I don’t have any glaciers nearby, I don’t live on the coast, weather in the UK has always been unpredictable, I have very few ways to relate to a shift in global climate.

Focus on reducing pollution at a local level

The phrase ‘carbon emissions’ has been as over used in the last few years as the phrase ‘credit crunch’ has in recent months. Travelling the world enables us to see and understand much better how the world really is changing on a global scale, but our response to dealing with pollution needs to be much more localised, so that we can see the benefits of changes we make. When will environmental concerns move on from being just a moral issue to becoming properly integrated into local communities and economics. It is happening I think, but not fast enough.