The ozone layer is recovering theres hope for the environment yet | Andrew Simms

A global treaty to eliminate harmful chemicals and protect the ozone layer has paid off. We need to take the same decisive action on fossil fuels

Sometimes things dont go, after all, from bad to worse, wrote the poet Sheenagh Pugh. Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops dont fail. News that the ozone layer is showing signs of recovery 27 years after a ban on the manmade chemicals that damaged it is welcome evidence that decisive international action can avert self-imposed disaster. It is that rare flower, a positive environmental story.

Its easy to forget the potentially catastrophic threat the world faced only recently. In the 1980s, scientists noted the ozone layer which screens us from the suns damaging ultraviolet rays and without which we couldnt survive was thinning. The cause was tracked down to a group of chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, that were being increasingly used in everyday household and industrial appliances and goods, such as fridges and aerosols.

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