Reagan seeks to protect fragile ozone layer, Dec. 21, 1987
On this day in 1987, President Ronald Reagan, overruling dissenting members of his Cabinet, urged Congress to ratify an international cap-and-trade treaty aimed at protecting the Earth’s fragile ozone layer.
Reagan said the deal, dubbed the Montreal Protocol, was needed “to protect public health and the environment from the potential adverse effects of depletion of stratospheric ozone.”
In arguing for ratification, Secretary of State George Shultz submitted a memorandum to the president, describing the protocol as “an important instrument for the protection of a critical global environmental resource.” Without the treaty, Shultz held, and with ozone degradation continuing to grow unchecked, the prospect was for an increase in skin cancer, suppression of human immune responses, reduced crop yields, adverse effects on aquatic ecosystems and “potentially significant climatic changes.”
The Montreal Protocol was agreed to in August 1987. It went into force two years later and has since undergone eight revisions. In all, 196 states and the European Union have approved the deal, making it the first universally ratified treaty in United Nations history.
The Senate ratified the treaty on March 14, 1988 by 83-0.
In a 2015 letter to The Wall Street Journal, Lee Thomas, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1986 to 1989, wrote: “President Reagan recognized the environmental risk of chlorofluorocarbons, heeding scientists who were increasingly convinced of the threat to human health, while many in the industry raised issues of cost, technical feasibility and scientific certainty.
“Reagan convened several Cabinet sessions to review and debate and concluded that action was justified and wise. With this direction, the U.S. played a leadership role in the negotiations that led to the formulation and implementation of the Montreal Protocol.”
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump disparaged the treaty. At a 2016 West Virginia campaign rally, Trump said: “Give me a little spray. … You know you’re not allowed to use hairspray anymore because it affects the ozone, you know that, right? I said, you mean to tell me, cause you know hairspray’s not like it used to be, it used to be real good.
“Today you put the hairspray on, it’s good for 12 minutes, right. … So if I take hairspray and I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer? ‘Yes. I say no way folks. No way. No way.’ That’s like a lot of the rules and regulations you people have in the mines, right, it’s the same kind of stuff.”
The Trump White House has sought, so far without success, to persuade Congress to zero-out funding for the treaty’s continued implementation.
In the wake of the agreement, the ozone hole in Antarctica has slowly recovered. Climate projections indicate that the layer will return to 1980 levels between 2050 and 2070.
SOURCE: “This Day in Presidential History,” by Paul Brandus (2008)