Green Options

Nitrous oxide, more commonly known at your dentist’s office as laughing gas, is now the most prevalent man-made substance damaging the ozone layer. And it’s a greenhouse gas. Sadly, the joke’s apparently on us.

Nature is not entirely defenseless against rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A class of elements called halogens (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, etc., often occurring in pairs) are emitted into the atmosphere via ocean spray, where they destroy ozone (O3), a significant greenhouse gas and aerosol that promotes warming.

Remember CFCs? They had the power to flavour teenage armpits and work wonders on refrigeration.

There’s two things I remember from when I was growing up. Well, not two things literally. That would suggest a woebegone adolescence. No, two things of environmental importance.

At 15, Chernobyl. A complete nuclear meltdown causing Europeans to duck for cover to avoid the prevailing winds.

Yeah, so plants are safer now, aren’t they? Well, look, personally, when you play with atoms, I still think of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, once smiling communities now nothing but cancerous shells of their former selves. Higher safety standards lead to greater complacency. No-one reading this can guarantee that another nuclear disaster won’t happen, so please, let’s leave that one alone. I’ve heard it all before.

(I don’t like things that glow in the dark really. I have innate misgivings.)

And as well as Chernobyl, we had an enormous hole in the ozone layer recognised for the first time.