Real answers · The family’s gifts to the world
What did CFCs do to the ozone layer?
The real answer
Chlorofluorocarbons, long the cooling gas in household refrigerators and the propellant in spray cans, break down the ozone layer. Researchers warned of it in 1974, work the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honored, and countries agreed to cut them under the Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987 (the Nobel Prize’s record).
In the United States it has been unlawful to produce them since January 1, 2000, with narrow exceptions (42 U.S.C. §§ 7671a and 7671c). Their replacements, hydrofluorocarbons, are now being phased down too (42 U.S.C. § 7675).
The house’s version
Seen here: the refrigerator, a marvel no one thinks about. It keeps your groceries, from us, cold, and its refrigerant, sold for about sixty years, thinned the ozone layer. The man who made the refrigerant died in 1944; the profits outlived him by decades. When the scientists showed the damage, the family spent more than a decade disagreeing with them, then sold you the replacement, which warms the planet instead. The family kept its cool throughout. No one was held accountable.
A parody, from Boys will be trusts.
For your convenience: a man in a bright shirt explains what we would rather not