Ozone Hole Alert
Residents of Argentina’s Patagonia region were warned to avoid the early summertime sunshine because the stratospheric ozone hole over Antarctica was predicted to extend northward over populated areas for the third time this year. That would allow higher levels of ultraviolet rays from the sun to potentially cause skin damage and even cancer.
Such events are particularly harmful during October, November and December, when the sun is high above the horizon and the intensity of ultraviolet radiation is already increasing considerably. In October, the ozone layer over far southern Argentina was providing only about 50% of its normal protection.
Restoring Earth
Delegates from nearly 200 nations gathered in Montreal to seek ways to reverse the loss of nature, hoping to put the world on a path of restoring the environment by the end of the decade. The UN’s COP15 summit is designed to do for biodiversity what the Paris agreement is attempting to do for climate change.
As the summit began, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to stop treating nature “like a toilet.” He added, “Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction.” Goals of the summit include reducing the extinction risks of one million species, protecting 30% of the land and sea, and restoring degraded ecosystems.
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