{"id":1816,"date":"2025-04-13T12:51:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T11:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2025-04-13T12:51:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T11:51:28","slug":"ladies-and-gentlemen-wear-sunscreen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/13\/ladies-and-gentlemen-wear-sunscreen\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladies and Gentlemen\u2026 wear sunscreen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about the ozone hole<\/a> lately. You don\u2019t really hear much about the ozone hole anymore, but if you were alive in the 80\u2019s you couldn\u2019t not<\/em> hear about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t thought about this particular Sword of Damocles for years, until we watched the \u201cFridge\u201d episode of The Secret Genius of Modern Life <\/a>the other night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now it won\u2019t get out of my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the ozone hole itself, or the chlorofluorocarbons that were humanity\u2019s contribution to the problem. I keep thinking about the research and scientific testimony in the mid-seventies that drew attention to the risk, the observations in the mid-eighties that focused us and catalyzed action, and the Montreal Protocol<\/a> that coordinated a global response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep thinking about the scientists, the civil servants and politicians, and members of the public who all had a part to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t help but wonder how the same thing would go today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that\u2019s<\/em> not enough to keep you up at night, that\u2019s usually the point where I find myself musing on what imminent calamity we\u2019re currently oblivious to because we are – right now – defunding the basic research that would be our best chance to discover and understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then I come full circle and wonder how the hell we managed to dodge that bullet when the only evidence that the problem even existed was some false color imagery and scientific papers largely incomprehensible to the general public and world leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, we acted. Globally. And our actions made a difference. And we didn\u2019t abandon the plan, or take our proverbial ball and go home, even when it would have been easy to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been trying to imagine what it would take, today<\/em>, to get the same outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be honest, I\u2019m not sure I believe it\u2019s even possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking about the ozone hole lately. You don\u2019t really hear much about the ozone hole anymore, but if you were alive in the 80\u2019s you couldn\u2019t not hear about it. I hadn\u2019t thought about this particular Sword of Damocles for years, until we watched the \u201cFridge\u201d episode of The Secret Genius of Modern … Continue reading “Ladies and Gentlemen\u2026 wear sunscreen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1816"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}