eli5, how did the ozone layer patch itself?
In: 75
There are natural processes constantly creating ozone, and there are natural processes that destroy ozone. The two rates balance each other out and result in a very important “layer” of ozone in the atmosphere.
When the hole happened, it was because humans were releasing chemicals that also destroyed ozone, so now it was being destroyed faster than it was being produced, leading to depletion of ozone in the air and “holes” in the protective layer.
Then, humans noticed the holes, figured out they were being caused by human activity, and collectively agreed to laws and regulations such as [The Montreal Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol) to limit the ozone-destroying chemicals we had been using.
This is a great example of how humans CAN in fact co-operate at a global scale and change enough to alter whether we are destroying or mending world-atmosphere sized issues. Ironically, “the ozone hole was supposedly bad too but now it’s a non issue” is used by climate-change deniers who don’t realize that the ozone hole *WAS a big deal until we actively fixed it* by passing a bunch of regulations and stopped emitting the chemicals that were causing the problem.
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