ABSTRACT
The year 2004 marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark paper by Molina and Rowland (1974), which describes their hypothesis on the depletion of stratospheric ozone by chlorine liberated from long-lived chlorofl uorocarbons (CFCs). Nearly ten years later, the Vienna Convention was adopted, an international treaty for the protection of the ozone layer. The Vienna Convention set in motion the negotiations that culminated in the Montreal Protocol agreements of 1987. The Montreal Protocol provided for the immediate freeze and future phasedown of CFC global production. Since that time additional agreements established accelerated schedules of the phasedown and phaseout of CFC production. The Montreal Protocol was the beginning of an end for CFCs that started nearly 70 years before.
