ABSTRACT: The "hole" in the ozone layer, heralds a catastrophe for the Earth. All the political forces are aware of this, but not a single one seems able to oppose the chemical lobbies which are destroying the atmosphere. For the parliamentary elections of June 1989, the Radical Party is calling for unambiguous commitment from all the parties.

("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

In the year 2040, New York, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Cairo, Copenhagen and Rome are covered by water. Ever since the layer of ice, arctic and antarctic, began to melt more and more quickly, the sea has overcome Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Bangladesh: in temperate zones, the climate has become subtropical, in the PreAlps pines and cypresses are flourishing, and further south in Spain, Sicily, Greece, California the climate has become Sahelian...Science fiction? No, merely a possible future scenario, with a well-grounded scientific basis. It is related to the "greenhouse effect" caused by the progressive thinning of the ozone layer which up to now has carried out the important function of screening the Earth from most of the ultraviolet rays from space, in particular from the sun. It seems nowadays certain that the main cause of the phenomenon of the diminution of the thickness of the ozone layer is caused by emission into the atmosphere of products associated with human activity, especially by t

he chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used as propellants in sprays (25% of world use of CFCs), in the plastic foam industry (25%), in the cooling circuits of refrigerators and air-conditioning plants (30%) and as solvents (in the chemical industry (20%). Science up to this point. On the other hand, as for politics, the threat does not exist, and the governments, in particular the European governments, are behaving like ostriches, trying not to see, to remove the problem. Opposition from the industries which use and produce chlorofluorocarbons is sufficient to prevent any efficient, prompt decision. In Vienna, at the Convention in March 1985, and in Montreal, with the Protocol of September 1987, completely inadequate measures were adopted which substantially postponed to 1999 not only the substitution of the products causing the "hole" in the ozone layer, but the simple reduction to 50% of the production of CFCs. Even the simple prohibition of the production and commercialisation of spray cans containing CFCs

(which represent only one quarter of world use), already adopted without commercial difficulty in the US, in Canada and in Sweden, seems excessive for many European governments. But the greatest mystification is due to the attitude of the larger majority of European political parties, which, through words and conventions, support the need for drastic measures to remedy the degradation of the earth's atmosphere, while on the government level, they seem impotent in the face of the allies of the CFC producers' lobbies. Faced with the cowardice and irresponsibility of governments and parties, the Radical Party got a campaign off the ground to make people aware and to denounce, with three precise objectives:

1) the embargo, by 1989, of the production and commerce of spray cans containing CFCs in EEC territory;

2) the organisation of a new international conference, to include even the USSR and the countries of the Third World, to reduce the use and production of CFC's by 50% within two years of the signing of the agreement, and the elimination of the remaining 50% in the following two years;

3) the definition, by 1989, of a co-ordinated research programme between the countries of the European Community, worked out to be able to manufacture products which could substitute CFC. On these well defined objectives, which only leave room for unanimous answers and not merely a fuss about the problem of the hole in the ozone layer, the Radical Party asks all the European political forces to declares themselves before the elections of the European parliament, scheduled for June 1989. It will therefore ask European electors to support only those parties that on this topic, as on other strategic themes in the development of the European society, which have publicly assumed the commitments of civilisation and real progress.