During the ’70s, the ozone layer has started to degrade as a result of pollutant emissions. According to the online report that was performed by the United Nations, the huge hole in the ozone layer might be utterly cured from the 2060s—and even in some regions of the world, it could be by approximately 2030.

Roughly a few dozen years ago, we decided that our world’s ozone layer was declining as a result of the widespread use of CFCs. If we didn’t make timely reforms in this area, we could not support our civilization.

Paul Newman, a NASA scientist and UN Special, was among those who led the UN’s Ozone Watch.

We’re at the turnaround point.

Hazardous chemicals, known as chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons, may be found in aerosol cans and refrigerators, in their use, the chemicals release chlorine into the stratosphere, where it breaks down ozone molecules. It’s particularly notable in Antarctica, which has a large hole that formed during the eighties.

This year celebrates “32 Years and Healing” success, since marked on September 16th, as a recognition when the world came together on World Ozone Day. 
The positive effects of effective lessening of our planet’s CO2 emissions were fully tied to regenerating ozone. Thanks to this, around 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were avoided from 1990 to 2010.

The ozone-depleting substances present on earth today cause higher volumes of ultraviolet radiation, causing toxic chemicals to harm agriculture as well as the forest lands, and increasing skin cancers.

The Canadian government developed the treaty, which was later ratified by the full United States, in 1988. The Montreal Protocol was the first treaty to receive universal ratification.

When we come together as a human race to prevent global issues, we can make a difference.

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Trees provide us with oxygen so we can breathe every day. They also give us the materials for tools and shelter. Trees stabilize soil, absorb carbon dioxide and other harmful gases, and give refuge to the world’s wildlife. There’s no doubt about it: Trees are vital to our planet and the planet needs trees. Forests cover roughly 30% of the world’s land area. Besides their intrinsic beauty, richness and unique diversity, they are a major provider of various vital components of a healthy, functioning Earth.

Here are the top 12 reasons the planet needs trees:

1. Forests host 80 % of all terrestrial biodiversity

Animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms function as the elements necessary for the existence of life and human society, and they also can benefit us economically.

2. Trees provide oxygen

A single mature tree generates enough oxygen for two to ten people. Through photosynthesis, trees produce oxygen that humans and many other organisms depend on to live. Without oxygen, life as we know it would not be possible. Although the phytoplankton in the oceans accounts for at least half of the world’s oxygen, forests thus also play a key role.

3. Forests contribute to our well-being

A study has suggested that hospital patients find healing by viewing trees and green spaces from hospital windows, which decreases their stress, and that school kids do much better when they have a view of nature and are to play outdoors.

Green is likely to make us happy, and spending time in a forest further calms us down.

4. Forests provide jobs and incomes

Forests comprise a wide range of income and investment opportunities for humankind. Some examples include forest products used in processes such as transportation and construction, energy extracted from forest products, and the investments made in forest companies. They also cover the protection of sites and landscapes of cultural, spiritual, or recreational value. Maintenance and enhancement of the functions is a crucial part of sustainable forest management.

5. Trees clean the air

While trees give off oxygen and sustain our very lives, the U.S. Forest Service reminds us why the planet needs trees is that trees also help to clean the air and reduce the negative effects that carbon dioxide could have on our environment. According to the Arbor Day Foundation, “During one year, a mature tree will absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen in exchange.”

6. Trees provide food

By growing fruit and nut trees on your property, you can produce a generous amount of food that you can share with all your family members, friends, neighbors, other family members, and others in your community.

7. Trees increase property values

If a house has mature trees on it, its value can be in the range of 7 and 19 percent higher than if there were no trees.

8. Trees hold soil in place

Tree roots penetrate deep into the soil, growing deeply into it, creating a strong foundation that prevents erosion and occurs on steep slopes and other terrains.

9. Trees help to save energy

The trees provide shade and lower surface and air temperatures according to Environmental Protection Agency explains that.

10. Trees reduce crime

Scientists at Illinois’s University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign determined that residents of public housing in Chicago had 25 percent fewer instances of violent and property offenses when they lived in a neighborhood with nearby trees and natural landscapes.

11. Forests slow down global warming

Trees and other green plants take in carbon dioxide that humans and other organisms produce.

Without the many forests that remain on earth, the levels of CO2 in the air would be even greater now. More forests mean less CO2 in the air and less global warming. This is another reason why the planet needs trees as approximately 18 % of current global warming is due to the loss of forests.

12. Trees save water

The shade from the trees slows down the evaporation of the water, thereby leaving thirsty lawns lush and green.

Probably one of the most important reasons our planet needs trees is that trees save water. Agricultural degradation and deforestation threaten the livelihood of numerous nations. Their effects on global fields such as biodiversity, climate change, human rights, peace and security, good governance and the rule of law are significant. Therefore, substantial action to combat deforestation and forest degradation is needed.

by Andrea Germanos

Seventeen states on Wednesday sued the President Donald Trump administration over its recent move “to eviscerate” the Endangered Species Act.

“As we face the unprecedented threat of a climate emergency, now is the time to strengthen our planet’s biodiversity, not to destroy it,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who’s leading the coalition. “The only thing we want to see extinct are the beastly policies of the Trump Administration putting our ecosystems in critical danger.”

#BREAKING: We’re suing the Trump Administration over their rollback of the #EndangeredSpeciesAct

The only thing we want to see extinct are the Trump Administration’s beastly environmental policies. https://t.co/gIdtwko2aX #StopExtinction #ProtectWildlife pic.twitter.com/eHmJssNATz

— Xavier Becerra (@AGBecerra) September 25, 2019

The suit (pdf), brought by 17 states and the District of Columbia and the City of New York, was filed in the District Court for the Northern District of California. It comes a month after the administration finalized a series of rollbacks to the law—a move Mass Audubon President Gary Clayton called “another example of the Trump administration’s continuing war on the nature of America.”

As Jonathan Hahn explained at Sierra magazine last month, the new regulations, which are set to take effect Thursday,

significantly weaken the process for listing and enforcing Endangered Species Act protections and inject economic and potentially political considerations into that process where none had existed before. They will bring to an end automatic protections for threatened species, make it easier to delist species (by raising the bar for what evidence is required to show that a species is threatened or endangered), and limit the ways in which climate change can be factored into listing decisions in “the foreseeable future”—essentially removing climate change as a consideration just as the global climate crisis is accelerating.

According to the new lawsuit, the new rules “violate the plain language and purpose of the ESA, its legislative history, numerous binding judicial precedents interpreting the ESA, and its precautionary approach to protecting imperiled species and critical habitat.” The legal action also accuses the Trump administration of failing “to consider and disclose the significant environmental impacts of this action in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who joins with Becerra and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh in leading the leagal action, wrote on Twitter Wednesday: “The Trump Administration wants to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act. We won’t let them threaten our environment just so oil and gas companies can make a quick buck.”

The Trump Administration wants to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act. We won’t let them threaten our environment just so oil and gas companies can make a quick buck. We’re suing. pic.twitter.com/ZuUGZYnVTO

— Maura Healey (@MassAGO) September 25, 2019

The other states involved in the suit are Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

They aren’t the first group to launch a legal challenge to the administration’s weakening of the ESA, as a coalition of environmental and animal advocacy groups filed suit (pdf) last month.

“We’re coming out swinging to defend this consequential law,” Becerra said in his statement, “humankind and the species with whom we share this planet depend on it.”

Originally published by Common Dreams