The Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to restore the ozone layer that is lauded as an environmental success story, turns 25 years old this weekend.

Negotiated under the two Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the treaty -- signed on Sept. 16, 1987 -- marked a global commitment to cut down and eventually eradicate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), two gases responsible for eating away the Earth's protective atmospheric layer.

In a sea of strained environmental treaties, the Montreal Protocol is a beacon of success. Every country in the world is a signatory, and flexible measures have made conversion relatively accessible.

"They call it the greatest environmental treaty ever negotiated," said C. Boyden Gray, a counsel to President Bush in the early years of the treaty and later the ambassador to the European Union. The treaty was signed more than a decade after chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland published a paper tying the destruction of the ozone layer to CFCs, a finding for which they eventually won the Nobel Prize.

Despite the use of CFCs and HCFCs in everything from refrigerators to insulating materials to the process for making the glue on the back of sticky notes, the world was able to slowly wean itself onto the ozone-safe hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

"Basically, we put the ozone layer on a road to recovery. We have phased out nearly a hundred chemicals by nearly 100 percent," said Durwood Zaelke, president and founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who has worked in the implementation of the Montreal Protocol since its early days.

A strategy for climate change?

And it worked. Were it not for the Montreal Protocol's success in phasing out CFCs and HCFCs, two-thirds of the ozone layer would be gone by 2065, said Paul Newman, the chief scientist for atmospheric sciences at NASA. A fair-skinned person in Washington, D.C., would be sunburned after a five-minute walk outside, he added.

"By 2065, stratospheric chlorine would have increased over 40 times the natural level," said Newman, referring to the element in CFCs, eating away at the ozone layer and creating catastrophic public health and agriculture problems.

The success of the Montreal Protocol lies in a few simple attributes. It has the participation of every nation on Earth but allows for flexibility for developing countries. Wealthier countries committed about $3 billion to pay for the incremental costs of transition. The change concerns only one economic sector, chemicals. And the inventor of CFCs and HCFCs -- chemical manufacturer DuPont -- also came up with the formula to make HFCs, a relatively inexpensive alternative.

"[It's] the value of the focus," Zaelke said. "I think that's what makes it work: focus."

The treaty is so successful, say its proponents, that it could serve as a much more effective medium to combat climate change than the Kyoto Protocol. Although HFCs do not harm the ozone layer, they are some of the most potent greenhouse gases in existence, with a global warming factor of up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide.

A transition from HFCs to more benign chemicals that don't warm the planet could avoid about 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, said Zaelke. It could curb climate change with less effort than trying to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, oil refineries, vehicles, agriculture and deforestation -- the goal of the Kyoto Protocol.

China buys in

But three of the fastest-growing world economies -- China, India and Brazil -- have rejected a phaseout of HFCs at Montreal Protocol meetings over the past three years. With growing middle classes, the demand for refrigerators, air conditioning and consumer goods is expected to rise tremendously in these countries (ClimateWire, July 30).

Industrial businessmen in China and India are also profiting from a loophole in the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism that allows payments for the destruction of HFC-23, a byproduct in the manufacturing of another gas.

The argument is similar to one presented in the first years of the Montreal Protocol, said former U.S. EPA Administrator William Reilly, who convinced the senior President Bush to agree to a full phaseout of ozone-depleting gases by 2000 with the help of then-British Prime Minister (and former chemist) Margaret Thatcher.

"The Chinese were very skeptical," he said. They found it "very suspicious, very convenient that the only replacements were made by [Imperial Chemical Industries, a British chemical company] and Dupont."

Reilly was able to show to the Chinese that an HFC alternative would cost less than $1 per unit more than CFC refrigerants. At that point, said Reilly, the Chinese were expecting 300 million new refrigerators in the next few years.

"Had that not gone well, the 300 million refrigerators would have blown a huge amount of reductions," said Reilly.

David Doniger, policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has followed the development of the Montreal Protocol since its beginning, expects the standoff from China, India and Brazil to eventually fizzle.

"I'm confident we will get over this hump in the next year or two and those decisions will happen," Doniger said.

Zaelke agreed, saying that three years of holding out is relatively small in the context of the Montreal Protocol's 25 years.

"Many things have taken many years more than three," he said. "The debate is already sending a very powerful signal to industry. The handwriting is on the wall now."