A May 1985 report published in Nature was alarming. A giant hole has opened in the ozone layer above Antarctica, which protects life on Earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays.
The discovery confirmed what scientists have been warning about since the 1970s. That means ozone in the atmosphere is being broken down by the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals known as CFCs, found in aerosol sprays, refrigerators, and air conditioners.
Just over two years later, dozens of countries meeting in Montreal signed an agreement to drastically reduce CFCs, which the Environmental Protection Agency estimates could prevent 27 million deaths from skin cancer.
“This is probably the most important international environmental agreement in history,” Chief U.S. Negotiator Richard E. Benedick said at the time.
Since then, the Montreal Protocol, known as the Agreement, has served as a milestone for collective action in the face of global environmental threats and a rebuke to the lack of international resolve to address more dire and complex global environmental threats. Ta. climate change.
Mr. Benedick was a career diplomat in the State Department when the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, patiently pushing aside foreign opposition while enduring strong domestic criticism within the Reagan administration. He died in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 88 years old.
His daughter, Julianna Benedick, said he has advanced dementia and has been living in a memory care home since 2018.
It is no small contradiction that the global treaty to combat air pollution was negotiated during the term of President Ronald Reagan, an elected champion of business and sworn enemy of government regulation.
But support for addressing the threat of fluorocarbons to human health was made possible because environmental issues were not as intensely partisan as they were later on, and because chemical giants such as DuPont This is because U.S. industry prioritized international treaties over the possibility of further problems. Severe cuts by Congress.
Still, as Benedick wrote about the path to the deal in his 1991 book, Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions to Save the Planet, success was guaranteed during the nine months the deal was crafted. There was no. “Most observers inside and outside the government believed at the time that it would be impossible to reach agreement on the international regulation of CFCs,” he wrote.
Mr. Benedick was described by his colleagues as energetic and tenacious, contributing to his success. “He was a tenacious guy. He was like a terrier with bones,” John D. Negroponte, then an assistant secretary of state who was Mr. Benedick's boss and ally, said in an interview. “The atmosphere in this town, it was a tough fight. I don't think any of this would have happened without him.”
During the Reagan administration, leaders of the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency supported regulation of CFCs. However, during international negotiations, strong opposition emerged from Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel and White House Science Advisor William R. Graham Jr.
Hodel said Americans concerned about skin cancer due to ozone loss should not expect further government regulation and should instead strive for “personal protective equipment” such as hats, sunglasses and sunscreen.
His comments were once leaked to the press, were widely ridiculed, and inspired editorial cartoons depicting fish and animals (also at risk from UV rays) wearing sunglasses. Environmental activists greeted Hodel at the press conference, their faces covered in white sunscreen.
There was also opposition from other countries, mainly Japan, the Soviet Union, and Europe, who argued that the scientific link between CFCs and ozone layer depletion has not been proven.
The State Department sent leading scientists from U.S. government scientific agencies to Moscow, Tokyo, and Brussels to train their counterparts.
“I think that helped get the message across,” Negroponte said. “Dick was the brains behind it.”
In the end, President Reagan sided with Benedick and the State Department and suppressed the anti-regulatory factions within his administration. The suggested reason for this decision was that Mr. Regan had recently had a cancerous tumor removed.
The Montreal Protocol, which mandates cutting the use of CFCs in half, was signed by 24 countries in September 1987. The following year, it was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate. In 1990, protocols were tightened to finally eliminate his CFC completely. Almost every country in the world has now banned them.
Concentrations of long-lived ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere are gradually decreasing, and the ozone hole above Antarctica is expected to recover by the 2060s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Richard Elliott Benedick was born on May 10, 1935 in the Bronx. His father, Lester L. Benedick, was in the insurance business. “He didn't like to celebrate his birthday,” Benedick's daughter said, because his mother, Rose (Katz) Benedick, died during childbirth.
Lester Benedick remarried Jean (Shamsky) Benedick.
Raised in the Bronx, Richard earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Columbia University, a master's degree in economics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. He graduated from Harvard Business School and wrote a thesis titled “Industrial Finance in Iran.”
In 1957, he married Hildegard Schulz, whom he met at Yale University's International House. She accompanied Mr. Benedick, then a diplomat specializing in economic development at the State Department, on assignments to Iran, Pakistan, France and Germany. The couple divorced in 1982.
Mr. Benedick's second marriage to Helen Freeman also ended in divorce. Then he found his longtime companion, Irene Federvisch. In addition to his daughter from his first marriage, he has a son, Andreas Benedick, also from that marriage. granddaughter. and two great-grandchildren.
At the time of the Montreal Protocol, Mr. Benedick was Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources and Coordinator for Population Affairs.
“Richard was energetic, even passionate,” said William K. Reilly, president of the World Wildlife Fund, where Mr. Benedick served as a fellow after negotiating the Montreal Protocol. “This was a career highlight and a stunning diplomatic achievement for him and for the United States.”
When Mr. Benedick returned to the State Department under President George H.W. Bush, he sought to apply ozone diplomacy to the problem of global warming, which scientists had begun to warn was the most dangerous environmental threat. Government scientist James Hansen made front-page news in 1988 when he told the Senate and the press that he could detect “with 99 percent confidence” evidence that global warming was beginning.
Riley, who led the EPA under Mr. Bush, said the administration's politics do not support action. Secretary of State James A. Baker III “chose to retreat from climate change,” Reilly said. President Bush's chief of staff, John H. Sununu, vetoed the EPA's proposal to have the president propose a global treaty on carbon emissions. When Hanssen appeared before the Senate again in 1989, the White House censored his testimony to sow doubts that human activity caused climate change.
Although Mr. Benedick was not a scientist, he was a lover of nature and the outdoors.
“He loved taking our family to national parks,” said his daughter Benedick. “He organized five transcontinental trips in the 1970s and '80s when we were kids. We flew to California and headed east to visit nearly every national park. He instructed us to rise at dawn and watch the sunrise over Yosemite, Bryce, Zion, and Monument Valley.”