Yellowstone Pond, 2012. Wikicommons/runt35. Some rights reserved.When I was 15 years old, I learned that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from sprays such as shaving cream to pesticides could lead to “…the possibility of end to life on earth”. After I read that article, the world seemed smaller and humanity larger.
The article, published in The New Yorker, reviewed a science-to-public-to-politics story about CFCs and their purported impact on Earth’s ozone layer. The article recounted the rapid proliferation of aerosol products during the postwar period, from 4.5 million cans in 1947 to 2.3 billion in 1968. The postwar economy of convenience fuelled the rapid scale-up, and by 1970, Brodeur reported, “Practically every product that was conceivably sprayable either had been packaged or was being considered for packaging in aerosol form.”
When I read that article, I was in high school in Vicenza, Italy, where my dad was serving in the military. The New Yorker was among the few English-language publications we could easily find. At 15, I knew I was younger than their targeted audience, but I devoured the nonfiction, especially the science. Brodeur’s article, in particular, gripped me.
