You are the cultural head of your school. Write a notice in brief for your school
notice board inviting all the interested students for preparing science models on
the occasion of International Ozone Day" (16 September) to their respective
class teachers latest by 06 September,2020. (word limit 25 to 50 words)
Answers
Refer to the editorial ‘Over to the CMs now’ (April 28); there appears to be a trust deficit between the Centre and states as only a few CMs attended the virtual meet of the PM with regard to the lifting of the lockdown and for evolving strategies to revive the economy of the country. The Centre must give funds to the states on equitable and need basis, otherwise, there will be political turmoil. The Punjab Chief Minister has repeatedly asked for previously pending GST share for the state, but nothing has come of it. Punjab is also effectively implementing the lockdown, despite the fact that wheat procurement operations are also to be kept in place.
Brij Bhushan Goyal, Ludhiana
Dual policy on charity
The Centre should not have a dual policy for charitable organisations in this hour of their need. The FCI has been ordered to supply wheat to the NGOs and charitable organisations at the open market rate of Rs 2,135 per quintal, but to the SGPC and the DSGMC at the PDS rate, i.e., Rs 200. On the one hand, the government wants that the NGOs should come forward to help the poor, and on the other, it discourages them by charging the market rate, that too when its godowns are overladen by 27% and the new wheat crop has already arrived. It should also publish the names of those providing grains, as well as the quantity of food stocks, at PDS rate, so that the poor are made aware that the food supplied to them is not alms, but a part of their money as contributors of society. During any disaster, the poor should not be made to feel that they are being given alms and their photographs should not be allowed on social or print media
Answer:
This year, we celebrate 35 years of the Vienna Convention and 35 years of global ozone layer protection. Life on Earth would not be possible without sunlight. But the energy emanating from the sun would be too much for life on Earth to thrive were it not for the ozone layer. This stratospheric layer shields Earth from most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Sunlight makes life possible, but the ozone layer makes life as we know it possible.
So, when scientists working in the late 1970s discovered that humanity was creating a hole in this protective shield, they raised the alarm. The hole – caused by ozone-depleting gases (ODSs) used in aerosols and cooling, such as refrigerators and air-conditioners – was threatening to increase cases of skin cancer and cataracts, and damage plants, crops, and ecosystems.
The global response was decisive. In 1985, the world’s governments adopted the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Under the Convention’s Montreal Protocol, governments, scientists and industry worked together to cut out 99 per cent of all ozone-depleting substances. Thanks to the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is healing and expected to return to pre-1980 values by mid-century. In support of the Protocol, the Kigali Amendment, which came into force in 2019, will work towards reducing hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), greenhouse gases with powerful climate warming potential and damaging to the environment.
World Ozone Day, held on September 16, celebrates this achievement. It shows that collective decisions and action, guided by science, are the only way to solve major global crises. In this year of the COVID-19 pandemic that has brought such social and economic hardship, the ozone treaties’ message of working together in harmony and for the collective good is more important than ever. The slogan of the day, ‘Ozone for life’, reminds us that not only is ozone crucial for life on Earth, but that we must continue to protect the ozone layer for future generations.