Yes. NASA Saved our collective butts back in 1987 when the world’s governments finalized and signed The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer which was based on NASA research. And it worked! If we had not acted, most of us alive today would be in for a world of hurt.
It wasn’t easy to sign the agreement in the United States. The same characters who enable climate change, as well as dismantling environmental safeguards, were there as they are today working against protecting our fragile biosphere. In those days, people believed in science over foolishness and alternative facts. They were aware that if the world did not act, their children and grandchildren (that would be most of us today) were doomed. Imagine if we had Trump, Pruitt, and the current GOP congress, they would have done everything in their power to sabotage the Montreal Protocol and seal our fates. This is exactly what they are doing right now with the global fight against the mass extinction events looming from climate change.
Below the block quote is a compelling and easy to understand video (really) from Michelle Thaller, NASA's assistant director of science communication.
From Big Think:
Pop quiz! Which NASA mission has been most critical to humanity? It's not the Moon landing. It's not the Apollo 8 mission, with its iconic Earthrise photo. It's not even spinoff tech like cell phones, baby formula, and GPS. "All those kind of fall flat, to tell you the truth," says Michelle Thaller, NASA's assistant director of science communication. "I think that people don’t understand." Thaller says the greatest mission NASA ever pulled off was saving your butt. While conducting blue sky research—curiosity-driven scientific investigation with no immediate "real-world" applications—that scientists in the 1980s discovered that the ozone layer was being depleted. Realizing the danger this posed to life on Earth, scientists—and NASA's crack team of science communicators—mobilized the public, the U.N., and governments to get the Montreal Protocol signed, and to ban ozone-depleting chemicals for good. "We’ve since done atmospheric models that show that we would have actually destroyed the ozone layer, had we done nothing, by the year 2060..." says Thaller. "That would have destroyed agriculture. Crops would have failed all over the world. You couldn’t have livestock outside. People couldn’t have lived outside. We very nearly destroyed civilization, and your grandchildren would have lived through that." The value of blue sky research is severely underestimated—especially when budgets are being drafted. But it has led to the best NASA spinoff Michelle Thaller can think of: grandchildren.
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