A May 1985 report in the journal Nature was alarming. High above Antarctica, a huge hole had opened in the ozone shield that protects life on earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
The finding confirmed what scientists had been warning about since the 1970s: atmospheric ozone is being depleted by the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals known as CFCs, found in aerosol sprays, refrigeration and air conditioning.
Just two years later, dozens of nations meeting in Montreal signed an agreement to significantly reduce CFCs, which the Environmental Protection Agency estimates will prevent 27 million deaths from skin cancers.
“This is perhaps the most historically significant international environmental agreement,” Richard E. Benedick, the United States’ chief negotiator, said at the time.
Since then, the Montreal Protocol, as the pact is known, has stood as a landmark of collective action against a global environmental threat, as well as a rebuke of the lack of international resolve to address the most dire and complex threat climate change.
Mr. Benedick, who was a career diplomat in the State Department when the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, and who patiently quelled opposition from foreign nations while enduring strong domestic critics in the Reagan administration, died March 16 in Falls Church, Va. . He was 88 years old.
His daughter, Juliana Benedick, said he suffered from advanced dementia and had been living in a memory care facility since 2018.
It is no small paradox that the negotiation of a global treaty to combat air pollution took place during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was elected a champion of business and a sworn enemy of government regulation.
However, support for addressing the threat of CFCs to human health was possible because environmental issues were less partisan than they would later become, and because American industry, notably DuPont, the largest manufacturer of the chemicals, preferred an international treaty than the possibility of more draconian cuts by Congress.
But as Mr. Benedick wrote in a 1991 book about the road to a deal, “Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Securing the Planet,” success was never assured in the nine months the treaty went under the hammer. “Most observers inside and outside government,” he wrote, “believed at the time that it would be impossible to reach agreement on the international regulation of CFCs.”
Mr Benedick, described as energetic and diligent by colleagues, was instrumental in the success. “He was a persistent guy. he was like a terrier with a bone,” John D. Negroponte, then an assistant secretary of state who was Mr. Benedict’s superior and ally, said in an interview. “The atmosphere in this town — it’s been an uphill battle. I don’t think it would have happened without him.”
In the Reagan administration, leaders of the State Department and the Environmental Protection Administration favored regulation of CFCs. But amid the international talks, strong opposition emerged from Donald P. Hodel, the interior secretary, and William R. Graham Jr., the White House science adviser.
Mr. Hodel said Americans worried about skin cancer from ozone loss shouldn’t wait for more government regulation, but should try “personal protection,” meaning hats, sunglasses and sunscreen.
His comments, once leaked to the press, were widely mocked, inspiring editorial cartoons featuring fish and animals – which are also at risk from UV rays – on sunglasses. Environmentalists greeted Mr. Hodel at a news conference with their faces white with sunscreen.
Other reactions came from foreign countries, notably Japan, the Soviet Union and the European bloc, who argued that the scientific link between CFCs and ozone depletion had not been proven.
The State Department sent key scientists from the US government’s science agencies to Moscow, Tokyo and Brussels to train their counterparts.
“I think it helped get the message out,” Mr. Negroponte said. “Dick was the mastermind behind it.”
In the end, President Reagan sided with Mr. Benedict and the State Department, defeating the anti-regulatory faction of his administration. Among the reasons offered for the decision was that Mr. Reagan had recently had a cancerous growth removed.
The Montreal Protocol, which called for the use of CFCs to be cut in half, was signed by 24 countries in September 1987. It was unanimously ratified the following year by the US Senate. In 1990, the protocol was tightened to finally phase out CFCs completely. Today, almost every country in the world has banned them.
Concentrations of long-lived ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere have gradually declined, with the ozone hole over Antarctica expected to heal 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. His mother, Rose (Katz) Benedick, died in childbirth, and as a result, “he never liked to celebrate his birthday,” Mr. Benedick’s daughter said.
Lester Benedick remarried Jean (Shamsky) Benedick.
Richard, who grew up in the Bronx, earned a BA in economics from Columbia University, an MA in economics from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Harvard Business School, preparing a thesis entitled “Industrial Finance in Iran”.
In 1957 he married Hildegard Schulz, whom he met at International House at Yale. He accompanied Mr. Benedick, then a foreign service officer specializing in economic development at the State Department, on postings to Iran, Pakistan, France and Germany. The couple divorced in 1982.
Mr. Benedick’s second marriage, to Helen Freeman, also ended in divorce. He later had a long-term partner, Irene Federwisch. In addition to his daughter from his first marriage, he also has a son, Andreas Benedick, also from this marriage. a granddaughter; and two great-grandchildren.
At the time of the Montreal Protocol, Mr. Benedick was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources and Coordinator of Population Affairs.
“Richard was energetic, even passionate,” said William K. Riley, who was president of the World Wildlife Fund, where Mr. Benedict was a fellow after the Montreal Protocol was negotiated. “It was a career highlight for him and for the United States, a masterful diplomatic achievement.”
When he returned to the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, Mr. Benedict tried to apply ozone diplomacy to the issue of global warming, which scientists had begun to warn was the most dangerous environmental threat. A government scientist, James Hansen, told the Senate and the press in 1988 that evidence that global warming had begun could be detected “with 99 percent confidence,” which made headlines.
Mr. Reilly, who led the EPA under Mr. Bush, said the administration’s policy did not favor action. Secretary of State James A. Baker III “chose to remove himself from the climate,” Mr. Reilly said. Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, John H. Sununu, vetoed an EPA proposal that the president propose a global treaty on carbon emissions. When Mr. Hansen appeared before the Senate again in 1989, the White House censored his testimony to cast doubt on human activity causing climate change.
Mr. Benedick was not a scientist, but he was a great admirer of nature and the outdoors.
“He loved taking our family to the national parks,” said Mrs. Benedick, his daughter. “He planned five trips out of the country when we were kids in the 70s and 80s. We flew into California and visited almost every national park we drove east. He would ask us to get up at dawn to watch the sunrise over Yosemite or Bryce or Zion or Monument Valley.”