Scientific American: In the 1970s, chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Roland found that mundane household items posed a serious worldwide threat. The two chemists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, from air conditioners and canisters of hair spray could destroy the ozone layer. That insight got them a Nobel Prize.
By the 1980s, folks like then Secretary of State George Shultz woke up to the threat, despite a campaign of denial from scientific doubters. He convinced President Reagan that the danger was real...