Focus Needed in Climate Debate

At two international summits this month, President Clinton will no doubt take some heat about U.S. sluggishness in combating global warming.

Some of the criticism is justified. At the 1992 Earth Summit, in Brazil, the United States vowed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000 and to expand aid to help developing nations implement less-polluting technologies. But since 1992 U.S. emissions have grown nearly 10% and foreign aid has been reduced by a third.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, no credible scientists dispute that global warming is causing ecological change (like the 70% decline in zooplankton off the Southern California coast), human disease (like the rise in malaria and yellow fever in Rwanda and Kenya caused by mosquitoes migrating to cooler climates) and economic dislocation (like the climbing sea levels now flooding some island nations).

What is open to debate is the degree to which reducing fossil fuel emissions would reverse such changes. The coal and oil industry correctly points out that the explosion of carbon dioxide emissions since the 1940s is not matched by a correspondingly large rise in world temperatures. Scientists counter that the rise is being masked by the temporary cooling effect of airborne particulates and ocean water.

But given the solid scientific consensus that fossil fuel emissions have some heat-trapping effect on the Earth, it’s vital for President Clinton to take the lead in offering definite emissions reduction plans at the Group of 7 meeting of industrialized nations in Denver and the Earth Summit+5 conference in New York. Otherwise, a shared goal of the summits--to develop an agreement that nations can sign into law at a third summit, in Kyoto, Japan, in December--will not be realized.

Political consensus on what to do has been unraveling ever since 1992’s Earth Summit. Australia, for example, wants to tailor the emissions limits to each nation’s circumstances, while the Alliance of Small Island States says that only a flat, worldwide 20% cut will save its nations from deluges. At the G-7 summit, European Union leaders will press for 15% reductions for industrialized nations by 2010, which could bind developed nations to dramatic and costly reductions while allowing developing countries like China and South Korea to pollute without much restriction.

Rather than embracing draconian mandates, Clinton should focus on expanding free market incentives to encourage exploitation of forms of renewable energy. The United States, which produces nearly one-quarter of all fossil fuel emissions and has an environmentally savvy administration, is the logical mediator of a compromise proposal.