U.S. and Japan Block Firm Stand on Global Pollutants

Led by the United States and Japan, a small group of industrialized countries on Tuesday blocked a world conference on global warming from setting a goal of stabilizing “greenhouse” pollutants in the atmosphere by the turn of the century.

Instead, environmental ministers representing more than 60 countries settled on a declaration agreeing that stabilization of the world’s atmosphere “should be achieved as soon as possible.”

In an eight-page statement, drafted by the Dutch government and debated privately and publicly for five days, the conferees called for new efforts next year to set a target level for atmospheric stabilization and urged consideration of a significant reduction of carbon dioxide by 2005.

The Dutch, backed by most European countries, wanted a pledge to stabilize production of greenhouse gases at 1988 levels by the turn of the century.

But the United States, insisting that it still needs more scientific and economic data, and contending that the meeting here was not the proper forum for such commitments, led efforts to water down the initial language.

It was actively joined by the Japanese and supported by the Soviet Union and perhaps others. No vote was taken, so it was impossible to determine exactly what delegations were prepared to do should the matter come to a vote.

The crucial language concerning stabilization concerns only industrialized nations.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly, who headed the U.S. delegation, said China, India, Mexico, and many developing countries would have joined the United States had the question been put to a vote of the entire conference.

Dutch environmental official Ed Nijpels, who organized the meeting and led the drafting of the Dutch declaration, still proclaimed the huge conference a success.

While the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union objected to the specific goals, the declaration did note that “in the view of many industrialized nations . . . stabilization of (carbon dioxide) emissions should be achieved as a first step at the latest by the year 2000.”

But environmentalists who dogged the steps of delegates while supporting the Dutch initiative said the meeting had failed on the most important front.

“The concept of stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions--without any commitment to the level at which stabilization will occur--must be regarded as a failure of nerve or a cynical ploy,” said Brooks Yeager, a vice president of the National Audubon Society of the United States. “This failure, however, cannot change the clear message of the last two days--and that is that national and world energy policies must be radically changed to deal with the climate problem.”

The next international attempt to deal with the threat of pollution-induced warming of the world climate will come in the forum that the Bush Administration contends is the right place for substantive action--the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC, organized by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, will meet in Washington in February.

After that meeting, Reilly said, the United States will be ready to undertake negotiations toward a framework convention on climate control, a step toward developing binding protocols to control greenhouse gases. In their declaration here, the environmental ministers called for stabilization levels to be considered both by the IPCC and by the Second World Climate Conference, which will meet next November in Geneva.

The IPCC, it said, should present its analyses and conclusions to the Geneva meeting, where the issue could be taken up again.

While Reilly and White House science adviser D. Allan Bromley promised that the United States will continue extensive work on scientific and economic analyses aimed at determining when the nation can accept a specific stabilization target and deadline, they would not promise that they would be ready by the Geneva meeting.

Although refusing to go along with countries pushing for firm commitments here, Reilly said the conference has succeeded in focusing attention on global warming, broadening world participation in the debate, and making clear that the IPCC will be the forum for dealing with the threat.

Key Players

The United States, Japan and the Soviet Union are all key players in the work of the IPCC.

West German A.O. Vogel said no one wanted to allow the session to end in an impasse, since the same officials are to meet again on the problem, considered by many scientists the most profound environmental issue facing the world.

“If you suggest there are some dirty boys,” he said, “it does not make for a good situation for the next meeting.”

While the conference struggled with the issue of carbon dioxide pollution from beginning to end, it did agree on several other matters.

It called for a worldwide reforestation program with a net increase of more than 30 million acres per year by the year 2000.

Officials also acknowledged that developing countries will have to be given financial and technical assistance to implement steps to control greenhouse gas production.

Besides the assistance of international development organizations and the United Nations, it said that “additional resources” should be mobilized.

Specifically they called for international aid to help developing nations phase out synthetic gases blamed for damaging the ozone layer of the atmosphere, to reduce destruction of tropical forests, and to promote efficient energy use, among other things.

The only major difference was over the Dutch proposal on carbon dioxide.

Reilly suggested that the U.S. delegation took the language of the declaration more seriously than some others leading the charge for a firm deadline. “We perhaps have been overly influenced by lawyers,” he told reporters.

He insisted that the Administrations’s opposition to the initiative was not an abrogation of U.S. leadership on the issue.

The Administration stance on global warming came under forceful attack Tuesday from leading Democratic senators, who denounced it as a further example of Republican refusal to confront pressing environmental questions.

“We have wasted much time wondering if we should act only to find out that we have done too little, too late,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said in a speech on the Senate floor.

“President Bush promised to combat the greenhouse effect with the White House effect,” added Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.). “Now what we see is the whitewash effect.”

Bush defended himself against such “carping” at a news conference Tuesday, noting that the United States had joined other Netherlands conference participants in signing a communique expressing determination to tackle the global warming problem.

“We’re just standing off against the extremes,” the President said. “. . . This policy of the environment cannot be driven by the extremes.”