PREVIEW / GLOBAL WARMING : Emissions Debate Heating Up

When an international conference on global warming convenes Monday, the United States and the Soviet Union will be the only major industrialized nations without a plan for cutting or stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions.

A year ago, presidential science adviser D. Allan Bromley told Congress the Bush Administration was expected to reveal plans for combatting global warming at this 10-day meeting in Geneva. The 1990 World Climate Conference in Geneva draws together scientists and environmental ministers from more than 100 countries.

But the United States is still unprepared to announce targets or a schedule for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief culprit among so-called “greenhouse gases” that trap heat from the sun in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Three-fourths of the 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the earth’s atmosphere each year results from burning gasoline, oil, coal and natural gas.

The United States accounts for about 22% of that, and the Soviet Union another 18%.

Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Germany have announced plans to make absolute reductions. Canada, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain have committed themselves to goals of stabilizing their emissions.

Earlier this month, Australia adopted an objective of cutting greenhouse gas output 20% by the year 2005. Just this week, Japan announced that it intends to stabilize its emissions at present levels by the year 2000.

And, as the 10-day Geneva meeting gets under way, officials of the 12-nation European Community will try to get agreement on a common goal of stabilization at 1988 levels by 2005.

Dodging the Pressure

But although work by scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency played a major role in focusing world attention on the problem, the Bush Administration has in several international conferences doggedly resisted European pressure for worldwide reduction targets and deadlines.

The pressure will be renewed when environmental ministers debate their declaration at the end of the climate conference in Geneva. Administration critics, such as Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), have accused it of trying to sabotage the conference during preliminary skirmishing over the draft declaration.

The Geneva conference will be the last international meeting on global warming before negotiations on a global warming convention begin in Washington next February.

Dissension Ahead

Before the conference in Geneva is over, ministers are expected to embrace a massive study of global warming and its impacts--a study completed last August by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--and to issue a declaration setting the stage for negotiations. The Europeans want the declaration to refer to targets, deadlines and commitments, while the Bush Administration wants the language to remain vague.

Apparently anticipating a rerun of half a dozen debates in which the Europeans have criticized the United States for emphasizing research instead of action, the Bush Administration is downplaying the conference’s importance.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the top environmental officials of scores of countries will attend. But the U.S. delegation, headed by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief John Knauss, will be made up of working-level representatives.

Administration officials contend that the U.S. go-slow approach is founded on a profoundly serious intention to meet objectives once the problem and the economic consequences of fixing it are understood.

But environmentalists suggest the strategy is to delay as long as possible.

Daniel Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who authored one of the landmark global warming studies while a staff scientist for EPA, says the United States could save $90 billion over the next 20 years by adopting renewable energy strategies that would permit stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions.

“The Bush Administration has run out of excuses for not acting against global warming,” he said.