Bush Assailed Over Global Warming : Environment: Mitchell says in Senate speech that U.S. must lead world efforts. He calls for a timetable on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Senate Democratic leader George J. Mitchell Tuesday accused the Bush Administration of foot-dragging on global warming issues and urged announcement of a timetable for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Mitchell, a prime sponsor of the Clean Air Act approved with the aid of President Bush, said the same approach could be used to achieve agreement on new world emission standards for “greenhouse gases” at an international conference that opened here Monday.

“For these negotiations to be successful, the United States must take a leadership position,” the Maine Democrat said in a Senate speech.

“We are alone among industrialized nations in opposing even the concept of setting an emissions reduction target and deadline,” Mitchell added. “Ignoring this problem will simply make it worse. . . . Delay reduces our options and increases the final cost of action.”

Challenging the Administration’s view that more research is needed before commitments are made for massive reductions of pollutants, Bush’s chief critic in Congress said global warming is an immediate threat.

“The decade of the 1980s includes some of the warmest years on record,” Mitchell said. “This week temperature records are being broken across the country as we experience April in February.

“The potential of temperature shifts that previously occurred over thousands of years instead taking place in a matter of decades, confronts us with an unprecedented event,” Mitchell added.

When the U.N. conference opened Monday in nearby Chantilly, Va., the United States announced that by the year 2000 it would stabilize its emissions of greenhouse gases at 1987 levels, and that it would work diligently for a global warming convention that can be signed by the target date of June, 1992.

However, the Administration has resisted mounting pressure to set a specific standard for carbon dioxide, which is the focus of international concern. Critics complain that by lumping all greenhouse gases together, the United States is able to claim overall reductions without significantly reducing carbon dioxide.

In the meantime, the Administration called for a combined strategy of research and action.

Other nations, particularly in Europe, are pressing for more dramatic steps to counter pollutants, which some scientists believe could raise the earth’s temperatures by 5 to 10 degrees in the next century, with potentially devastating consequences.

Mitchell charged that Bush failed to provide any bold initiative at the opening session of the U.N. conference.

“Unfortunately, his Administration’s so-called ‘action plan’ announced yesterday is in reality an ‘inaction plan,’ ” the Democratic leader said. “In this policy area, the Administration has chosen to follow, not lead. It is up to the Congress to provide the leadership the U.S. should have and the world needs.”

Alluding to the Gulf War where U.S. forces are heavily involved in fighting Iraq, Mitchell added: “Even as we are forced to focus our attention on the deadly clash of military forces, the long-term survival of our planet demands that we keep a focus on natural forces as well. In the long term, those forces will determine how we live as certainly as the outcome of war.”