An Idea White House Needs to Warm To : With Sununu gone, will U.S. become aggressive about dealing with global warming?

The United States is the world’s largest single contributor to the global warming trend that many scientists fear is leading to a devastating rise in temperatures.

But even if the 99 other countries that are trying to deal with the threat were grandstanding on the issue, the United States still would be making the smallest contribution to the U.N. effort to curb the warming trend.

And the time left for the Bush Administration to catch up with other nations on the issue is running out.

Other industrial countries want Washington to commit itself to limits on carbon dioxide, which is the primary ingredient in a blanket of gases that has wrapped itself around the globe, trapping heat much as panes of glass do in a greenhouse.

For a long time, Washington could blame its foot-dragging on John H. Sununu, then the White House chief of staff. But Sununu has been gone for months.

And though the White House no longer says it is not going to let the rest of the world tell Americans how much carbon dioxide they can put into the atmosphere, neither has it agreed to act to limit emissions.

Carbon dioxide is created when wood, petroleum and other fuels are burned. A smaller component of the greenhouse effect is a chlorine compound released in the operation of air conditioners and refrigerators, which is damaging to the ozone layer also.

A second week of negotiations on global warming at U.N. headquarters in New York starts today. U.N. officials once hoped they would have a final covenant that could be approved by world leaders at a June conference in Rio de Janeiro on the global environment. But for a variety of reasons--not all of them involving American reluctance to act--the process is behind schedule and a sixth meeting must be held in April.

Americans could live with carbon dioxide limits more easily than the White House seems to think. Opposition is generally based on the myth of an absolute link between energy production and economic growth, the notion that if smoke is coming out of chimneys, people are working.

The pity is that facts are so seldom a match for dogma. A 1991 study sponsored by five environmental protection organizations found that between 1973 and 1986, carbon dioxide emissions fell and energy consumption was flat but the economy grew nearly 40%. The White House desperately needs a copy of that report.