Ads Urge Bush to Attend U.N. Earth Summit

Deploying everything from billboards to trailers at movie theaters, environmental activists are waging a vigorous, volunteer campaign to pressure President Bush to assume leadership at a world summit on the environment this summer.

As a result, thousands of telegrams are being sent to the White House urging Bush to attend the unprecedented June summit in Rio de Janeiro and to sign strong environmental protection treaties there.

“It’s making a lot of the fence-sitters in the White House very nervous,” a Bush Administration official said.

The President is meeting this week with several high-level Administration officials to discuss what action the United States is willing to take at the U.N.-sponsored summit.

The meetings follow widespread criticism of the Administration for dragging its feet in negotiations leading up to the Rio summit. Although Bush is expected to attend the summit, he has not yet publicly pledged to do so.

The Administration also has refused to agree to specific targets for reducing gases that contribute to global warming, jeopardizing a potential global treaty on climate change.

Such a treaty was to be the highlight of the summit, which will be attended by officials from more than 100 nations. Remedies for many of the planet’s most pressing environmental ills will be on the agenda.

The environmentalists’ campaign, headquartered in Los Angeles and called “Earth Voice,” is using donated time and materials from businesses, the film industry, billboard companies, movie theaters and radio and television stations to urge Bush to attend.

Activists started it a year ago after organizers of previous Earth Day celebrations singled out the summit as the most important environmental event of 1992.

“Earth Day was consciousness-raising,” said Regina Cleveland, the campaign’s director and a member of the Sierra Club. “We’re a call to action.”

Run on a shoestring budget out of borrowed offices on Melrose Place, the campaign has received the most attention for a trailer in movie theaters across the country asking Bush to attend the summit.

The trailer opens with a monkey in obvious distress as a rain forest is brutally destroyed. It is followed by a white horse surrounded by blue, an image that is supposed to evoke hope.

Actor James Earl Jones tells audiences that world leaders will sign treaties at the summit to determine the “future of our global environment.”

“At stake is the entire human race,” he says. “Problem is, our own President may not participate.”

At least one theater chain balked at running the trailer, calling it too political.

Jack Holland, marketing vice president for American Multi-Cinema Inc., or AMC Theatres, the nation’s second-largest theater chain, said it decided not to screen the trailer because it contained political overtones and lacked an uplifting, positive spirit.

“We think that the theater environment is such that people really don’t want to go and see baby seals clubbed to death and things like that,” Holland said.

But five chains, along with cable television channels and network affiliates, agreed to run it.

Radio stations are running similar announcements, and a national billboard and newspaper campaign is in the works. Next week, 25 billboards on the Rio summit are scheduled to go up in Los Angeles.

Viewers and listeners are being asked to call a toll-free number to urge Bush to “lead Rio.” Callers can choose from one of five telegrams urging Bush to attend the summit and take specific actions.

The telegrams, which cost the caller $6.95 each, include the subjects of global warming, energy, deforestation, wildlife and ocean pollution, all issues that may be addressed at Rio.

White House spokesman Gary Foster said Bush has received about 1,200 letters and telegrams urging him to go to Rio.

But campaign organizers and Western Union say more than 6,300 telegrams have been ordered, up from about 30 a day when the campaign started in February to more than 700 on Monday.

James M. Staudenraus, major account manager for Western Union’s Priorities Service Division, said nearly 5,000 telegrams have been delivered to the White House.

So far, about 29% of callers have chosen to ask Bush to give special attention to forests, 25% to global warming, 21% to oceans, 15% to wildlife and 8% to energy.

The environmentalists’ campaign is being sponsored by several major environmental groups, but there is no single financial backer. So far, it has racked up about $100,000 in bills. The campaign receives $1 for each telegram sent, enough, organizers believe, to settle the accounts in June.

Administration officials say that Bush has been distracted by the right wing of the Republican Party and the sputtering economy during an election year and only now has begun to focus on the summit.

One Administration official said part of Bush’s reluctance to commit himself to attending reflects his “characteristic caution” as well as “the legacy of John Sununu,” the former White House chief of staff who opposed strong actions to curb potential global warming.

Europe wants the industrialized countries to agree to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. Carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of fossil fuels, is the largest man-made source of potential warming.

“The fear among the U.S. contingent is that they don’t want to hamstring American industry because energy production in this country might produce more carbon dioxide than in European countries,” the U.S. official said. “If he (Bush) goes, and he is likely to go, we need something in hand that will represent a respectable contribution.”