Can the Whole Planet Get Its Act Together? : Daunting political challenges face the U.N.’s Earth Summit in Rio

Leaders of more than 100 nations--from the most advanced to the most backward--are braced for what could be the most awesome political task in world history. They will meet this June in Rio de Janeiro, and their mission will be nothing less than changing the way 5.5 billion human beings live on this planet.

Is this a pipe dream or a real possibility? No one can tell at this point. But a torn ozone layer, polluted farmland and other insults to the planet are genuine dangers. When scientists discuss the greenhouse effect, the planetary heat buildup resulting from a blanket of man-made gases, they no longer speak in terms of whether temperatures will rise and coastal cities will be flooded but in terms of when . So the world’s leadership has no choice but to try to bring about change.

At the unprecedented Earth Summit meeting, world leaders will be asked to accept or reject the results of years of study and negotiation by the United Nations concerning ways in which the economies of industrial and developing nations can grow without further damage to a planet that bruises surprisingly easily for something so immense.

The term of art they are searching for is “sustainable growth.” That means growth that will put food in the mouths of people everywhere, and clothing on their backs, without further fouling the Earth’s air, land or water.

To meet the goal set out by the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (the summit’s official title) they must adopt detailed plans for coping with what many scientists see as a global emergency.

One plan would be needed to lift more than 1 billion humans from absolute poverty. Another would protect freshwater supplies, already often inadequate for a global population that will nearly double to 10 billion before the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.

One model for the best result that Rio could hope for is the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which has committed 62 nations to reduce their use of chlorine-based chemicals that are eating away the Earth’s ozone layer. The chemicals are chlorofluorocarbons, used as refrigerants and in aerosols. The ozone layer filters out the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancers.

Damage to the ozone layer is but one in a litany of Earth’s ailments on the Rio meeting’s agenda. For example, nearly half of the Earth’s tropical rain forest (much of it in Brazil’s own Amazon basin) has been destroyed. As more forest falls, so does the ability of the planet to absorb carbon dioxide, the principal cause of global warming. And as Daniel Kevles, a Cal Tech history professor, wrote recently in the New York Review of Books, killing off the forests also kills off the habitat of half of the Earth’s species at a rate “ten thousand times greater than the prehuman extinction rate.”

World leaders at Rio must find ways to halt the pollution, overgrazing and other damage that have taken 10% of the world’s fertile land out of production since World War II. They must address the hazards of toxic chemicals, pollution of the oceans and coastlines, and the future uses of biotechnology.

It may be that no man or woman alive has the political gifts required to persuade 5.5 billion people to help put an end to all the damage the Industrial Age has done to our environment.

The monumental agenda could collapse over two issues: Who will help poor nations pay for cleanup work and whether rich countries will bind themselves to Earth-saving changes in lifestyle. Developing countries will make such commitments only with promises of financial help, promises that seemed to fall through last week. That’s a major reason that President Bush--the head of state in the wealthiest, and most polluting, industrial nation--could be the world leader to have the most influence at Rio. So far, Bush has refused to promise that Americans will become more energy-efficient and less polluting. He hasn’t even decided whether he will attend the summit.

If Bush stubbornly stays with that stance, he could doom the Rio meeting. He has two months to think over the frightening alternatives and summon his political skills to the task.