ENVIRONMENT WATCH : Why Blame It on Rio?

It’s a good thing that President Bush has decided to head for the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro next month, but he’s still wringing his hands over whether an America worried about keeping jobs can afford to take steps to delay global warming.

For many Southern Californians, his anxious approach to the U.N. conference of 160 nations is a real puzzle because they already know the answer. The answer--and it’s one that comes not from environmental dreamers but from power company executives--is that, yes, even a nation in recession can afford to delay global warming.

This serious environmental assault is caused by a cocoon of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases around the Earth that traps the sun’s heat. Global temperatures may rise by as much as 8 degrees before the end of the next century, turning prime farmland to deserts.

Bush seems so worried that putting a lid on carbon dioxide emissions from burning fuels would slow economic growth that he almost passed up the summit. He decided to go only after he quietly cut a deal to promise to try to reduce emissions, not to actually do it.

What makes this all seem so unreal is that Southern California Edison Co. and the L.A. Department of Water and Power--the region’s two biggest power producers--a year ago said they would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% over the next two decades. They will do it by cutting energy consumption, not economic growth.

Maybe the President would feel better if he called one or the other or both before Air Force One heads for Rio.