Bid to Press U.S. for Air Pollution Limits Is Failing

A last-ditch effort by a dozen European nations to press for a U.S. commitment to stabilize its carbon dioxide pollution by the end of the decade has apparently failed.

Sources familiar with the effort, made during the first days of the Earth Summit here, said there has been mounting concern that a declaration by “like-minded nations”--giving their interpretation of U.S. obligations under a global-warming treaty now being signed--would backfire.

“It is fading out,” said a Danish delegate who participated in the prolonged treaty negotiations. “It is not yet dead, but it is essentially dead.”

Of the dozen countries initially involved in the move, only three--Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands--remain enthusiastic about going ahead with the attempt to seek a firm target for U.S. carbon dioxide stabilization.

In negotiations in New York in early May, the United States succeeded in getting a global-warming agreement that does not have a legally binding deadline for stabilizing its output of the “greenhouse gases” that many scientists believe could lead to disastrous warming of the Earth’s climate.

Europeans, disappointed by the outcome of those talks, were subsequently angered by the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the agreement’s language.

U.S. industrial allies had been united in calling for a firm commitment to stabilize the gases at 1990 levels by the end of the century. The United States successfully resisted that explicit language, but the Europeans continue to insist that America accepted a binding obligation for specific action.

Last Wednesday, the long-debated agreement was finally opened for signature by the more than 178 nations attending the summit, formally known as the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development.

By Saturday, only 17 nations had signed, but a line is expected for form later this week when heads of state begin arriving here for the climax of the two weeks of deliberations.

As the attempt to challenge Washington’s interpretation of the global-warming pact was apparently coming to an end, there were other signs that various allies would like to help ease the U.S. isolation at the conference.

According to European sources, one effort is likely to come in the form of an initiative by Britain and Germany to make the Bush Administration’s $150 million-a-year global forest-aid pledge a cornerstone of a larger international effort.

The summit opened with the United States in a conspicuously uncomfortable position because of its role in limiting the global-warming treaty and its refusal to sign a key treaty on biological diversity.

Washington was then embarrassed by the leak of a confidential memo from U.S. delegation leader William K. Reilly to the White House. The memo outlines suggested changes to the biological diversity treaty that would allow the United States to sign the accord. It was leaked after Reilly’s efforts were rebuffed by the White House.

While Reilly was away at an exposition in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Saturday, the most conspicuous American at the summit was Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), who went from speech to news conference to briefing trailed by the press, all the while denouncing the Bush Administration’s role at the summit.

At one point, Gore commented that “right-wingers have led the President into making a trip to Rio that resembles the trip to Tokyo. Next, they’ll advise him to bring the coal executives with him on Air Force One,” a reference to Bush’s spring trip to Japan, when he took along American automobile executives.

The dispute over the meaning of the global-warming treaty arose after the Administration proudly announced that it had achieved a framework agreement without legally binding targets or deadlines for stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions.

Meanwhile, European officials left New York saying that the United States had, in fact, made a legally binding commitment to take measures aimed at stabilizing its output of greenhouse gases, generated by the burning of fossil fuels.

According to European delegates in Rio, U.S. public comments since the treaty text was completed in Washington have given the impression that the United States is backing out on that alleged commitment.

For that reason, an effort was launched here to write a clarifying declaration.

The United States is said to have worked to discourage the move. By one account, U.S. officials cryptically noted that such a declaration would be unhelpful in future relations with countries that are pushing the proposal.

But sources said Saturday that most of the countries considering the declaration had decided that a statement strongly criticizing the United States--and noting their own commitment to a year 2000 deadline--might backfire on other grounds.

Rather than pinning down the United States, they said, such a declaration might give Washington the opportunity to claim that the declaration’s signers had undertaken their own obligation and gone beyond requirements of the treaty.

The European Community is expected to consider its own statement concerning the treaty on Monday.