Clinton Offers U.S. Proposals to Cut Global Warming

President Clinton, trying to answer complaints from major industrial nations and environmentalists that the United States has done too little to fight global warming, launched a program Thursday intended to install solar panels on 1 million U.S. rooftops during the next 13 years.

He also proposed a $1-billion aid program to help developing countries end forestry and energy practices that may contribute to climate change, another initiative that would block U.S. assistance for foreign projects that threaten air-cleansing tropical forests, and a third program aimed at promoting energy-technology research.

Clinton unveiled the proposals at the United Nations as the General Assembly continued a weeklong special session on the environment. The programs are intended to help reverse use of oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and coal, and thus reduce prospects that emissions of carbon dioxide will hasten global warming.

But the president’s proposals, unveiled the day after he endorsed tougher rules on air pollution in the United States, drew immediate criticism as too limited in scope.

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Environmentalists in particular said the plan fell short of the dramatic steps they believe are needed to protect the world from climate-induced disasters--rising sea levels, drought, famine--that they predict will occur over the next century if the United States, China, other industrialized giants and developing nations do not curb their use of fossil fuels.

They also criticized Clinton for making no firm commitment to achieve greater energy efficiency across the nation, and for failing to set specific targets and a timetable for reducing the emission of carbon dioxide.

“That is the key thing he needed to do to provide the leadership we were looking for,” said Dan Lashof, a Natural Resources Defense Council staff member studying global warming.

The United States has 4% of the world’s population but emits 20% of its greenhouse gases, more than any other nation. How far the U.S. goes in cutting such pollution has become a crucial issue in the effort by 160 nations to reach an agreement by December on fighting climate change. The United States has said the pact should set binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions, but has been no more specific.

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In 1992, the 118 world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro set the goal of reversing the trend of spewing more and more such gases, which many scientists say are trapping Earth’s heat much the way the glass panels of a greenhouse do. But since then, the United States’ emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary such gas, have increased by 13%, said Kathleen McGinty, the chairwoman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality.

Clinton noted, “If the trend is not changed, scientists expect the seas to rise 2 feet or more in the next century,” which in turn could set off a variety of environmental catastrophes.

“No nation can escape this danger,” he said. “None can evade its responsibility to confront it.”

He added: “Here in the United States we must do better. . . . Our record since Rio is not sufficient.”

The solar-energy proposal mimicked in theme, if not in specifics, a largely scorned program in which President Jimmy Carter had a $28,000 solar water-heating system installed on a White House roof in 1979 to encourage a nationwide turn toward solar energy.

Clinton’s plan, built around solar water heaters and energy-producing photovoltaic cells in solar panels, would rely on federal purchases for government buildings and long-term loans to private individuals through federal housing, farm, and small-business programs. It would cost about $200 million a year over the next five years.

“Capturing the sun’s warmth can help us turn down the Earth’s temperature,” the president said.

The international aid program would fund technical assistance and training to help officials in developing nations manage the world’s forests in an environmentally responsible manner and develop renewable energy sources there.

Under Clinton’s plan, in addition, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a quasi-public federal institution that insures U.S. investors’ shares in foreign projects, would keep track of greenhouse gas emissions from power projects it backs and would not finance projects in ecologically fragile areas.

Another element in the plan, Clinton said, would have the government work with the auto industry to produce vehicles three times as fuel efficient as today’s. That program is actually more than a year old, is built around extensive federal subsidies and is aimed at producing a single vehicle--which, because it would rely on diesel fuel, would produce air pollution even if it burned fuel with remarkable efficiency.