Global Warming Moves to Front Burner in Japan

In a setting almost too tranquil for talks about impending disaster, world leaders started discussions Monday about potentially devastating climate changes caused by pollution and what they are willing to do to avert them.

The mission that drew leaders here from 166 countries is difficult and rare: They want not only to change the planet but also to get every nation, rich and poor, large and small, to agree on how. And to do this in 10 days.

“These 10 days could change the history of mankind,” said Keizo Obuchi, Japan’s foreign minister, welcoming almost 10,000 participants in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to this shrine-filled ancient capital.

Their common goal is to commit to specific reductions of greenhouse gases--emissions from burning wood, oil or coal that hover over Earth like an invisible roof, trapping warm air.

But though their general aims are the same, the countries are separated by vastly different interests and economic goals. The effort to make legally binding cuts in emissions has intensified tensions among wealthy countries and those still developing and between economic rivals such as the United States and Europe.

“The ultimate objective of the conference is to conclude an international agreement to prevent global warming,” said the conference’s president, Hiroshi Oki. “If this Kyoto meeting is unsuccessful in the outcome of an agreement, it is indeed a detriment to the well-being of future generations.”

It is the United States--the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases and yet the home of many of the scientists and environmentalists who have helped push global warming onto the international agenda--that may make or break any Kyoto deal.

The U.S. delegation has put forth the most limited proposal for emission cutbacks. Its members say that more extensive energy restraints could cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs but benefit U.S. rivals and fast-developing countries not bound by a Kyoto agreement. Days before the conference began, Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat said that the United States will not sign a pact that it does not consider favorable in economic and environmental terms. That stance could cause the collapse of any Kyoto protocol.

But after a Sunday session, where Chairman Raul Estrada declared himself “really fed up” and urged the U.S. to soften its position, American negotiator Melinda Kimble said Monday that her delegation would consider setting reduction targets based on countries’ particular needs.

That position backed away from Washington’s previous demand that all industrialized countries reduce emissions equally. Still, Kimble’s statement was received with a stark lack of applause at the conference’s plenary session.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, the conference’s executive secretary, later called the U.S. shift “cause for optimism” and stressed that the conference’s success will depend on Washington’s flexibility. “It is no use having an agreement without the world’s major emitter and the world’s major economy on board,” he said.

In what some analysts saw as evidence that the U.S. will bargain even harder and that it hopes for a successful conference, it was announced Monday that Vice President Al Gore--the Clinton administration’s top voice on the environment and a likely presidential candidate in 2000--will attend the Kyoto conference.

Although these sessions may not result in the history-making agreement organizers envisioned, the mere fact that the world’s political and business leaders are devoting serious attention to global warming and other environmental issues indicates significant progress.

Unlike in recent years, when debate centered on whether global warming was a threat or an environmentalist scare tactic, most of those who have come here agree that climate change means problems. Scientists point to documentable effects of a suddenly warmer world: Extreme weather changes are creating more droughts and floods, tropical diseases such as malaria are spreading to once-cooler regions, and melting icecaps are causing oceans to threaten islands such as the Maldives.

But the factors believed to be behind these changes--gases belched by factories, cars and power plants--are byproducts of much-desired development. Countries in the early stages of industrialization say that limiting their use of cheap and convenient fuels such as coal would be the same as telling them that they can’t make progress.

“The advanced nations are telling us do as they say, not as they do,” argued a Southeast Asian delegate. “They’re trying to close the gate behind them.”

This is an especially unwelcome message right now in Asia. In the world’s fastest-growing region--but also the most polluted--unexpected economic tumult has made leaders less likely to commit to costly cleaner technologies.

“We have many ambitious plans in my country,” said one Malaysian participant. “But our main concern of the moment is whether we will have to have an [International Monetary Fund] bailout.”