Global Warming Accord Faces Tough Fight in Senate

Now that negotiators have reached an agreement to try to curb global warming, international attention will turn to Washington, where the pact’s fate in the Senate is cloudy.

“What we have here is not ratifiable in the Senate in my judgment,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said from Kyoto, Japan, where the agreement was reached.

He recommended a delay--at least until 1999--in submitting the pact to the Senate, leaving at least two years to extend the agreement until developing nations can be given a role in the international effort to curb emissions of “greenhouse gases.”

The chief opposition will come from business and economic interests and their champions in the Senate, who warn that there is no way to meet the goals of reducing carbon dioxide and five other gases without making fundamental and damaging changes in the way the United States makes and consumes energy.

“The issue of greenhouse gases and climate change is going to be the mother of all environmental fights,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who was a member of the congressional delegation observing the negotiations in Kyoto.

On each side of this dispute are groups that are adamant--environmentalists and their supporters in government who favor the pact in one corner, and business and industry and their government supporters in the other.

How those forces translate into Senate votes is anyone’s guess at this point--and the situation is murkier still if the question does not reach the Senate until after the November 1998 congressional elections. If the issue arises after those elections, it could well run smack into another campaign--the presidential election in 2000.

Under the Constitution, the president determines when to submit such a document for ratification. If the accord wins approval, the United States will embark on an ambitious task--the outlines of which are only now beginning to form.

“There is no silver-bullet technology,” said Joseph Romm, a senior official in the Energy Department. But, he said, the administration is putting together a plan built around $5 billion in tax cuts intended to encourage energy efficiency.

The effort will focus on developing greater efficiency in power plants, where about two-thirds of the energy created is lost as escaped heat, as well as on encouraging greater use of energy-saving appliances and such fuel-efficient cars as a 66-mile-per-gallon Toyota powered by electricity and gasoline.

“What you need is a couple of dozen things that can each make up 5% to 10% of the gap,” Romm said.

If the Senate rejects the accord, it would take effect without U.S. involvement--unquestionably leading to international scorn of this country. Negotiations on elements of the proposal will continue, and the U.S. probably will try to influence those talks to reshape the pact into a version that could eventually pass muster in the Senate.

But the administration also has indicated that if the Senate does not ratify the Kyoto accord, the U.S. government will make a good-faith effort to comply with important elements.

With details of the pact remaining sketchy late Wednesday, officials in Washington were uncertain just where the Senate battle lines will be drawn.

For example, President Clinton had insisted that poorer nations join in binding limits to curb emissions in a “meaningful” way. He did so recognizing the sentiment in the Senate, which gave unanimous approval earlier this year to a nonbinding resolution calling for poorer nations to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

What role will those nations have under the Kyoto accord and how will that role play out in the Senate ratification debate?

“It’s too early to say,” said Eric Federling, a spokesman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). The senator attended the talks as an official observer and was on his way back from Kyoto on Wednesday when the negotiations neared their conclusion. “My read is it’s somewhat up in the air,” Federling said.

Without a doubt, he said, “it’s going to be a battle.”