World Views on Global Warming Are Worlds Apart

In what is emerging as the harshest environmental debate of the decade, opponents of a looming treaty on global warming are spending millions of dollars to unleash some truly frightening numbers:

Americans thrown out of work because energy use would be restricted? 1.5 million by 2010. Gasoline prices? Up 50 cents a gallon. Electricity? Bills rise 93%. Economic output? Down 4%.

Now listen to voices for stopping global warming. Their message is also well-orchestrated, and their warnings even more apocalyptic:

Pacific islands--entire nations--vanish beneath the waves. Coastal communities from North Carolina to the Texas Gulf wash out to sea. Wild swings in precipitation alternately bring crop-destroying drought and such violent, torrential rains that 100-year floods and California coastal mudslides become routine. The colorful sugar maple trees of the North die out; dengue fever and mosquito-borne encephalitis move in.

It is against this backdrop that the White House is preparing for negotiations over the next 10 weeks to bring the nations of the world into agreement in December on these questions:

* Should they reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide? If there is such a thing as man-caused global warming, it mostly stems from the burning of oil and coal, which produces gases that become a thermal blanket wrapped around the Earth and act like a greenhouse, increasing surface temperature.

* If the gases are to be reduced, to what degree, and how?

* And if the fight against global warming successfully cools the Earth’s environment, must it also chill the global economy?

These are questions that have diplomats, scientists and now even President Clinton’s own top advisors arguing among themselves. Casting a shadow far beyond Washington, it is setting apart the developing world from the developed world. Even Europe and the United States, allies on many issues of war and peace, are deeply at odds.

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At 5:05 p.m. last Wednesday, Mike Davis, who delivers the weather report nightly for Channel 10 in Columbus, Ohio, became a player in the White House campaign to turn the nation’s attention to global warming.

He was one of 118 television weather forecasters attending daylong briefings by the government’s top climatologists and meteorologists--and a speech by Clinton in the White House East Room in which the president said the TV weather people “have more influence than anybody does on how the American people think about this.”

Davis was then given a spot on the White House North Lawn to broadcast his 75-second report.

Yes, he volunteered, “the White House is using us.” But, he said, the issues dealt with questions that trouble him.

Besides, he added, “meteorologists don’t normally get summoned out of town.”

The White House also has dispatched Cabinet members to college campuses across the country, and Vice President Al Gore to Glacier National Park, to warn that it would be penny-wise and pound-foolish to overlook global warming as a real threat.

The campaign will take another public turn Monday, when Clinton takes part in a conference on climate issues with economists, manufacturers, environmentalists, scientists and state and local officials.

Similarly, an opposition coalition that has brought together such disparate groups as car makers, corn growers, cattle ranchers and senior citizens--concerned about everything from fuel restrictions to fertilizer costs is vying for attention with a $13-million advertising campaign.

The global-warming talks move into a critical phase later this month in Bonn, where U.S. negotiators, in the words of Kathleen McGinty, who heads Clinton’s Council on Environmental Quality, will learn “the slope of the hill we have to climb.”

The Bonn negotiations will set up the planned final discussions in Kyoto, Japan, near the end of the year--and will be the first time a detailed U.S. position is placed on the table.

Administration officials say the specifics of the president’s negotiating proposal are far from developed.

But Clinton has been speaking with increasing frequency about the need to curb global warming, and he is showing little doubt that scientific reports forecasting climate change are accurate.

Still, environmentalists are trying to keep the political pressure on him. They are publishing polls they say demonstrate the public’s concern, and they are issuing reminders that Gore, who has written a book warning about global warming, will be judged harshly in a presidential race if the administration does not agree to firm limits on emissions of so-called greenhouse gases.

As the talks near, groups that favor vigorous restraints as well as those calling for no action have each found support in climate research, economic models, even public opinion polls. The result has become a confusing swirl of facts and theory.

A five-year international study, completed in 1995, found that the average temperature around the world had increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years and that it would climb between 1.8 degrees and 6.3 degrees over the next century if emissions are not reduced.

But much of that increase in temperature occurred before the great blooming of greenhouse gas emissions during the past 50 years, say scientists whose work is cited by the Global Climate Coalition.

That organization includes more than 60 representatives of railroads, oil and chemical companies, mining interests and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all arguing against signing any treaty until more studies are completed.

In addition, new research suggests that whatever warming is taking place is to some extent a natural occurrence fed by changing solar events.

What about the predicted economic havoc?

The claims are based on exceedingly complex calculations and are subject to endless debate. For example:

“Reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 or 2015 would require a tax in the range of $200 or more per ton of carbon emitted. . . . These taxes would reduce U.S. [economic] growth by more than 4% annually or over $350 billion per year,” said Margo Thorning, director of research for the American Council for Capital Formation.

Daniel F. Becker, a Sierra Club specialist on air pollution and global warming, replies that no one is proposing such a tax because lower emissions can be achieved largely through technological advances and thriftiness in fuel consumption.

At the talks, negotiators will have a wide range of proposals to consider:

* The European Union favors requiring the industrialized nations to reduce their emissions 7.5% below their 1990 levels by 2005 and 15% below 1990 levels by 2010.

* The organization representing the small island nations of the world--primarily those in the South Pacific--is calling for a 20% reduction by 2005.

* Clinton has called for negotiators to adopt binding targets and timetables, but he has yet to offer any specifics. His administration is not expected to complete work until just before the Bonn talks begin, around Oct. 22.

Perhaps most difficult is the dilemma posed by India, China, Brazil and other major developing nations. They generally argue that under the mandate establishing the talks, they are exempt from emission restrictions in the current negotiations.

Developed countries, they say, are believed to have contributed three-fourths of the greenhouse gases emitted over the last century, while the developing world is responsible for one-fourth. Now, the developing countries say, it is their turn to catch up; restrictions would put them forever at a disadvantage.

But countering their argument are projections showing that as China, India and other developing economic powerhouses continue to grow, their greenhouse gas emissions will surpass those of the industrialized nations sometime during the 20-year period beginning in 2025.

The Global Climate Coalition and others say that giving China a pass would only encourage multinational companies to move manufacturing operations there to avoid installing the expensive emission-reducing equipment required to help the United States meet its assigned targets.

The Senate, by a vote of 95 to 0 this summer, signaled that any treaty that did not include some restrictions on the developing world’s emissions would never be ratified.

During the next 10 weeks, the president has several options:

He can negotiate a firm agreement with real restrictions and try to win Senate ratification--a process that would take several years. Or he can accept a watered-down pact, on the theory that some progress is better than none. Or he can walk away from any treaty in Kyoto that does not include commitments from developing and developed countries alike.

Environmental leaders who met with Clinton in September said he favored the first option. But a senior administration official who took part in the meeting said he did not hear Clinton make a commitment.

The talks are also complicated in another arena, as is illustrated by one plan already presented by the administration.

Under the proposal, companies in the heavily industrialized nations where emissions are restricted--the United States and Britain, for example--could trade among each other for the right to increase emissions, with one company that wanted to exceed its limits buying the privilege to do so from a company whose emissions were below the limit.

Similar trades could be arranged between companies and countries that might not have emission restrictions. The United States, for example, could trade with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, places where emissions have been cut in half since 1990 as a result of stringent economic problems.

“The emissions that don’t come out of Russian smokestacks and tailpipes would come out of American factories,” Becker said.

Companies also could perhaps secure the right to produce additional gases by planting forests, which absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, or by building a high-efficiency power plant.

Such complicated trading operations aside, environmentalists are arguing that technological advances, such as the goal to produce practical electric vehicles or design engines with fuel mileage triple that of current cars, will ease the reach for lower emissions.

But Andrew H. Card Jr., president of the American Automobile Manufacturers Assn., says Detroit has been working unsuccessfully for years to produce a consumer-friendly electric car.

“No matter what, we’d have to go on an energy diet,” he said.

The split between environmentalists and industry is reflected starkly within the administration, where Cabinet-level officers and their deputies fall into three camps:

* One argues that global warming is unquestionably a problem the world must deal with quickly and that technological advances will allow the United States to lead the way in reducing emissions of carbon-based gases.

* A second, while concerned about global warming, would devote more study to the matter before taking action.

* The third has focused on the potential economic impact of lowering emissions by limiting energy use--for example, by imposing new taxes on carbon emissions from power plants. “The conclusion is, this could be nasty, at least for the economy,” one administration aide said.

Complaining that all sides in the debate are out of necessity relying on economic models predicting trends 20 and more years distant, the aide said: “There’s a gaping economic hole in everyone’s understanding of the issue.”

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At Stake for U.S.

As the top producer of carbon dioxide (CO2), the United States has a major stake in the global warming debate. The gas is considered by many experts to be a key culprit in the rise of global temperatures.

TOP C02 PRODUCERS

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RANKING BY YEAR 1994 1950 U.S. 1 1 China 2 10 Russia 3 2 Japan 4 9 India 5 13 Germany 6 3 Britain 7 4 Canada 8 7 Ukraine 9 2 Italy 10 17

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AVERAGE TEMPERATURE

The average global temperature has risen about 1 degree in the past century.

Note: Russia and Ukraine were part of the former Soviet Union in ranking for 1950

Source: Environmental Information Center