Clinton Gets Global Warming Options

Senior advisors are presenting President Clinton with a series of options for fighting global warming that could delay the initial steps against the climate phenomenon until well into the next century, administration officials and environmental sources said Thursday.

Such a course, if Clinton chooses it, would minimize the likely economic impact of any energy-trimming campaign and leave the United States far outside the diplomatic mainstream among industrial nations seeking to reduce emissions of the gases most often linked to a changing climate.

The president’s most senior economic advisors have argued, along with some private economists and large industry groups, that any move to curtail the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases given off when oil and coal are burned could severely hamper economic growth. That position has prompted a sharp split between senior Treasury and budget officials on the one hand and Clinton’s environmental team on the other.

Clinton was scheduled to meet with economic and environmental advisors for three hours today to begin developing the proposal the United States will take to global-warming negotiations in Bonn later this month.

If he opts to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases rather than reduce them, Clinton will be sending his negotiators into a wall of opposition at the Bonn meeting and subsequent wrap-up talks among 166 nations, scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December.

The European Union has called for a treaty that would require industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels 15% below 1990 emissions by 2010. Japan is calling for a 5% reduction.

Undersecretary of State Timothy E. Wirth characterized the Japanese plan as feasible but told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee Thursday that the United States and European Union had reached “something of an impasse.”

The major European nations and Japan have made more significant strides than the United States in reducing their gas emissions, either with wider use of nuclear power or by taking advantage of the efficiency offered by high-technology devices.

Sources familiar with the options being presented to the president said they contain these elements:

* Stabilizing emissions, but not reducing them, no sooner than 2010 and as late as 2030.

* Establishing a market-based system under which companies and countries could buy the privilege of exceeding emissions limits, paying for permits in a commodity-like trading system from companies and countries that are keeping their emissions below target levels.

* Creating caps on the price of the permits and making available additional permits--resulting in higher total emissions--if the bartered price threatens to break through the cap. Restrictions on the upper price of permits are favored by industry representatives and “have been gaining as a subject of discussion,” one administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But White House officials close to the debate emphasized that a much wider range of options remains available to the president. In addition, Clinton has a history of reaching well beyond the options presented to him, pushing his staff to broaden their consideration of a controversial issue and surprising them with the course he chooses, often at the last minute.

“The reality is there are dozens of options,” said one White House aide.

The officials said today’s discussion is an initial attempt to work out a negotiating position. They said Clinton is unlikely to reach a decision on the U.S. approach until after he returns from a weeklong South American tour that begins Sunday.

Even the most strict course said to be under consideration, in which emissions would be stabilized at the 1990 level by 2010, leaves environmentalists seething because it would not actually reduce emissions.