U.S. Stance on Global Warming Offers Cold Comfort

On the critical matter of global warming, the United States--birthplace of the environmental movement three decades ago--is suddenly more out of sync than ever with the rest of the world on a crucial ecological issue.

The U.S. position announced by President Clinton in Washington on Wednesday has drawn reactions ranging from disappointment to disdain among the representatives of more than 150 nations who have gathered in Bonn to negotiate a treaty pledging concrete steps to control global warming.

Even more significant, the United States is increasingly finding itself playing the naysayer while a diverse collection of nations says it is ready to take tougher action across the board to fight pollution and protect the environment.

The other issues on which the United States has applied the brakes--including efforts to protect the ozone layer and plant and animal species and to control the export of toxic waste--have attracted none of the international attention devoted to global warming. But U.S. recalcitrance has made the country something of a pariah among international environmental diplomats.

Now, with Clinton’s global warming program on the negotiating table, the degree to which other countries have passed the United States in demonstrating a willingness to tackle one of the most intractable--and potentially most costly--environmental dilemmas could not be more clear.

Clinton on Wednesday proposed that industrialized nations reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to 1990 levels during the period between 2008 and 2012. He called for further, unspecified reductions in the following five-year period. Current emissions are 7.5% above 1990 levels.

The European Union has proposed a 15% cut from 1990 levels of emissions by 2010, while Japan has proposed a complicated formula that would force cuts of 2.5% on Japan and an average 5% on all the industrialized nations.

In the corridors of the Beethovenhalle here--where the conferees are meeting this week and next to prepare a treaty for completion in Kyoto, Japan, in December--delegates expressed deep disappointment that Clinton had not moved the United States closer to the positions put forward by some of its largest economic partners and competitors in the industrial world.

The negotiators’ mission is to find common ground among nations with increasingly similar economies but often fundamentally different societies--China, India, the United States and those in Europe--and countries with sharply divergent interests.

The tiny Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, for example, are concerned about simple survival if global warming causes sea levels to rise over their shores. Australia, also an island--though a massive one--is less concerned about being swamped and more focused on its economic future and its continued use of coal to fire factories and utility plants.

When coal and oil are burned, they give off gases that, like the glass of a greenhouse, trap the Earth’s heat in the atmosphere.

Yet some key questions have no clear, undisputed answers. For example: What would be the economic impact of dramatic action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons? And would a more deliberate approach do the trick?

The United States appears the odd-man-out in preferring the more cautious track. Only Japan is anywhere close to supporting Washington’s position. Also complicating the mix is the position of some scientists--considered out of the mainstream--who say that if global warming is taking place, it may be simply a natural phenomenon that nature will correct, rather than the result of the unchecked use of carbon-based fossil fuels that has accompanied economic development.

The United States has long agreed that global warming is a concern, but some bargaining partners here see a gap between Clinton’s strong rhetoric on the issue--in a speech at the United Nations in June he said the world had to do more to combat global warming--and the specifics of the U.S. proposal.

“I would have expected a more substantive step forward,” said a German delegate, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The complex tangle of scientific and economic questions, and the wide differences over geographic and economic interests, add up to this: In an era when international negotiators have tackled such vexing matters as nuclear arms control and multibillion-dollar trade disputes, those working on global warming are facing what some have called the most difficult questions ever placed before international bargainers.

And the United States stands opposite a wide array of nations that favor more economically painful action: Virtually all of Europe favors tougher action than that proposed by Clinton; so does the organization representing the developing world. Even Japan’s proposal, criticized as so full of loopholes that it would require no real action until distant years, calls for some cuts in the emission of so-called greenhouse gases.

It is an ironic position in which the United States has recently found itself, but one that diplomats here fear is occurring with greater frequency.

“The United States was in the front end of environmental policy, and for good reason,” said Jorgen Henningsen, head of the European Union’s delegation, which has spearheaded calls for stringent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. “In Los Angeles you could simply see the smog.

“Now, domestic environmental issues are still relatively high on the agenda in the U.S.,” he continued, “but on the global issues, the U.S. has been much less ready for action. It’s a bit sad for the global environment.”