Protecting Planet Isn’t Partisan

The gap between political rhetoric and reality yawned especially wide last week when Vice President Al Gore attended the Hollywood premiere of a movie trailer about the importance of protecting the environment just as Congress was gutting the Clinton administration’s programs to reduce pollution.

Today, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and John H. Chafee (R-R.I.) plan to give Congress one more chance to live down its “do-nothing” image on the issue. They will offer an amendment that restores $12 million in recently eliminated funding for an international effort to reduce ozone-depleting substances that developing nations pour into the atmosphere.

Scientists agree that the thinning of the Earth’s protective ozone layer--a portion of the upper atmosphere that filters out harmful ultraviolet rays--is afflicting more and more people with maladies ranging from weak immune systems to skin cancer.

Much of the problem is due to antiquated, ozone-depleting devices like the air conditioners and refrigerators used in the developing world that release chlorine-based gases, which chew up ozone molecules and let damaging UV light reach the Earth’s surface.

That’s why the Bush administration and the governments of 31 other developed nations established an international program in 1990 to help developing countries implement technologies that do not deplete ozone.

The program is well managed and highly effective in lowering emissions. This is good news for American business, which has induced developing nations to buy ozone-safe products from the United States, the leading manufacturer.

Senate approval of the Kerry-Chafee bill is likely, but it faces an uphill battle in a House-Senate conference committee. This is the committee’s chance to rise above a knee-jerk tendency to kill environmental legislation.