Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990 TAG: 9005030579
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/6 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
An international conference of lawmakers on the environment concluded Wednesday with a call for specific curbs in so-called greenhouse gases and development of a "global Marshall Plan" to help developing countries deal with environmental problems.
"This conference has given us an agenda for action," said James Miruka Owuor, a conference co-chairman from Kenya. The three-day legislative gathering was hosted by the U.S. Congress.
The conference goals and resolutions are not binding on any country, but they are expected to be used by environmental activists in legislative bodies as a way to push for new laws to deal with international environmental problems, participants said.
Some 200 lawmakers from the 42 nations, including the Soviet Union, most European countries, Japan and many developing nations, took part in the conference.
"We have come to a consensus agreement that the need for action is now, that the need for action is urgent," said Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., the conference chairman.
Delegates to the Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment called for:
Nations to make a specific commitment for a 50 percent reduction in global-warming gases over the next 20 years, including elimination of the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and a 20 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions, largely from the burning of fossil fuels.
Development of a so-called global Marshall Plan by industrial nations to help developing countries deal with international environmental problems such as global warming, ozone deterioration, loss of forests and other matters.
Greater efforts to deal with population growth so that the world's population could be stabilized at 10 billion people in the next century. The link between population growth and environmental deterioration must be acknowledged, the delegates said.
The policy statements and goals provided few specifics on where the money would come from to pay for the new programs.
Some delegates suggested that money from the "peace dividend" derived from improved East-West relations be used to combat environmental problems.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a conference delegate, called the conference's closing declaration "an extraordinary statement of potential legislative strategies."
But Dingell, whose committee would act on most global-warming legislation, said he doubted any such bills would be approved this year.
Nevertheless, the aggressive strategies outlined by the legislators contrasted with the more cautious approach for dealing with environmental problems favored by the Bush administration.
For example, the president told an international White House Conference on the environment two weeks ago that more research was needed before any commitments are made for specific pollution controls on global warming.
"I think this is a message to the executive branch here in the United States" and in other countries as well, Gore said of the resolutions approved by the legislators. "For any prime minister or president who says delay, we are saying . . . the time is now to act."
On global warming, the conference agreed, declaring: "Delay exposes us, our children and their children to calamities which we will have made irrevocable by inaction in the present."
The delegates called for setting a timetable for specific cuts in global-warming pollutants by the year 2010, including a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, a product of burning fossil fuels; elimination of CFCs and a variety of other ozone-depleting chemicals; and a 10 percent reduction in methane emissions.
Altogether, that would amount to about a 50 percent reduction in global-warming pollutants by 2010, conference organizers said.
by CNB