Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 25, 1990                   TAG: 9005250519
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

OZONE THREAT

The latest example is a Senate bill introduced this week. It would provide U.S. support for a vital international program to halt the use of ozone-depleting chemicals by developing nations. The White House had refused to contribute.

Last week U.S. delegates to negotiations in Geneva wouldn't agree to establishing the fund from which Third World countries could borrow to develop alternatives to dangerous chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. The refusal makes no sense.

Led by the United States, industrialized nations have for decades produced and used vast quantities of CFCs for refrigeration, air conditioning, insulation and other purposes. When CFCs escape into the atmosphere, they destroy the upper layer of ozone that protects the Earth's surface from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.

In recognition of that threat, the United States has signed the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a 50 percent reduction in the use of CFCs within 10 years. The Bush administration has even joined governments of other industrial nations in calling for a ban on CFCs. Last March, those governments agreed that a special fund and technical aid would be needed to accomplish the ban.

Unfortunately, the administration's call lacked commitment; it was rhetoric without resources. In refusing to pay the U.S. share of the proposed international fund, the Bush administration suggests the World Bank should get the money elsewhere. Never mind that the CFC industry is paying billions in special excise taxes to the U.S. Treasury.

And so William Reilly, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator who sought the contribution, is outgunned by John Sununu, the White House chief of staff who opposed it. Sununu, it should be recalled, also vetoed the EPA's position on how the United States should respond to the threat of global warming. His view would not prevail, of course, without the president's agreement.

Now China, Pakistan and India, among other nations, say they won't bother trying to reduce CFCs if the industrial world's leader shows so little concern. Now the United States is isolated even from other industrial nations in the international effort. Meanwhile, the health risk from ozone depletion respects no boundaries.

The Senate bill introduced this week keeps the issue alive, but offers no substitute for presidential leadership and international cooperation. Bush would prove a better environmental president if he more often backed up posture with policy, if he cooperated more with other nations' efforts, and if he accepted more often his EPA administrator's advice.