Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504180030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BERLIN LENGTH: Medium
``We can allow emissions to increase for maybe a decade. But after that they would have to be reduced dramatically,'' cautioned Bert Bolin, the Swede who is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Bolin's bunch are not alarmist doomsdayers. They are top climatologists.
World leaders are listening to their predictions that global warming must be halted or sea levels will rise, ecosystems disappear, deserts expand and storms become more frequent and violent - within our children's lifetimes.
But there was no dramatic agreement during the 11-day U.N. Climate Conference in Berlin that ended Friday.
The 900 delegates from nearly 120 nations were well aware that the 3.2-foot rise in sea levels predicted by 2100 would inundate areas inhabited today by more than 94 million people.
So why could they only agree to take two more years to set goals for further cuts in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other ``greenhouse'' gases that result from burning oil and coal?
U.S. negotiator Rafe Pomerance put it bluntly:
``We can't write a blank check.''
The world remains addicted to fossil-fuel energy, and weaning it will be a costly, gradual process.
Industrialized nations already won't be able to keep the promise made at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Although 24 made the promise, few are on target.
Essential to mitigating climate change will be a shift to clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and better technologies to improve fuel efficiency.
Higher taxes on fossil fuels would spur such a shift, but that is a kiss of death for most politicians in industrial democracies.
Debates between rich and poor, North and South, were central to the Berlin conference.
``We are all in the same boat,'' stressed Angela Merkel, Germany's environment minister and the conference's president. But the North still rides comfortably in the first-class berths.
U.S. per-capita emissions are 15-20 times higher than those in the developing world.
India's environment minister, Kamal Nath, proposed that rich nations transfer $100 billion a year to developing countries as ``environmental rent'' for ``free-loading'' on the Third World's back.
Yet the Indians, Russians and Chinese were not the only ones blaming global warming on the wasteful Western consumer societies.
``A shift in the world economy is required,'' said Norway's environment minister, Torbjoern Berntsen. ``This will require a shift in consumption and lifestyle patterns.''
In other words: less luxury for the rich, more recycling, more public transportation.
Such concepts are anathema to the powerful U.S. energy and automotive lobby, which kept constant pressure on U.S. Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth right up to the bitter end of negotiations Friday.
The lobby contended the U.N. conference might adopt measures that would hurt American competitiveness and give the United Nations too much influence over U.S. policy.
``For the first time, it appears the United Nations is going to have a very strong continuing say on the determinants of the U.S. economy and jobs,'' said John Schlaes, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, whose members include the big oil companies and automobile manufacturers.
Many U.S. environmentalists were privately surprised that the American delegation even allowed vague mention in the final document of possible time frames of ``2005, 2010 or 2020'' for future emission-reduction goals.
by CNB