Global Warming: A New Warning

By Richard Lacayo

It may not be easy to determine if the greenhouse effect is causing a worldwide rise in global temperatures, but the heated atmosphere around the White House has been unmistakable whenever that topic -- or any other environmental question -- was raised. From the earliest days of the Bush Administration, there has been heavy friction between William Reilly, director of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a White House faction led by White House chief of staff John Sununu and Budget Director Richard Darman, who are apt to see red when they hear the word green. For them, policies designed to protect the environment look like brakes on economic growth and therefore should be implemented cautiously, if they are put into effect at all.

Last week a panel of the National Academy of Sciences issued a long-awaited report on global warming -- the theory that a buildup of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing temperatures to climb, threatening crops and coastal areas that could be drowned under rising oceans if the polar ice caps melt. Though both sides could find some support for their positions in the study, its findings and recommendations could prod the go-slow faction in the White House.

While acknowledging that predictions of global warming are highly uncertain, the panel insists that should not be used as an excuse for delaying action to lessen its possible effects. The panel concluded there is a "reasonable chance" that by the middle of the next century global temperatures will rise anywhere from 2 degrees F to 9 degrees F. That threat, the panel declared, is "sufficient to justify action now."

Then the panel laid out the action it wants, the first time a scientific body has issued recommendations on the subject. Basically, they add up to taking out what the panel called "insurance" against the worst-case scenario of global warming. Among other things, the commission urged the White House to toughen the inadequate energy plan that it unveiled in February. To achieve a 30% increase in automobile fuel efficiency, the panel called for "tax incentives" or regulation, the latter a notion that makes the President flinch. The report also suggested raising overall automobile mileage standards from the current level of 27.5 to 32.5 m.p.g. The President has so far resisted that move, though members of the panel met with him privately at the White House last week to urge the idea.

The report brushed aside claims, many emanating from the White House, that reducing greenhouse emissions would be wildly expensive and a blow to economic growth. In February the Administration trotted out estimates that energy-tax increases of as much as $250 for each ton of removed gases would be needed to curb emissions significantly. To the contrary, the panel estimated that reduction of between 10% and 40% in greenhouse emissions could be achieved by doing such comparatively simple things as making buildings and power plants more energy efficient at little or no cost to the economy.

The faction led by Darman and Sununu, however, could point with satisfaction to some parts of the study. For example, the commission declined to recommend explicit target dates or percentage goals for the reduction of CO2 emissions. Such steps, which have been taken by most European nations, are firmly opposed by the Administration. Moreover, the U.S. has already adopted some of the other measures that the report urges, including investing in global climate research (to the tune of $1 billion) and planting millions of trees that can become storehouses for CO2. Though Bush undertook those actions for other reasons, they double as defenses against global warming. The panel also used a cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the price of implementing its recommendations, an approach that Darman and Sununu favor.

The report's main benefit could be to reinforce a new spirit of cooperation between the sniping Administration factions. Last year Reilly won a major victory when Congress passed the Clean Air Act over Darman's objections. But Darman and Sununu had seemed to have the upper hand, and the President's ear, on global warming. Bush campaigned on the promise to curb the increase of greenhouse gases, which are produced chiefly by the burning of coal and oil. But the emissions are the exhaust of an industrial economy that Bush is loath to regulate. His instinct was strengthened by the fact that computer models predicting the impact of global warming are imprecise, leaving scientists unsure just how bad the problem is likely to get. Sununu seized upon those uncertainties, insisting it would be foolish to take costly preventive measures against a calamity that might never happen.

But during the past year, Administration infighting on the greenhouse effect seems to have subsided. "Everyone is getting along swimmingly," insists a Sununu aide. While that may be an overstatement, it appears that global warming will no longer be a cause for conflict in the President's immediate circle -- at least for now. Pollsters tell the White House that the issue is not high on the public's list of environmental concerns, ranking below more immediate problems like waste disposal, pollution and the disappearance of natural areas. With no pressure from below and little inclination to move at the top, the Administration is likely to keep the warming issue on a low boil. Will that be enough to stave off a change in the weather? Keep an eye on the thermometer.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/ Washington