September 28, 1997

Clinton and Global Warming: Struggling to Scare a Contented World

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

resident Clinton has long been seen as an instinctive politician, one with a talent for sensing a public yearning and turning it to political advantage. So why, when Americans are blithely pumping record amounts of gasoline into their Blazers, Jeeps, and not-so-mini-vans, is he preparing to campaign to cut the nation's use of fuel?

Clinton says his goal is to reduce the threat in coming decades of droughts, coastal floods, and famine from global warming -- a warming of the atmosphere caused by rising concentrations of gases, especially carbon dioxide, released when fuels and forests are burned. He plans to play host at a climate conference at Georgetown University next week to publicize the issue, and he invited dozens of television weather forecasters to meet with him and Vice President Al Gore at the White House on Wednesday, also to discuss global warming.

1910 The Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, where Al Gore discussed global warming, before the melting. Credit: Elrod/Glacier National Park Archive

Around Washington, where hot, sticky summers are commonplace, those seeking a political explanation for everything say that global warming simply is a safe haven for a second-term president who is eager to divert attention from more uncomfortable subjects, like campaign financing or his personal life.

But scientists and officials involved in the intensifying international debate on how to deal with global warming say it has taken the United States far too long to put the issue front and center, particularly because this country is the biggest source of heat-trapping gases, and because the spread of American-style consumerism to developing nations is likely to create the biggest source of the gases in the next century.

A strong consensus has built among scientists that global warming, although not a certainty, is a sufficiently serious threat to justify taking some action.

Without concrete action by the United States, climate policy experts say, the rest of the world -- which is eager to replicate America's high-revving, energy-hungry economy -- will be unlikely to conserve coal or oil for the sake of the shared atmosphere.

Clinton's decision to tackle the issue now, some of these experts say, was largely prompted by the need to build public support before he fulfills a pledge to commit the United States to firm limits on future greenhouse emissions. Specifics are expected to be announced by the White House next month and made final at an international climate meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in December.

That pledge came after Clinton became the focus of increasingly harsh criticism from countries like Britain and Germany, which have pushed ahead with environmental programs to cut their output of carbon dioxide.

1931 Photographed from the same vantage point 21 years later, a clearly smaller glacier. Credit: Hileman/Glacier National Park Archive

But finding ways to convince the American public of the seriousness of the climate threat will be no mean feat. This is particularly true with the nation feeling flush, with gasoline and oil relatively cheap, and with most of the more obvious environmental problems either solved or being attacked.

Clinton had a much easier sell in his last big environmental policy move -- toughening standards for two familiar pollutants, soot and smog. Soot and smog are a visible blight that kills old people and asthmatic children. Bubbles in Beer

But carbon dioxide is far harder to paint as a villain. It is, after all, the same invisible stuff that makes the bubbles in beer.

And, unlike smog or water pollution -- where solid evidence has been plain for all to see -- global warming is a looming, complicated problem that never quite seems to arrive. In other words, a nightmare for a politician.

There will never be a day when newspaper headlines proclaim "Earth Warms -- Floods, Famine Erupt," climate experts say. Even the particularly nasty storms, floods, and droughts of recent years, although consistent with the theory, can never be directly ascribed to human meddling with the atmosphere. Indeed, some recent work suggests that variations in the sun's brightness could account for some warming.

Clinton will have to overcome inertia that is being fed by industry. Despite a few recent converts, like British Petroleum, most industries that either produce fossil fuels or rely on them still contend that the science is uncertain and are lobbying for more research before action is taken to cut greenhouse pollution.

Seth Dunn, a climate and energy analyst at the Worldwatch Institute, a private environmental group, said that a key to any initiative this fall will be to show the economic sense of using fuels sparingly and developing new sources of energy that do not add to the atmosphere's greenhouse burden. An enormous market for such technologies is already building overseas, and could easily spread here as well, he said.

1997 The glacier this year; having receded 3,100 feet in a century, it is expected to disappear within 30 years. Credit: Fagre/Glacier National Park Archive

One of Clinton's soldiers in his environmental campaign is Gore; the prospect of a hothouse planet was a central theme of his best-selling book, "Earth in the Balance" (Houghton Mifflin, 1992).

Another is Timothy Wirth, undersecretary of state for global affairs. Wirth is a veteran of the communications wars over global warming. As a Senator, he staged one of the first congressional hearings on the subject during the scorching summer of 1988.

To get the point across at the time, staffers called the National Weather Service to be sure the hearing date would be a hot one. "We had it on that day, and opened all the windows," Wirth recalled. The greenhouse effect became big news. This time, he said, sweaty hearings won't be enough. He said the Clinton administration is planning to invoke the fate of future generations, just as he did to spur proposed solutions to the budget deficit.

To prepare for his improbable climate campaign, Clinton has been boning up both on the science, and on ways to explain it.

When some of the country's leading climate specialists gathered at the White House in July for a meeting with Clinton and Gore, they provided a host of simple ways to illustrate the problem.

Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University biology professor, invoked the image of canaries carried into coal mines to warn of noxious gas. "The canary in the cage is starting to quiver," Schneider said.

Clinton slowly repeated the phrase, as if testing it for future use.