Off to Rio, George?
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
PRESIDENT George Bush is still making up his mind whether to join the rest of the international community and attend one of the biggest environmental conferences this century.
Dubbed “The Earth Summit” the United Nations Conference on Environment and Devel opment will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 2. It promises to be a doozy.
More than 100 world leaders and hundreds more media representatives and lobby groups will descend on the picturesque city to discuss, record and bemoan the state of the planet.
A shadow summit, called ’92 Global Forum, will cater for environmental, indigenous and women’s groups in a bid to influence the blue suited men who will dominate the official conference. Most scientists, government officials,
journalists, lobbyists and greenies are fighting for a place at Rio de Janiero. Even the dethroned Mikhail Gorbachev is thinking about it.
So why is President Bush so hesitant? Because he doesn’t want to go all the way to Rio in a presidential election year Dnly to have to torpedo a treaty limiting earth-warming
:arbon-dioxide gases.
Backed by just about all of the 148 nations currently icgotiating the treaty, the draft proposes limiting worldwide :arbon dioxide emissions in the year 2000 to the same levels is those in 1990.
President Bush says this would threaten American economic productivity and jobs. He and his White House advisors want i boarder treaty that would encourage nations to adopt their >wn voluntary programs to deal with environmental problems.
The search for a compromise is dominating pre-conference nanoeuvres. The Europeans, who strongly back strict limits, re furious. South Pacific Island officials, who fear the tidal Beets of global warming on their fragile nations, are worried, "he Americans appear rigid.
White House official Clayton Yeutter has said Mr Bush only attend the conference if it was “productive” for him
d participate.
“The definition of a productive meeting is whether it’s in the iterests of the United States,” said Mr Yeutter. “That’s the idgement call that we have to make, and we’ll do it on those rounds.”
Without a green light from the United States, the treaty ould be rendered meaningless the US is the single largest roducer of greenhouse gases. And its technological and :onomic strengths are seen as crucial to the successful aplementation of environmental strategies.
But pressure on the American President to join his ternational colleagues in Rio is mounting - and it is coming om a variety of groups.
Concerned Hollywodd stars produced a six-minute video ppeal which was delivered to the White House. “President ash, would you please go and represent us at the Earth immit in Rio? The world is waiting for us to take the lead,” id singer/actress Cher on the tape.
Washington
President Bush’s opponents in the Democratic Party have also lambasted his ambivalence on the Rio summit.
The White House is “just trying to wiggle out of a meaningful commit ment,” said Democratic Senator A 1 Gore, who recently published a book on the urgency of confronting environ mental problems. “He alone has the fate of these agreements in his hands.”
Democratic Presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, has described Mr Bush’s environmental stand as “reactive, rudderless and expedient” with policies that promote “short-term trade-offs be tween jobs and the environment”.
Perhaps it is not surprising then, that the White House is now giving hints that the President will ultimately attend the
conference. “The signals are that he will,” said one official who works on environmental issues.
Has President Bush changed his mind on greenhouse emmissions? Not necessarily. In fact, some environmental groups are suggesting that the “will-George-go?” controversy played right into the Presidents hands.
By hyping that question so much, the media and the American public (who will vote on his re-election in November) might applaud President Bush’s presence in Rio even if he refuses to endorse the new treaty.
“His political handlers, his media people, have done a masterful job of keeping focussed on (whether he will attend) THE event,” said Clifton Curtis, of Greenpeace.
“It masks the real issues, which is the United States’ failure in these negotiations to make the kinds of co-operative commitments that are essential to saving the planet.”
But while White House aides and other American conservatives decry the scientific basis for the greenhouse theory of global warming - thereby justifying relative American inaction - a new report by US government agencies lends support to calls for drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emmissions.
The report even says that American gas emmissions could be stabalised at 1990 levels by the year 2000 because of the steps to save energy and reduce pollution already under way, thus undermining White House arguments that such a move would be too costly.
The report makes it more difficult than ever to understand the White House rationale for not agreeing to the greenhouse treaty.
According to Alsen Meyer, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, all President Bush has to do, is go to Rio and promise that the US will keep doing what it already is doing.
But the final word goes to Chief Oren Lyons, of the Onodaga Indian Nation from the Northern Part of New York state, who thinks all the official machinations surrounding the Rio conference is boring. “The Indian understanding of the Earth is that the Earth will survive. The Earth will not disappear.
It may undergo some degradation, to the point that life might succumb. Then the Earth will simply re-green itself. It’s not a problem for the Earth. But for human life, and life on Earth, yeah, it’s a problem.” □