TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070990/0709330.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 137 lines

                                                                                ENVIRONMENT, Page 63

Letting the Earth Breathe Easier


At last, progress is made on ozone, offshore drilling -- and
more


    Thanks to a heightened worldwide concern about the fragility
of the earth's ecology, environmental issues seem to come up
more and more frequently as matters of public policy. But even
by current standards, last week was remarkable for progress
made on a number of important actions and proposals -- even if
all parties to the various disputes could not claim total
victory. Among the week's events:

    -- Nearly 100 nations agreed on a ten-year plan to end
worldwide production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other
chemicals that threaten the earth's protective ozone layer.

    -- President Bush placed a moratorium on further oil
exploration in large areas on the continental shelf.

    -- A congressional committee rejected White House proposals
and agreed to permit states suffering the effects of oil spills
to set the amounts of fines and other cleanup charges.

    -- A group of Senators, noting the decline of a Soviet
threat, proposed enlisting the U.S. military establishment in
the fight to preserve the environment.

    -- The Administration presented a partial -- and
controversial -- plan to protect the northern spotted owl, a
threatened species.

    The ozone agreement, signed by 59 nations at a conference
in London (about 30 other nations were observers), was a
historic improvement on the already tough Montreal Protocol of
1987. That pact called for a reduction by the end of the
century in worldwide production of ozone-depleting CFCs and
halons, man-made chemicals that allow ever increasing amounts
of dangerous ultraviolet light to reach the earth's surface.
But since Montreal, a consensus had been growing that mere
limitation was not enough. All the participating nations agreed
that both types of chemicals should be phased out almost
entirely by century's end. Moreover, two other destructive
chemicals, carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform, were
added to the protocol, and will be eliminated by 2000 and 2005,
respectively.

    The conference also approved a landmark special fund that
would provide $240 million over the next three years to help
poorer countries switch to chemicals that are more expensive
but less harmful than CFCs for use as refrigerants, solvents
and propellants in spray cans. The fund, proposed long before
the London meeting, had been a major sticking point until a few
weeks ago, chiefly because the Bush Administration had declined
to support it. Consequently, such populous developing nations
as India and China continued to refuse to sign the Montreal
Protocol. Bush finally reversed himself, under withering
criticism from inside and outside the U.S., and India and China
have now agreed to sign. They and other developing countries
will have an extra ten years to phase out some of the
chemicals.

    Even with the Bush reversal, several nations are still
annoyed at the U.S. for insisting on a deadline of 2000 for the
general phaseout, rather than the 1997 limit that some had
wanted.

    There were limits as well on the environmental benefits of
Bush's new restrictions on offshore oil drilling. The President
imposed a ten-year moratorium on oil-company leases covering
9.5 million hectares (23.5 million acres) off the Florida Keys
and California; banned drilling permanently in California's
ecologically fragile Monterey Bay; delayed until 2000 the sale
of leases in rich fishing waters off Washington, Oregon and New
England; and called for negotiations to buy back drilling
rights that the Government had awarded in Florida.

    Environmentalists were not altogether happy with some of the
elements of this plan. The new restricted zones, after all, are
safe for only ten years, leaving the harder decisions about
permanent bans in the hands of Bush's successor.
Conservationists were further disappointed when Bush left
unresolved the disposition of certain territories off
California, Florida, Alaska, the western Gulf Coast, New Jersey
and North Carolina.

    The oil industry was equally critical. The American
Petroleum Institute warned that the Bush plan would lead to
"more imports, more dependency on OPEC and more tanker traffic"
-- the last meaning, presumably, more risk of oil spills.

    Nor could the industry be delighted with the actions of a
House-Senate conference committee on oil spills. The White
House had wanted to abide by international rules that put a cap
of $78 million on the amount that a guilty party would be
required to pay for spills. The legislators rebuffed the
Administration and agreed to permit aggrieved states to assess
cleanup costs to polluters without limit. The bill is expected
to pass both houses this month.

    Perhaps the most surprising proposal of the week came from
Georgia's Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, and several of his fellow Democrats. Reasoning that
warmer Soviet-American relations may leave the U.S. military
with a reduced mission, Nunn and his colleagues on the
committee suggested that defense money and manpower be directed
into saving the environment. The rationale: environmental
destruction is itself a threat to national security. Nunn
suggested that one benefit of his proposed Strategic
Environmental Research Program -- call it Green Wars -- would
be to keep the defense establishment from withering away.

    For environmentalists, the week's actions and reactions,
though less than ideal, carried a lesson: in the face of strong
and vocal pressure, the Bush Administration will sometimes do
right by the endangered earth.


By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Anne Constable/London and
Glenn Garelik/Washington.