Environment: Letting The Earth Breathe Easier

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.