As Glaciers Melt, Talks On Warming Face Chill; Discord Looms Over Climate Pact's Details

By Joby Warrick Copyright 1998 Washington Post November 2, 1998

From observation posts high in the South American Andes, scientists this fall are pondering an extraordinary disappearing act: The great Quelccaya ice cap, home to some of the hemisphere's largest glaciers, is melting.

The losses were small when first detected 30 years ago, but in the 1990s Quelccaya's retreat turned into a rout. Scientists aren't sure why, but some suspect global warming. "Where it was shrinking at three meters a year, it's now up to 30 meters," said Ellen Mosley-Thompson, a glacier expert and professor at Ohio State University.

From the Andes to Montana's Lewis Range, dozens of ancient glaciers are turning to slush as global temperatures climb to the highest levels in recorded history. But despite increasingly strong signals of possible change in the climate, international efforts to slow global warming are at risk of sliding into a deep freeze.

A year after the world's nations approved the first binding agreement on climate change in Kyoto, Japan, 180 countries are gathering today in Argentina's capital to begin deciding how to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. But Kyoto's sunny optimism has given way to cold reality in Buenos Aires as diplomats awaken to formidable technical challenges and steep divisions among nations over how to apportion the costs.

Governments can point to only paltry progress on climate change over the last 11 months, and many are dampening expectations for significant achievements this year. Some observers worry that Kyoto's consensus will collapse in Buenos Aires, disintegrating like the great Quelccaya, in nearby Peru.

"For the first time, the glaciers are moving literally faster than the negotiations," said Christopher Flavin, vice president and senior climate researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington think tank. The fear, he said, is that "time could be running out for both."

The two-week United Nations-sponsored climate conference begins near the close of a year that will be remembered for its bizarre weather. For reasons that may or may not be related to global warming, Mother Nature cranked up the thermostat this year, pushing global temperatures to records in each of the first nine months. The year 1998 is on track for being the warmest in at least six centuries, or about as far back as scientists can reliably read the weather. Some blame goes to an unusually severe El Nin o, yet the global heat pump has continued chugging long after El Nin o fizzled out over the southern Pacific.

"We have never seen a sequence where we broke records every month in a row," said D. James Baker, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It doesn't prove that you have global warming, but it's absolutely consistent with what you'd expect."

While climate can shift abruptly without help from humans, most scientists believe people are contributing to the warming of the planet. Fossil fuel burning and the destruction of forests are causing a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which traps heat from the sun. Over the next century, scientists predict average temperatures will rise between 1.8 and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to trigger a sea level rise that could swamp large chunks of coastal areas.

Last year's Kyoto accord was a historic attempt at putting the brakes on warming. For the first time, the United States and other industrialized nations agreed to binding limits on greenhouse gases. By 2012, these countries would be obliged not only to freeze their pollution output, but to reduce it to an average 5 percent below 1990 levels.

But while Kyoto set the targets and deadlines, the most difficult issues -- how to achieve the cuts and how to spread the costs -- were largely papered over, to be debated later. These are the questions that now lurk in ambush for government ministers attempting to put flesh on Kyoto's flimsy bones.

"This has all the makings of an old-time East-West free-for-all," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who will lead a delegation of U.S. Senate observers at the talks. "Buenos Aires could disintegrate into a name-calling process, with the West being blamed for all the evil, problems and difficulties in the world."

Aware of the risks, conference leaders are setting modest goals. Officially, the ministers are not required to answer all the questions in Buenos Aires but only to begin a process that will yield solutions in years to come. If Kyoto "created the architectural structure," then Buenos Aires will "create a process for installing the interior plumbing and circuitry," said Stuart Eizenstat, the undersecretary of state who will serve as chief U.S. negotiator.

But international fault lines that opened in Kyoto have only solidified in the past year. Complicating matters is the deepening economic turmoil in Asia, which Eizenstat acknowledges caused "setbacks" in the critical task of persuading developing countries to restrict the growth of their emissions.

To many observers, the peril in Buenos Aires is that nations will fail to agree even on the rules for settling their differences. With the clock ticking on deadlines set in Kyoto, a breakdown in Argentina could strip the process of its political momentum and delay action on climate for years -- a prospect treaty opponents are already savoring.

The treaty is on shaky political ground in a number of world capitals. As of last month, only 55 countries have signed the accord and only one -- Fiji -- has ratified it. President Clinton, as leader of the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has said he will sign the treaty before the March 1, 1999, deadline, and aides say he may do so this month to give the Buenos Aires conference a symbolic boost.

The White House insists the accord will not be submitted for Senate ratification for at least another year, or until U.S. negotiators win assurances on flexible rules and solid commitments from key developing countries. Meanwhile, Republican leaders have pledged a bitter fight against the United Nations-brokered Kyoto agreement, which they believe would harm the nation economically. The congressional delegation to Buenos Aires is dominated by lawmakers who are skeptical not just of the treaty but of global warming itself. One member, Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), introduced legislation this year that would have imposed a de facto gag order on the Clinton administration, prohibiting even educational seminars on climate change.

"Opponents are hoping Buenos Aires will be Heartbreak Hill, that it will founder on the tensions they have worked so hard to foster," said Alden Meyer, director of government relations for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group. Supporters, he said, can only hope the conference will yield enough progress to avoid the appearance of standing still.

"Kyoto was a high-wire act," Meyer said. "Buenos Aires will be three yards and a cloud of dust."

There are many hidden mines that could blow the Buenos Aires talks off track. One of them could explode as early as the opening day, when Argentina will try to insert into the agenda a plan to allow developing countries to voluntarily accept commitments to limit their own greenhouse gas emissions, setting their own goals and timetables.

Voluntary cuts -- an idea strongly supported by the Clinton administration and a few developing countries with close ties to the United States -- may seem innocuous enough. But other developing countries are opposed even to discussing Argentina's plan, U.N. officials said last week.

"Argentina stuck its neck out," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the U.N. executive secretary who presides over the climate talks. "Other countries, such as Mexico and [South] Korea, may look at this positively. But after that it becomes quite speculative."

The role of developing countries had become a flash point in the climate debate. Because most of the world's greenhouse gases historically came from North America and Europe, poorer nations insist that the West goes first.

But wealthier countries say they can't solve the problem alone. Already, modernizing countries such as China and India are on their way toward eclipsing the developed world as the biggest polluters, and any climate strategy that excludes them would fail in the long run. Both the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans say they will not support U.S. ratification of the Kyoto accord without "meaningful participation" from key developing countries.

Another battle, pitting industrialized countries against each other, is looming over rules for emissions trading programs that would allow developed countries to cut their costs by buying and selling pollution credits. Europeans favor imposing "caps" or limits on such trading to force each country to make most of its emissions cuts at home. The Clinton administration strongly opposes caps, arguing that any restrictions would raise the cost of compliance. Eizenstat warned last week that the European Union's actions "threaten to undo the Kyoto agreement."

"We will adamantly oppose efforts to set limits on trading," the U.S. delegation leader said.

But while the U.S. position may sway moderates in the Senate, it leaves the White House open to criticism in Buenos Aires. Europeans, already suspicious that the United States intends to "buy" its way out of its treaty obligations by purchasing pollution credits, will likely point to the meager progress the Clinton administration has made on fighting climate change at home over the past year.

President Clinton's request for $ 6.3 billion in investments and tax credits for energy-efficient technology was largely ignored by Congress, as was his initiative to build 1 million solar roofs over the next century. A Department of Energy report next week is expected to show continued, if moderate, increases in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions over the past 12 months.

Still, the White House did secure $ 1 billion in funding for climate programs last month -- a hard-won concession that White House officials say reflects climate's top rating on the administration's list of priorities.

To David Sandalow, White House associate director for the global environment, the money represents solid, if modest, progress. And U.S. negotiators can only hope to do as well in Argentina.

"We haven't filled all the blanks on the Kyoto protocol, but that's not a big surprise -- this is the most complicated set of international negotiations ever," Sandalow said. "While recognizing the urgency of the problem, we must be realistic in understanding what it will take to move this ocean liner forward."

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