SUNS  4319 Monday 7 November 1998

Washington, Nov 6 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- As negotiators meet in Buenos Aires to hammer out details for curbing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, a new poll released here Thursday suggests that public support in the United States for a tough treaty may be greater than suspected.

The poll, conducted by the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, also found that a majority of the public support a treaty even if developing countries do not agree to cut their emissions in the fight against global warming.

That finding is at odds with the prevailing views among the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, where any treaty resulting from the current negotiations must be ratified. Republicans have vowed to oppose the treaty, whose basic framework was negotiated last December in Kyoto, Japan, unless developing countries also accept cuts in their emissions.

"The U.S. Senate is out of step with the American public on the issue of treaty ratification," said Stephen Kull, who last month conducted the survey of 800 adults. "The majority of Americans feel so strongly about the need for a global warming treaty that they are willing to go forward even if the developing countries do not join in."

The poll also found that a majority (63 percent) of U.S. families are willing to accept increases of up to $25 a month in household energy costs to comply with the Kyoto Treaty, which is roughly the amount at least one government study has estimated would be the actual costs.

But that estimate assumes that the treaty will include a system for trading emission rights among countries - a mechanism which is opposed by the European Union (EU) and some environmental groups here. The U.S. government says that without an emissions-trading system, it will be difficult to keep compliance costs below $25 per month per household. Moreover, the survey found that a majority of respondents opposed paying as much as $50 dollars a month in additional costs.

"To keep the costs of compliance to a level the public finds acceptable, the U.S. will have to persuade Treaty signatories to agree to ... an emissions rights trading regime," said Kull.

Global warming has become a hot issue in the United States, the industrialised country which emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other. Most atmospheric scientists believe that these mostly carbon-based gases, which result mainly from the burning of oil and gas, have been heating up the world's surface temperatures and will continue to do so at an accelerating rate.

The most recent projections by a international panel of experts predict that global temperatures could rise by an average of as much as 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Such an increase would have major climatological and environmental effects, ranging from sharp increases in sea level to the desertification of broad areas of the tropics and the northward spread of malaria into what are now temperate zones.

In recent years, predictions about warming have been bolstered both by new and more sophisticated studies and by the increasing frequency of violent storms, which scientists say is consistent with a warming trend.

In addition, U.S., British, and other agencies have found that the last decade has been the hottest ever recorded, that 1997 was the hottest year, and that 1998 is on track to being hotter yet.

Last December, UN member states (as Contracting Parties to the climate change treaty) met in Kyoto to draft a framework for a treaty which binds the 39 western nations to reduce their greenhouse emission to an average of 5% below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

A report by Federal Energy Agency, released Tuesday, shows that emissions from the United States actually increased by 10% between 1990 and 1997.

The Kyoto Treaty did not require developing countries to limit or reduce their emissions, even though their emissions are increasing much faster. China's, for example, will soon eclipse those of the United States, although, on a per capita basis, China will remain far behind for many decades.

But opponents of the Kyoto Treaty, which include the powerful oil, gas, and automobile industries, have seized on this omission as a way to depict the pact as unfair. Even the U.S. administration has pledged not to submit any treaty for ratification until developing countries commit themselves to limiting - although not necessarily reducing - their emissions at some future date.

In the last several months, an anti-Kyoto coalition called the Global Climate Information Project has mounted a multi-million-dollar campaign against the treaty. That campaign, which consists of two television commercials that are often run in prime time on the major networks, stresses that the treaty is not really global.

"So while America and a few other countries are forced to drastically cut energy use, countries like China, India and Mexico will continue to produce even more emissions," one ad states.

The new survey, however, suggests that the campaign has had little effect on public attitudes. Only 31% of respondents agreed to the following statement: "The less developed countries produce a
substantial and growing amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore they should be required to CUT their emissions."

On the other hand, 45% agreed to a second option that developing countries should only be required to minimise their emissions "through greater energy efficiency", while another 19% agreed with a third option that "they should NOT be required to limit their emissions until they develop their economies more."

The survey also found that a larger plurality of the public now consider global warming to be a serious problem requiring strong measures than six months ago when PIPA did a similar poll.

It also found that more than two-thirds of the respondents believe they personally are more supportive of taking steps to reduce global warming than the public at large.