Will The System Defeat Al Gore?

By EUGENE LINDEN

ONE OF THE FIRST WORLD LEADERS TO SEEK AN AUDIENCE with Vice President Albert Gore is, naturally enough, Norway's Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who headed the World Commission on Environment and Development. Brundtland's mission, however, could not be more environmentally incorrect. She wants her buddy from the Earth Summit in Rio to promise that the U.S. won't take punitive economic measures against Norway, which plans to defy an international moratorium on whaling.

Brundtland's humiliating mission is like an environmental version of the ghost of Christmas future: four years from now the Vice President may find himself in a similarly uncomfortable position, explaining to his environmental supporters why he failed to deliver on commitments made during the campaign. Just as ideologues during 12 years of Republican Administrations were thwarted by the courts and Congress from unilaterally rolling back environmental protection, Brundtland's situation illustrates how the workings of a modern democracy can also dampen the ambitions of true believers occupying the highest positions of power.

Brundtland got into her fix because she needed the political support of fishermen in northern communities. Faced with declining catches, the fishermen look hungrily at Minke whales. To keep this group in her fragile coalition, Brundtland has blithely forgotten many of her strongly held convictions.

To be fair, Norway has an admirable environmental record in other respects. The U.S., for instance, might follow its example and implement a carbon tax, which encourages efficiency and the use of cleaner fuels. But the whaling issue has real significance. By undermining the International Whaling Commission, Norway's unilateral action will open the door to cheating by other nations, imperiling anew some whale species. Many Norwegians recognize this, but it is the politically potent fishermen who are driving policy.

This is the nub of it. Just as Norway has its politically potent fishermen, the U.S. has politically potent loggers, not to mention developers, ranchers, auto manufacturers and an endless assortment of highly focused interests that can make life uncomfortable for environmentally minded politicians, even when they have broad support in the community. This leads to what might be called the first law of environmental decline: the long-term health of an ecosystem recedes in importance when people are fighting over access to specific resources for their short-term economic interests. This is hardly surprising in a country that cannot come to grips with the long-term problems of its budget deficit and whose major corporations are dominated by managers who will not look past the next fiscal quarter. The difference is that while people adjust to shortsightedness and compromise, nature only reacts. The results can be irreversible and belie any rhetorical airbrushing.

Take the case of America's Western forests. During his confirmation hearings, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona Governor, had to run a gauntlet of Western Senators who left the impression that the government has unreasonably locked up vast tracts of forest. All it takes, however, is a flight over the tattered quilt of arbitrary-looking patches that remain of the Pacific Northwest's forests to refute bland assurances of responsible stewardship.

Similarly, the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer is often trotted out as an example of how the international community successfully came to grips with a dire threat. Unfortunately, the protocol is not a success for the ozone layer, which will continue to deteriorate as CFCs manufactured during years of international temporizing wander upward to the stratosphere like leisurely assassins. Bush ridiculed this threat during the '92 campaign, calling Gore "Ozone Man," but in fact the loss of the world's upper atmospheric shield is one environmental threat that has people genuinely scared.

This presents the new Administration with a golden opportunity to change the tenor of the environmental debate. Clinton and Gore should take a page from Ross Perot's scare tactics on the deficit and use this fear. Sad to say, it is only when people become truly frightened (or angry) that the government has some hope of breaking the cycle of enacting feel-good laws that do little to halt environmental decline.

Before mobilizing the public, however, the new Administration must undertake a thorough review of the sorry, zigzag path of past environmental legislation. If there is anything positive in this pastiche of cumbersome, expensive and irrelevant initiatives, it is the trend championed by the Republican predecessors to move away from regulations and toward market incentives (hint: a gas tax!) to achieve environmental goals. The new team also has the opportunity to rethink the various environmental risks that determine priorities.

Internationally, the Administration can reassert American efforts to put some substance into the neutered agreements that came out of last June's Earth Summit. Gore has the opportunity to signal determination if he meets with Brundtland. If he were feeling sadistic he might quote from her Harvard commencement address last June, in which she spoke of the vital importance of international agreements, or recite the words of her report, Our Common Future, which cites American economic sanctions as a means of policing agreements on marine conservation. And he might pray that four years later, a successor will not appear to read back to him his own words on how the world can halt environmental decline.