in terms of the refrigeration and air-conditioning sector, and that has to be taken into account as part of any global warming analysis.

Senator BAUCUs. I appreciate that. This has been a helpful panel. I just want to very strongly urge the Administration to move more quickly than they have thus far. I think there is an opportunity here for the United States to develop real leadership. Not only to help reduce the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, which helps all of us-no one is going to dispute that-but also, if we would provide more leadership in other areas, that could spill over into other areas.

As we are a leader here, we are going to have more moral force and be able to project American power and policy more easily in some other areas, too. I think it is very helpful to lead rather than follow.

Beyond that, it is an opportunity to develop technologies. It is clear that the more we move ahead, the more likely it is that we are going to develop environmental technologies that we can produce and manufacture here at home for our domestic use and for overseas sales and for production overseas-if we develop the know-how.

We are certainly going in this direction. We know that there is going to be a date when CFCs are going to be phased out. If that is going to happen, we might as well do it more quickly.

I am reminded of a Japanese poem. The translation is: "I always knew one day I would travel down this road, only I didn't know it would be so soon." We might as well get on with it.

I very strongly urge the Administration to get those regulations out on time and to take a very firm leadership role at the next conference. Thank you all very much.

Our next panel consists of Mr. Robert Reinstein, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources, the Department of State; and Mr. Richard Mott, the Treaties Officer for the World Wildlife Fund International. The last panel was a good preliminary for this one. Mr. Reinstein, why don't you proceed?

STATEMENT OF ROBERT REINSTEIN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH, AND NATURAL RESOURCES, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Mr. REINSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to come up here and brief you on the most recent negotiating session. I feel a little lonely here; there were four of them and only two of us, but I guess we'll manage.

The last time I came up here to brief this committee was after the first negotiating session here in Chantilly, outside of Washington. We were frankly rather disappointed at the progress made in Chantilly.

I am pleased to report that at the recent session in Geneva in June, we made a good deal more progress in moving forward. There were more countries: 127 countries in Geneva, 94 developing countries, and a larger number of experts from capitals rather than diplomats from New York and Washington.

It was clear that the developing countries are engaging in the process in a much more active and substantive way. In fact, many brought suggestions and a few brought specific text proposals and so forth, so it was clear that the large number of countries who came to Geneva came to engage substantively in the negotiating process.

We did resolve the remaining procedural issue, which was the election of chairs of the two working groups that had been established in February. We settled on co-chairs for each of the two groups and were able to begin substantive work early in the Geneva session in the working groups.

During the week-plus that we were able to work, we established an atmosphere of cooperation and forward momentum among the countries there. In Working Group I, which deals with commitments, we had a rather extended discussion of principles which are believed by some countries to be what should guide the negotia

tions.

We had some difficulty with that approach. We felt that it would possibly lead us into endless debate about abstract principles and felt that we should get into more specific discussion of appropriate commitments, actions, to respond to possible global climate change rather than a debate over general principles which could get us into philosophical issues and waste a lot of time.

However, to the degree that countries said that they would want to take up principles, we did submit some principles for consideration. They are included in my written testimony.

The second working group, dealing with mechanisms, made considerable progress. They had fewer texts to work with, fewer differences among those texts, and were able to produce, at least in the area of scientific cooperation, some bracketed text. We will be working in the next session, which will be in Nairobi, toward further development of bracketed text on the institutional aspects of the convention. So we were quite pleased with the progress in Working Group II.

A number of interesting proposals were put on the table by several countries. Perhaps the most interesting one, which was proposed by Japan and supported by the U.K. and France, was something called Pledge and Review. Pledge and Review encourages countries to put forward their own national action plans for responding to climate change. These action plans would then be reviewed by the other parties to the convention.

The concept has not really been well developed yet, but I anticipate a good deal more discussion about it in the September session in Nairobi and in the future negotiating sessions. The next one following is in Geneva in December.

In some informal meetings, the U.S. put forward what is called a non-paper, an unofficial paper on technology cooperation which would focus on country studies and a technology cooperation resources inventory. In doing so, the U.S. advocated a partnership among sovereign countries to facilitate this cooperation, recognizing that technology transfer to developing countries and to countries with economies in transition on a priority basis must be a central aspect of the cooperative effort. Financial resources to support this effort should, in our view, make maximum use of existing bi

lateral and multilateral institutions and should be integrated in such a way that support for general development purposes is in no way diminished.

The plenary also addressed the role of the IPCC. The IPCC will be taking up some of the requests from the INC in its future meetings. There is a meeting of Working Group III on response strategies next week in Geneva. I will be there to chair that.

Since returning to Washington, we have briefed environmental groups and industry groups and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to brief you here today. I would be happy to try to answer any questions. I see that I did not exceed my time. Senator BAUCUs. Thank you, Mr. Reinstein.

Mr. Mott.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD N. MOTT, TREATIES OFFICER, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INTERNATIONAL

Mr. MOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today. I do so as Treaties Office with WWF International in Switzerland and on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund, U.S. and the WWF family of organizations worldwide.

Our concern with the issue of global climate change stems from the WWF mission which, in short, is to preserve the abundance and diversity of life on earth which is threatened by global climate change around the world in plant, animal, and human realms.

I will speak today to the recent history and present outlook as we see it for the international negotiations on a framework convention for signature next June and transmit to you the growing concerns of WWF and of our colleagues throughout the environmental community that prospects are dimming for a successful agreement in the next 11 months.

In particular, we are troubled by the role that the United States Government has played to date in obstructing progress toward an effective and meaningful agreement. We urge you and the Senate to become more actively involved in the hope that you can help to change the current policy of the United States Government.

Nearly three years ago, the U.S. invested considerable financial and diplomatic resources as well as its own credibility in an intergovernmental consultative process on climate change. That initial process of the IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, delivered a report last Fall finding that the greenhouse effect is real; that the current emission rates will commit us to a one degree Centigrade temperature rise by 2025; and that the ecological and human impacts are potentially severe. The IPCC concluded, moreover, that reductions of over 60 percent of current emissions levels of the long-lived gases, including CO2, would be required to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at today's levels.

Following on the IPCC's sobering report, we are now engaged in an intergovernmental negotiation on climate change, stalled on what must be considered the most fundamental objective of its near-term mission. That is agreement among the industrialized countries to curb their disproportionate contribution to the global buildup of warming gases. The negotiations are stalled on this issue principally because of the opposition of the U.S. in the face of

overwhelming consensus among the rest of the industrialized coun

tries.

U.S. abstinence from an agreement to curb CO2 would, by itself, do great injury to the effectiveness of a climate agreement. Quite apart from issues of statesmanship and international cooperation, U.S. refusal to participate would be damaging because the U.S. alone accounts for almost one-quarter of the total CO2 emissions worldwide and over one-third of the emissions in the industrialized world.

The impact of current U.S. policy, however, reaches far beyond the simple refusal to contain its own emissions. Throughout the first two years of the IPCC process and now again in the INC, the U.S. has sought to slow the pace of progress, to avoid the subject of legal obligations, and to weaken the text of documents prepared in the working groups.

It initially appeared that the Europeans, particulary the EC countries, would nonetheless forge ahead with an agreement. Today, however, that collective resolve is showing its first signs of wear and there is now a danger that the U.S. efforts to isolate the EC may be having their intended effect.

Discussions with Western European delegates to the INC last month confirmed the impact of U.S. diplomacy. EC representatives are candid in saying that their governments may not withstand the pressure expected over the next 10 months and that the U.S. Government may be effective in driving wedges among the members of the 22-country OECD CO2 Club.

The emergence last month of Pledge and Review, which could mean the effective removal of binding obligations from the convention, is evidence of a dangerous trend toward accommodation of the U.S. Pledge and Review may have ramifications far beyond its intended beneficiary, the U.S., and may significantly weaken the text of the convention itself.

An irony in this is that the need to act in concert has for years been held out as an excuse for delaying unilateral action. U.S. representatives in the past have been quick to remind us that action by less than all parties present invites free riders, countries that share in the benefit of a global agreement but fail to do their fair part. Now that we stand within reach of a CO2 agreement among the industrialized countries, it is unsettling indeed that the United States is positioned to become the free rider should our peers find the political courage to move ahead next year without us.

Mr. Chairman, Senator, we at WWF encourage you to do all that you can to urge the Administration that the U.S. should take its rightful place of responsible leadership in these negotiations. The U.S. emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than any other country in the world, 23 percent of the world's total, from only 5 percent of the world's population.

We emit 5 tons per capita per year. Our allies Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and France each emit fewer than 3 tons and the developing countries aren't even close.

In the face of this disproportionate contribution to the gathering problem, our National Academy of Sciences issued a report this Spring concluding that the United States could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions between 10 and 40 percent of the 1990 level at

very low cost. The voice of the U.S. Senate has been effective in the past in the form of resolutions and other actions, even when it was not timely to enact full environmental statutes. We urge you and the Senate to participate in the INC negotiations; to send Members and/or key staff to the sessions; and as you follow the progress of the negotiations, to make your voice heard on key issues in the debate, both here and abroad.

Thank you.

Senator BAUCUs. Thank you, Mr. Mott.

Mr. Reinstein, what about it? Mr. Mott says that the United States is lagging behind; we're laggards. While other countries are doing the right thing, the United States isn't. We are kicking and screaming at the table.

Mr. REINSTEIN. Mr. Chairman, I'm afraid I cannot agree with all those statements. We, in fact, have participated actively in the negotiations from the beginning as we participated actively in the IPCC from 1988.

In fact, we have worked actively and constructively with a large number of other delegations, including European delegations, to try to find ways to move the process forward. Frankly, our position on targets and timetables is not the only issue that needs to be resolved through negotiation. And that need not block a meaningful agreement.

We have favored a bottom-up approach of commitments to specific actions.

Senator BAUCUs. What kind of approach?

Mr. REINSTEIN. A bottom-up as opposed to a top-down. Targets and timetables are essentially a top-down approach. You fix the result and then you go and try to find out how to achieve it. We have favored a bottom-up approach.

Both top-down and bottom-up can produce meaningful results. I think the important thing here is that we need to find a way that will engage in commitments from as many countries as possible, because over the long term, it is quite clear that it is not the OECD countries but the developing countries' projected emissions that will grow the most rapidly and will essentially offset all of the ef forts by all the OECD countries, including the United States, if we do not involve them early in the process.

We are engaged in trying to find a solution that will commit the largest number of countries to meaningful actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Senator BAUCus. It is the conclusion of the IPCC that the greenhouse gas phenomenon is real-that is not disputed. Also, it is the conclusion of the IPCC that global warming is occurring as a consequence of the greenhouse phenomenon.

Mr. REINSTEIN. That was not the conclusion exactly of Working Group I of the IPCC. First, there is no question about the science of the greenhouse effect. There is also no question about the buildup of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

There is measured global warming. It differs from one location to another on the earth, but on average, there is a measured global warming. What was not the conclusion of the IPCC scientists was that there was a clear causal link between human greenhouse gas emissions and the observed warming over the last 100 years.