
DATE: Tuesday, October 7, 1997              TAG: 9710070305

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

CLINTON SAYS ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM NEED NOT HURT BUSINESS

President Clinton sketched out his position on global warming at a conference Monday, saying, ``Environmental stewardship does not have to hamstring economic growth.''

His speech and discussions with two separate science and technology panels was down-linked by satellite from Georgetown University to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester County. The site was one of about 25 nationwide that carried the conference live.

``I am convinced the science of climate change is real,'' Clinton said of the increase in temperatures worldwide known as the greenhouse effect. ``Although we do not know everything, what we do know is more than enough to warrant action.''

He encouraged technological advances such as wind and solar energy sources that would reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. But he rejected energy taxes and other cost-increasing measures.

``We must employ flexible, market-based approaches,'' Clinton said.

In December, Clinton will take his ideas to a conference in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 160 countries will chart solutions to global warming. There, a treaty may be drafted, which would have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

After the broadcast at VIMS, several local scientists and professors spoke to a group of their peers about their research on the topic.

Hampton University physics professor M. Patrick McCormick said the president ``would like to take some kind of consensus with him to Kyoto in December.''

McCormick said the country needs to commit to long-term measurements of atmospheric changes using satellites and improve its mathematical models for predicting weather changes.

Many speakers referred to a July 1996 government report that projects the Earth's temperature will increase by 2 to 6.5 degrees by the year 2100, ``a rate faster than anything observed over the last 10,000 years,'' according to a summary.

This corresponds with a projected increase in sea level of 6 to 38 inches. The result, say many scientists, will be flooding and droughts that will affect the world's food production. The culprit is carbon dioxide emissions, at least 22 percent of which come from the United States.

Senior NASA research scientist Joel S. Levine told those gathered at VIMS that carbon dioxide was ``clearly the major gas controlling the temperature of our planet,'' contributing to 55 percent of the human-made greenhouse gases.

Levine's research with students from the College of William and Mary showed that the burning of fossil fuels such as natural gas and petroleum is not the only problem. About 40 percent of the carbon dioxide produced each year is from the burning of forests and grasslands, he said. Most of that takes place in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.

Clinton had addressed the role of developing nations in his speech, saying that countries emerging into the world economy should start that process with advanced technologies that are less polluting.

A representative from the Global Climate Coalition, a business-and-industry lobbying group, agreed that developing nations should participate in combating global warming.

But the Department of Energy is making the transition sound ``too easy,'' and ``too inexpensive,'' said Connie Holmes.

Holmes also works for the National Mining Association, and said Virginia's and West Virginia's coal miners could be in for hard times.

``That (coal mining) business is going to pretty well dry up, if that treaty goes through,'' Holmes said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Clinton, at Georgetown University on Monday, said

Americans cannot afford to ignore the issue of global warming.

Clinton also said businesses can have a beneficial role in

environmental reform.