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The European nations and Japan have been hailed as summit heroes for their willingness to support its agreements, but they will have to bolster their declared commitment to reducing greenhouse gases with realistic programs. For instance, part of Japan's strategy to stabilize CO2 emissions calls for building 20 nuclear power plants by the year 2000 and 40 by 2010. It stretches credibility to assume that Japanese citizens, already worried about nuclear risks, will agree to this massive initiative in their crowded communities. Similarly, countries like Italy have found an easy way to meet targets of greenhouse emissions by buying power from their neighbors, essentially an accounting trick that allows nations to claim they are addressing global warming without coming to grips with energy efficiency.
The U.S. has been hammering at the "easy rhetoric" of other nations, but it has yet to accept the responsibilities of the world's largest economy. It has a strong story to tell in such concrete measures as the Clean Air Act, transportation legislation, a pending energy bill and an ambitious Green Lights energy-conservation program. Together these may enable the U.S. to beat the target of stabilizing greenhouse emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. But instead of seizing leadership and galvanizing industry to compete with Japan and Europe for an emerging market for clean technologies, the Bush Administration has taken up the cause of the environmentally handicapped, limply replaying arguments developed by the coal, electric-utility and railroad lobbies that meeting the greenhouse target would cost jobs and harm the economy.
/ Saddened by the isolation of a country with a distinguished history of environmental programs, many delegates felt that the U.S. has squandered an exquisite opportunity to invest meaning in the new world order. Said retiring Senator Timothy Wirth of Colorado: "I'm afraid that history is not going to treat the U.S. kindly when it looks back at the summit."
Given the lack of leadership by governments, Maurice Strong, the summit's secretary-general, hopes ordinary people will force politicians to live up to the obligations articulated at Rio. He plans to make his own contribution to this grass-roots movement by heading an Earth Council, which he sees as a watchdog organization like the Helsinki Watch groups that sprang up after the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights. The Earth Council's goal would be to ensure that institutions such as the Sustainable Development Commission actually do their job.
Most summit participants agree that the best hope for the future comes from changes in values prompted by grass-roots concerns. Said Spencer Beebe, president of the American environmental group Ecotrust: "Saving the planet has never been an issue of money but rather a matter of the resourcefulness and motivation of individuals."