WASHINGTON — In his first major environmental policy speech, President Clinton Wednesday declared that he is committed to stabilizing the country's emissions of atmosphere-warming pollutants at 1990 levels by the year 2000 and cutting them further in later years.
The decision, in Clinton's Earth Day speech, pleased environmentalists and follows a last-minute behind-the-scenes struggle between Administration aides on how far Clinton should go in wedding himself to a policy that could complicate his goals for sustained economic growth.
But Clinton stopped short of committing himself, as some environmentalists had wished, to higher auto fuel-efficiency standards, or to fuel taxes that would curtail consumption.
Instead, he called for a "cost-effective plan" that would be "a clarion call not for more bureaucracy or unnecessary costs, but instead for American ingenuity and creativity to produce the best and most efficient technology."
Clinton committed himself during the 1992 campaign to stabilizing greenhouse gases and environmentalists had been waiting for some time to hear him reaffirm that pledge. "He said it over and over and over," said Jim Maddy, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters.
Aides said that the emission-reduction plan Administration officials will devise by August will emphasize voluntary industry efforts to increase energy efficiency and promotion of technologies that will help the nation cut its output of carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons and other greenhouse gases.
Also Wednesday to commemorate Earth Day today, Clinton, as expected, declared that he will sign a biological diversity treaty aimed at protecting threatened species. President George Bush had balked at signing the treaty for fear it would hurt the patents of American biotechnology firms that use some rare species to make drugs and other products.
But Clinton Administration officials have worked out a deal with industry that they believe guarantees the treaty will protect their rights even as it sets limits on exploitation of plants and animals. The treaty is important, he said Wednesday, "not only because of what it does to protect species, but because of opportunities it offers for cutting-edge companies whose research creates new opportunities, new medicines, new products and new jobs."
