‘Greenhouse Effect’ Plan May Be Revived

The chairman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality said Thursday that the Bush Administration is reconsidering a plan killed in the waning days of the Reagan White House that would have directed federal agencies to take account of the “greenhouse effect” in assessing the environmental impact of government actions.

The directive, proposed by the council, would affect federal decisions on issues ranging from new-car mileage standards to opening new lands for oil and gas development and long-range forest management plans.

Following what CEQ chairman A. Alan Hill described as a 40-minute meeting Thursday at the White House, Hill said that he is “quite optimistic” that the proposal will be approved.

“This was a very good meeting. There’s very sincere concern and interest in discussing how we proceed from here. I’m quite optimistic,” Hill said in a telephone interview. Hill said he met with Deputy White House Counsel John Schmidt.

Another government official who was briefed about the meeting but was not present said the atmosphere was “much more positive than earlier meetings about this subject. It is now a topic that’s being seriously revisited.”

However, Deputy White House Press Secretary Steve Hart denied that a reexamination had begun. “There’s been no policy review undertaken on this topic by the Bush Administration, nor was the fact that one would be undertaken alluded to in the meeting, according to Schmidt,” Hart said.

How the issue is eventually settled is widely viewed as an early test of the new Administration’s commitment to translating its oft-stated concern about mounting global environmental problems into firm policies.

Shortly before Reagan left office, Hill was told by a presidential assistant not to issue the proposed directive. The aide warned that the government could be opening itself to lawsuits from environmental groups for not having taken the greenhouse effect into consideration in the past.

Moreover, there were complaints that the Council on Environmental Quality, which advises the President on environmental issues and is charged with making sure that federal agencies consider the environmental impact of their plans, did not sufficiently consult with federal agencies before advancing its proposal. Between 450 and 500 environmental impact statements are prepared each year by federal agencies before final decisions are made on an array of development programs and policy decisions.

Nonetheless, the decision to put a hold on issuing the directive drew widespread criticism from key senators and as recently as last Tuesday Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), the ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote Hill to remind him of the panel’s interest in reviving the greenhouse directive.

Last week, 10 senators wrote President Bush again urging him to impose the directive and, in effect, challenged Bush to put his campaign rhetoric into practice. The lawmakers said that they were “pleased” by expressions of concern about global environmental issues from ranking members of the Administration. “But,” they wrote, “we have been troubled in the past, however, by a gap between general statements of intent and concrete action on the part of U.S. officials on this subject.

“The United States is the largest national and per capita source of the gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect. We cannot expect others to cooperate with us in dealing with this problem if we do not act decisively ourselves. Your acceptance of the CEQ proposal would be a dramatic first step toward demonstrating strong international leadership by the United States on global environmental issues,” they wrote.

During the campaign, Bush repeatedly expressed concern about worldwide environmental issues such as global warming brought about by an acceleration of the so-called greenhouse effect in which gases like carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuel trap the heat of the sun near the Earth.