‘92 POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE : Gore’s Environment Book Becomes a Weapon for Both Sides : Ecology: The Democrats point to the best-seller as a clear, courageous plan. The GOP characterizes it as the work of an extremist.

One of the main reasons Al Gore said he decided to run for President in 1988 was to make people aware that the global environment is dangerously close to disaster.

Like his campaign, the message failed to connect with voters. But if anything, Gore said he became even more convinced after the election that his environmental fears were well founded and that the issue should become a mission for his life.

Earlier this year, Gore wrote a book called “Earth in the Balance--Ecology and the Human Spirit” as another attempt to alert America to what he calls its destructive habits. He contends that the problems stem from a crisis in the relationship between humans and their environment.

“The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual,” Gore wrote. “. . . We have assumed that our lives need have no real connection to the natural world, that our minds are separate from our bodies, and that as disembodied intellects we can manipulate the world in any way we choose.”

As Gore returns to the presidential campaign as Bill Clinton’s running mate, “Earth in the Balance” provides a blueprint of one of the sharpest contrasts between the two White House tickets.

Gore’s supporters say the book will be embraced as courageous and visionary because it contains the kind of crystal-clear statements so rare from politicians.

But Republicans are convinced that the book’s bold language will help them define some of their fundamental differences with the Democratic ticket--and that voters will side with the GOP. The Administration hopes to cast Gore and Clinton as “environmental extremists,” and use sections from the book to back up their characterization. Ultimately, the GOP hopes to undermine the Democratic ticket’s moderate image.

In that context, Vice President Dan Quayle recently traveled to Michigan, the heartland of America’s automotive industry, to highlight Gore’s proposal to eliminate the internal combustion engine within 25 years.

“America has the world’s best environmental record, but that doesn’t matter to Gore and other hard-core environmentalists,” Quayle said.

Gore responded in a television appearance Sunday by charging that jobs in the auto industry are already being lost to the economic problems of the Republican Administration.

About eliminating the internal combustion engine, Gore said: “I used that as an example of the scale of changes we ought to contemplate over the next quarter-century. . . . I’m sure there were some in the aircraft industry who said: ‘Get rid of the propeller? Those jet engines will never fly.’ ”

The GOP strategy has been complicated by William K. Reilly, the man Bush appointed to run the Environmental Protection Agency. “I don’t think he (Gore) is an environmental extremist,” Reilly said after other members of the Administration had made the charge, adding that he has “a lot of respect” for Gore’s book.

Another assignment for Bush strategists is to dispel the impression that Clinton and Gore are the best ticket for change. As a result, Republicans have tried to portray Gore’s world view as one in which American society and individual freedoms are the sources of the Earth’s destruction.

As evidence, Republican attacks have focused on a section of “Earth in the Balance” in which Gore compares American society to the life of a drug addict and to the distorted behavior of a dysfunctional family.

Gore wrote that society’s lack of a relationship with the natural world has left a void that it has filled, like a drug addict, with an insatiable and destructive urge to consume environmental resources. At the same time, he said, society has developed a false world--evidenced by plastic flowers, air conditioning and frozen food--”to replace the experience of communion with the world that has been taken from us.”

Gore referred to Nazi Germany as another example of a dysfunctional society, providing fodder for the sharpest GOP attacks.

“When the vice presidential candidate of a major party thinks that every time you walk through the frozen-food section of a grocery store that it’s like Gestapoism in Nazi Germany, that is absolutely weird,” Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a recent speech.

Quayle also referred to the book, saying: “Theirs is a sad and strange outlook on the world.”

In an interview with The Times, Gore said that he is happy the book makes a strong case for increasing environmental diligence and that he is comfortable in defending it. But he added that he’s not sure he would have written the book if he had known he would be running for vice president.

“I might have felt a little more reluctant to do that if I felt (the book) was going to be in a national campaign,” Gore said aboard his campaign plane recently. “I might well have been more vulnerable to timidity in some of the frank self-description in the book and some of the efforts to really bare my soul.”

“Earth in the Balance” was on the national best-seller list before Gore was nominated, and sales have picked up.

Here are some of the main topics:

GLOBAL WARMING: In a chapter called “Climate and Civilization, a Brief History,” Gore contends that some of the world’s most traumatic times have been caused, or at least influenced, by environmental changes.

He traces examples back thousands of years, from a temperature shift shortly before the disappearance of the Minoan culture from Homer’s epics in 1200 B.C. to the 1930s migration of Oklahoma migrant workers from the Depression-era Dust Bowl. The message is that a slight shift in the environment can have profound effects on civilization.

“All of these changes took place during temperature variations of 1 to 2 degrees centigrade,” Gore wrote. “Yet today, at the close of the 20th Century, we are in the process of altering global temperatures by up to three or four times that amount.”

Gore predicts that global warming could cause seas to rise, forcing the dislocation of 10 million people from Bangladesh in the next few decades and, possibly, 60% of the population of Florida.

He suggests a variety of solutions to reduce the production of so-called greenhouse gases, which trap solar radiation and warm the planet. On an international level, he said, treaties should limit production of pollutants, and developed countries might retire some Third World debt in return for more environmentally benign practices.

POPULATION BOOM: The rapid depletion of food sources and destruction of such natural resources as the rain forests are largely caused by a booming population, Gore says. As a result, a primary focus for ecologists should be to slow population growth.

“From the beginning of humanity’s appearance on Earth to 1945, it took more than 10,000 generations to reach a world population of 2 billion people,” Gore wrote. “Now, in the course of one human lifetime--mine--the world population will increase from 2 (billion) to more than 9 billion--and it is already more than halfway there.”

Gore calls for an extensive program to stabilize global population that involves adequate nutrition, health care, an increase in literacy and education rates and lower infant mortality.

OZONE DEPLETION: One of the most dangerous global threats, Gore says, is the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere and the resulting increase in ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth. The problem has been caused, Gore says, largely by the release of chlorofluorocarbons during the last 60 years. CFCs come from such things as air conditioners, refrigerators and propellants for aerosol cans--although in recent years they have been replaced in aerosol cans with possibly more benign ingredients.

The radiation inhibits the ability of plants to photosynthesize--that is, to convert sunlight to fuel--the book says. It has also increased the incidence of skin cancer and cataracts and threatens humans’ immunity systems.

In the Australian state of Queensland, Gore said, three-quarters of residents over age 65 have skin cancer, and children are required by law to wear hats and scarves for protection from the sun.

“What does it mean to redefine one’s relationship to the sky?” he wrote. “What will it do to our children’s outlook on life if we have to teach them to be afraid to look up?”

Gore suggests that the United States accelerate its schedule for phasing out the use of CFCs.

GOVERNMENT: Gore sees an active role for government in changing American behavior to become more environmentally benign. He argues that changes can be made with minimal impact on lifestyles.

If cities charged for garbage pickup by the pound, for example, Gore suggests that residents would have greater incentive to recycle, reduce waste and avoid bulky packaging. He also proposes a government standard for “green labels” to steer consumers toward products with the least environmental impact.

Gore proposes a variety of tax mechanisms to influence behavior. He proposes two taxes--one on petroleum or coal fuels and another on “virgin materials”--such as trees used to make paper. The taxes could be offset by reductions in other taxes that would encourage more environmentally sensitive practices.

SITUATION IS GRAVE: Gore acknowledges that conclusive scientific evidence has not confirmed all the dire scenarios he predicts. Researchers are uncertain, for example, precisely what will happen if the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere doubles in the next few decades.

But he chastises those who suggest that further evidence is needed before taking drastic steps to significantly reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

“The insistence on complete certainty about the full details of global warming--the most serious threat that we have ever faced--is actually an effort to avoid facing the awful, uncomfortable truth: that we must act boldly, decisively, comprehensively and quickly, even before we know every last detail about the crisis,” he wrote.

The most significant change needed, Gore said, is in public attitudes, “for most people do not yet accept the fact that this crisis is extremely grave.” He compares the magnitude of the necessary shift in perception to the dawn of the nuclear age, when warfare was changed forever by the realization that humans were capable of destroying the planet.