Global warming treaty: a black cloud for business.

Proponents of global climate change theory claim the climate currently is warming due to an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused primarily by the use of fossil fuel. According to the theory, without a severe and immediate reduction in the man-made production of C[O.sub.2], the Earth's climate will warm further, causing all sorts of calamities.

Despite the questionable accuracy of this claim, the resulting dire warnings have prompted a rash of proposed restrictions and mandates that, if enacted, will place U.S. businesses and industries at a gross competitive disadvantage to their foreign counterparts and have a devastating effect on the nation's economy. What's more, rational assessments suggest little or no resulting benefit to the environment.

However, the global warming hype continues to build. At a recent U.N.-sponsored climate change conference in Geneva, Timothy Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs, expressed the administration's commitment to setting quantified, legally binding objectives and timetables for the reduction of C[O.sub.2] emissions. Carbon taxes, BTU taxes, increased vehicle mileage standards, and subsidized or free technology sharing are among the proposed policies.

These proposals come on the heels of unrealistic voluntary goals established by the 1992 Rio Climate Change Treaty. The U.S. government already admits that the treaty goal of returning to 1990 levels of C[O.sub.2] emissions by 2000 is unattainable. The radical changes necessary could reduce the U.S.' GDP by $200 billion annually, eliminate 600,000 jobs, raise gas prices by more than 50 cents a gallon, and increase food prices.

In a similar vein, unilateral, binding C[O.sub.2] reductions would push American businesses to move production overseas to countries not participating in or exempt from the requirements, entailing a loss of jobs in both the service and high-wage manufacturing industries. The potential harm caused by these proposed mandates, combined with the lack of consensus on the evidence for and effects of global warming, has already caused Australia, among other countries, to reject adopting an enforceable treaty by the next international meeting, which will be held next year in Japan.

The threat also has not gone unnoticed within President Clinton's own party. In a letter to the president, six Democratic senators indicated that any climate change treaty that unfairly penalized the U.S. in relation to its trading partners or that was undertaken without an adequate assessment of the economic and social consequences would not achieve the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate.

Corporate America seconds the motion. Prior to the Geneva conference, more than 100 top executives, including the CEOs of Exxon, General Motors, Motorola, LTV, Goodyear, Ryder System, CSX, Southern Pacific, Texas Utilities, and Maytag, wrote a letter to President Clinton that asserted: "The U.S. must take care to avoid commitments that will cost U.S. jobs, retard economic growth, or damage U.S. competitiveness... This is a global issue that needs to be addressed on a global basis."

Because developing countries will not be bound by the proposed treaty, it will offer little or no environmental benefit. According to the International Energy Agency, developing countries such as Russia, China, India, South Korea, and those in Eastern Europe currently produce more than half of all C[O.sub.2] emissions. Furthermore, as much as 85 percent of the projected increase in emissions will come from these countries. Therefore, even if developed countries somehow stopped all their C[O.sub.2] emissions immediately, total emissions would continue to rise.

If the policies included developing countries, they might be a rational reaction to the worst-case scenarios portrayed by advocates of climate change theory. But the evidence suggests that the proposal is based more on incomplete data and a powerful campaign staged by environmentalists than on a rational assessment of the evidence of and dangers posed by global warming.

In fact, alarming earlier projections by the global warming theorists have failed to materialize. According to predictions, the Earth already should be much warmer than it currently is, and the rainfall in the Sahara desert should equal that in London - which, of course, it does not.

But even if the current warming figure of 0.3 to 0.6 degrees Celsius is correct, such an increase is well within natural temperature variations for the last 15,000 years. In addition, satellite data - the most reliable climate evidence we have - show no evidence of warming in this century.

It's time to rain on the climate change theorists' parade. The evidence suggests significant man-made global climate change is not occurring. Thus, the U.S. should not act unless and until further proof concerning the existence and possible impact of global warming is uncovered. That's the only way to preserve our economic sanity.

Pete du Pont is the former governor of Delaware and policy chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas.