Clinton Sounds Climate Shift Warning Praises Costa Rica’s Practices, Says He’ll Go To U.N. Conference

Drenched by a misting rain, President Clinton stood before the soaring forest here on Friday to issue a hedged warning about global climate change and to declare that the world has much to learn from Costa Rica’s environmental stewardship.

Clinton announced that he would lead the American delegation to a special U.N. session on the environment in late June in New York, in hopes of raising the meeting’s international profile.

While calling for reduction of greenhouse gases, Clinton stopped short of an explicit declaration that pollution was causing the global climate to change for the worse. “There is some doubt about what increased greenhouse gas emissions are doing to the climate,” Clinton said, “but no one doubts that they’re changing the climate, and no one doubts that the potential consequences can be very profound and severe.”

In keeping with the relentless solicitude he has shown his hosts on his first trip to Latin America, Clinton did not talk about the environment in smogbound Mexico City earlier this week. Instead, he waited until reaching Costa Rica, where one quarter of the land, he noted on Friday, is protected by the government. Clinton flew on to Barbados later Friday afternoon, for a summit meeting of Caribbean nations there today.

Together with its stable democracy, Costa Rica’s environmental conservation has paid off in tourism, the largest source of income here.

Clinton spoke on a rare flat area in this jagged rain forest. Just behind him the land dropped away into a gorge, before rising almost vertically just yards beyond in an undulating curtain of green that disappeared upward into the mist. The rain fell steadily, blowing sideways under the canvas canopy set up for the event and spritzing the small crowd, made up mostly of American and Cost Rican park service employees.

Costa Rica generates 85 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, and President Jose Maria Figueres Olsen is pushing the use of electric vehicles in the cities here. Offering another morsel of assistance here, the Clinton administration signed a joint statement on Friday with Costa Rica committing itself to providing advice for the project.

“Costa Rica’s ambitious plans prove that we can have clean air and renewable energy in ways that create jobs here and in our country,” Clinton said. Costa Rica’s first electric bus, parked nearby, was made in Tennessee, Clinton said.

Costa Rica is pursuing a variety of unusual environmental initiatives, including some that the United States government has not attempted. It is licensing the use of its natural resources to pharmaceutical companies to conduct “biological prospecting” for drugs, using the fees paid by the companies to protect the forests. “It increasingly seems that we might be doing that in the park system in the United States,” said Bruce Babbitt, the secretary of the interior.

Mike McCurry, Clinton’s press secretary, said before Clinton’s speech that it was intended to “invigorate global environmental diplomacy on the part of the United States.” But the president spoke for only eight and a half minutes, and did not seem eager to linger in the rain.

In his remarks, Figueres noted that Clinton had been emphatic about visiting the rain forest. “I hope this met your criteria, as to the forest and as to the rain,” he said. “And if it doesn’t, we have some thunder and lightning on order.”

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = BRAULIO CARRILLO NATIONAL PARK, COSTA RICA