choose to fund the program from the general fund indefinitely," CBO Director June O'Neill wrote. But CBO's calculations did not sit well with EPA officials, who said the tax loss is $4 million a day, plus interest, to the trust fund, based on the $1.5 billion EPA collected in FY95. EPA estimates it can sustain its current level of funding through the end of FY99. The long-term future of the tax depends on the outcome of next month's elections. In August, while on his preconvention whistle-stop tour, President Clinton called on Congress to reinstate the tax. Still, many in Congress are unwilling to do so without first overhauling the program. Oil and chemical manufacturers that pay heavily into the tax oppose it and are likely to continue to fight for its demise. Bill Bresnick, environmental affairs representative for Texaco Inc., said oil producers provide more than half of the fund's annual income, a sum that far exceeds any liability the companies may have incurred. If the funds run dry, some industry representatives believe that state Superfund programs will take over NPL site cleanups. Many states are interested in taking on more responsibility for directing Superfund cleanups, said Robbie Roberts, executive director of the Environmental Council of States. "But the states do not want to be left holding the bag financially, " Roberts said. —CATHERINE M. COONEY
International body moves forward on controlling greenhouse gas emissions Future international treaties on global climate change—negotiated after 2000—should include legally binding targets instead of voluntary goals, according to the final declaration of the Second Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), held in Geneva in July. The United States endorsed this goal, and Timothy Wirth, State Department undersecretary for global affairs announced that the United States supports reductions in climate change tlint HI*6 "realistic verifiable and binding " However he provided no specifics on how extensive the emissions reductions should be or when they should take effect The principle of binding reductions, supported by most delegates and many environmental groups but not a full consensus, was included in the Geneva Declaration, the final product of the conference. The declaration is one in a series of international agreements issued as part of the United Nation's call in 1990 to address the need to control greenhouse gases. It is a nonbinding statement of the attending ministers intended to lay out the direction for discussions at next year's conference in Kyoto Japan where negotiators are expected to make specific commitments The first declaration was
State "Superfund" programs expand State Superfund programs have made significant progress in standardizing cleanup requirements and using risk assessment methods to determine the standards, according to an annual report on state Superfund programs released in July by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), a nonprofit research group. According to ELI, in 1995,44 states had some kind of cleanup program in place for hazardous waste sites not listed on the federal National Priorities List, up from 22 states in 1989. As many as 24 states have promulgated their own cleanup standards, up from 5 in 1989; and 45 states report using risk assessment methods to calculate cleanup decisions at hazardous waste sites. Forty-three states have retroactive liability provisions, which impose cleanup responsibility on any party that contributed to the pollution before enactment of the state law. The same standard applies to the federal Superfund. Republican leaders tried to soften this and other liability provisions in their Superfund bills but met stiff opposition from congressional Democrats and the White House. For a copy of "An Analysis of State Superfund Programs: 50-State Study, 1995 Update," call ELI at (202) 939-3248.
signed by the heads of state during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, a nonbinding document that committed signatories to achieve voluntary targets and schedules. During that meeting, delegates from the European Union pushed for more binding commitments to be included, but delegates from the United States refused to go along. The Geneva Declaration calls for a flexible, free-market approach to achieving the reductions, including "joint implementation" of emissions credit trading among countries. It calls for the emissions reductions to begin as early as 2005, but no specific targets or timetables were set. V\firth said the United States hopes to provide concrete proposals during the next meeting of negotiators in December. But industry groups that attended the conference as observers disagreed that tougher, more binding language is necessary. Industry groups have consistently attacked the science behind global climate change. The most recent focus has been the second report released in July by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the panel of international scientists charged with assessing the state of global climate change. The report states there is a "discernible human influence on global climate" and that "the chemical composition of the atmosphere is being altered by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases " Some industry groups including the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) which reDresents utilities and other industries that burn or minp fossil fiipk allppp that the rpnort altered to tone down the uncertainties originally expressed by the authors. GCC and other opr
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tific consensus on global warmingt Several groups also complain will cripple the U.S. economy. But to Wirth, the statements in the second IPCC report are "remarkable." According to State Department officials, the move to
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