Only on the surface, complain U.S. negotiating officials, does America's global warming reduction plan appear to be weak. But environmentalists and delegates from 143 nations have been unable, it seems, to look beneath the upper crusts of proposed U.S. emission-reduction policies that, they believe, lead nowhere fast.

The European Union sees a need for as much as a 15% reduction below 1990 levels by 2010. A U.S. State Department official waxed pessimistic, however, saying, "We just don't see all the kinds of coalescence that you need yet" for such an agreement.

The Americans admit that, on the surface, the U.S. proposal is "the weakest on the table." Business interests—especially oil and coal—insist that the gasses their products emit are harmless, and that climatic changes, including major storms, and the melting of the polar caps, have little or nothing to do with what top-of-the-line scientists call heat-trapping "greenhouse" gasses. These gasses the scientists attribute to ever-increasing outpourings of fossil fuels.

Sea levels rising at accelerated rates would—because of polar caps melting-- inundate lowland areas in the next century, obliterating such states as Florida.

Kyoto, Japan will host a long-planned international conference to address such scenarios in early December. During November emissaries from each nation will once more hold high-level talks in an attempt to iron out differences prior to the Kyoto conference.

A previous conference addressing the planet's climatic health took place in Brazil in 1992 where developing countries clashed with more developed ones, accusing them of hypocrisy. Since technically advanced countries are responsible for the preponderance of greenhouse emissions, say the underdeveloped nations, they should be willing to take a lead in emission reduction.

Fearing economic slowdowns should they reject current gaseous technology, the less developed countries point fingers of blame at those nations producing higher levels of carbon emissions. The United States leads as the world's number one pollutant. Therefore, argue economically disadvantaged regions, the U.S. should, by all rights, commit to the highest reductions.

The economically advanced nations, these non-industrials say, have polluted the world through the greater part of the past century, and, if climatic destabilization is occurring, it is not because of the non-industrialized world.

Therefore, they argue, the industrialized nations must bear the greatest burdens of reduction. Economies worldwide, increasingly dependent on fossil fuels, are reluctant to switch to less poisonous technologies, afraid of inflicting economic self-injuries.

American negotiators insist that their own position occupies a middle ground between Japan on the low end of reductions and the European Union, with its demand for the highest percentage changes. Japan, least worried about emissions, is calling for reductions (by 2010) that range only between 2.5% and 5%.

The Clinton administration insists that its plan to tackle all six greenhouse gases would reduce emissions by more than 15%, and that, in fact, by 2010, such reductions would soar to 30%. Other nations are treating this claim not only as self-serving, but as deceptive.