The United States and its partners at the economic summit sidestepped differences on global warming Wednesday, but issued an environmental declaration that emphasized forestry protection. The seven leaders pledged to negotiate an international agreement to curb deforestation as expeditiously as possible. The environmental declaration contained mostly general language on global warming and called for an international convention on the subject to be completed by 1992. The United Nations is already working on the issue. The Bush administration prevailed in blocking European wishes to specify exactly how much the industrialized nations should reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. Carbon dioxide has been estimated to account for about 55 percent of global warming, but the timing and the degree to which the earth is expected to become hotter are uncertain. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said Germany had wanted tougher commitments in the area of emissions, but added, ``We can live with'' the communique. Environmental groups immediately lambasted the summit as having failed to produce substantive progress on environmental concerns. President Bush fired back, saying he wasn't out to ``get some brownie points'' from the environmental groups. He told a news conference that the summit had produced ``a reasoned position, not a radical position that's going to throw a lot of American men and women out of jobs.'' The summit declaration emphasized forestry planks. It called for immediate negotiations to forge a worldwide forestation program; a World Bank plan to stop destruction of Brazil's tropical rain forests, and a toughening of the World Bank's current Tropical Forestry Action Plan to emphasize ``conservation and biological diversity.'' ``The destruction of forests has reached alarming proportions,'' the summit communique said. A forestry program could end up helping combat global warming eventually because trees absorb the carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to the earth's warming. Scientists say 20 percent of global warming is due to deforestation. Kohl said he was pleased about the summit leaders' commitment on Brazilian rain forests. ``The continuing destruction of tropical forests must be stopped through an immediate program,'' he said. The leaders said the forestry agreement should be ready for signing by 1992. The general language of the summit communique stated: ``We as industrialized countries have an obligation to be leaders in meeting these challenges'' on climate change, ozone depletion, deforestation, marine pollution, and the loss of biological diversity. But environmentalists said the seven leaders had abandoned their promise at their Paris summit a year ago to take decisive, urgent action on environmental problems. ``Despite their green rhetoric, the G-7 leaders leave Houston in the red on the environment,'' the Envirosummit coalition of prominent environmental groups said. The group welcomed the promise of a forestry protection plan, however. ``The summit is a failure on the environment because they did nothing on global warming,'' said Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. ``In order to cover over their inaction on global warming, they've added a fig leaf on rain forests.'' On the contentious issue of global warming, the communique included vague compromise language calling for ``appropriate implementing protocols'' to stem global warming ``as expeditiously as possible'' but it was unclear whether such protocols would have to wait until after a 1992 convention on global warming. The Bush administration says more research is needed on climate change before dramatic steps are taken to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
