A Plan to Help the Planet

Most policymakers would rather wait until the greenhouse effect and other environmental threats have irrefutably arrived before taking remedial action. Not Senator Albert Gore. "When you look at the overall pattern, the image is so clear that further delay is utterly irresponsible," he says. "We know enough right now to justify moving as quickly as possible to change the practices that are causing the worst environmental destruction in history."

The Tennessee Democrat is not just talking: last week he introduced a bill in Congress containing steps aimed at halting the deterioration of the environment. For one thing, the proposed law would replace the White House's Council on Environmental Quality with a new body. Called the Council on World Environmental Policy, it would refocus attention on ecological problems of the planet as a whole. The bill also calls for tougher U.S. fuel-economy standards for autos and a phased-in ban on chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals that exacerbate the greenhouse effect and destroy the stratosphere's protective ozone layer.