Floor Statement- Antarctic Treaty
Mr. GORE. Mr. President, on October 4, 1991, the Antarctic Treaty consultative parties adopted and opened for signature the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. Twenty-five consultative parties have signed the protocol, including the United States. I urge my colleagues to ratify this protocol.
The protocol builds upon the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, extending and improving the treaty's effectiveness as a mechanism for ensuring the protection of the Antarctic environment. It designates Antarctica as a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science, and sets forth environmental protection principles applicable to human activities in Antarctica that will be binding under international law. These include obligations to accord priority to scientific research and a prohibition of Antarctic mineral resource activities.
Additionally, the protocol enforces an indefinite ban on mineral prosecting, exploration, and development activities. This ban is not reviewable for 50 years, and has no termination date, unless agreed upon by 75 percent of the consultative members. This ban is essential to uphold the integrity of the Antarctic environment.
The protocol is urgently needed to protect Antarctica's fragile environment. The Antarctic is remote from our thinking on most occasions and, yet, as we become more concerned about global climate changes, we begin to understand Antarctica. Far from being at the fringes of life on Earth, Antarctica is near its core, a prime mover in the organic food chain, a principal cause of the wind and ocean currents which make up the system of weather as we know it.
Anyone who visits Antarctica cannot help but experience a sense that the place dwarfs all human scale. I traveled to Antarctica in 1988, to gather evidence on global warming and ozone depletion. In many ways, Antarctica is the frontier of the ecological crisis. It is the Antarctic where the first evidence of an ozone hole was discovered. The Antarctic provides ice cores that indicate high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere correlate with changes in global temperature. And it is the Antarctic that acts as a massive engine driving the world's weather, redistributing its massive coldness through the winds of the air and currents of the sea.
It is also the Antarctic that contains some of the most polluted waters in the world. A soup of PCB's, raw sewage, and other unknown substances contaminates much of McMurdo Sound. Without the protocol, more tragic situations like this are likely to develop, as yet more scientists and tourists make the long journey to the South Pole.
Most alarming is the possibility that mining could be carried out in the fragile Antarctic environment. Mining in Antarctica could have global consequences. Oil spills and pollution could kill the plankton that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen in the cold waters surrounding Antarctica. Other zooplankton provide the bottom layer of the food chain that so many marine organisms depend on.
That is why, in 1989, I introduced a bill to protect Antarctica as a global ecological commons. That bill, and another measure by my colleague Senator Kerry, were signed into law in 1990 by President Bush. But while we in Congress had clearly stated that it should be the policy of the United States to pursue an indefinite prohibition on commercial mineral development and related industrial activities in Antarctica, President Bush opposed us every step of the way--obstructing our efforts here at home and the effort of nearly every one of our Antarctica Treaty partners to prohibit mining and protect the fragile Antarctic ecosystem.
When the Antarctic Treaty parties met in Madrid in the spring of 1991 to negotiate the protocol, the President sent his representatives with the instruction to push for a temporary ban on mineral exploration--maybe 20 or 30 years--after which time the moratorium would be lifted. That is clearly not an indefinite ban, which we in Congress had passed--and the President signed--into law. The President was ignoring the wishes of the American people as expressed through votes here in Congress and flagrantly violating the law.
It should have come as no surprise that the Bush administration would attempt to scrap a treaty on environmental protection. It's a strategy we've seen played out in subsequent negotiations on other global environmental issues. In the global climate change negotiations, the biodiversity negotiations--and nearly every one of the many issues discussed at the Earth summit, the administration was the single largest obstacle to progress. The Earth summit for us was in every respect an environmental, economic, and foreign policy disaster.
The incredible thing about the President's position in the Antarctic negotiations is that there really is no reason to push for mining in Antarctica. The U.S. mining industry has had little interest in mining there--the environment is too harsh. In addition, the Office of Technology Assessment has started:
There are no known oil, gas or mineral deposits in Antarctica of commercial value, and furthermore, the technology does not presently exist to recover minerals in the harsh environment of Antarctica.
While other nations at the Madrid negotiations pushed for a permanent and indefinite ban on mining activities in Antarctica, the United States continued to ask for only a 20-40 year moratorium. The administration pushed its case until, single handedly, our negotiators nearly caused the talks to crash. Finally, intense international pressure and the work my colleagues joined with me in here in the Senate sent a loud message to the President to change course. The negotiations were saved--but only at the 11th hour and well after our good will with our allies had been dealt a serious blow.
Rather than risk the demise of the whole treaty, the other signatory countries acquiesced to the U.S. demands and created a compromise treaty that would ban minerals exploration for 50 years and would continue the ban unless 75 percent of the consulting countries agreed to rescind it. This final compromise is what we are here to ratify today.
It is not a perfect measure. It is weaker than what I and others in Congress had hoped for. It is not the strongest bill the world could have had. The administration made sure of that. But it is a first step. It is a clear advantage over what the status quo offers, which is no protection whatsoever for Antarctica's environment. In spite of the fact that the Bush administration torpedoed a stronger protocol, I support this measure, and ask my colleagues to do the same.