Planet Of The Year: The Greening of the U.S.S.R.

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Gorbachev, whose background is in agriculture, has shown a special concern for the environment from the beginning of his reign. Early on, he toured the country and took care to detour from the carefully prepared showcase routes to inspect firsthand the polluted rivers and devastated forests. Funds for environmental protection, about $24 billion this year, are projected to reach $46.4 billion annually in the first half of the 1990s. At the same time, Gorbachev's regime has cracked down on polluters. Around Lake Baikal, about two dozen violations of ecological standards have been referred to prosecutors. In Nizhni Tagil the government has closed ten factories for failing to control toxic emissions and has begun criminal investigations against more than ten other plants.

But the Soviet leader may face a potential conflict between his desire for a cleaner environment and his hopes of rapidly raising the living standards and / consumption levels of his people. Without careful pollution control, boosting production will befoul the environment even more. And money that goes into antipollution equipment cannot be used for industrial expansion. In Boulder, Morgun emphasized that the Kremlin wanted to get around this dilemma by redirecting money from military spending into the civilian economy. That, he said, depended on continued progress in arms-control talks with the U.S.

From an international perspective, the most disturbing aspect of the Soviet economy is the enormous quantity of carbon dioxide it puts into the air. Because the machines in many Soviet factories are obsolete and inefficient, they consume an inordinate amount of energy, making the country one of the largest contributors to the greenhouse effect. The Soviets are aware of this problem and hope to solve it by importing technology designed to improve energy efficiency and pollution control. They hope that much of that technology will come from the U.S. Said Morgun: "We will go anyplace, over any mountain, over an ocean to get the technology. And if you offer some kind of technology, we will be glad to accept it. We would be most grateful."

That is a plea the U.S. should take seriously, by easing restrictions on the export of industrial technology to the Soviets. Unfortunately, the biggest barrier to such shipments is not export controls but the lack of hard currency. The U.S. cannot finance the Soviet drive to conserve energy and control pollution, but America should offer as much technical assistance as possible. The Soviets seem to be sincerely determined to clean up their act, and the U.S. should help out.