AVENPORT, Iowa - Al Gore used a new report on global warming to frame a two-pronged attack yesterday, spearing George W. Bush over the issue as he tried to snare environmentalists supporting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.
At a Kansas City, Mo., diner and later at a rally in front of a firehouse just across the Mississippi River from Illinois, the vice president cast Bush as a servant of special interests and himself as a worthy trustee of the nation's air, land, and water.
Gore played off a new study by a United Nations-sponsored panel warning that global warming could raise the average temperature 11 degrees by 2100.
''Some people want to dig in their heels and give the policies over to big oil companies and chemical manufacturers, let them cut corners by dumping their pollution on everybody else, putting their heads in the sand about everybody else,'' he told a dozen patrons at Town-Topic Hamburgers in Kansas City.
Asked by reporters whether he was referring to Bush, Gore replied: ''He has said that he's unsure of the cause and he doesn't think that anything should be done other than study it.''
Later, in Iowa, Gore seized on a report that said Bush's plan to divert Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts would make it all but impossible to pay off the national debt.
The American Academy of Actuaries, a nonpartisan group of financial and statistical specialists, also said the proposal probably would trigger federal budget deficits by 2015.
''They confirm what I've been saying,'' Gore told an audience of several thousand filling an intersection in front of Hose Co. No. 4. ''His numbers don't even come close to adding up.''
On both counts, the Bush campaign rebuffed the criticism. It also highlighted other portions of the actuaries' report that criticized Gore's Social Security plans. The academy complained that the ''lockbox'' Gore wants to use to protect the Social Security trust fund only marginally reduces the national debt, while ''the Gore plan does not suggest any structural reforms to Medicare that would reduce costs, but simply forestalls the inevitable tough choices.''
Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett said: ''The study does underscore the fact that unless we have a leader willing to reform our nation's entitlement programs, the debt will be a long-term [burden] under every economic circumstance. In this race, only Governor Bush is proposing such reforms.''
Nonetheless, the Gore campaign launched a new TV ad highlighting the favorable elements of the actuaries' study.
On the environment and global warming, Bartlett highlighted Bush's actions as Texas governor.
''The governor does believe it's a problem but also believes we should have all the best science and knowledge available before we make a decision,'' he said. Bartlett noted that Bush had signed legislation requiring emissions reductions from Texas utility plants exempted from the 1972 Clean Air Act, although the Gore campaign dismissed the move because it did not cover the state's oil refineries.
While undercutting his Republican rival, Gore's criticism was aimed at attracting votes from Nader supporters. The consumer activist is running at about 5 percent in national polls, but his pro-environment, anti-corporate welfare agenda is playing in Washington and Oregon, states viewed as critical to Gore.
Later in the day, during a rally in Madison, Wis., the vice president said that a vote for Nader would indirectly serve the interests of big polluters.
''If the big oil companies and the chemical manufacturers and the other big polluters were able to communicate a message to this state, they would say vote for George Bush, or in any case vote for Ralph Nader,'' he said.
The vice president, following a pattern of recent days, spoke in dire terms as he described the election campaign. He called cleaning up the environment ''a moral issue'' and cast Bush as a front man for special interests.
In both Iowa and Missouri, he told voters they were ''in the catbird seat.'' While having only seven and 11 electoral votes, respectively, Gore said the potential closeness of the election gave every state great weight.
Material from Reuters was used in this report.
