The Bush administration yesterday appeared to end all hope of reviving the Kyoto treaty on global warming, declaring it had "no interest" in its implementation and taking the first steps towards withdrawing the US signature on the accord.
Kyoto's death warrant, announced by Christine Todd Whitman, head of the environmental protection agency (EPA), represented a blunt rebuff to European hopes of establishing a global programme to slow down the emission of greenhouse gases, amid startling new evidence of rapid climate change. A UN panel of scientists assessing the threat recently reported that average temperatures could rise by up to 5.8 degrees celsius this century without a serious effort to curb emissions.
The former vice-president Al Gore signed the Kyoto accord on behalf of the US, but it was never ratified by the Senate. A state department official yesterday confirmed a report in the Washington Post that the new administration had asked the state department to explore ways of formally withdrawing the US signature from the document.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, privately told European ambassadors last week that the US considered the Kyoto accord "dead", but the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, had hoped to convince Mr Bush not to abandon the agreement altogether when the two leaders meet today in Washington.
"It is important that the US accepts its responsibility for the world climate. They are the biggest economy in the world and the heaviest energy consumers," Mr Schröder told the Los Angeles Times.
Ms Whitman's remarks represent a snub to the German chancellor on the eve of his arrival. Asked whether the Kyoto deal had any chance of survival, she told journalists: "No, we have no interest in implementing that treaty."
In a letter to Republican senators earlier this month, Mr Bush said he opposed the Kyoto deal - under which the US would have to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012 - because it exempted developing countries and would harm the US economy. He said he would not impose controls on emissions of carbon dioxide, despite an election pledge to do so.
A European diplomat called the hardline attitude depressing and marked a significant divergence between European and US views on how to deal with the problem. It cast a pall over an international meeting in Bonn in June, where a fresh attempt is to be made to establish a consensus.
European leaders had been hopeful that the 1997 treaty could be salvaged after Ms Whitman came to the G8 environment summit in Trieste and signed a joint statement on March 4 which said: "We commit ourselves to strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost-effective manner the environmental integrity of the Kyoto protocol."
Ms Whitman attempted to persuade Mr Bush to support an international agreement on global warming. In a memorandum to the White House obtained by the Guardian, her office said such a treaty would "begin to create some certainty that climate change is a lasting policy issue".
The White House's stance represents a serious defeat for Ms Whitman and the treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill. In a memo for Mr Bush on February 27, Mr O'Neill said that the accumulation of greenhouse gases was "a very big problem" and that the emissions controls laid down in the Kyoto treaty did not go far enough.
Amy Kreider, director of the global warming campaign at the US National Environmental Trust, said: "This is no way to conduct policy.
"It looks like amateur hour at the White House as regards foreign policy."