In a dramatic about-face that reflects the important influence of the energy industry in the White House, President Bush has abandoned an explicit campaign pledge to set limits to CO2 emissions.
The decision, against the advice of his director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms Christine Todd-Whitman, sets the new administration on a collision course with Europe in the Kyoto climate-change talks.
Only days ago Ms Todd-Whitman was assuring the country that Mr Bush would keep his election promise. "George Bush was very clear during the course of the campaign that he believes in a multi-pollutant strategy, and that includes CO 2", she told CNN's Crossfire. "He has also been very clear that the science is good on global warming."
During the election Mr Bush even criticised his opponent, Mr Al Gore, for proposing voluntary emission curbs. "In Texas we have done better with mandatory reductions and I believe the nation can do better," he claimed.
But on Tuesday, in a letter to four Republican senators, Mr Bush claimed that "new" evidence from the Energy Department showed that curbs on CO2 emissions would lead to a move away from coal to gas and result in higher energy costs. "I do not believe . . . that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emission reductions for carbon dioxide," he told them.
The decision was a bitter disappointment to environmentalists who believe that CO2 is a major factor in global warming and was described by one Democratic member of the House, Mr Henry Waxman, as a "breathtaking betrayal". And Mr Waxman pointed the finger firmly at the influence of coal and oil lobbies on a White House.
Mr Bush and Vice-President Bill Cheney are both former oil executives as are several senior members of the Cabinet, and Mr Bush will have been reminded that he owes the coal producers of West Virginia, won by him on promises that coal would be made a priority by his Administration.
Mr Bush has made repeated play of the need for the US to become more self-sufficient in energy production by such controversial means as drilling in the Alaskan National Wilderness Park. For energy interests the policy on CO 2 jarred with that.
Mr David Doniger, senior lawyer for the Natural Re sources Defence Council, said: "Bush has turned his back on the consensus of the science which shows that global warming is an alarming problem. "You just can't deal with global warming unless you deal with power plants. He's snuffed out the spark of what we had hoped would be a progressive environmental policy. He's caved in to the coal industry's medieval view of the science," he said.
Internationally Mr Bush's decision will be viewed with dismay. Talks on implementation of the Kyoto protocol on emission limits were postponed last month at US request after its negotiators said they needed more time to prepare. That had given rise to hope that the US, the main obstacle to binding commitments to greenhouse gas emission reductions, would be more forthcoming.
The Kyoto Protocol has been signed by more than 100 countries but has not been ratified by any industrialised nation.
Its final adoption would require the US and three dozen other industrialised countries to cut combined emissions by 2012 to 5 per cent below their 1990 levels.
The US produces a fourth of the world's emissions with 5 per cent of the world's population.
Bargaining broke down in November at The Hague, where the EU rejected a US compromise position.
