The decision by President Bush to repudiate his campaign commitment to curb COs2] emissions has stranded his administration without a policy at the start of a new round of international talks on global warming.
It has propelled the US into another controversy with its closest allies, the EU, as the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, warned him yesterday when he visited Washington.
His host promised he would work with Germany and other US allies to devise a plan that will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions linked to global climate change.
"We'll be working with Germany, we'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases but I will not accept anything that will harm our economy and hurt our American workers," Mr Bush said at a news conference.
But with the US no longer pretending that the scientific evidence of warming is inconclusive and thus being forced to address the issue of actual emission reductions, Mr Bush's representative in the climate change talks, the moderate head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms Christine Todd Whitman, faces a huge credibility problem with other countries which have been begging her to outline a US position.
Next Thursday environment ministers from the Americas are due to meet to prepare a new strategy for a Summit of the Americas in May and then for the July heads of government talks in Bonn under the UN Framework Convention on Global Warming signed by the US in 1992.
"We're ready to work with our friends and allies on the issues of global climate change to develop alternative approaches to the Kyoto Protocol," Mr Sean McCormack of the National Security Council told journalists this week. He and the President's spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, had made it clear, however, that Kyoto is dead.
Yet, a memo from Ms Whitman to the President earlier this month, revealed by the Washington Post, insisted that Kyoto was "the only game in town".
"There's a real fear in the international community", she warned, "that if the US is not willing to discuss the issue within the framework of Kyoto, the whole thing will fall apart."
What is certain is that the scuppering of Kyoto is not about the search for a more efficient method of curbing emissions - the administration has made clear it regards the right to increase emissions as critical to US economic growth.
Fears about US dependence on overseas sources of energy are also compounded by the protocol, as its implementation would favour the gas sector rather than oil and coal, industries that are extraordinarily well represented in the Bush team.
Both would face significant cost implications in introducing cleaner technology. Mr Bush owes a particular debt to the coal industry of West Virginia for his election.
What are the alternatives? No one can say, beyond reiterating the promotion of technical efficiency and the controversial idea of massive emissions trading - a system by which the rich countries continue to pump out greenhouse gases while paying the poorer ones to refrain from using up their quotas.
