Explicitly acknowledging the threat to the world from global warming and human responsibility for it, President Bush yesterday pledged to work in "a UN framework" for agreement on how to meet the challenge.
But Mr Bush's comments, intended to placate angry European leaders ahead of his trip there this week, is unlikely to have the desired effect. With him having torpedoed the Kyoto Protocol, European leaders will be asking in vain for a viable alternative involving a serious US commitment to greenhouse-gas emission reductions.
Although the President pledged to increase spending on research and monitoring of climate change, he avoided any idea of commitments to binding greenhouse-gas targets and placed a heavy emphasis on the need to involve the developing world in sharing the burden of any agreement.
Developing countries have insisted that they should not be penalised for what they see as the past sins of the West by curtailing their growth prospects, a position which, if not endorsed by the EU, is seen as an inevitable barrier to a meaningful agreement on emissions. Mr Bush yesterday focused on both China and India, which are exempted from Kyoto obligations.
Speaking to journalists in the Rose Garden, he reaffirmed his decision in March to pull the US out of negotiations to finalise Kyoto. Emphasising that science had yet to define satisfactorily "safe" emission levels, he called for research into technological solutions to slow greenhouse emissions, without hurting the economy.
But he acknowledged the findings of a report last week by the National Academy of Sciences which concluded that the Earth's temperature was rising, mainly because of human activities, and said dire climate changes could occur this century.
The President proposed an effort to study global warming and bolster co-ordination among research institutions throughout the world.
In Spain, Mr Bush's first stop today, thousands of demonstrators marched on Sunday to protest, among other things, at his stance on global warming.
