Editorial: US still out in the cold on climate

Only a combination of inexperience and overexuberance can explain the proclamation from the Minister for Climate Change that the United States is "effectively back in the tent". David Parker, fresh from the United Nations climate summit in Montreal, was clearly keen to portray the Bush Administration's agreement to join an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat global warming as a breakthrough. Sober analysis, however, suggest a far different conclusion.

Mr Parker was not alone in his enthusiasm. Britain's Secretary of State for the Environment, Margaret Beckett, hailed the US participation as more significant than the original agreement on the Kyoto Protocol eight years ago. But, given that Tony Blair has made climate change a priority of Britain's presidencies of the European Union and the G8, there was a strong vested interest in her cheerleading.

Mr Parker was in a position to cast a more unemotional eye. Had he done so, he would surely have judged that the US had conceded nothing of significance, and had sidestepped any discussion that might lead to mandatory targets and timetables. Its position remains essentially as it was before Montreal, as does the divide between it on one side, and Europe, Japan and other supporters of the Kyoto Protocol on the other.

The dialogue in which the US will participate had already been agreed to, albeit reluctantly, by President George W. Bush at the G8 summit at Gleneagles earlier this year. Indeed, at Montreal, the US worked at, and succeeded in, getting its substance watered down.

Therefore, its commitment is to talks that will be "open and non-binding". Specifically ruled out is "negotiation leading to new commitments". That ensures the US will not find itself involved in discussions that could lead to the type of emission cap enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol. It also signifies that the questions raised by this year's extreme weather, especially Hurricane Katrina, have failed to resonate in the White House.

If the Montreal summit could be termed a success, it is only because the US failed to persuade any other nation to join its hard-line stance. This averted any prospect of the talks collapsing, or of the Kyoto schedule being undermined. As it was, parallel negotiations at the conference produced agreement by the 157 protocol nations to begin talks on mandatory post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gases.

This means that all the industrialised countries, except the US and Australia, have agreed in principle to make deeper cuts in pollution emissions when their present clean-up commitments expire in seven years. Talks between now and then will seek, but are not guaranteed, to provide a seamless transition.

The US, meanwhile, will pursue the voluntary adoption of new, energy-efficient technologies by businesses. The weakness of this policy is its lack of Kyoto-style targets and timetables. And while the protocol nations have signalled their willingness to move forward, they know their efforts will always be constrained by the indifference of the US, the world's biggest single source of industrial carbon-dioxide emissions.

The Montreal summit was an embarrassment for the Bush Administration, such was the condemnation of its approach. Its response was a single-minded refusal to enter meaningful negotiations. The US is far from being inside the tent. Indeed, it seems destined to remain outside until a President more amenable to UN-lead action sits in the White House.