History will not judge George Bush kindly. It is hard to exaggerate the significance
of his repudiation of the Kyoto treaty. It is not simply that the US President thinks
his nation cannot meet the solemn commitments on global warming which it signed
three-and-a-half years ago. It is that he does not care.

Of the many potential conflicts between the US and its partners on trade, defense and
foreign policy, nothing is as bad as this. It is not even isolationism, it is in-your-face truculence.

The token gesture Mr Bush made during the election campaign towards some kind of
reduction in America's carbon dioxide emissions turns out to have been a cynical ploy
to match Al Gore's green credentials.

Now Mr Bush is revealed as a fully fledged sceptic about the science of global warming,
saying he is "unequivocal" in opposing the Kyoto agreement. In this he sets himself,
as firmly as any Creationist or Flat-Earther, against the overwhelming scientific consensus.

At the start of this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported on its latest
review of the evidence. The IPCC is no pressure group. It is a cautious and dispassionate body
of scientists. Its findings were ­ in a word ­ "unequivocal": the world's climate is definitely warming,
and burning of fossil fuels is almost definitely responsible.

Of course, there is more uncertainty about the effects. But even the best-case predictions are catastrophic by
the end of this century. And one does not need to be a scientist to understand that if what can be predicted is
bad, the unpredictable effects of disturbing the planet's life-support system could be so much worse. Even the
most pig-headed and blinkered politician in the pocket of the US oil companies would want to minimise the risk
to future generations by prudently attempting to restrain the appetite of the energy-hungriest nation in the world.

Not Mr Bush. The supposed "leadership of the free world" is in the hands of a man determined to visit
greater misery on the generations to come.