While reading this story about how the US has increased its carbon dioxide emissions half as rapidly as has Europe since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997, a gap which is widening (EU

CO2 emissions have increased three times as fast as the US’s since 2000, for the most recent five years for which we have data).

Ask yourself, have we heard such nastiness about their climatically criminal fellow Europeans, whose absolutely spectacular emission increases are being underwritten by the UK’s one-off of a dash-to-gas in the early 1990′s?

Then ask yourself, what is the real disgrace?

“[Conservative Shadow Environment Secretary] Mr Ainsworth’s outspoken attack goes far beyond any previous criticisms of Mr Bush made by senior party figures and reflects how widespread frustration with the administration’s failure to tackle global warming has become.

“Without a world solution to climate change, there won’t be any solution at all. We have been having discussions with both Senator McCain and others in terms of building an international agenda on this,” he said.

“The sooner the current administration in America goes, the safer the world will be.

“It has been a deplorable drag on international efforts to get a resolution; the leading polluter of the world hasn’t been playing a full part.

“I’m confident a future American administration will shoulder its responsibilities,” he added