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In the fallout over the US sideswiping international efforts to control global warming, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was asked whether the new President would call on drivers to reduce fuel consumption in the interests of a cooler, cleaner planet.

``That's a big no," Fleischer told the assembled media at a press conference earlier this year. ``The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

Next week, the US will be asking international policymakers to endorse that goal when 180 nations meet in Germany for another round of negotiations on measures to combat global warming.

The meeting in theory is supposed to be about finalising the ground rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Most developed nations were holding off on ratifying the protocol until they knew the rules by which they would be held accountable for meeting mandatory targets for reducing emissions.

Talks to resolve the outstanding issues broke down last November in the face of US intransigence in demanding generous terms to account for carbon stored in vegetation and soil. These carbon ``sinks" offset emissions, and offer a potential way out for countries which want to meet their Kyoto targets without cutting into their fossil fuel consumption.

Nonetheless, the international community got close to striking the deal so close the July talks were considered almost a formality. The talks were going to be tough, but it seemed possible the ways would be cleared for countries to ratify the protocol and make it legal by its 2002 deadline.

In practice, next week's meeting will be a diplomatic salvage operation by which the protocol lives or dies. It was the US who changed the game plan when it changed its president. In March, the Bush Administration decided the US did not want to be a part of the protocol at all. Further, it did not want the rest of the world to be a part of it either.

Despite President Bush initially promising European leaders he would not interfere with their efforts to bring the protocol into legal effect, the US has been lobbying hard (but so far unsuccessfully) to persuade countries such as Japan to declare the protocol dead also. In climate talks in the Netherlands in late June, EU officials accused the US delegation of staying in the process for the purpose only of obstructing progress by the rest of the world.

The Americans want the international community to take a step back 10 years and adopt an alternative, voluntary plan without reduction targets. It is yet to release the details of what it has in mind, but it was the failure of voluntary measures under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent treaty for the Kyoto Protocol, that led to mandatory targets.

The EU has been fighting a rearguard action to persuade other developed nations to ignore the pressure from the Americans, stick with the protocol for the greater good of the planet, and work to bring it into force as soon as possible.

With the major powers polarised, Japan, Australia and Canada are emerging out of the diplomatic chaos as the pivotal countries which will determine the future and character of international action on climate change.

Their influence derives from the formula for bringing the protocol into legal effect. This will occur once the agreement is signed by at least 55 countries, including developed nations whose 1990 emissions collectively represent 55 per cent of emissions from the industrialised world. The US accounted for 36.1 per cent of developed nations' emissions in 1990. The EU, non-EU Europe and New Zealand together account for 49.91 per cent. It means the protocol lives or dies by whether Japan, or Canada and Australia, ratify it.

Both Japan and Australia have made it clear they want more time in the hope of persuading the US to either rejoin the Kyoto process or come up with something better. With that goal in mind, the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, said earlier this week that the meeting in Bonn should not be judged a success or failure by whether or not the deal on Kyoto was struck.

The EU has also softened its previously hardline stance after getting nowhere in last-minute lobbying last week in Australia and Japan. The EU Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, said Bonn was no longer a firm deadline for agreement on the Kyoto pact. She envisaged instead agreement ``not on everything but on parts" of the protocol.

``You can imagine different scenarios for Bonn in order to still be able to say that it was a success." Time indeed may be just what the US President needs to bring him around, according to Molly Harris Olson, the former head of President Bill Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development and now director of the Australian business systems consultancy EcoFutures.

Diplomatic progress on climate change might have stalled, but the business world was moving on and that might ultimately prove the circuit-breaker, Ms Olson said. She has just returned from the United States where she said the oil company Exxon was under enormous consumer pressure over its role in persuading President Bush to ditch Kyoto.

Ms Olson said the talk in business circles was that Exxon would be knocking on the President's door begging him to return to the international fold if the public pressure kept up in the US and Europe. Meanwhile, other multinationals wielding campaign finance and therefore influence over Congress were leading the way with tough internal company greenhouse reduction programs. For example, the chemical giant DuPont, once a committed greenhouse sceptic, is now committed to reducing emissions to 65 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. Similarly, Shell is committed to reducing emissions 10 per cent by 2002, while BP is committed to 10 per cent reduction by 2010. Both oil companies are investing heavily in alternative energy while the head of the Ford motor company, Bill Ford jnr, declared his intention last year to oversee the end of the internal combustion engine in transport.

``If companies who are not radical are doing this, then it can't be that difficult," said Ms Olson of US and Australian Government claims that meeting the national Kyoto targets would be costly for business and economic growth. ``I think these companies would not be making a commitment like that if it was too costly or impossible in the long term ... the politicians will have to follow."

Alan Tate of the Ecos Corporation, which advises companies such as BHP, BP and Bovis Lend Lease on sustainable business practice, said attitudes were changing and that this was no better illustrated than the world's leading chief executive officers voting climate change as the biggest challenge of the coming century at the World Economic Summit in Davos last year.

Corporations were increasingly regarding action on climate not as a burden but a business opportunity, Mr Tate said. Queensland's Stanwell Corporation, one of Australia's major coal-fired power companies, was diversifying to develop solar and wind so that it could grab the advantage once consumers could choose their supplier later this year.

``This is a transition period, so even for companies and industries that are the most carbon liable, which would have to be coal-fired power stations, this might not spell disaster. It depends on how you look at it. It can be an enormous business opportunity."

Dr Clive Hamilton, of the Australia Institute, said it was nonetheless important that governments acted worldwide. ``Some companies are at the forefront, and are anticipating that the world will change and they want to be ahead of the game rather than dragging at the rear. So they are investing in alternatives while continuing their traditional activities.

``They are hedging their bets and getting the public relations benefits, but the reality is they will only go so far and only be so competitive if governments don't act to bring the laggards on board."

In the meantime, the slow train of climate change just keeps getting closer and closer. There will be no delaying the inevitable and, for that reason alone, Dr Hamilton says the momentum for global agreement will not be lost although there may be glitches on the way.

In 1992 President George Bush snr signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with the proviso that the American way of life was ``non-negotiable".

His son might like to turn back the clock to his father's day, but the times have changed.