WASHINGTON, 28 September 2007 — The Bush administration opened yesterday a two-day conference on global warming that has been criticized by environmentalists and Democrats as an attempt to rob the limelight from UN climate talks that also occurred this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) requested in a letter on Monday that Bush “not start a separate process competing with negotiations under the United Nations Framework.” At the conference, which was attended by invitation of the White House by representatives of the world’s biggest polluters (the US tops the list with China and India not far behind), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — a former Chevron Corp. board member — challenged the world’s biggest polluters to “cut the Gordian knot of fossil fuels” by shifting toward energy sources that will reduce global warming, but without harming their economies.

Bush opted out of the UN climate meeting Monday in New York, adding to speculation that the Washington meetings were scheduled as a way to undermine the UN talks.

American climate researcher and the program director of Environmental Defense, Peter Goldmark, told reporters the White House meeting is little more than a Bush PR stunt.

Participants aim to forge a global consensus about how to curb carbon dioxide emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The US conference will emphasize creating more processes to find a solution to global warming, rather than setting firm goals for reducing carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for heating up the atmosphere.

The nations summoned by Bush will “seek agreement on the process” and more work teams for nations to set their own strategies beyond 2012. It also “could include a long-term global goal, nationally defined midterm goals and strategies, and sector-based approaches for improving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the White House said.

That has European leaders, who concede that the biggest polluting nations must be part of any solution, walking a thin line between skepticism and optimism.

“We can’t do this on the basis of talking about talking or setting goals to set goals,” John Ashton, a special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, said in an interview.

“We know that a voluntary approach to global warming is about as effective as a voluntary speed limit sign on the road. We don’t just need an approach that works; we need an approach that works very quickly.”

Yvo de Boer, the chief UN climate-change negotiator, avoided any scathing criticism of the White House conference on Wednesday, saying only that it would “feed back into the UN process.” But he added that the United Nations is “the most appropriate global venue” to address climate change.

There are only two sessions of the White House conference that are open to the media: yesterday’s session with Condoleeza Rice and today’s featuring Bush. There will be no session in which any visiting delegate will answer questions from the press.

Yesterday Rice took the opportunity to portray the Bush administration as genuinely interested in reducing America’s dependence on oil, as long as such reduction doesn’t in any way affect American economic growth, which is heavily dependent on the consumption of fossil fuels extracted from American soil and imported from abroad, including from countries the US considers unfriendly, such as Venezuela.

“Ultimately we need to answer just one fundamental question: What kind of world do we wish to inhabit and what kind of world do we wish to pass on to future generations?” Rice posed at the start of the conference.

Aside from the rhetoric, the United States has lined up with China, India and other major polluters in opposition to mandatory cuts in Earth-warming greenhouse gases sought by the United Nations and European countries. Rice said the challenge of global climate change cannot be dealt with entirely as an environmental question, but “in a way that does not starve economies of the energy that they need to grow.”

“Though united by common goals and collective responsibility, all nations should tackle climate change in the ways that they deem best,” she said. “Managing the status quo is simply not an adequate response.”

The current president’s father, George H.W. Bush, attended an environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. When asked by a reporter why the US refuses to pledge to reduce greenhouse gases, H.W. Bush replied: “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

Now some are saying the current president’s environmental policy is a matter of like father like son.

— Additional input from agencies