THE GATHERING of 189 nations in Montreal at the Climate Change Conference ended last Friday as most U.N.-sponsored conferences end these days: with denunciations of the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin sent a message to "reticent nations, including the U.S. . . . : there is such a thing as global conscience and now is the time to listen to it." Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate change project at the World Wildlife Foundation, said that American's refusal to sign on to the Kyoto approach "shows just how willing the U.S. administration is to walk away from a healthy planet and its responsibilities to its own people."

But the richest--as in, that's rich--comment came from former President Bill Clinton. In what the New York Times describes as "a hastily arranged speech," the man who, during his tenure in the Oval Office, refused to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification, had this to say about President Bush's continuation of the Clinton policy, "I think it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future. We know what's happening to the climate, we have a predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we know we have an alternative that will lead us to greater prosperity." Supporters of that alternative--extending the Kyoto emissions limits beyond 2012--reacted with what the New York Times's Andrew Revkin described as "waves of applause," unheard by Dr. Harlan L. Watson, America's chief negotiator, who walked out of the informal discussion phase of the Montreal meeting on Thursday evening rather than remain a passive receptor of abuse.

Never mind that many of the enthusiastic delegates represented nations that have failed to cut their emissions to meet their Kyoto Treaty obligations. It seems that job-creating economic growth trumps environmental concerns, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, sufficiently worried about global warming to favor a new round of construction of nuclear plants, ruefully noted, in a typically candid appraisal of the effectiveness of the Kyoto emission caps: "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge."

That did not deter his environment minister, Margaret Beckett, from claiming that the 15 older E.U. countries are on a path to meet their Kyoto obligations by reducing their 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 9.3 percent by 2010. Italy, Japan, Ireland, Canada, and Spain have so far shown no sign of being able to cut their emissions by anything like that amount: all are actually producing greenhouse gases in excess of, rather than below, the 1990 baseline levels. Germany, because its economy is in the doldrums and it has shut down uneconomic and highly polluting Soviet-era factories in the East, is one of the few countries likely to meet its targets.

The delegates agreed to allow poorer nations to count their rainforests as repositories for carbon dioxide, which would make them eligible for economic assistance, and offered China financial and technological inducements to accept caps on the emissions associated with its rapid economic growth and emergence from poverty. But it is unlikely that the major developing countries such as India, China, South Africa, and Brazil will sign on to Kyoto as it is now drafted. These countries have shown no inclination to stifle their growth in order to accommodate the richer nations who have signed the Kyoto treaty or to invest in uneconomic energy-saving technologies and devices.

Indeed, when the energy crunches come, the developed nations' politicians quickly shed their green clothes. Last week OPEC hinted at, and then denied, plans to respond to mounting inventories in consuming countries by cutting production in order to sustain crude oil prices in the $60-plus per barrel range. That hint sent consuming countries' policymakers into a spin: they want OPEC to pump more, not less oil to feed their thirsty cars, trucks, and factories, and to heat the homes of those who have not switched to natural gas. Oh yes, burning that oil will produce more greenhouse gas emissions, but that's a problem for still another international conference.