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.