Bush's reversal came in the form of a letter sent Monday to four Republican senators who had asked for clarification of the administration's views on carbon dioxide emissions.

"Any such strategy would include phasing in reductions over a reasonable period of time," the letter states. "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide."

That statement is a direct contradiction of a position paper put out in the heat of last fall's presidential campaign. In a Sept. 29 position paper, Bush said he would introduce legislation to "establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide."

Bush tried to explain his backtracking in the letter to the senators, citing a "recently released" report from the Department of Energy that concluded that the proposed limits on CO2 emissions could lead to a spike in energy prices.

"This is important new information that warrants a reevaluation, especially at a time of rising energy prices and a serious energy shortage," Bush's letter states. But the DOE report was released last December, giving the president more than enough time to change his position before Whitman marched off to Trieste.

Dan Lashof, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, blasted the report. "The DOE itself issued a report last fall called "Scenarios for a Cleaner Energy Future," which reaches an opposite conclusion."

Lashof says that DOE report found that new technologies to reduce emissions could actually lower consumer energy bills.

"What's clear to us is that President Bush doesn't have all the facts on the economics of electricity in the United States," says Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Change Campaign. "There are many studies, and he cites one that is quite flawed."

Republican environmentalists also took Bush to task. "We're really disappointed in the president," said Martha Marks, president of Republicans for Environmental Protection. "Obviously, we were trusting he would live up to his campaign promise, but it seems like the wrong forces or the anti-environmental forces inside his administration are prevailing."

Members of a dozen environmental groups staged an ad hoc protest in front of the White House Wednesday, a surefire sign of things to come. "This is going to be a protracted war," said Kert Davies, director of the global warming project at Greenpeace. "I believe they made a fatal mistake. There's too much agreement on the Hill on the fact that we need to do something about carbon dioxide."

But environmentalists give Bush credit for one thing: They say his presidency has been good for their movement. "We've seen a strong spike upwards in membership after the [Gale] Norton nomination and it really hasn't stopped," said Marks. "We've had several hundred more members sign up in the last two months. Maybe as many as 1,000."

Greenpeace executive director John Passacantando also grasped for the silver lining. "The good news is if Bush is not planning on doing anything real about solving global warming, it's a blessing that he's not smart enough to use green rhetoric. What he's done here is very honest: He told the American public how bad he's going to be on global warming."

(Alicia Montgomery contributed to this story.)

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