Today, two oil shocks later, the planet's environmental health has become so poor that green issues are now inescapable for the G8 and even have explosive potential.

This week's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, could see the US-British alliance that has weathered so many storms over the Iraq War come under intense strain over climate change.

On one side is the summit host, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who declares that urgent action against global warming, the result of fossil-fuel pollution, will be one of the hallmarks of his G8 presidency.

On the other is his friend George W. Bush, who has ditched the United States' promise of making binding cuts in carbon emissions and has even challenged the scientific evidence for global warming.

Sources close to the July 6-8 summit northwest of Edinburgh say there is a wide rift over how to draft a summit communique and an action plan that will be serious about tackling greenhouse gases rather than be a bucket of greenwash.

The gap is likely to be resolved only at the last minute by summit leaders themselves rather than their representatives, they say.

And, according to the British daily The Guardian, it may not be bridged at all - there is the extraordinary prospect that the G8, for the first time in its history, will have a "split communique," with its biggest member, the United States, on the sidelines.

Bush is fighting proposed text which admits that global warming is a serious problem and climate change is already underway, and which calls on G8 members to "slow, stop and then reverse" carbon pollution.

"The main argument is over the scale of the problem - how much of it is human-induced and whether it is necessary to act urgently," says Jennifer Morgan, a climate specialist with the green group WWF.

Another crunch point is over how far the G8 wants to promote future cooperation with five big developing countries - Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa - which are also coming to Gleneagles.

European members of the G8 are pushing for this fledgling relationship to be set on an ambitious footing.

They want to discourage these fast-growing populous countries from following industrialised nations in becoming big carbon polluters.

But, say sources, the United States is against this, apparently fearing the launch of another international forum where, like the Kyoto Protocol ditched by Bush in March 2001, it will come under pressure to make promises on pollution cuts.

"(Bush) knows what the game is, and he's not going to put his cards on the table until the big deal is done at the grand shootout," said John Kirton, director of the G8 Research Group, a thinktank at the University of Toronto, where he is also a professor.

"The three other (G8) countries who put boots on the ground in Iraq - Britain, Japan and Italy - are all pretty keen on climate change. These are friends who have diplomatic capital. But one unknown is whether Blair has exhausted all his boots-on-the-ground capital by negotiating (a Gleneagles deal) on African debt relief."

Global warming touches on big issues of money and national identity as well as protecting the environment.

The United States accounts for just four percent of the world's population but 23 percent of its greenhouse gases.

To curb that too quickly, Bush argues, would be too expensive for the American economy, for the US lifestyle is based on lavish use of energy and dependence on cars, which are essential in the sprawling layout of most American cities. He wants a voluntary approach, helped by technological change in favour of low-carbon energy.

Despite his isolation in the G8, Bush "actually has got a lot of politically, economically and environmentally attractive options right at hand," said Kirton.

Kirton speculated that Bush might push for measures that would promote "security in energy" - finding alternative sources to oil, on which the United States is chronically dependent - and by doing so ease the clamour for green action.

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