For Al Gore revenge really has proved to be a dish best served cold. Seven years after losing the American presidential elections to George Bush on a legal technicality, Gore is turning his vanquisher into an object of global ridicule for his refusal to act on climate change.

He's already written The Assault on Reason, a lacerating attack on Bush, and laced his speeches on climate change with references to the president's refusal to accept the science of global warming.

Last night, in a speech to the Bali climate change conference in Bali he stuck the knife in further than ever before, making it plain that America, and Bush's administration, have become the biggest obstacles to cutting the deal on greenhouse gas reductions that might save the world from runaway global warming.

"I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: my own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," he said, prompting cheering from the thousands of delegates and environmentalists attending.

BACKGROUND

• UN chief to return to Bali climate talks

• Al Gore: free of diplomatic niceties

• Al Gore lambasts US climate obstructions

• Scorching decade claims eight hottest years

2007: worst year for the environment

As UN climate talks go down to the wire, scientists across the world says 2007 was a 'year of worsts' for the planet

• This decade breaks records in table of world's hottest years

BACKGROUND

• US rejects Bali climate change guidelines

• UN chief: act now on climate or face oblivion

• Al Gore calls for climate ‘mobilisation’

• Carbon emissions are 'higher than claimed'

• A convenient £50m for green Gore

Multimedia

• Video: protests in Bali

• Video: Going green with God

• The environment - 2007 in pictures

BACKGROUND

• Carbon stand-off puts climate talks at risk

• US 'must change lifestyle' for planet's sake

• Woodman, spare that high-carbon tree

• Act now or prepare for disaster

US laws will sap Europe’s energy

There is a serious danger that the politics of the American cornfield are again threatening trade and development

BACKGROUND

• Water shortages 'likely trigger for wars'

• Global crisis reveals big cracks in policies

• UN climate circus rolls in on CO2 cloud

• Carbon Trust not meeting the challenge

We’re not doomed yet

Should we really be listening to the views of one man just because they are eye-catchingly more dramatic than the consensus?

BACKGROUND

• Brown’s bid to seal fate of carrier bags

• Opec ponders wealth of alternatives

• Climate change panel verdict: the future is bleak

• A global warning for UN chief

Related Links

• Al Gore: 'Act now - Bush is going'

• This decade set to be hottest on record

Gore had crystallized the anger and frustration that is spreading through the Bali meeting over what is seen to be American intransigence over cutting emissions.

Earlier, the EU had also accused the United States of failing to act on the climate and threatening to boycott a U.S.-hosted conference of major economies next month.

The EU wants a firm guideline of cuts of 25-40 percent in greenhouse gases by 2020 below 1990 levels, while the United States, Japan and Canada say setting figures too early in the process figures would prejudge the outcome.

Europe's anger had, however, been couched in diplomatic language by faceless Eurocrats. Gore was unrestricted. " I am not an official and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties," he said.

The attack marked the end of a bad day for Bush's representatives in Bali, closely following an astonishing display of apparent arrogance from James Connaughton, the leader of the American delegation.

When journalists quizzed him about America's lack of leadership on global warming, he claimed the real problem was simply that other nations were disagreeing too much with America. "We are leading and we will continue to lead but that requires the rest of the world to fall in line and follow," he said, to audible gasps.

For America the effect of such gaffes alongside Gore's attack is disastrous. It means that if Bali talks and the next two years of negotiations end in anything but success, it will be America – and Bush – that take the global blame for it.

Bush has just 140 days left in office and is looking for a lasting legacy. Could Gore be trying to ensure that his presidency will instead forever be linked with climatic disaster?

Times recommends

• Energy-saving ideas from switched-on professor
• Rooks are as clever with tools as chimpanzees
• Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu