Bonn, Germany - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President George W Bush are good friends on a personal level. The two leaders also share a similar conservative Christian outlook, but when it comes to the gravest problems facing mankind, they diverge sharply. Last year, Merkel put greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming at the top of her agenda for Germany's presidency of the Group of Eight (G8).
Bush had to be nudged towards concessions at the Heiligendamm G8 summit in June and made sure that the binding targets for the industrialized world so dear to Merkel's heart were not mentioned in the final document.
Now Germany is playing host to a major conference on biodiversity, and Merkel has once again nailed her colours to the mast, unilaterally pledging billions in funding over the years ahead to halt the loss of species - a second issue she sees as crucial to humankind's future.
The United States is not even formally present at the Bonn conference, which draws together the 190 nations that have ratified the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD).
But it is not only the emphasis on the related problems of climate change and species loss that is different, but also the approach.
Taking up a theme of her G8 leadership last year, when she insisted that the United Nations was the central forum for dealing with global warming, Merkel made clear in Bonn that the UN was key to the biodiversity problem.
"Only the UN can provide the reliable framework," she insisted.
Bush differs. While his predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed the UN's Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions before leaving office, Bush has ensured that it has never been ratified.
The US came in for sharp criticism at the major UN climate change conference on Bali in December, which aimed to pave the way fo
