Ever since 1997, the earth and the USA have been in dire need of couple’s therapy. Forget about the idea of the earth as a mother for a minute. Picture the earth, instead, as an Anne Hathaway-esque, well-meaning heiress. That makes the USA the jackass potential boyfriend who is not only afraid of a commitment, but who also siphons off a large portion of her trust fund.

Sound silly? Maybe. Sleazy? Definitely. In 1997, the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest producers of greenhouse gases, refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. It was, however, ratified by 55 parties, including the majority of the European Union. The ratification of the Protocol by Russia in 2004 brought the total to the 55 percent of nations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) needed to put the global environmental treaty into effect.

But it is now the end of 2010. There have been two large conferences on global climate change, and a third scheduled by the end of next year in South Africa. With the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012, Japan is refusing to consider any measure or continuation of the Protocol that does not include China and the U.S., believing it to be unfair to the international committee. The U.S. is still refusing to commit to a binding international treaty, or even the guidelines outlined in 1997.

In a way, we are leading the way for countries such as China and India to stringently oppose the idea of an internationally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But China is doing something to curb its own pollution. The Asian nation is at a crossroads in its development after its pre-Olympic five-year plan to clean its air. Generally, there are two ways for a large nation to industrialize – the way the U.S. did, with no regard for the long-term consequences of its development, or after the fashion of the European Union and Japan, which push towards models of sustainability. China is currently working on high-speed trains and cleaner energy research, understanding that a country with 20 percent of the world’s population cannot environmentally support what they see as the “American” lifestyle – big houses and SUV’s.

India holds an obligation to many smaller, surrounding island nations that risk being submerged. It is opposed to being locked into an internationally binding legal arrangement, but India has also asserted that it takes its domestic obligations seriously, and will do so when formulating its domestic environmental and industrial development policy.

But in the U.S., climate change does not yet put homes at risk. It has not yet tarnished our landscapes – at least not in any way that the government or the general public notices. From Manifest Destiny to the Industrial Revolution, the country has stringently committed itself to the idea that the land and the earth are meant to be used for every resource we can extract from them. Fields are just unfinished parking lots, and the bones of the forests that once covered much of the continent are places to build identical neighborhoods of identical homes and strip malls. And all of this is fine, because we have some scattered national parks to remind us of the ideal of the frontier yet to be conquered.

Even though Obama came into office asserting that this country would start taking the environment seriously, it has yet to be seen. We still have not even made the token gesture of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, Kristianstad, Sweden, known for producing Absolut vodka, has managed to wean itself entirely off of all fossil fuels. That is 80,000 people, within the city and the surrounding countryside, dedicating themselves to actively pursuing alternative energy sources from biogas plants, effectively reducing their carbon footprint and creating a new sector of business and jobs. Small island nations and African countries are pushing not only for the international agreement, but also for a commitment from all developed and developing nations to cut their emissions by over 50 percent, as well as to cap the increased temperature at 1.5 degrees above industrial revolution levels.

It is beyond time for the U.S. to commit on the international level to the UNFCCC, and to actively pursue domestic initiatives, instead of continuing this abusive and neglect-filled relationship with the world we live in.