The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, is to hold talks with the US's most senior environmental official this week in what he is describing as an attempt "to build bridges" between Europe and America on environmental issues.
The meeting with Mr Mike Leavitt, the new head of the US's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is to take place as part of a major three-day OECD meeting of environment ministers in Paris to be chaired by Mr Cullen. Relations between the European Union and the US on environmental issues have deteriorated seriously during the Bush administration, principally because the US withdrew from the international Kyoto agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Since then the US has followed an isolationist approach on environmental matters.
Mr Cullen told The Irish Times yesterday he hoped the meeting would spark an opening of dialogue between Europe and the US. "What I would hope out of this is for the US to re-assess its global position and rejoin the international family on environmental matters," he said.
"I would hope that we could reach better understanding, and that we can get our viewpoint across in a non-threatening way."
He said that while it was unrealistic to expect that the US would sign up to the Kyoto agreement again in the near future, "it is better to work together, so that we can integrate environmental issues into political policies". Mr Leavitt, a former governor of Utah was appointed as administrator of the EPA by President Bush in October.
The post is a political appointment, and is seen as the most senior position in the US in setting environmental policy.
His meeting with Mr Cullen will be Mr Leavitt's first with a senior representative of the European Union. Mr Cullen said he was hopeful of making progress on a number of issues at the conference which begins in Paris tomorrow and will be attended by environment ministers from 30 countries.
Areas for discussion at the conference include global warming, globalisation of trade and technology innovation to address environmental challenges.
Mr Cullen said he believed the international environmental debate had become "too adversarial" between environmental advocates and business concerns. Some environmentalists have been "too zealous", he said. As chairman he wanted to move away from this and towards a more constructive discussion of environmental policy and its effects in the long-term.
Currently the focus has been on short-term effects of environmental policies on the economy, rather than the long term benefits.
"The debate is conducted in the immediate, but in relation to the environment, you can't talk in terms of one or three years.
"We can't continue to have these debates. We must take a more strategic view on the whole clean economics agenda, and a long-term viewpoint of 15 to 20 or 30 years."
Previously in Ireland the debate on environmental measures such as emissions trading and carbon tax, had been focused on the short-term economic impact. Business interests and some Government Departments have taken this approach, he said.
"You are only going to see very foreboding conclusions with this outlook."