"We have a duty in our country to make sure our land is preserved, our air is clean, our water is pure, our parks are accessible and open and well preserved," Bush said in a speech driven indoors by a heavy snowfall on a cold, blustery day.

Bush hailed the Adirondacks, among the first protected wilderness areas in the United States, as an example of the cooperative efforts between the government, private sector and volunteers he wants to preserve the nation's wilderness.

Critics like Gore, a possible White House rival in 2004, suggested Bush's deeds belied his words and many honed in on his plan - rejected by the U.S. Senate last week - to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"The environmental and energy policies of our government are completely dominated by a group of current and former oil and chemical company executives who are trying to dismantle America's ability to force them to reduce the extremely dangerous levels of pollution in the Earth's atmosphere," Gore wrote in a New York Times opinion piece published on Sunday.

Gore accused Bush of committing environmental "sabotage" by rejecting the Kyoto global warming treaty, which would require industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases and by scrapping a deal requiring automakers boost fuel efficiency.

"The Bush administration has chosen to serve special interests instead of the public interest and to subsidize the obsolete, failed approaches of the past instead of choosing the exciting new solutions of the future," Gore told an Earth Day audience at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

ASIAN ACTIVISTS PROTEST, PLANT TREES

On Indonesia's Sumatra island earlier yesterday, students at the University of Lampung blocked all vehicles from entering the campus in a 10-hour campaign that snarled traffic, the Antara news agency reported.

Environmentalists elsewhere in Indonesia, home to the world's second largest expanse of rainforests after Brazil, held tree-planting programs, clean-ups and seminars.

In Thailand, some 15,000 Buddhist monks and devotees gathered at a temple on the outskirts of Bangkok to mark the day with prayers for the Earth and world peace.

Saffron-robed monks gathered from various parts of the mainly Buddhist country for a special day of chanting and alms-giving.

In Singapore, a campaign to get people to use public transportation fell flat, prompting "Car Free Day" organizers to complain it will take years for the city-state to go green.

Penelope Phoon, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council (SEC), estimated around 5,000 car owners gave up using their cars to mark Earth Day - a little over one percent of the 403,000 private and rental cars.

At the United Nations yesterday, Hollywood stars Susan Sarandon, Kevin Bacon and Patrick Stewart were among the personalities to address a two-hour "celebrity brunch" billed as "the nation's most prominent Earth Day 2002 event."

But the real star of the day appeared to be Toyota , the Japanese automaker whose hybrid Prius model sedan teams up a gas engine with an electric motor to get 52 miles to a gallon in city driving.

Sarandon praised the vehicle as a rebuke to Bush's hopes to to drill for oil in the pristine Alaskan wilds.

THIRTY DECADE HISTORY

Earth Day was first marked in 1970 by American organizers Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes.

Thirty decades on, the pioneers head an Earth Day Network based in Seattle, which coordinates global Earth Day activities, and acts as a prominent vehicle to stimulate environmental responsibility.