Kyoto Treaty

Forbes gives the latest on the Kyoto Treaty:

For the time being, then, Kyoto is essentially a western European proposition. With the Bush Administration and Australia opting out and the developing world no longer being asked to join, the European Union stands as the default supplier of signatories who are in a position to make significant reductions in carbon emissions. This seems anomalous, as China and India together send more tons of carbon into the atmosphere than all of western Europe combined, and the U.S. accounts for more than China and India together.

And yet it appears that even western Europe is not reducing emissions. The Kyoto rules say that western Europe must get their emissions to a level 8% below those prevailing in 1990. But virtually all those countries--the only significant exception is Germany--are going in the wrong direction. The latest available data, covering emissions through 2003, tell us that in the years since the treaty was negotiated, carbon dioxide levels increased by 7% in France, 11% in Italy and 29% in Spain. The increase for western Europe as a whole was 5.4%.

After many years of European chatter about the monstrous evil perpetrated by George W. Bush in rejecting Kyoto, it is of possible interest that the increase in carbon emissions in the U.S. during those years was slightly lower (4.7%).

This is hilarious considering how upset Europeans professed to be over Bush's refusal to go along with Kyoto. I guess they figured out that spending gobs of money for an infintesimal reduction in global warming just isn't worth it.