Europeans Blowing Kyoto

Europe is quick to chide the US for not signing on to the Kyoto accords, but its own record is hardly stellar:

• 13 of the 15 original members of the European union have increased their greenhouse emissions since 1990.
• EU's environmental agency reports that by 2010, the EU's greenhouse emissions will exceed 1990 levels by seven percent.

Whoa!? How could that happen in good ol' lefty, big-government Europe? Explains National Center for Public Policy Research senior fellow Dana Joel Gattuso, "the Kyoto treaty is economic suicide, and most European nations know it."

OK, so the National Center is conservative. How about the Internationl Council for Capital Formation in Brussels, which predicts:

Kyoto would cause the UK's gross domestic product will fall more than 1 percent in 2010 from what it otherwise would be, Italy's by more than 2 percent, and Spain's by more than 3 percent. The UK, Italy, and Germany each would lose at least 200,000 jobs; Spain would lose 800,000.

For what? According to Gattuso, "they'd achieve a paltry reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of just 0.1 percent by 2010."

(source)
Related Tags: Global warming, Kyoto, Greenhouse gasses, National Center, EU, Greenies