US doing better than Europe with regard to actual Kyoto emissions

H/T - Dumb Ox Daily News

I hesitate to refer to CO2 as emissions. CO2 is an essential, natural by product of normal respiration and combustion. The political argument is that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated, taxed and controlled. Europeans who have invested much money and energy in the Kyoto protocol like to deride the US as an evil polluter.

Well it seems that CO2 output of the US, as a result of the supposedly wrong policies of President Bush, is less than that of the gung-ho European signers.

The same European critics who accuse the U.S. of unilateralism have failed to meet their own Kyoto targets, Horner told a meeting at the Heritage Foundation.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty requires signatory nations to set limits on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other "greenhouse gases" blamed for climate change, by an average of five percent by 2012.

The 15 European nations participating at the time - the so-called E.U.-15 - made a commitment to collectively reduce their emissions to the point where they would be eight percent lower than 1990 levels.

Since the treaty went into effect, however, Europe's CO2 emissions have increased quite substantially - and at a rate three times faster than America's - Horner said. At the same time, Kyoto-related regulations have led to higher energy costs for E.U.-15 citizens. (Emphasis mine)

Could it be that the Kyoto protocol is simply bad policy??




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