This just in:

U.S. WILL RETURN TO KYOTO PROTOCOL, SAYS FRANCE

The United States will sooner or later rejoin the Kyoto Protocol, even though the Bush administration* still shuns the United Nations' global warming pact, French Ecology Minister Serge Lepeltier said Tuesday.

"I am convinced that we are going to bring the United States into Kyoto, even if it doesn't want to," he said.

Lepeltier suggested the US federal government would be caught in a "vice" [sic]. ... "American corporations which have operations in Europe ... are going to have to meet the rules which we set in place to uphold Kyoto, at least on (European) soil," Lepeltier said.

"It may not happen today and it may not happen tomorrow, but the United States will inevitably have to develop these technologies because they do not want to lag, which would be a major risk for their companies."

Kyoto runs out on 2012** but negotiations begin next year on a successor to it.

M. Lepeltier, yours is such a dandy piece of transparently specious thinking we won't dispute it, however, we invite you to take a deep breath and hold it till the predicted American compliance.

We suggest a superhuman deep breath.

* Before President Bush ever pronounced on the Kyoto Treaty, the United States Senate pre-empted its submission by voting it down 95-0 in a Sense of the Senate. This is bipartisan pig heaven. Mr. Clinton went on to sign the treaty without a shred of support or hope of ratification.

** The Kyoto Protocol was feverishly cooked up in 10 days in December 1997. It has taken 7 years for enough signatories to ratify it to put it in effect. Without the United States signed on the signatories have been cheated of the derivative economic advantages that were to come at America's expense. And it's a sure bet Russia and China will be exemplars of compliance. By 2012, contrary to M. Lepeltier's big boast, Kyoto will be another UN white elephant that is observed in the breach. Like sanctions on Saddam's Iraq.

And I just saw on Ace that the Skynews is reporting that Italy is going to pull out of Kyoto now. Poor green frenchies.