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

Serge Lepeltier,
former ministre de l’Ecologie et du Développement durable*
PARIS December 7, 2004 (AFP)

On just what M. Lepeltier based his fanciful conviction is not clear. Like much headline chest-thumping by the French government, it was said to be forgotten.

Still France continues efforts to include America in her prize sop to Gaea.

FRANCE TELLS U.S. TO SIGN CLIMATE PACTS OR FACE TAX

PARIS January 31, 2007 (NYT) - President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign [sic, the United States is a signatory but has not ratified the treaty] both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012.

He said that he welcomed last week’s State of the Union address in which President Bush described climate change as a "serious challenge" and acknowledged that a growing number of American politicians now favor emissions cuts.

We have not read any French editions of the Melian dialogue, so we do not know just how the thrust of the Athenian argument has been altered to give Jack standing to demand anything of the United States. Every reasonable French person must find Jack's delusional obsession with keeping even with America, well, embarrassing. Now Jack thinks France has outpaced America entirely, and he, the president of France, is free to demand whatever he fancies.

For those who are new to Pave, this is why we mock France.

But he warned that if the United States did not sign [sic] the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods.

"A carbon tax is inevitable," Mr. Chirac said. "If it is European, and I believe it will be European, then it will all the same have a certain influence because it means that all the countries that do not accept the minimum obligations will be obliged to pay."

Again Jack has blindsided us. We must admit to being completely in the dark about his commission from Bruxelles to promulgate such a tax and to finger-scold the United States on behalf of the EU. We suspect several member states will also find Jack's presumption, um, well, presumptuous.

Jack is parochial and his vision is a parochial vision. Had he been paying attention he would know that America -- under no president, under no Congress -- will ever ratify the Kyoto Protocol nor anything resembling a Kyoto Protocol that attempts to end-run the American economy.

Pick any year since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997, Mr. Bush should have said, and the U.S. CO2 emission performance is superior to that of all major Kyoto parties, including and most notably Europe (CO2 being the focus of the many pending legislative proposals).

One would never know this from reading European Union press releases, most any media account or even White House statements on the issue. ... In truth, Europe's CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the U.S. since Kyoto, three times as fast since 2000. This figure balloons to more than five times as fast when one tallies the individual country average of the EU-15.

... Climate change and Kyoto have simply become totems in the larger anti-Bush struggle. When he is gone the rhetoric will calm, the world will get used to the idea that, like 155 other countries including China, India, Mexico, South Korea and Brazil, under no president will the U.S. ratify a global pact rationing greenhouse emissions. This is particularly true regarding a regime with such a miserable record already, with its perverse incentives, economic cost and, frankly, the pervasive cheating.

[Hat tip: ¡No Pasarán!]

Without America on board, the EU finds itself at the very competitive disadvantage it had hoped to impose on the United States. Crippling compliance is fine by Europa when Europa comes out on top. Ah, but ask Europa to make the same sacrifices she pronounces on others, ho-ho, mon ami, not so fast.

EUROPE LOOSENS EMISSIONS TARGET
TO PROTECT ECONOMY

January 10, 2007 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union, the world's biggest trade bloc, called for an easier target for greenhouse gas emissions to safeguard its own economy and encourage global negotiations on mandatory caps.

The EU proposed cutting emissions by "at least" 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990, the European Commission, the regulatory unit of the 27-nation bloc, said today. It rejected calls for a 30 percent cut, saying it would agree to such a reduction if all developed nations did the same.

Emissions targets that are too ambitious may put European manufacturers at a disadvantage with competitors from nations including the U.S.

What? Compliance a hardship? No problemo. Lower those targets by 33%. Of course that rather banjaxes the sacred arithmetical mumbo-jumbo underpinning the mumbo-jumbo "science" of the Protocol. But the virtue of mumbo-jumbo is how easily it becomes whatever you say it is.

The EU is ready to do its part if there is an equal effort among all. Hhmmm. Where have we heard that before?

We recognize the responsibility to reduce our emissions. We also recognize the other part of the story -- that the rest of the world emits 80 percent of all greenhouse gases. ... This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet, India was also exempt from Kyoto.

GWB,
president of the Unitied States
saying "no thanks" to trashing the American economy
WASHINGTON June 11, 2001 (White House Press Release)

* The impulsive M. Lepeltier did not survive into the "new impulse" government.

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