After You

You’ll never believe this, but Europe has been a wee tiny bit hypocritical about their concern for the environment. Dana Joel Gattuso reports:

The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But 13 of the 15 original members of the European Union have increased their emissions since 1990, not reduced them. New data by the EU’s own European Environmental Agency show that by 2010, the 15 nations’ emissions collectively will exceed 1990 levels by seven percent.

It gets funnier. 1990 was chosen as the baseline for a very good reason: it was the year Germany reunified. Germany was going to scrap a bunch of the former East’s dirty brown-coal power plants anyway, making it easy for them to hit the targeted reductions. Also, no one was buying Trabant autos anymore. Apparently, not even rigging the game was enough to let Europe win.

Maybe they’ll shut up now, but don’t count on it.