Europe Slips on Kyoto Greenhouse Targets

covertlaw writes "Emissions of greenhouse gases from the European Union increased in 2001 for the second year running. According to the unratified Kyoto Treaty, the EU as a whole is committed to reducing emissions by 8% on their 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012."

Comments

Seems the US got it right

[Scarblac]

I really hate to say this as a left-thinking, American-bashing European bigot.

But if the choice is between declining to join Kyoto, and joining it and then totally ignoring it - it seems the US did the right thing.

Re:Hasn't Europe all ready met their Kyoto targets

[OrenWolf]

The point is the gassess and emissions in question remain in the atmosphere for some time. No one needs to "meter" your vehicles or lawnmower because they are able to detect these emissions in aggregate.

Local metering may or may not be conducted by individual agencies to help identify local sources of pollution, but this is no different than the process several US states undergo to detect vehicles with unusually high emissions today.

So the answer is, the meterologists know how to enfoce it, and measure compliance, and that the US is already "in this mess" via the road and factory emissions compliance they already have in place.

The only difference is, those who signed Kyoto now have a deterrent to increase pollution. The US is free to continue to pollute itself as it wishes.

Ahhh Kyoto.

[/dev/trash]

The same protocol that says Country A can sell it's excess credits to country B who is in need of credits.

Kyoto isn't about cleaning the air, it's about creating a trading market.

Not that tired old nonsense again...

[Spamalamadingdong]

But ratifying Kyoto might at least have shown the USA's intention to do something about its mass consumption. It might have shown they feel responsible for burning over 25% of worldwide resources, while constitutin less than 10% of its population/surface.

You might have missed this point, but the US also pays for the resources it gets from other countries. It returns value in the forms of goods and services.

There are a lot of good arguments against the USA using so much oil, and producing such a large fraction of humanity's excess CO2. However, the "over-consuming society" argument is logical junk. If the USA consumed 50% of the world's human-handled energy but produced it all from solar and wind, the "mass consumption" claim would still be true! That just goes to show how little sense it makes. Find another argument.