The only “Impending Catastrophe” will be in their Spiderman Underoos

We have long ago heard about the swindle that permitted Germany to use the collapse of the industries of the DDR as a crutch in the fake carbon-emission sainthood contest, but the extent to which it was employed by the rest of Europe is stunning. They managed to rig up a situation where they were under roughly the same, if not better obligations in the arena of new-chastity, than underdeveloped countries.

On closer inspection, Germany thus got off with what is in fact a remarkably light emissions reduction “burden.” Thanks to the sharing of the German emissions windfall, other members of the EU-15 were let off the hook altogether.

For instance, France. In his victory speech in May 2007, president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy lectured the United States on the fight against “global warming.” “A great nation like the United States has the obligation not to obstruct the struggle against global warming,” Sarkozy intoned, “but, on the contrary, should take the lead in this combat, since what is at stake is the fate of all humanity.” It was easy for him to say. Many commentators have noted that France covers by far the greater part of its electricity needs with nuclear power and hence has only a limited dependence on fossil fuels. Less well known, however, is the fact that under the EU “bubble” arrangement France has no obligation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions at all. It is only supposed to hold them steady at 1990 levels.

Using any cheap “exceptionalism” as a scarlet letter against the erst of civilization is nothing new to Europeans. After all, this helpless, pitiful giant needs some source of pride. Why not then, after all, invent a myth about your superiority? What? They’ve never don’t that before?

All told, seven of the 15 EU member states forming part of the EU “bubble” have no emissions reduction requirement. Five members of this group are indeed permitted to increase their emissions. Greece, for example, is permitted to increase its emissions by 25 percent; Portugal by 27 percent. According to the European Environmental Agency’s 2009 report on “Greenhouse gas emission trends,” of the eight EU-15 members that accepted reduction tar-gets, only Germany and the U.K. are on track to meet them.

Strangely enough it was convenient to identify themselves in the victimhood affirming tomes that they’re familiar with the cast themselves as a set of loose, unconnected, near third-world countries. It sort of makes the otherwise vile sounding bravado about being the big, huge, superpower, wave o’ the future sort of silly – after all, it’s an equally pathetic and implausible notion.

As for the 12 current EU member states that were still just candidates for EU membership at the time of Kyoto’s adoption, these countries got even better deals. Cyprus and Malta were simply left out of Annex I. The other countries, all of them “post-Communist” Eastern European states, were assigned reduction targets of either 6 percent or 8 percent. But they were classified as “Economies in Transition” and as such permitted to opt for a year other than 1990 as their base year or to use the average over a period of years.
The choice of 1990 was already sufficiently advantageous for many of these countries, but, unsurprisingly, some of them opted to employ a base year or period upstream of 1990 when their still Communist-era industries were pumping out the maximum amount of CO2. It is thus likewise no surprise that almost all of these countries will meet their targets without any difficulty. Miceal O’Ronain has calculated that by the end of 1998, Romania’s CO2 emissions, for example, had fallen by a whopping 56 percent from its emissions levels in its Kyoto base year of 1989. This means that Romania’s nominal “obligation” to reduce emissions by 8 percent was in reality a license to increase them by more than 100 percent.

Yeah, yeah, clean and green, how dare you drive an SUV, blah, blah, blah.

What we are talking about here are nations – whole nations employing the emotionally manipulative tricks of teenagers and trying to call that “a brave, bold step”, a near Jesus-like sacrifice for the future of humanity for which they should be thanked, if not prayed to. In fact what they are is summed up best in the false premise behind their scheme at COP15: they want the rest of the world to hang a millstone around their neck so that they can seem more competitive, AND saintly, AND to sell you their expensive, ineffectual rubbish like windmills and solar panels.

You exist to be used, but they care, dontcha know. They care more than you.