Yesterday, Tony Snow came out and said what we’ve been wishing he’d do for ages – that Europe’s performance in restricting carbon dioxide emissions since 2000 has been worse than America’s. Of course, the Democrats and greens have been apoplectic at this praise of America and denigration of their beloved Europe and have issued charts showing how America’s performance since 1990 and 1995 has been worse than Europe’s. True, but that’s not what Tony Snow said. Since 2000, and you can see this if you look at the charts they’ve put out, Europe’s CO2 emissions have clearly risen faster than America’s. The only reason Europe looks better when you include the 1990s is that the baselines chosen include the British dash-for-gas, when North Sea gas replaced coal as the source of most of Britain’s electricity, and the closure of the East German smokestack industries. And that’s precisely why the EU foisted a 1990 baseline on the world at the Kyoto negotiations in 1997. Now that the gains from those two one-off events have disappeared, Europe’s advantage has disappeared. The response is just a Jedi mind trick, or a three-card monty, if you’d prefer.

One other thing the charts reveal is that US emissions rose much faster under President Clinton than under President Bush. There was someone else in the Clinton administration, wasn’t there? I wonder who that was.