Today AFP reports that “A senior EU official said Sunday that a European Union deadline to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 2012 was unrealistic.” Yes. It is important for Europe to remain realistic and thereby retain its position as “world leader” for, say, U.S. presidential aspirants to follow.

2012 is of course when Kyoto expires, so this is Europe’s supposed Kyoto policy for transport going down the tubes (transport as a whole accounts for 21 percent of EU emissions, which are projected to be 26 percent over their baseline-year 1990 emissions by Kyoto’s mid-point in 2010). Maybe they can just make up the difference with a recession?

Here are the specifics:

Brussels has proposed that all cars sold in Europe in 2012, whether European-made or not, should reach an overall objective of 120-130 grammes (4.2-4.6 ounces) of CO2 emitted per kilometre (0.6 miles), as opposed to an average of 160 grammes today. The EU executive wants to penalise automakers who do not reach the goal by 2012 with a charge of 20 euros (30 dollars) per extra gramme of CO2 per car, with the penalties rising to 95 euros by 2015. “Even the Commission knows that not all new cars will meet these standards by 2012,” Verheugen continued, adding that “there are already calls from the (European) Parliament to extend the deadline to 2015.”

By the way, here’s how our friends, whom I like to simply call “Double Down,” have done in fulfilling their completely realistic Kyoto promise to reduce CO2 and other GHGs to 8 percent below 1990 levels (including from transport) as of 2005. See the green line; the others are an annual joke whose slopes are sharpened two out of every three years since agreeing to Kyoto.

Yes, 2005. Brussels is quite slow playing with Member State data. But enough is out there to know that the 0/8% downturn was tied to the German economic downturn which, like EU emissions, reversed, and beginning next month this will be updated to show an increase of >1% each for both 2006 and 2007. So after shutting down East German post-reunification and the UK’s dashing for gas, and after picking the low-hanging emissions fruit in an economy that has grown more slowly than ours and whose population increased more slowly than ours, Europe is basically back where they started.

Regular PG readers know that this chart is just GHGs, as it appears they’ve stopped publishing this embarrassing chart:

Seeing this, just a few months ago they decided that the obvious next, presumably realistic step is to promise a 20-percent reduction by 2020.

Wouldn’t want to be unrealistic, now would we? Now I must sign off to go watch Sen. McCain give a major speech about how we need to replicate this glorious success. It would be a shame to keep taking Europe’s manufacturing jobs (new steel jobs in KY and AL, for example) when they could go somewhere else. Besides, China, India, and Mexico need stimulus packages, too, you know.