In the latest installment of what has become an increasingly sorry drama, the European Union’s Ambassador to the US, former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton, has fired off a detailed if now typically misleading missive to Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA). The goal of his February 22 letter is to correct the record about “incorrect or incomplete information [that] has been presented about the European Union (EU) climate policy. In particular, this concerns the EU’s achievements to date by comparison to achievements in the US, and whether the EU will meet its obligation under the Kyoto Protocol, which is to reduce its emissions by 8% by 2012.”

Amb. Bruton’s complaint, in short, is that not everyone is bending to Europe’s insistence that all discussion about greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) be in the context of a 1990 emissions baseline, which affords Europe credit for two political decisions preceding and unrelated to the Kyoto Protocol or any effort to reduce GHGs. More modern performance, when it comes to light, presents Europe with a serious embarrassment for being out-performed by the US, particularly carbon dioxide which is the target of all proposals floating around Washington.

Specifically, Mr. Bruton’s letter is in response to an assertion by White House spokesman Tony Snow that although “there is a carbon cap system in place in Europe, we are doing a better job of reducing emissions here”. Senate Democrats rushed to Europe’s defense with charts purporting to denigrate the US performance but which, as my colleague Iain Murray noted, merely changed the subject from an accurate assertion while upon scrutiny also affirming it.

See here for more, including a fun EU chart that Mr. Bruton might want to study.