Europe achieves cuts in greenhouse gases, but U.S. pollution erases Europe’s gains

There was lots of cheer from Europe for the weekend, after the EU and UK both announced Friday they are on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels and below the levels to which they committed via the Kyoto Protocol.
But now it’s Monday, and here’s the bad news: data released by the Environmental Protection Agency in April shows U.S. emissions increased enough since 1990 to negate the Europeans’ progress, and then some.
Nonetheless, President Obama expressed optimism on Friday that the U.S. would catch up with Europe and become a leader in the effort against global warming. That’s a bit like a tortoise predicting victory over a hare, a scenario almost as unlikely as the election of an African American president once seemed.
Speaking at Dresden Castle, Obama suggested the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would be the vehicle for U.S. leadership on global warming, and the rallying point would be the UN Climate Change conference in December in Copenhagen:
We are seeing progress in Congress around energy legislation that would set up for the first time in the United States a cap and trade system. That process is moving forward in ways that I think if you had asked political experts two or three months ago would have seemed impossible. So I’m actually more optimistic than I was about America being able to take leadership on this issue, joining Europe, which over the last several years has been ahead of us on this issue.
As I told Chancellor Merkel, unless the United States and Europe, with our large carbon footprints, per capita carbon footprints, are willing to take some decisive steps, it’s going to be very difficult for us to persuade countries that on a per capita basis at least are still much less wealthy, like China or India, to take the steps that they’re going to need to take in controlling carbon emissions.
So we are very committed to working together and hopeful that we can arrive in Copenhagen having displayed that commitment in concrete ways.
The UK reduced its greenhouse gas emissions 23 percent below 1990 levels, doubling its Kyoto target of 12.5 percent, the Home Office announced Friday. The European Union reduced emissions 9.3 percent below 1990 levels, the European Environmental Agency reported.
But U.S. emissions are up 17 percent since 1990, according to the EPA. The combined reductions from the EU and UK add up to about 668 teragrams of “carbon-dioxide equivalents,” a measure scientists devised to simultaneously quantify different greenhouse gases. The U.S. produced an increase of about 1050 teragrams.
Waxman-Markey establishes a cap and trade system similar to the one that would have been imposed by the Kyoto Protocol, which Congress did not ratify.