In spite of embracing of the Kyoto treaty that borders on religious zealotry, Europe is failing to achieve come anywhere close to meeting their goals in cuts for greenhouse gas emissions. So now the EU is setting up a trade agreement wherein European countries will pay Russia to cut emmisions on their behalf. But there’s a problem:

The economic repercussions will be enormous. A study released by the International Council for Capital Formation (iccfglobal.org) this month looked at the impact on four European countries — Germany, Spain, the U.K. and Italy — of purchasing emissions credits. The firm conducting the study, Global Insight, assumed that the cost of buying the credits would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy prices.

The result — an average decline of almost two percentage points in annual GDP for the four countries. Since these nations are currently growing at less than 1 percent a year, they would be plunged into recession. Jobs and capital would go elsewhere; total annual employment losses in the four countries would be 1.5 million.

On a related note, a study shows that there has been a 30% reduction in the currents that carry warm water past Europe. These warm currents give Europe it’s balmy weather and it is feared that the reduction will plunge the continent into a mini-ice age.

Of course, the article goes on to say that scientists are unsure “if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend”, that the “team’s findings leave a lot unexplained” and that “nobody is clear on what has gone wrong.”

In other words, scientists are still unable to come up with climate models that explain current or past conditions. Yet there are those that want to base national economic policy on them.

And by the way, the country that was the target of global criticism when we rejected the Kyoto insanity is the country that is doing the best:

Meanwhile, even though it hasnt ratified Kyoto, the United States is doing better than countries that have (including, over the past three years, many in Europe), in large part because market forces are driving businesses and individuals to use energy more efficiently.