The Iron Curtain revolt

The financial crisis trumps the so called "climate crisis":

Europe’s commitment to ambitious green goals became the latest victim of the global financial crisis yesterday when a growing number of EU countries rebelled, claiming that the plans were now too expensive.

Plans for binding European legislation by December were dropped as the EU watered down the carbon dioxide blueprint that it had announced with a fanfare 18 months ago.

The revolt by eight countries, led by Italy and Poland, left the EU’s self-proclaimed mission to shape a global, post Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gases in disarray.

Actually, financial crisis or not, it would have eventually come to this anyway. The only way to meet the EU's crazy carbon targets would be to severely curtail industrial production and throw their economies into a tailspin.

President Sarkozy of France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, led the way in appealing to all 27 countries to stick to their targets.

But tempers flared at the quarterly European Council in Brussels, with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, clearly furious at the pressure being applied. During a stand-up row behind the scenes, he told Mr Sarkozy that the targets would crucify Italian industry.

“Our businesses are in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed,” Mr Berlusconi said later.

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, said: “We don’t say to the French that they have to close down their nuclear power industry and build windmills, and nobody can tell us the equivalent.”

In an extraordinary break with EU protocol, both leaders said that they did not have to stick to the deal because neither had been in office when it was signed by their predecessors in March 2007.

Bravo to Italy, Poland and the other renegades for putting their economies and their people's welfare first and not giving in to the EU on this.

Let Mr. Sarkozy commit Kyotocide if he wishes. Vive le revolution!

Update: Looks like the Euros have got the UN worried.