USA better than EU on Climate Change

America is often critised by the EU and European countries over enviromental issues for not signing to the Kyoto Protocol. However unlike the empty bluster that was Kyoto the USA is actually doing something about climate change, rather than mouthing pleasantries.

Most European countries are falling behind their carbon pledges, but the US is doing better. Its economy grew by 3.5 percent last year, but its fuel emissions went up 0.1 percent, with no growth in road pollution and a drop in aircraft emissions.

But then the need to do anything doesn't seem to be understood much in EU. The US is helped by the fact that it is more exposed to the market due to it's lower taxes, rises in oil prices have a greater marginal effect. And that is where incentives really come into play, at the margins, so the greater marginal effect of the world wide increases in oil prices are having a much greater incentive to cut back in the US than in the EU.