(In)Action By Committee

So, I sees this headline, EU-U.S. Summit To Call For "Urgent" Climate Action, and says me to myself, "Hmmmm, maybe finally something is going to start happening.

Wrong:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The European Union and United States will agree at a summit on Monday that climate change is a central challenge that requires "urgent, sustained global action," according to a draft statement seen by Reuters.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, making her first trip to Washington since assuming the presidency of the EU, hopes the joint statement will lay the groundwork for a broader deal on combating global warming at a June G8 summit she will host in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.

OK, so it's not pulling the fire alarm, but let's face facts: no multilateral agreement ever happened overnight, did it?

So what's this "call" going to entail? Well...um......errrr.....not so much, it turns out. See, America and the E.U. have different regulatory standards, so the agreement to be announced this week will create:

A council led by EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen and White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard will be set up to monitor progress in aligning regulations and present annual reports to EU and U.S. leaders.

A COMMITTEE?!?!?!? ANNUAL REPORTS!?!?!?!?

Oh dear lord, save us from those who stand in our way! Or to put it in the words of Queen Amidala:

I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee!

People will die. People are suffering.

Let's make this very simple: the E.U. environmental standards are barely more acceptable than America's, and do just slightly more than nothing to assist the environment and mitigate the damages of global warming.

New standards, tougher even than Kyoto's, are required now, thanks to the hands-sitting-on by the Bush administration and more important, the European Union, who should have pressured Dumbya much harder to accept Kyoto and get with the program.

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