Scott,

Perhaps I am misreading you, but I think you are giving the EU too much credit here. I believe that they deliberately signed Kyoto without any real intention of honoring it. As long as they professed the proper sentiments on the matter they were in the right, how they actually acted on it was not important. This sort of behavior seems to be par for the course with the EU(read: France and Germany). The EU Stability and Growth Pact furor leaps to mind.

What angers me is that President Bush was completely honest and forthcoming about why he would not sign the treaty and comes off in the world press as evil personified. Meanwhile the cynical EU members who said what was necessary to get good press with no intentions of acting on it, are defended to the end by those who honestly believe that a temperature change over 50 years of less than 1° C is catastrophic! Apparently this is what is meant by European "sophistication" - lying, while American "naivete" seems to equate to honesty. I'll take naivete any day of the week.