Sir, - Few things demonstrate the difference between the United States and the European Union more clearly than the controversy over the Kyoto Protocol. The US is a democracy where, despite the best efforts of the late Clinton administration, debate and dissent on important social issues can be discussed. A recent petition signed by nearly 17,000 US scientists trained in the fields of physics, geophysics, climate science, meteorology, oceanography and applied chemistry stated that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate." The European Union is not a democracy but a highly centralised state which is increasingly showing a tendency towards totalitarian control exercised through legislation which is not democratically mandated and implemented by an executive which is not elected. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Europe, unlike America, has seen no public debate on the hugely pervasive Kyoto Protocol which was accepted by the Irish Government without as much as a vote in the Dail.
The universal acceptance of Kyoto represents the effective hijacking of science by the political community for its own purposes. One of those purposes is the introduction of a Europe-wide energy tax which will give politicians the ability to do what they do best, to stifle economic growth and to exercise control over their benighted citizens.
George W. Bush has got off to a wonderful start as American President and he shows all the hallmarks of becoming a truly great national leader. When the European Union eventually comes to survey the social and economic recession which its policies are creating, the European peoples may be forced into the realisation that the true future for Europe lies in the establishment of democratic institutions rather than the socialist, totalitarian models towards which they are drifting at the present. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Leahy, Clifden, Corrofin, Co Clare.