WASHINGTON, D.C. — The “old Europe” members who still control the turbulent European Union are a curious lot — bereft of ideas and devoid of intellectual honesty.

The older members of the EU, led by France and Germany, are having their economic lunch eaten for them by such free-market upstarts as Poland, Hungary, Spain and the Czech Republic, yet they cling, lemming-like, to welfare state socialism that encourages 35-hour work-weeks and paid vacations of 10 weeks or more.

France and Germany are home to growing numbers of Muslim immigrants, who not only refuse to assimilate into their new cultures, but are openly anti-democratic and hostile to the other long-established religions of those nations.

Except for some token troops in Afghanistan, they’ve done precious little in combating Islamic terrorism and virtually nothing to alleviate the suffering of millions of their former subjects in Africa.

A rapid response by just one battalion of French or German soldiers in Rwanda could have prevented the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus and ended the long-running genocide against the non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese.

Rather than stepping forward to contribute to human progress, the French and Germans seemed obsessed with an apocalyptic view of global warming as well as pointing a collective finger of blame at the Bush Administration for failing to take their obsession seriously.

Although the Earth may well be in one of its gradual warming cycles, the EU establishment has embraced a sky-is-falling theory based, not on science, but faulty computer projections that temperatures will warm by as much as 10 degrees over the next century — all because of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2).

As the astute economic columnist Robert Samuelson recently observed in The Washington Post: “Considering Europeans’ contempt for the United States and George Bush for not embracing the Kyoto protocol, you’d expect that they would have made major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — the purpose of Kyoto.”

Not, Samuelson notes, according to the latest figures supplied by the International Energy Agency. From 1990 to 2002, global emissions of the CO 2, the major greenhouse gas, have increased 16.4 percent. Among the Europeans, Spain was up 46.9 percent, Ireland 40.8 percent and Greece 28.2 percent.

France was only up 6.9 percent, but it derives almost all of its electricity from non-carbon emitting nuclear power — an environmental no-no in many other Western countries, including the U.S.

True enough, Germany was down 13.3 percent, but their reductions did not come from complying with Kyoto. Germany shut most of the pollution-belching coal-fired plants inherited from its absorption of East Germany.

With China and India continuing to rev-up industrial output, there’s undoubtedly much more carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere than three years ago, but both countries were exempted from the Kyoto treaty because they were “emerging nations.” Try telling that to a laid-off American assembly-line worker as he stands in line at the unemployment office, by the way.

Europe’s insistence that the U.S. sign-on to Kyoto’s emissions cuts, would idle even more Americans.

Testifying before the House of Representatives earlier this year, Richard Trumka, the president of the United Mine Workers cited studies that found ratifying Kyoto would cost the U.S. "hundreds of billions of dollars of lost economic output, and over a million-and-a-half lost American jobs."

France and Germany, both saddled with high unemployment and sluggish economies, would like nothing better than to see Kyoto’s restrictive mandates rein-in America’s robust economic recovery.

That — and that alone — is the major reason they and their EU allies keep pressuring the Bush Administration to sign what amounts to an economic suicide pact. Given the horror of the terrorist bombings in London, they might do better by committing their resources to fight a real enemy rather than a phantom one.

BUSH AND THE U.S. MUST AWAKE TO REALITY WHILE PLANET EARTH STILL HAS A CHANCE

WASHINGTON , D.C. — President Bush, who has previously rejected any links between global warming and man-made pollution, is sending confusing and mixed signals on the one of the most important issues to face the planet.

In Denmark, just prior to the G-8 Summit, Bush told a press conference, "Listen, I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem." But then Bush continued to reject the 1997 Kyoto Treaty that seeks mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Bush's contradictory policy on global warming and pollution has left European leaders, who strongly support the Kyoto treaty to fight global warming, noticeably perplexed.

The President also resorted to his typical "scare and blame" tactics. He said Kyoto’s curbs on energy use would have "wrecked" the U.S. economy. Bush fails to recognize that "green" industries and other environmentally friendly businesses are among the few success stories in an otherwise stagnant U.S. economy, particularly in California.

Bush continued to demagogue the global climate change issue and blamed worldwide greenhouse gas emission increases on India and China. Further, he called the two nations "big polluters" and childishly noted that they did not sign Kyoto.

Quizzically, Bush declared he would work for the "post-Kyoto period" during his European visit. However, Bush never embraced the current " Kyoto period."

The Kyoto Treaty calls for a mere 5.2 percent reduction in 1990 global greenhouse gas levels by 2012. A few months after his inauguration in 2001, Bush withdrew President Clinton's signature from the accord, dismaying the Europeans who worked for years to hammer it out.

With a U.S. environmental policy that is listless and rudderless, it is no wonder that European leaders are trying to exercise responsible leadership on one of the most important international policy issues since the Cold War.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac, and other G-8 leaders are correct in pressuring Bush, who has listened too much to Vice President Cheney and other White House officials shilling for greenhouse gas-producing oil, coal and gas companies, to get with the international effort to stem global warming. There is no time for Bush to be waffling and delaying by citing nebulous "post-Kyoto" plans.

On his flight to Denmark and Scotland, Air Force One likely flew over or near Greenland — a land that is experiencing the rapid melting of its ice sheet and the disruption of the lives of its native Inuit inhabitants.

Greenland is not an isolated case. The same devastating effects of global warming can be seen in Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska, Canada, and Russia, the Antarctic, and near-sea level island states like Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands.

If Bush continues to dismiss the effects of global warming, perhaps the next G-8 Summit should be held on the island of Funafuti, the capital of Tuvalu, so the industrial nation leaders can show Bush how rising sea levels are poisoning fresh water aquifers and crops and threaten to make the island country the first extinct nation in modern history.

The UN is already calling such an option "abandonment." If Bush continues to falter in his responsibilities to have America take the helm on global warming, the UN General Assembly desk plates for Kiribati, Maldives, and the Marshall Islands will soon join Tuvalu's in a box in some dusty UN storage closet — "abandoned nations."

But it is not just the developing world that will suffer. The residents of Venice may have to relocate to Milan or Rome and the sea may reclaim large portions of the Netherlands.

It is past time for President Bush to start acting more like President Theodore Roosevelt and less like Emperor Nero.