A Swedish friend writes to inform us [with links in Danish] of “some remarkable statements from the Danish government.

The Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedergård [of the] ‘conservative party’ compares the break down of the US capitalism with the fall of Soviet Union.

The Danish foreign minister and Party Chairman of conservative party says that conservative party is a mix of socialism and liberalism.”

Knowing that Europe’s social democracies are faring equally poorly — and that some, notably Spain, Germany and the UK actually led the global recession — this simply proves that old habits die hard, such as the Euro-instinct of blaming the U.S. for everything [this instinct being a constant sore spot to those many U.S.-admiring Europeans, such as my Danish wife and in-laws].

But let us not ask too much of dear Connie. You may remember her. She’s the lady with a colorful history. For example, she obstinately refused to apologize or even correct the record when caught dragging other poseur pols to a “galloping glacier” whose gallops she falsely blamed on global warming.

More pompously, she “claim[ed] that she and her ilk ‘are getting a bit impatient, not on our own behalf but on behalf of the planet.’ The condemnations of the US included ‘unusually blunt language’ about how the rest of the world are waiting for the US to act, and that it is the US resistance to adopting a particular approach to addressing emissions that jeopardizes the climate. Not China, India, Mexico, and 155 countries representing the vast majority of emissions seeing theirs skyrocket; certainly not the EU.”

One might think that such insight is mighty tough talk from Europe’s biggest Kyoto violator, whose sole emission reductions all seem to have come from deciding one year to import electricity instead of producing it, despite a massive suite of taxes designed to price discretionary energy (and automobility) out of the reach of most.

That’s not exactly what their neighbors to the south would call a Wirtschaftwunder. Hmm, given Europe’s absurd bluster, maybe they would call it that, given some EU nations are now calling Eastern Europe’s economic collapse “early action” toward Kyoto compliance.

Yes. We have many things to learn from our European superiors on this issue. For example, why didn’t we just call the Fannie/Freddie – inspired financial meltdown our stab at being green, and put a happy face on things? It would, at the same time, have accurately presented the truth about the phrase, “green jobs”, which is to say, making jobs disappear.