How Green Is Your Country

Last week the Readers Digest published a list of the most green countries and cities at the, see www.rd.com/content/greenest-locations-on-the-globe
The people behind the list were Matthew E. Kahn, PhD, and Fran Lostys. Its refreshing to see a better assessment than that given by the Labour Party, who like to pretend that were world leaders, when were one of the worst offenders. The press took this attitude last week, but I’m not sure how much notice will be paid to this.

However I’m not sure exactly how this was done, some of the results are surprising. The USA does better than the UK, and African Countries come near the bottom. I would expect the wealthy countries to have a larger footprint as they consume vast amounts of energy. In developing countries people can’t afford expensive imports so are forced to live more sustainably. A list of countries with their 2004 emissions shows USA and China leading, the top 8 countries producing 63% of the worlds emissions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

According to www.mnp.nl/en/dossiers/Climatechange/moreinfo/Chinanowno1inCO2emissionsUSAinsecondposition.html Chinas emissions have recently overtaken that of the USA. China is now producing goods for much of the world, so in fairness some of these emissions are down to us. Our increasing dependence on Chinese goods is contributing to a rise in carbon emissions, a report suggests, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7028573.stm


How Countries Rate according to the Readers Digest
1. Finland
2. Iceland
3. Norway
4. Sweden
5. Austria
6. Switzerland
7. Ireland
8. Australia
9. Uruguay
10. Denmark
11. Canada
12. Japan
13. Israel
14. Italy
15. Slovenia
16. France
17. Netherlands
18. Portugal
19. New Zealand
20. Greece
21. Germany
22. Latvia
23. United States
24. Lithuania
25. United Kingdom
...
137. Chad
138. Burkina Faso
139. Sierra Leone
140. Niger
141. Ethiopia