US places dead LAST among Group of 8 on Environment

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment


By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: January 23, 2008


WASHINGTON — A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.

European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.

The top 10 countries, with scores of 87 or better, were led by Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The others at the top were Austria, France, Latvia, Costa Rica, Colombia and New Zealand, the leader in the 2006 version of the analysis, which is conducted by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities.

“We are putting more weight on climate change,” said Daniel Esty, the report’s lead author, who is the director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. “Switzerland is the most greenhouse gas efficient economy in the developed world,” he said, in part because of its use of hydroelectric power and its transportation system, which relies more on trains than individual cars or trucks.

The United States, with a score of 81.0, he noted, “is slipping down,” both because of low scores on three different analyses of greenhouse gas emissions and a pervasive problem with smog. The country’s performance on a new indicator that measures regional smog, he said, “is at the bottom of the world right now.”

He added, “The U.S. continues to have a bottom-tier performance in greenhouse gas emissions.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/washington/23enviro.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1201093301-E/RgiM7i6lrJfgWRgkdYXQ&oref=slogin

:eyes:

A few of them have less than or close to the total population of New York city.

"Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The others at the top were Austria, France, Latvia, Costa Rica, Colombia and New Zealand"

The largest is France, and our population is somewhere around 4 or 5 times as large as theirs. You could also probably fit all of those countries into the continental United States, and have room to spare(or get close).

We have the population of a developing country(only two bigger), but the economic status of a developed country(for now, none bigger).

Then you look at populations in Europe, and they're getting older. So are we, but our immigration policies are more open. We obviously have our share of conflict in terms of immigration, but European countries have more than their fair share of problems in that area. You would hope developed countries with aging populations would use less. Which is why they have an actual healthcare system in various European countries, since they have to keep everyone alive, as long a spossible, or else they won't have much of a population. We're a throw away society because there are 300 million of us. If somebody dies, there's another cog to takes their place. Plus we don't have a system for 300,000,000 people. Nobody does. That would have to include every age bracket, not just seniors in Medicare, or not just children with the SCHIP, or not just a few million people here and there in insurance companies. The US also has a more diverse population than almost any other country(if not every other country).

I just don't think it's as easy as, "we should be like Sweden". The current version of America can't be like Sweden. Break the US up into smaller countries, and a couple might be able to be more like Sweden.

There are even more complicated layers in addition to those. The military aspect, and how all those work. January 23rd, 2008 being the way it is as a result of the results of every war ever financed. When, where, and how exploration and colonialism found the new and old world's. There are more you could add to the list.

That's why there is no easy answer to these problems. No matter what we do, we'll have positive and negatives outcomes. We'll get something, but we have to give something in return. The best we can do is go out with what we got in with. The only way you can do better than breaking even, is if you exploit someone else along the way. Even then, you're not getting out alive.

The natural environment doesn't give a rat's ass about the absolute "size" of each country. The per-capita footprint of each resident is a much more relevant measure. The US (and Canada, and Russia, and Australia) has a lot lower level of density than Europe or China or Japan or India. As a result, those countries could have a much smaller footprint if they put their priorities straight. The "Oh, the US has almost 5 times France's population" excuse is just a shallow cop-out.