Saturday, May 10, 2008

Not so Green

The National Geographic Society just released its Greendex 2008 survey of consumers in the 14 countries of the world that use 75% of the world’s energy resources.

The survey measured each country’s environmental impact, by comparing the behaviors of its citizens in 4 areas: housing, transportation, food, and consumer goods.

Housing included size of homes, water consumption and the amount/type of energy used.

Transportation measured ownership of private vehicles and usage, length of regular commutes by car and use of public transportation.

Foods looked at the consumption of foods with high environmental impacts like bottled water, meat and seafood and how far foods consumed had traveled (as opposed to consumption of locally grown products).

Goods compared the amount of things that people buy and how long they’re used, whether they’re recycled/reused or thrown away.

Here are some of the scores, with India and Brazil the top two greenest countries and Canada and the US, the least green countries in the world.

India – 60
Brazil – 60
China – 56.1
Mexico – 54.3
Hungary – 53.2
Russia – 52.4
UK – 50.2
Germany – 50.2
Australia – 50.2
Spain – 50.0
Japan – 49.1
France – 48.7
Canada – 48.5
USA – 44.9

3 comments:

Bandobras said...

Well of course we are near the bottom of that list. We are a big people and therefore we need big houses. We need big meals. You never heard of a sushi bar with supersize specials did you. We need big cars / trucks to cover the big distances between our big cities. Leave the green stuff to little countries and little peoples. Remember "more is better" Why we even have bigger funerals than most of those weenie societies. And we are going to have more of them too.

XUP said...

B - You're very cynical.

Jazz said...

Very cynical perhaps, but that's pretty much the attitude of lots of north americans. Unfortunately.