[OKC] From NY Times: Iceland Leads Environmental Index as U.S. Falls

[Miles, Karen]

Iceland Leads Environmental Index as U.S. Falls 


By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/elisabeth_
rosenthal/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

A new ranking of the world's nations by environmental performance puts
some of the globe's largest economies far down the list, with the United
States sinking to 61st and China to 121st. 

In the previous version of the Environmental Performance Index
<http://epi.yale.edu/Home> , compiled every two years by Yale and 
Columbia University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/col
umbia_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  researchers, the United
States ranked 39th, and China 105th. 

The top performer this year is Iceland
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritorie
s/iceland/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> , which gets virtually all of its
power from renewable sources - hydropower and geothermal
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/geothermal_power/inde
x.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  energy. It was joined in the top tier by
a cluster of European countries known for their green efforts, including
Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. 

"Countries that take seriously the environment as a policy challenge do
improve, and those that don't deteriorate," said Daniel C. Esty,
director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, who
oversees the index project. "Both the U.S. and China are suffering
because they're industrial and haven't been paying much attention to
environmental policy."

 

Article continues at: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/science/earth/27index.html?partner=rss
&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

 

 

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