US at the bottom of G8 for Environmental Performance

U.S. Ranked at Bottom of G8 for Environmental Performance. By Felicity Barringer, NYTimes, January 23, 2008. "A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Groups 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 list [will] be released today at the World Economic Forum in Davos."