by Timothy Curran
Perhaps surprisingly, the Greendex study which surveys
17,000 people, 1000 in 17 different countries, on their habits and attitudes in
relation to consumer choices finds that the residents of developing nations of
Brazil, India and China are the most sustainable consumers. France, Canada and
the USA rank the lowest.
While these results may be encouraging to those concerned
with how economic growth will affect the environment, they do not sit well with
the environmental realities in these countries. Current individual practices
may be more sustainable than in already affluent, developed nations, but
evidence shows that as income rises in developing nations habits will start to
mirror American and Western European behavior, which will exacerbate the
environmental damage currently occurring. This reality is seen in China where demand
for resources is soaring. Use of fossil fuels has been growing at 8% per year
since 2002, as opposed to less than 2% in developed nations. This is in spite
of the fact that Chinese are still far more likely than Americans to commute by
bicycle. As incomes rise people will start putting down those bikes and hopping
into cars, a trend that is already playing out. When that happens China will
easily overtake Western Europe and America for the dubious distinction of being
the top emitter of greenhouse gasses.
To get a more accurate picture of the overall environmental
picture of a country we can look to the Environmental Policy Index (EPI)
conducted by Yale and Columbia every two years. Instead of asking people about
their habits the “EPI ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked
across ten policy categories covering both environmental public health and
ecosystem vitality. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government
scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.”(from:
epi.yale.edu) When government policy, action, and the actual state of the
environment are considered, the results are very different from the Greendex.
The countries of northern Europe, though they do not rank
very high on the Greendex survey, have some of the most environmentally-protective
policies and healthiest ecosystems. In fact, the 2010 EPI scored 6 European
nations in its top 10, while the developing nations of China and India ranked
considerably lower, at 121 and 123 out of 163 nations. Comparing the results
from the two studies shows a wide gap between the actions, and stated attitudes
of individual consumers, and the overall reality of the nation.
The positive take away from the Greendex survey is that
there may be a growing awareness of the impact that lifestyle has upon the
environment. If that is the case, maybe there is hope that citizens of
developing nations will adopt better habits than the citizens of America and
Western Europe.
