Ranking the Climate Performance of G8 Countries

While climate change will apparently be at the center of the G8 meeting in Germany, the World Wide Fund has just published a report ranking the climate performance of G8 countries. As expected, the United States is the worst country (it didn’t even ratify the Kyoto Protocol), but, more surprisingly perhaps, Canada is not far behind.

Although comparisons are difficult because countries have different starting points, between 1990 and 2004 greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) increased by 27% in Canada and by 16.3% in the US. In contrast, during that same period they decreased by 18.4% in Germany, 14.8% in the UK, and 1.8% in France. Both Canada and the US have a level of emissions per capita of 24, compared to 9 in France, 11 in the UK and Japan, and 12 in Germany. In both countries, the largest share of GGE comes from electricity and heat (36%).

Finally, although I insist on the fact that comparisons have to approached with caution, it is worth looking at the increase of GGE in emerging countries. Between 1990 and 2004, GGE increased by 40.7% in Brazil, 57.5% in India, and 72.7% in China.

Successful globalization might entail global overheat. Hence the urgency of pressuring the biggest producers of GGE but also of revising our entire consumption and development model as environmentalists have long advocated.