North Americans may talk the green talk, but we're apparently too lazy to walk the walk. The US and Canada came in first and second respectively in a survey which measured the environmental unfriendliness of consumers around the world. The study, conducted for the National Geographic Society, asked people in 14 countries about their lifestyles, including questions on housing, food, and transport, and then gave them a green score on a scale of one to a hundred.
Reasons for the low marks in North America had to do with things like large houses, a preference for driving over public transit, and (not surprisingly in Canada) considerable use of home heating. Developing countries showed a smaller environmental footprint, probably because poverty, which usually involves tiny houses and nonexistent cars, is far less energy-intensive than wealth.
Beside the US and Canada, countries measured in the survey were Brazil, India, China, Mexico, Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Spain, Japan and France.
via [CBC News]
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