2007 Climate Change Performance Index

Germanwatch and the Climate Action Network-Europe (CANE) have released their 2007 Climate Change Performance Index. Their press release describes the purpose and methodology of the index as follows:

Jan Burck and other Germanwatch experts developed the CCPI methodology, which is meant to help increase transparency in international climate policy. The Index compares the climate protection efforts of 56 industrialised and rapidly industrialising countries, that together make up more than 90% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The CCPI was published for the first time earlier in 2006, and an updated version with the latest data and insights is being presented at the World Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. Recently, its usage for country ratings in financial markets was agreed with German rating agency OEKOM Research in Munich.

The Climate Change Performance Index allows for a thorough and reliable comparison between countries, because it does not only look at emission volumes of a given country, but analyses trends in emission and even includes an assessment of the climate policies at both domestic and international level respectively. The Index is based on data sets from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a qualitative survey among national experts who supplied detailed policy assessments.

The 10 best countries, according to the index, are:

1. Sweden
2. UK
3. Denmark
4. Malta
5. Germany
6. Argentina
7. Hungary
8. Brazil
9. India
10. Switzerland

The ten worst countries are:

47. Australia
48. South Korea
49. Iran
50. Thailand
51. Canada
52. Kazakhstan
53. USA
54. China
55. Malaysia
56. Saudi Arabia

One individual involved in the study makes the important point that environmental policies have a significant impact on how successful a country will be at protecting against climate change:

Christoph Bals, political director of Germanwatch, said policy had an enormous effect on the rankings. The U.S. could move up 30 spots if its policies were akin to Britain’s, he said.

The United States and Australia are the only major industrialized countries to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is not disturbed by ranking 53rd out of 56. In its view, it is doing quite well in the climate change arena:

“The president has made dealing with climate change a priority for this administration (and) will continue to,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday.

When asked about the rankings, Kristen A. Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said there were many different ways to measure environmental progress.

“The U.S. has seen one of the smallest increases — 1.3 percent from 2000-2004 — in greenhouse gas emissions (of) any major world economy,” she said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

“This compares favorably with Europe’s more than 2 percent increase during the same time period,” she added. “At the same time, the U.S. successfully met the needs of a growing population and grew the economy nearly 10 percent, and the U.S. is exceeding the president’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas intensity 18 percent by 2012.”

At least last week’s election has rid us of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who has (in)famously described global warming as the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and compared Al Gore’s book The Inconvenient Truth to Mein Kampf…