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LIVING GREEN
Just because a place is environmentally “fit” doesn’t mean you’d want to spend your life there—think glaciers and rain forests. But finding the perfect balance between what’s green and what’s livable could lead you to paradise. Aiming for that ideal, we researched the world’s greenest countries while also ensuring they were ones where people could thrive. Along the way, we alsounearthed the worst places to live. Hold your breath and hope the country you call home isn’t one of them.
We analyzed data from two top sources covering 141 nations to rank the planet’s greenest, most livable places. Our analysis delved into social factors (income and education, for instance) and environmental measures (see our chart for who scores highest and lowest for some of them, and how theUnited States, the best overall, and the worst overall stack up). While helping rank the countries, our analysis also led us to five key lessons.
You Can Always Get Greener
Even the cleanest countries have serious environmental problems. Top-ranked Finland wins high marks for air and water quality, a low incidence of infant disease, and how well it protects citizens from water pollution andnatural disasters. But the country also produces an above-average amount of greenhouse gases, has a large ecological footprint (the mass of land and water needed to sustain the national level of consumption) and contributes significantly to regional environmental woes.
The reason: Finland has the highest industrial-energy consumption rate of all five Nordic countries, due largely to its reliance on thefuel-intensive forestry and quarry industries. Colder winters and lower rainfall in recent years have also had an impact, forcing cuts in the production of hydroelectricity and boosting—by 15 percent since 2005—the national appetite for fossil fuels, a major source of greenhouse gases.
A Move to Improve
To get greener, countries must do more to capitalize on national strengths. Finland, amongthe world’s largest exporters of wind-power technology, produces less than 1 percent of its own electricity via wind power, despite average coastal wind speeds of 15 mph, 50 percent stronger than those in Chicago.
On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire, apparently after sparks from a train ignited a surface oil slick. No one was hurt, and the blaze caused only about$50,000 worth of property damage. Still, the fire had a huge impact, focusing attention on environmental issues in the United States. Three years later, the Clean Water Act was enacted, and in time, other aggressive steps were taken to improve the quality of the country’s air and water. Today people fish and canoe on big stretches of the Cuyahoga.
Unfortunately, as shown by the United States’ranking on our list (No. 23), there’s plenty of cleanup work to be done. Again, greenhouse gases are a major culprit. In 2004, per capita carbon dioxide emissions were nearly five times the worldwide per capita figure. And it’s a trend headed in the wrong direction: Total carbon dioxide emissions grew by 22 percent in this country between 1990 and 2005.
A Move to Improve
To fight air pollution,Congress boosted the average fuel economy standard for passenger cars from 18 mpg to 27.5 mpg between 1978 and 1985. It hasn’t risen since. That’s likely to change, but Congress should do more to improve energy efficiency, such as offering greater incentives for owners of alternative-fuel vehicles.
Save the Forests and the Trees
In developed nations, people tend to cluster in cities and suburbs,concentrating pollution in those areas. When rural swaths are publicly owned and protected against development, they become “green moats”—buffers against the harmful effects of “brown cities.” Canada (No. 11) exemplifies this. While wild forests are largely disappearing in most developed nations, they still thrive in Canada. Their presence helps explain why the country rates well overall for clean...