Australians Are the Worst In The World Ecology

Original source : http://amazingdata.com

Posted : August 2009

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Australia has been named the world’s worst polluter in a new global ranking list. The list was posted on the Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) website and looked at over 50,000 power stations worldwide to determine its rankings. The list ranked countries according to the amount of CO2 produced from generating power. 

Although Australia does not emit the largest amount of CO2, that honor belongs to the US at 2,530 million tons per year; its comparatively low population and high level of emissions make it the largest polluter per capita. Australia emits 205 million tons of CO2 annually, the 7th highest overall. This works out to around 10 tons per person. The US, in second place, averages 8.2 tons per person.

Carma hopes the list will help push countries towards lower carbon emissions. Kevin Ummel is a research assistant with the Center for Global Development, the company that compiled the data for the list. Ummel said: “The experience of people in the environmental field has been that supplying the public and markets with information that they did not have has often led to improvements in environmental quality. There is no reason why this could not happen for carbon emissions.”

Australia is one of two nations, the other being the US, which did not ratify the Kyoto accords. The country regularly places in the top of lists of worst polluters. Environmental groups have been actively pushing the government towards more environmentally friendly policies, however. Earlier this week close to 150,000 people rallied in cities and towns across Australia to draw attention to global warming as an issue in the upcoming November 24 elections.

Source: BBC

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