We’re not doing great, to put it bluntly. MIT Technology Review ranked the US 21st in the annual ranking of 76 nations on their abilities to develop a sustainable, low-carbon future. European countries took 16 of the top 20 spots, cementing the conventional wisdom that Europe is leaving the US in its wake when it comes to implementing sustainability at scale. Canada beat the US as well, clocking in at No. 15. Iceland led this year’s rankings.
The index measures how countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, implementing renewable energy and enacting other environmental measures.
The recent Supreme Court ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions certainly won’t help the US’s ranking in coming years. SCOTUS’s ruling was basically a roll-back of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
Writing in the New Yorker, noted environmentalist Bill McKibben decried the ruling as another example – as the MIT rankings starkly illustrate – of the US taking a back seat on climate policy. “If the United States — historically, the world’s largest emitter of carbon — can’t play a serious policy role, it won’t play a serious leadership role,” he wrote.
Greg Zimmerman is senior contributing editor for FacilitiesNet.com and Building Operating Management magazine.
