2012 World's Green Countries Guessing Game

I got into a discussion with my father who is taking Environmental Lab this Spring Semester with me about how we as a country don't do our best with our environment  I asked him if he knew what country was the "greenest" country in the world and we started simply guessing which ones we thought would be among the top. This was our list:

1) Switzerland
2) France
3) UK
4) Australia
5) Germany

After playing this little guessing game we decided to on ahead and find out what it really was for 2012, and these were the results we from in an online article:

*Not my personal content*

Source: http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/analytics/?doc=52268


"Switzerland is the greenest country worldwide. Latvia is ranked second, ahead of such countries as Norway, France, Great Britain and Sweden, according to "Environmental Performance Index" (EPI) by Yale and Columbia universities.

The executive director of the environmental organization "homo ecos", Sanita Ribena, informed LETA that Latvia is second among 132 countries.

Lithuania is ranked 17th, but Estonia – 54th.

Source: http://epi.yale.edu

EPI is a quantitative study. It follows the state of national environments and uses the best available data. The research has been out for a while, and its findings are published once per two years. In 2008, Latvia was ranked eighth, whilst in 2010 – 21st.

Latvia's society became familiar with EPI two years ago due to "homo ecos" campaign – "Latvia – the greenest country in the world?" – when the organization urged people to replace their habits with more environmentally friendly ones.

"Latvia's richness lies in its resources – biological diversity, water and air. We are living in royal conditions, compared to other places worldwide. Unfortunately, these resources are not everlasting. They are too valuable to estimate their value in any currency, however, they are our country's added value. It is important to remember this when planning Latvia's economic development," emphasized Ribena.

This year, the traditional EPI is also accompanied by "Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index". This research reveals how various countries gradually solved their environmental issues from 2000 to 2010. In this study, Latvia is ranked first."