As a resident of The Netherlands for a couple of years, I caught a slight football (for Americans, soccer) fever and follow the sport somewhat.  So of course I’m excited about the World Cup and the good (and lucky) start by the USA as well as the just-ended match in which the Dutch team has opened Group E with a win over Denmark.  Hup, Hup, Holland!  Go USA!

Building on this theme, we thought we’d also share with you two other resources in the larger planetary competition – that is, which countries are most aware of, most capable of, and most active in reducing their contribution to global climate change?

The other World Cup – who’s doing the most in the area of environmental sustainability?

We found two interesting measurements of this.

National Geographic’s Greendex(TM) – a survey of sustainable consumption

First, we found Greendex(TM) – a program run by National Geographic

Greendex is made up of four components:

1. Qualitative survey of experts
2. 17-country quantitative survey
3. Greendex calculations
4. Market Basket

So Greendex gives significant detail, but on a limited number of countries:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• Hungary
• India
• Japan
• Mexico
• Russia
• South Korea
• Spain
• Sweden
• United Kingdom
• United States

We encourage you to check this out.  As a project manager, it’s important for you to understand the context and full spectrum of stakeholders in the countries in which your project is taking place.  In fact, you can make this personal by taking the quick but challenging 5-question Knowledge Quiz on the National Geographic site and compare your score with colleagues worldwide.  The link to Greendex is here and also in the title of this section.  Find a PDF summary of the Greendex survey here.  OK., you want the bottom line?  India is in first place, and the United States is in last place in 2010.  Stunning.

Yale University’s EPI

Secondly, we found the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) which is run by Yale University.  Taken directly from the EPI site, here is the description of this index:

Evidently, the whole Climate Change thing (say some folks) is just vaporware.  Pun intended.

Today’s Boston Globe has a very telling article (read the whole thing here), with some poll statistics showing that people are backing off their belief in climate change.

To us, the most revealing statistic is this one: Just since 2008, the number of people who do not think “that global warming is happening” has doubled. It’s still an (ignorant, in our opinion) minority of 20%, but it’s 20% now, when it was 10% in 2008.   see the chart below.

And, according to the surveys, done by Yale and George Mason Universities,

Sixteen percent are considered “dismissive’’ – believing that global warming isn’t happening and is probably a hoax – up from 7 percent in 2008. So the number who actually think this is a hoax, has MORE than doubled.

Here’s a quote from the article:

“This issue is so politically sensitive, scientists need to be careful they [focus] on the science and not advocacy. . . . The science is robust and can speak for itself,’’ said Adil Najam, a lead author of two Intergovernmental Panel assessments and director of Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He said the recent errors do not undermine the fact that man is significantly contributing to global warming, “but the review process needs to be strengthened’’ for future reports.

Dyslexia is not equal to a hoax

One of the issues providing fuel (again, pun intended) for the cynics, is the fact that some of the scientific reporting has been sloppy.  Not good, ladies and gentlemen, please tighten up on this. Turns out that when one report cited the ice on the Himalayas would melt by 2035, they reversed a couple of numbers – it should have read 2350.  In scientific terms, of course, that’s a blink of the eye.  In talk-show host language, though, this is ammunition, baby.  It shows bias.  It proves that this is a hoax.  Damn lying scientists!  Proving their points with false facts! Give the talk show hosts a little nub like this and they will hang their hats on it.  Again, to quote the Globe, “the errors went beyond sloppiness and were troubling to scientists because advocacy group reports, no matter how robust, can give the perception of bias and are often not peer-reviewed – meaning they have not been vetted by independent scientists, as are studies published in scientific journals.”

More than one way to be wrong

The article also points out – quite correctly – that errors have probably also been made which underestimate the problem.  And even without errors, are we 100% sure that we have all of the effects in hand?  We may be missing an “accelerator” factor that actually would either increase the intensity or speed of some of the changes that have been detected, and may not even have detected or predicted other changes at all.

Have a look at the detailed poll below.

Your comments wanted

What do YOU think? If you’re a cynic, where are you getting your energy (pun)? And if you are in the camp that thinks that there is a change to the climate initiated by millions of tons of GHGs (greenhouse gasses) produced by humankind, what’s keeping your belief level high despite the dyslexic and dumb dabbling of some of our scientists?