Area 51

Fair-to-middling was the U.S. ranking in a new study, presented at the World Economic Forum last week in New York, that rated the environmental health of 142 countries. In the study, conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, the U.S. came in at number 51, behind Botswana (15) and Cuba (47) but ahead of Japan (62) and Great Britain (98). The top-ranking countries were (can you guess?) Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Switzerland, while the worst were Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Interestingly, the study found no clear correlation between economic wealth or degree of industrialization and environmental health.