Take my pop quiz about crushing environmental guilt:a) One nation burns more coal per capita than any other in the world, drives massive gas-guzzling cars, scoffs at public transit, buys piles and piles of useless consumer goods, and is even considering strip-mining its most cherished national landmark for uranium.b) One nation will soon be the most populous on earth, yet its per capita consumption of natural resources is super low, vast swaths of it aren’t even electrified, and its worst industrial environmental catastrophes have occurred as the result of malfeasance from the first country’s exploitation.The question is a two-parter: Which country is a) and which is b)? And which country do studies show feels more guilty about their impact on the environment?So the first is obviously the United States, and the second is India. But the next part is much more surprising. According to new research carried out around the world by National Geographic, Americans feel far, far less guilty about their impact on the environment than Indians do. According to NatGeo’s annual Greendex report, Americans live far less sustainably than anybody else, and feel much less guilty about it. Indians, meanwhile, live more sustainably than just about anyone on the planet, and feel way worse about their impact on the environment.This handy graph breaks it down:
Kate Sheppard parses the findings: "Researchers from NatGeo asked 17,000 people in 17 countries around the world about their habits — how much energy they use, how they get around, where their food comes from, what they think about environmental issues. And in their results, released on Thursday, they found that American consumers were the “least sustainable” for the fourth year running. India, China and Brazil — three of the biggest emerging economies in the world — scored the highest on the survey."The study also demonstrates the perverse logic of sustainable thinking: “People in countries that were the least likely to make sustainable choices … were also more likely to feel like they could have a postive impact on the environment. People in developing countries, while more likely to report practicing sustainable behaviors, also said that they didn’t feel like individuals could do much to affect the environment” There’s a graph for that too:
In a way, the findings make total sense — those who live in the developing world have seen their natural resources exploited relentlessly by multinational corporations and sometimes, authoritarian governments. It follows they’d feel helpless when oil companies charge in and disasters rain down, or when, for instance, the Chinese government decrees that a massive coal plant is going up next door, sorry. Meanwhile, Americans are probably right that they do hold more power to protect the environment than others — our corporations are the ones fucking everything up, after all — but in reality, we don’t bother. We don’t vote to restrict their carbon pollution, to regulate dangerous drilling practices. We don’t rally against the injustices they habitually commit, we don’t hold them accountable. Instead, we buy Priuses and recycle and call it a day.And it works! We feel better than ever.
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