Green Mirage

The Guardian newspaper’s ‘greenwashing exposer’ Fred Pearce uncovers a number of offending countries who have succeeded in raising their emissions from 1990 levels despite signing up to reduce them. “Step forward Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece — all with emissions up by more than a quarter … US and Australia, which both reneged on the protocol after signing it. And Canada, which never reneged but still has emissions up by a quarter… But my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as ‘clean and green’.” “New Zealand secured a generous Kyoto target, which simply required it not to increase its emissions between 1990 and 2010. But the latest UN statistics show its emissions of greenhouse gases up by 22%, or a whopping 39% if you look at emissions from fuel burning alone.”