Linda Young - AHN Editor
Athens Greece (AHN) - Greece ranked 11th from the bottom of 148 countries for being sensitive to using natural resources wisely, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund conservation group.
Greece wastes energy and water at such a high rate that it ranks significantly worse than the global average for waste, according to the report. But then, more than three-quarters of the world's population are living in nations that use more natural resources than the biological capacity of their countries.
WWF found that only residents of the United States use more water per person than Greece's 634,012 gallons of water per person per year, which is double the 327,573 gallons per person per year global average.
"Our way of life in Greece has far outstripped our ecological limits and this is chiefly due to a warped mentality which regards the natural environment as an inexhaustible source of resources," WWF Hellas director Dimitris Karavellas told Athen's Kathimerini news.
Karavellas pointed the finger of blame at Greece's excessive consumption of energy, especially the fact that it relied on dwindling natural resources such as highly-polluting fossil fuels lignite and anthracite.
WWF's Living Planet Report 2008, was produced with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network.
According to the report, Greece is not alone in wasting natural resources.
The report shows "more than three quarters of the world's people now living in nations that are ecological debtors, where national consumption has outstripped their country's biological capacity," a statement on the WWF website reads.
Several of the WWF officials, and others associated with the report, likened the world-wide overconsumption of finite natural resources to the current global financial crisis, but the made the point that no bail out was possible for an ecological crisis.
"Global consumption of natural resources far exceeds the Earth's regenerative capacity. We are borrowing from our natural capital at an entirely unsustainable rate. And, as is evidenced from the current economic crisis, unsustainable borrowing is not without profound consequences. To raise the stakes even further, there can be no bailout if the Earth's systems collapse," Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-U.S., said in the WWF statement.
Using natural resources is referred to as a person's ecological footprint.
Living Planet Report 2008 notes that the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Kuwait have the largest per person national ecological footprints and that countries such as Haiti and Congo have the lowest per person ecological footprints.
However, that the problem is more complex than those facts would seem to present because those countries are so rapidly degrading their biocapacity that rising populations and export pressures mean that even their low consumption of natural resources is more than their individual nation's can sustain.
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