Norway ranks first on the environment component, followed by Ireland, Finland, and Britain. Spain had the second worst ranking on the environment policy component, followed by Australia and Canada.

    The Index, produced annually by the Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent Washington research and policy organization, ranks 21 high-income industrialized countries on how well their policies and actions support poor countries' efforts to build prosperity, good government, and security. The scoring adjusts for size, leveling the playing field for large and small nations.

    Index components are environment, aid, trade, investment, migration, security and technology.

    The Netherlands comes in first on the 2007 CDI on the strength of ample aid-giving, falling greenhouse gas emissions, and support for investment in developing countries.

    Close behind are three more big aid donors, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are among those tying for fifth. Japan remains last.

    "The environment component of the CDI dramatically exposes the disaster of U.S. environmental policies when compared to other rich countries," said CGD research fellow David Roodman, who is the architect of the CDI. "The United States can do much better. It has the money, technology, and entrepreneurial flare to be a global environmental leader."

    The United States comes in last due partly to its extremely high greenhouse gas emissions per capita (21.7 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per person, the third worst after Canada and Australia), and the lowest gasoline taxes of all 21 countries in the Index.

    The United States also loses points for its failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the most serious international effort to deal with climate change.

    CGD President Nancy Birdsall said that she hoped that the poor U.S. showing on the CDI's environment component would serve as a wake-up call, especially to policymakers in Washington. "There is a growing body of evidence that developing countries will suffer first and worst from climate change," she said.

    This year for the first time, Roodman extended the environment component of the Index to cover four of the biggest developing countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

    Taking into account eight environmental policy indicators for which data are available, Brazil, Russia, India, and China score remarkably well when compared to a similarly limited CDI environment component for the 21 rich countries covered by the full Index.

    When the four countries are thrown in with the usual 21, they rank second, fourth, fifth, and eleventh. They generally perform well on the greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of ozone-depleting substances, and tropical timber imports. They have also joined important international environmental accords. As a group, their major weakness is low gas taxes.

    Overall, the best performing country is the Netherlands, followed by Denmark. Norway and Sweden are tied in third place. Down the line are Finland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

    Among the Group of Seven industrialized countries, Britain comes in second behind Canada, followed by Germany, while Japan comes in last on the index.