It may not be coincidental that soon after NBA Knicks' Jeremy Lin dazzled the nation with a seemingly infallible jump-shot, China's vice president, heir apparent and avid basketball fan Xi Jinping made an official U.S. visit.

But while Lin -- a Harvard graduate raised with Chinese and American values by a "Tiger Mom" -- has proven remarkable on the court, China and the U.S. as players in the environmental arena have performed more like junior-varsity playground scrappers.

This year's Environmental Performance Index, produced with my colleagues at Yale and Columbia Universities, revealed the U.S. and China respectively ranked at 49th and 116th place out of 132 countries. The U.S. and China fare even worse if we look at their performance trend index numbers across the last decade: 77th and 100th, respectively. While both countries have made some progress in a few environmental categories, notably environmental health conditions, their showing on climate change - often[...]

[Published in GreenNews - Read the original article]