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what about such important factors as country's territory and climate?

If you take for every country  its oil consumption per capita, per GDP, per area (say, in square metres) and add some coefficient connected with climatic zone (say a 10.0 for the countries with the most favourable weather which will include the bulk of Central/Western Europe and put a 1.0 for the country with the worst climate - Russia and put the rest of world in between)
...er... and why do i want to multiply all this, not that i know anything about non-linear stuff... ah well, then you will get figures which may show another picture (very simplistic but anyway) of the worst natural resource wasters in the world

I am even not sure that the US will be the number one offenders

by lana on Fri Jul 28th, 2006 at 08:39:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, if you pick your weightings like that ... and why pick area as a factor? Consumption per capita's (and maybe per capita gdp) more interesting than total consumption, but the rest tends to hide complicated factors.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Jul 28th, 2006 at 08:48:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You could use area per capita as an indication of wastefulness.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 28th, 2006 at 08:55:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Total consumption makes a lot of sense to evaluate the global impact of an individual government's policy. For instace, a 10% change in US consumption is more than enough to provide all of Italy's oil. If you look at oil consumption per capita, you'll find the Virgin Islands, Gibraltar and Singapore are the worst offenders. That tells you keeping a microstate going is expensive, but eliminating them would not solve any of the world's global energy problems.

So, first use the aggregate figures to find which political agents are associated with the biggest impacts, and then use the normalised figures to see which of those are inefficient.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 28th, 2006 at 09:15:16 AM EST
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