ENVIRONMENT -- UNITED STATES RANKED 53RD IN CLIMATE CHANGE PERFORMANCE: The United States comes in 53rd -- edging out only China, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia -- in a new study ranking the climate change performance of the 56 top carbon dioxide-emitting nations. The study, released by Climate Action Network Europe at the U.N. Climate Conference in Nairobi this week, based its rankings on current emissions, emissions trends, and emissions policy. The Bush administration has consistently shirked serious action to reduce U.S. emissions, announcing a climate change plan without penalties or restrictions for polluters, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and covering up scientific research revealing the dangers and costs of global warming. The study points out that merely having high emissions, as the United States does, does not assure a low ranking. "If the USA, currently among the bottom five, were to exercise an international climate policy stance as progressive as the UK, it would move up more than 30 places," says the study, "but because of their adverse position in national and international climate policies the United States blows this chance."