In the newly released Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2013, Canada is ranked fourth from the bottom and slips behind USA, China and Russia. In last year’s ranking, Canada was in 54th place before Russia and China. The CCPI found that Canada still shows no intention of moving forward on climate policy, thereby leaving it as the worst performer of all western countries. This is no surprise to those familiar with Canada’s federal government’s deliberate inaction on the issue of climate change, however Canada’s policy stand continues to perplex many. The bottom three countries are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kazakhstan, all of whom are highly dependent on oil and gas exports.
The eighth edition of the annual CCPI, which was published at the Doha climate talks on December 3, 2012 by the Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe and Germanwatch, ranks the climate protection performance of the 58 highest emitters worldwide. The first three ranks are actually empty, because no country on the list is pursuing a path that would achieve the goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2 degree Celsius. The CCPI names Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and the US as the world‘s worst climate polluters; the same as in previous editions. The best international climate policy is credited to Mexico, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway, while Turkey, Japan, Canada and Iran hold the lowest places in this category.
For the first time, the index used deforestation data, which resulted in a rankings drop of countries with high forest emissions such as Brazil and Indonesia. The two biggest emitters, US and China, still rank comparably low. The US climbed up in this year’s CCPI, but partly due to decreased emissions resulting from the economic crisis and its massive exploration of shale gas. The indirect emissions of shale gas are not taken into account in the CCPI, as only energy and forest emissions are included. With a shift towards renewables and greater efficiency, the US could climb up even more. Jan Burck, one of CCPI’s authors, notes that China’s emissions levels has risen, but as its massive investments in renewable energies are expected to show an effect shortly, China’s emissions trend could slow down in the near future and lead to better results. The Climate Change Performance Index 2013 country table can be found here.