Is Canada flunking climate? The picture isn’t great, but there might be a way out

Hey, it’s Mitchell. I think it’s fair to say Canadians are the type to check our grades against our classmates — we love comparing ourselves. So when I saw Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index rankings in July, it felt like a bad report card. A bit surprised, I thought I should look into how Canada’s doing on environmental scorecards and its capacity to improve. We certainly aren't getting an A.

Canada ranked second last in climate and environmental performance among "Global West" countries and 29th in the world, according to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), released in July by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions and Columbia University.

The ranking uses 47 environmental indicators from growth of carbon emissions to rates of habitat protection compiled from datasets published between 2022 and early 2026.

EPI lead researcher Zach Wendling told CBC News the index aims to arm people with data to spark deeper conversations and hold their governments accountable.

Canada scored 57.78 out of 100. The average score among 22 “Global West” countries was 64.74 and the global average (177 countries) was 39.57. The highest score went to Estonia, at 74.79, helped by significant cuts to greenhouse gas emissions from shale oil power generation.

Wendling said Canada was weakest in climate change, protected lands and fishing.

Canada ranked 45th on the EPI’s overarching category for climate change policy, which includes indicators related to emissions trends, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen monoxide. Canada ranked 133rd in greenhouse gas emissions trend per capita. The score of 24.26 was well below a “Global West” average of 44.87, but was 7.65 points better than Canada would have done 10 years ago, according to the EPI’s calculations.

Wending said many of Canada's scores in marine and terrestrial habitat protection and emissions trends have increased. Though the improvements were small, he said this “shows that change is possible."

Canada’s worst ranking was 162nd in the risk to biodiversity from pesticide pollution in agriculture.

Estonia earned top honours on the EPI due mainly to cutting down shale oil power generation, which brought down the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent, according to the EPI’s report . The country has set a target to use only renewables for electricity by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2050 .

“For years, we've been pushing countries to pick the low-hanging fruit,” Wendling said. “Shutting down your dirtiest and oldest generation technology would be like an apple the size of a beach ball right at your knees.”

Wendling said Estonia’s massive climb — equivalent to 23.22 points over 10 years — is a one-time outlier, so they need to reach higher. Their lowest scores came in fishing, agriculture and forestry-related indicators.

Other strong performers include Denmark (eighth on the EPI) and Norway (11th).