- Estonia, Luxembourg and UK are the top three in biennial Yale University index in tackling pollution and other issues
- US, China are falling further behind, the researchers say
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The biennial Yale University index again ranks Estonia as the best-performing of 177 assessed countries, after strong recent efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and protect its ecosystems. Luxembourg is second, and the UK is third, having moved up from fifth place in the 2024 index.
European countries dominate the top 20, with only Japan, in 16th, not situated in the continent. Australia is in 25th place, two places ahead of the US. Laos is the last-ranked nation, with the bottom three rounded out by India and Bangladesh.
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Despite this worsening situation, several countries, most notably the US under Donald Trump, have recently scaled back efforts to combat the climate crisis. The Yale index uses data up to 2024, capturing the last part of Joe Biden’s presidency rather than Trump’s, but still finds that even then the US’s emissions were falling far too slowly to reach net zero by 2050, as the science demands must be done to avoid disastrous climate breakdown.
China, now the world’s largest carbon emitter ahead of the US, has made huge progress in developing its clean energy sector, the Yale report finds, but still derives 56% of its electricity from coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and performs relatively poorly on its marine conservation and biodiversity stewardship, the scorecard found.
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“Europe has really stepped out in front and is continuing to pursue climate change with not the full vigor it might have a few years back when the political circumstances were different, but they’re getting the payback for decades now of work on this issue at the cutting edge,” said Esty.
“The laggards in the US and China both are still lagging, seem to be falling further behind and are holding back the global community’s efforts to achieve the targets that have been agreed upon.”
China has climbed the table somewhat to 129th position, however, after previously being ranked near last due to the dangerous air pollution suffered by many of its major cities. It has since removed many of the coal-fired power plants near cities that caused such problems. The Yale index also marks India down for its tree cover loss, pesticide pollution risks and ocean conservation from the last index. “India’s performance is shockingly bad for a country that aspires to be a leader in global terms on the economy,” Esty said.
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Extremely misleading stat. You can’t measure the quality of a countries environmental impact or policies by how much they reduce pollution.
It has to be measured on the actual level of pollution per capita.
So a country according to this stat, could be polluting like hell using coal, but if they switch to oil, that a HUGE improvement.
While a country with 90% renewable energy is not rated high, because they already reduced their footprint years ago!!
Switching from coal to oil does not deserve credit, being clean for many years does.Either it’s a complete bullshit stat, or the article explains it wrong.
If the stat was done correctly, USA would rank much much lower, and actually BELOW China which is ranked 129.
But USA pollute more per capita than China does!!! China is just coming from a way lower point, and USA is coming from one of the worst in the world.It says right on it that it’s “progress”. And that’s useful for measuring government policies, since they don’t work retroactively.
How does that change anything I write? It’s a misleading stat if people think they can use it to see how well a country is doing, they can’t. They can only see if a country is doing better. That’s all, and not a useful stat for comparison between countries, which the article uses it for.
Ranking by improvement is as meaningless as a participation trophy.The goal is to reduce emissions, yes?
Absolutely, but the measure of success is not how much you reduce if you are still a polluting pig like USA you don’t deserve credit for reducing it a little bit, what matters is how much you actually emit.
China invest about 5-10 times more than USA in reducing emissions, and have lower emissions than USA, but USA is “ranked” 27 and China 129, that makes absolutely zero sense in any way. Except of course the rank is made by Americans?!China invest about 5-10 times more than USA in reducing emissions, and have lower emissions than USA, but USA is “ranked” 27 and China 129
Unlike in China where freedom of opinion is practically non-existent, It is your full right here in the West to question any report and stats. It would be nice if you came up with exact numbers to foster your arguments.
China itself officialy aims to reach ‘net zero’ in 2060, ten years later than the EU which aims to reach that goal in 2050 already. Germany is an EU outlier so far as the country is set to reach carbon neutrality by 2045. But now, as German industry representatives urge Berlin to ‘delay’ the German goal for five years and compky with the EU’s 2050 goal, Chinese propaganda tries to exploits that, slamming Germany for being slow.
The Climate Action Tracker also rates China as one of the worst emitters, far behind by global comparison in climate actions.
The same is with Climate Watch, rating China’s climate actions as comparibly poor and Beijing’s transparency on future commitments as very low.
You’ll find more stats by various institutions. The hard truth is that no country is on track, except maybe a few low-emission states in the Global South.
Among the big emitters, however, China has not only risen to the biggest polluter in the world but ranks also among those countries with the lowest commitment regarding climate change.
[Edit typo.]
You are completely forgetting that China is a developing country, that hasn’t had the resources until recently.
Most of Europe started to work towards sustainability in the 70’s, while USA has given the world the fuck finger and polluted 2-3 times as much as Europe per capita for more than half a century.It would be nice if you came up with exact numbers to foster your arguments.
China has CO2 emission per capita in 2023 of 9,24 tons per year. USA has 13,83 meaning USA has 50% more than China.
Weighed for production China 8.05 has USA has 14,85This is of course only CO2, the stat by Yale claims to account for 40 points, but CO2 is the stat that is most significant regarding climate change.
Not hard to find:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capitahttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/china-green-energy-sector-investment-growth
Green energy sector drove more than 90% of China’s investment growth last year, analysis finds
No doubt China is investing a lot, and no place on earth comes remotely close to for instance his:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNLj2uiVzbQQuestioning my original claim seems decidedly dishonest!! Or very very ignorant.
China is investing more than the rest of the world combined!
https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2025/chinaChina’s production of renewables heavily relies on coal, making the country the worst emitter of CO2.
In its own 15th five-year plan, the Chinese Communist Party says that fossil fuel energy consumption would increase by 8-10%, reversing the slow-down in fossil fuel energy consumption during the 14th five-year period period.
China’s own goal to reach carbon neutrality is set for 2060, ten years later than the EU’s.
You said,
China invest about 5-10 times more than USA in reducing emissions.
Neither of your links prove this claim. (Is it 5 times now? Or 10 times?) Where do you get these numbers?
You’re just making baseless claims while posting links that don’t prove yoyr claims. And it is this that is ‘decidely dishonest’ if you want to put it that way.