The Guardian8 Jul 2026Macro
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
The biennial 2026 Yale Environmental Performance Index ranks Estonia first among 177 countries, with Luxembourg second and the UK third, having moved up from fifth in the 2024 edition. The US slipped to 27th, two places behind Australia, while Japan at 16th is the only non-European nation in the top 20. Laos, India, and Bangladesh occupy the bottom three positions. The index uses data through 2024, capturing the end of the Biden presidency, and finds that even then US emissions were falling too slowly to reach net zero by 2050.