Canada is now the G8's classroom dud on climate change, sliding to last place among the world's industrial leaders in the annual climate scorecard released by the World Wildlife Fund and insurance giant Allianz today.
While countries like Germany and England have substantially cut their greenhouse gas emissions over the past two decades, Canada's emissions are continuing to skyrocket, now 26 per cent above 1990 levels.
"We emit more greenhouse gases than half the countries in the world put together," said Keith Stewart, WWF-Canada's climate change campaign manager.
"We have the resources – financially, intellectually, ecologically – to be leaders, and we've simply chosen not to."
Canada was ranked seventh in the previous two scorecards, but was bumped down this year by the United States, under the new green leadership of President Barack Obama.
Although Americans still emit slightly more greenhouse gases per capita than Canadians, that soon will change, given the green energy incentives in Obama's stimulus package and the carbon cap-and-trade program proposed in the climate and energy bill that was passed by the House of Representatives last week, Stewart said.
Canada has not implemented its climate change plan.
"Canada is becoming increasingly isolated in clinging to the fossil economy while the rest of the world is moving on to green economy," he said.
While lauding some nations for specific actions, the report states all eight industrial nations have not done enough to ward off the worst possible effects of runaway climate change, which could include vast droughts, hurricanes, and flooding of coastal cities by rising sea levels.
To avoid this, all eight nations must cut their emissions substantially by 2020, and by a drastic 95 per cent by 2050, the report states. That's more than the 50 per cent urged this month by the science academies of all the G8 countries.
The WWF hopes the report will spur people to pressure their governments to agree to deep carbon cuts in the next round of international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December, Stewart said.