Are Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s environment ministers cursed?

No sooner has Calgary-based environment minister Jim Prentice taken over from John Baird than Canada is paraded around the globe (again) as an environmental laggard by European NGOs as ministers gather in Poznan, Poland, for climate-change talks.

The two NGOs, Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, published a report today (December 10), and it won’t make pretty reading for Prentice as he attends the United Nations Climate Conference that ends December 12. The bad press will last longer than the event.

The top climate-change performers are announced in the report’s conclusion: Sweden, Germany, France, India, Brazil, the U.K., and Denmark.

“The other end of the index is to be taken note of as well,” the report states. “Especially Russia, the USA, Canada, and Austria have worrisome results. Crucially, they performed poorly in their current emissions level, emissions trend, and in the evaluation of their climate policy.”

Only Saudi Arabia, in 60th place, finished below 59th-ranked Canada.

A year ago in Bali, then-environment minister John Baird was at it himself, when he refused to commit to specific greenhouse-gas-emission reduction targets when the current Kyoto targets expire in 2012. He was lambasted for this in many quarters, adding to the evidence that Harper’s environment ministers either are set up to fail and move on by an uncaring prime minister, or they are bizarrely incompetent.

The ebullient Baird was ostensibly inserted into the position due to the abject failure of Harper’s first environment minister, Rona Ambrose. Can all this be mere coincidence?

Echoes of Bali were present in Ambrose’s sorry tenure too, this time in Bonn in 2006. Canada was due to take a leading role in the talks until Ambrose talked down the Kyoto targets and almost talked Canada out of the talks altogether.

Our reward? U.K. environmentalist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot was so incensed that he boarded a plane for the first time in 18 months, flew to Ottawa and then travelled to Toronto and Vancouver. The Straight interviewed him about the whole trip and Canada’s role on the world stage.

In January 2007, Ambrose was removed from the file.

How long will Prentice last?

Answers below please.