In fact, the Washington Post reports that the United States isn't even remotely among the countries with the best chance to become neutral with regards to greenhouse gas emissions, occupying the 43rd spot on the chart, which also accounts for air quality and biodiversity.

At the top of the countries that are in the right direction sit Denmark and the United Kingdom.

If the trend will remain as is today in 2050, the US, China, India and Russia will make up for 50% of the global emissions.

Martin Wolf, principal investigator for the project, said that "what we see is a credibility gap between what countries say they’re going to achieve and the policies they’re implementing in the here and now."

The index has been published biennially by Yale and Columbia universities for the past two decades and analyzes the efforts of 180 countries with regards to their environmental health, water resources and climate change mitigation efforts.

This year, the index introduced a new metric, which takes into account net-zero performance, and when it comes to which countries are most likely to hit this goal, Finland, Malta and Sweden are following Denmark and Britain, which occupy the first two spots.

In fact, Denmark might as well break the promise and become carbon neutral before 2050, Wolf said, since the country has been investing a lot in wind power and even in more sustainable transport alternatives.

Britain was able to secure a top spot on the index as well, which is mostly due to replacing coal-based power plants with natural gas and renewable energy, which Wolf says is a "low-hanging fruit".

Namibia and Botswana also sit at the top of the charts and are likely to hit net-zero by 2050, but Wolf said that this will depend on how the countries' economies will grow.

Coal power plants, the enemy of progress

India is unfortunately at the very bottom of the chart, which is because the authorities decided to reopen coal mines in order to increase cheap electricity output in order to deal with the shortages.

Officials in India failed to install the promised 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by this year, which made them resort to the polluting alternative.

China increased its reliance on coal-powered electricity as well, in order to deal with the increase in energy requirements.

EPI's research shows that, if the trend continues, China will account for 29% of the global emissions by 2050, followed by India at 11%, the US at 8% and Russia at 5%.

Germany is also not in a good spot when it comes to hitting the net-zero target, as the country shut down a lot of its nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which led to the reopening of natural gas and coal power plants.

Last year in November, at the Cop26 Glasgow summit, rich countries promised to help poorer nations with regards to becoming more sustainable and eco-friendly, as well as stopping deforestation and revising their national climate goals within one year.

But climate experts say that the economic powers made little progress with regards to their promises and everyone is looking forward to the climate summit that will take place this November in Egypt.

EPI authors hope that the chart will provide useful information for each nation in order to figure out where it needs to improve to hit its climate goals.

"Current trends aren't a country's destiny", Wolf concluded.