"Those of us concerned about climate change generally inhabit an old-fashioned reality-based world."

There's reality and there's reality and one of the realities is that although Canada is one of the highest per capita producers of GHGs at the same time it is way down the list as far as GHGs per surface area. Because of our low population density, as a nation, we are far easier on the environment than most other countries with significantly lower per capita GHG production.

All this means is that we need not panic and wildly shoot ourselves in the economic foot just to impress the impressionable when other countries can eat up, in a heart beat, any reductions we can make.