Here's a headline I'd rather not see

Checking The Guardian on my morning round of news websites, I encountered the following headline: "Canada, the surprise "pariah" of the Kyoto protocol." The subhead went on to add, "Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only nation to reject the first one."

One of those doubters, Green party leader Elizabeth May, is quoted as saying, "I can't imagine how anybody would want us in the room." Ms. May suggested that might be because we were negotiating to weaken the second Kyoto, have already signaled we will not take on new targets in the second period, and have legally withdrawn from the protocol.

She is of course quite right. We are an environmental slacker of the first order. As the article points out, we are not just the only country to have repudiated Kyoto, the sole legally binding international policy tool to deal with carbon emissions, we rank immediately behind the U.S. and Australia as the worst global emitters per capita.

After years of seeing Canada portrayed as a constructive participant in international affairs, it's a bit of a shock to see us headlined as a pariah. I guess I will just have to get used to it.