&quot;The reality depicted in these charts utterly...

"The reality depicted in these charts utterly confounds Stephen Harper's vision of Canada as a filthy fossil-fuel superpower."

Justin Trudeau has the same odious vision. He says exporting resources (read: Alberta's tar) to Asia (read: China) is the "future of Canada's economy."

The real enemy of climate change is free trade. It creates a regulatory race to the bottom. The only way we can force countries to comply with GHG emissions reductions is with tariffs (and sanctions) enforced by common-regulation fair-trade blocks (as opposed to free-trade blocks.)

We also need tariffs to stop mercantilism (countries producing more than they consume where the excess goes to oligarchs in profits) and exploitation of workers (cheating workers out of their fair share of wages and benefits.)

Small government anti-tax ideology is also the enemy. We need progressive taxation to spend big money on green infrastructure projects to make the transition to a green-energy economy.

So replacing free-trade with fair-trade, restoring progressive taxation, bringing back Keynesian-era infrastructure spending to create jobs, and reducing inequality by regulation and redistribution of wealth through public benefits, are all essential components for necessary change.

The only way to stop our present course of self-destruction is with a different economic model — something other than free-market capitalism which has dominated over the past 35 years and created our globalized economy.

The only democratic alternative to free-market capitalism is the mixed-market economic system we used in the post-war era (which had historically low tariffs in the first place.) The only alternative to free-trade globalization is regulated, managed, fair-trade globalization. (High levels of protectionism to end globalization altogether will also work; but globalization allows the global enforcement of green regulations with tariffs and sanctions.)

So although the plutocrats created free-trade globalization to overrule democracy and have the freedom to rape and plunder the globe without rules or accountability, globalization is actually the key to creating a global regulatory regime that will change the world: because all oligarchs need access to First-World markets to make their riches.