I, for one, was inspired by the Kyoto Protocol, which ushered in a bold new era in which countries throughout the world put aside their differences and worked together to ignore the Kyoto Protocol.

It’s rare you see that kind of teamwork outside of arms deals.

The Conservatives pulled Canada out of Kyoto this week, and it would be easy to mock them (fun, too), but this is a failure we all share in.

When the Kyoto deal was signed in 1997, we talked about the deal as if something really exceptional had happened that would unite humanity — like the end of nuclear weapons or a Saved by the Bell reunion special.

We were breathlessly told that we’d be able to breathe again, all thanks to 160 signatories sending the amount of greenhouse gases back to the halcyon days of the 1980s.

The U.S., showing its usual world leadership, got the failure started when George W. Bush said the protocol was “economically irresponsible” — a description that looked a little short-sighted when New Orleans did its  imitation of the SpongeBob SquarePants mise-en-scène.

At the time, Canada took its usual official diplomatic position toward the U.S. of being smug. According to WikiLeaks, Paul Martin’s official cable to the U.S. was “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Canada’s greenhouse-gas record was as bad as America’s but we left that part out, as one does.

Some blame goes to the accord’s writers, too: We should have known Kyoto was doomed as soon as we heard there were environmental “credits” that could be used to offset actually helping the environment — a sort of frequent-polluter points card. Getting out of pollution standards because you are planting trees, say, seems to me like getting out of a speeding ticket in the morning because you plan to drive under the speed limit in the afternoon.

Finally, of course, there’s you. Did you do anything worthy of an environmental award since 1997? Recycling and composting only gets you a Certificate of Attendance.

Global warming is too slow, too subtle for humans. Us rats, we don’t understand risk-reward if the electric shock comes decades later.

I’m still hopeful. Everyone seems to value the environment, even if they weren’t on board for Kyoto. One-hundred-and-sixty countries failed in Japan, but it could be different now. If we really believe, we could get 190, maybe 200 countries on the road to probable failure this time. When it comes to world diplomacy, this is progress.

(Deep breaths, everyone. Deep breaths.)