So Parliament will vote on the Kyoto Protocol before year's end. If Parliament assents, will it matter? Are efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions the best way to spend our money in the face of global warming? What's the logical, rather than ideological, landscape surrounding the issue?

If the world is indeed warming, we should expect it to happen about now, with or without humanity's influence. The Earth is still emerging from the last ice age, which ended about 12,000 years ago. With occasional lapses into cold periods (the Middle Ages), the Earth has been warming for most of recorded human history, but remains quite cool by geologic norms. Global warming at this point in the Earth's cycles should be expected.

When climatic conditions change on Earth, they often do so abruptly. The natural reasons for this can be highly varied, ranging from volcanoes to the state of the oceans and icecaps, sun activity and external shocks, such as asteroids. The complexity of the environment suggests there are many "tipping points" where straws break camels' backs, and change comes rapidly. Even in the short history of humanity, whole societies have been decimated by relatively modest climatic change.

The composition and concentration of greenhouse gases is one important variable in the climatic recipe, and human beings are contributing to increases in greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are the leading human-related greenhouse gases (methane much more potent by volume than carbon dioxide), which are generated by industrial and agricultural activities. If the Earth is warming cyclically, its rate of warming may be accelerated by human activity.

The Kyoto Protocol requires its signatories to roll back their rate of greenhouse-gas emissions to levels near those recorded in 1990 by 2012. If all the signatories were to honour that agreement, the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere each year through human activity would not necessarily decline, because developing nations (and the United States) are not party to Kyoto, and their economies are growing. With Kyoto, the rate of increase in greenhouse-gas emissions would decline somewhat, but volumes would still grow robustly.

This means that, if the science behind human-related global warming is right, the Earth will continue to warm at a brisk pace over the next several decades. (Melting icecaps could alter the scenario later in the century by shifting ocean currents and increasing the rate of snow accumulation in northern latitudes, which could lead to cooling again in some regions or entire continents. But we are not omniscient in these matters.)

The greatest changes on land probably will occur in temperate and northern latitudes, though effects in tropical climes will be notable, too. If the science is correct, the dice have been rolled, and the endgame will not be significantly changed by foreseeable policy or technological initiatives.

Nevertheless, almost all our intellectual and political effort on this subject has focused on reducing the rate of increase in greenhouse gases, which will have marginal effects on predicted outcomes.

Given these realities, and the balance of probabilities in the climate, the elephant in the room takes the form of one question: Why aren't we focusing a great deal more on dealing with the likely effects of global warming on humanity and nature?

Should we stop building cities near the sea?

Should we start ensuring the existence of natural corridors for the migration of species from middle regions to the poles, or inventing transplant devices?

Why are we furiously debating the best strategies to change the course of events marginally, rather than developing strategies to adapt to the body of what might happen?

Cutting our geenhouse-gas emissions to meet Kyoto's terms will require a reduction of some 20 per cent in existing emissions to meet pre-1990 levels, probably leading to a weaker economy. That, in turn, will reduce our ability to adapt to climatic change, just when we need that ability most.

Do we deny the need to adapt because of arrogance -- assuming we can do much more to alter emissions and the climate than any existing scenario suggests is possible?

Is it guilt -- the need to take some kind of action against the cause, however symbolic, reflecting chagrin at generating so many disruptive changes to the environment?

Is it denial -- fearing that a focus on adaptation would signal acceptance of something we are not yet prepared to accept?

Whatever it is, sophisticated analyses of where disruptions to humanity and nature are likely to be greatest, and thoughtful suggestions about strategies and priorities in dealing with them, would seem to be especially prudent. How about an international conference on that?
William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.