Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has played into the hands of his critics by declaring he will push through ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions before he lets the country in on the government's plans to implement it.

The Prime Minister indicated after cabinet yesterday that we may not know all the plans for a decade, when the limitations come into effect. If he is getting beaten up daily because of the uncertainty and competing estimates of the cost, then his hold-your-nose-and-pass-it approach will only exacerbate his difficulties in building support for the programs required to meet Kyoto targets.

Global warming and sustainable development may well turn out to be the predominant challenge for this generation. Environment Minister David Anderson puts it on a par with the Second World War -- a just war that we fight because it is the right thing to do.

"If Winston Churchill had said in 1939 that we are not going to challenge the Nazis until we know exactly how much it will cost and how long the war will last, then we would never have won the war," he is fond of saying. Most people have yet to see the issue in such cataclysmic terms, however, and are less reluctant to embrace the costs.

But while cabinet committees fret about how much to penalize gas-guzzling SUVs, minimum requirements for fuel alcohol or subsidies to install energy-efficient windows, not to mention the larger questions such as the emissions-trading framework, the critics spin out worst-case scenarios unanswered.

In the short term (and in this case the short-sighted term), the business groups, the fossil-fuel industry and some provincial governments have powerful arguments.

Why should Canada agree to the treaty when the United States refuses? Why put ourselves through expensive hell for a mere 2 per cent of total greenhouse-gas emissions when the Americans and Third World countries keep spewing them out?

Why should Canada adopt a public policy that puts its companies at a competitive disadvantage? Why agree to anything that will raise the cost of driving your car or heating your home?

The really insidious danger, according to one of my e-mail correspondents, is that "the Kyoto Protocol is like a Trojan Horse computer virus downloading into the Canadian economy."

Since climate scientists and activists acknowledge that Kyoto is only the first "baby step," the Kyoto virus will lead to more and more "super Kyotos."

The answer has to be in the long term. Reducing greenhouse gases is a moral and practical imperative. And Canada's 2 per cent may be just the commitment that hits the threshold that will bring the treaty into effect.

As Steven Bernstein and Christopher Gore, University of Toronto political scientists, write, "voluntary measures are insufficient, and a major intervention in the economy is needed if Canada is to meet its Kyoto target."

Mr. Chrétien's commitment in South Africa was aimed as much at the foot-dragging within his government as at the oil patch.

Yes, the economy will not grow quite as fast under Kyoto as it might under a no-holds-barred approach. But the estimate that cabinet is having difficulty admitting to is 200,000 fewer jobs over a decade, not the end of the world given that the labour-force growth in the first eight months of this year was 386,000 jobs.

And the probability of new jobs in the new, carbon-reduced economy is equally high.

The United States eventually will have to join the fight, so Canadian companies could have an advantage.

Flawed as Kyoto may be, the alternative is to do nothing. As Deputy Prime Minister John Manley recently told The Globe and Mail editorial board, "Maybe there's a technological silver bullet, I don't know. But in the meantime, if we aren't working seriously down this [Kyoto] track, then we're basically accepting there is nothing that can be done. . . . I don't think that is where Canada ought to be."
hwinsor@globeandmail.ca