FORT McMURRAY, ALTA. -- 'I'm out of gas!"the mayor shouts as he heads down a long hill toward the Athabasca River.

"I'm running on empty!"

The truck, too, is running alarmingly low -- but the mayor himself could probably run on fumes from now until the end of the year, which is when the Prime Minister has promised to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that Doug Faulkner figures could turn his beloved city on the edge of the tar sands into a "ghost town."

Doug Faulkner is feeling the stress. At 61 and five years into his job as mayor of the massive municipality of Wood Buffalo, the slim, florid-faced mayor barely slept a wink last night thinking about the upcoming council meeting when he will have to talk about the local effects of Canada signing an agreement to reduce significantly the greenhouse-gas emissions that are said to affect global warming.

They will talk about Kyoto -- "The rest of the country just doesn't understand it!"-- and at some point he suspects a phrase will come up again that he kept hearing at a recent gathering of Alberta mayors.

"Western Separation."

A federalist and a Liberal -- "a Paul Martin Liberal!" he corrects -- Mr. Faulkner is also in complete agreement with Alberta's Conservative Premier Ralph Klein, who has called Kyoto "the goofiest, most devastating thing that was ever conceived and has ever been contemplated by the Canadian government."

Mr. Klein has even suggested Alberta might one day turn to the Clarity Act as a formula for leaving confederation, if it comes to that.

"Just don't push us," is the way the premier put it in Banff.

No one in Alberta feels more pushed than Mr. Faulkner.

Earlier in the day, he stood, hands fiddling behind his back, and stared out from his seventh-floor office over the city he has lived in for 23 years and where he has served on council for 10, the last five as mayor. Below him, Fort McMurray seems like it has just been uncrated and is in the process of panic assembly before the cold weather arrives. Over the most recent oil boom, the population has soared to more than 50,000. He points out the new Wal-Mart, the new low-income housing project, the new developments where houses are running upwards of $300,000.

He ticks off the current needs: a new landfill site, a new sewage lagoon, an expanded waterworks.

But now, suddenly, it seems the future has fallen into some doubt. The Prime Minister no sooner committed Canada to the Kyoto Protocol and rumblings began among the major investors that perhaps the $50-$60 billion they've earmarked for new oilsands investment might go elsewhere. TrueNorth Energy immediately announced it was cutting back and hinted its projected $3.5-billion project to the immediate north might no longer proceed.

There is nothing new about the 1997 Kyoto agreement, but it seems most in Alberta thought Canada would simply follow the American lead and ignore it.

"I was too busy trying to build a community to worry about Kyoto," Mr. Faulkner says.

Now, they are all worried in Fort McMurray. Young couples fret about their massive mortgages, local businesses worry about the repercussions of offending the oil giants, the oil giants worry about staying competitive in Canada when there are no equivalent environmental restrictions right next door in the U.S.

"Kyoto is in our brain," Mr. Faulkner says.

"People here were taken aback" by Chretien's announcement, he says. "They were saying, 'What's he doing?' 'Is he losing it?'

"The country needs to hear Fort McMurray's story!" he says. "This would have a devastating impact on Fort McMurray.

"We should not be penalized for growth. We're talking here about the hand that feeds 60,000 people. You cut off that hand and this town becomes a ghost town."

To his mind, any burden should fall to all consumers, not to producers, and he stands firm with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities resolution that "no region of the country bears an unreasonable cost." Alberta should not be forced to live through another National Energy Plan.

"I'm not against cleaning up our environment," Mr. Faulkner says. "Canadians are leaders in recycling and things like that. But it's the way it's being rammed down our throats.

"We support a plan -- but please, let us see it first. That's why I agree with Mr. Klein that we need a 'Made-in-Canada' plan."

Up ahead, a gas station looms and the mayor begins to turn in, but not before one final firing of his own spark.

"The Prime Minister should come here," he says, "and drive around town with me just to see the stress the mayor of this community is under right now. That's the worst of it, you know.

"The not knowing."