He's passionate. He's articulate. Business loves him. Hands down, he's now by far the most persuasive apologist for Canada's creative and singular approach to implementing the Kyoto Protocol. Could Jean Chrétien make him a special emissary and send him on a round-the-world tour? He's -- wait for it -- Ralph Klein, Premier of Alberta.

Mr. Klein, champion of the anti-Kyoto camp these past few months, made clear yesterday in a widely anticipated speech at the New York Yacht Club that his war with Ottawa is over, and he thinks he has won. Chances are he's right. Mr. Chrétien and his increasingly woebegone pack of MPs will vote to ratify the Kyoto Protocol this afternoon: There will be much prayerful murmuring about the sanctity of the environment, and puffy blather about Canada's heroic role in the effort to save the Earth.

But they will all know, in that quiet little back-of-mind nook politicians must reserve for the truth, that Kyoto will be ratified, then beached. Legislation to implement the treaty's targets -- reduction of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 -- will be slow in coming, if at all.

The Prime Minister, with 15 months left in office at best, has neither the political muscle nor the will to force implementation over the objections of eight provinces. And prime-minister-in-waiting Paul Martin, as Mr. Klein pointed out yesterday, has already indicated that the "ram-it-through" approach is history.

"There is increasing evidence that Ottawa will not move toward implementation until it has a plan that balances environmental responsibility with economic growth," Mr. Klein told his audience of Canadian expats and well-heeled Wall Streeters. It won't be long before the senior bureaucrats at the Ministry of the Environment get the message: Messianic zeal is out, messy compromise in.

Now let's put this in perspective. Consumers and industry together account for the lion's share of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, well over 50 per cent. It's been obvious for months that Mr. Chrétien never intended to get tough with consumers, by, for example, slapping a tax on sport utility vehicles. It's now equally obvious that the Liberals don't have the stomach to confront business, either. Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal yesterday confirmed that Ottawa will cap business's cost of emission reductions at a relatively mild $15 a tonne.

Any overruns are to be borne by taxpayers, most likely through the purchase of emissions credits in the international market.

But intriguingly, Mr. Martin recently poured cold water on that very idea. The biggest net holder of such credits is Russia, whose economy happened to implode in the early 1990s after 70 years of Communist abuse, thereby dropping its emissions well below target. Clever man that he is, Mr. Martin no doubt realizes it could be tough to sell Canadians on the virtue of funnelling tax dollars to Russia in the name of the environment, while Toronto remains shrouded in choking smog.

Where, one wonders, does that leave the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, and others who've invested money and political capital in support of Ottawa's drive to ratify Kyoto? It leaves them snookered. Thirteen weeks ago, at the United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, Mr. Chrétien became an environmental hero overnight by promising to ratify the Kyoto Protocol before year's end.

But in the weeks since then, the Liberals have quietly eroded the nature of Mr. Chrétien's promise, to the point that Alberta's Mr. Klein can now appear in New York and happily proclaim today's ratification benign.

Where does all this lead? The sensible approach to greenhouse gas emissions, if one believes they're a problem at all, is to tie reductions to economic growth. Emissions intensity, or emissions as a percentage of gross domestic product, steadily drops -- but growth itself is not impeded. This is the American approach. It is the Alberta approach.

It likely will become Canada's approach as well.

Three months ago, the environmental lobby thought it had finally bent Mr. Chrétien to its political purposes. In fact, he used the lobby to suit his own needs and -- true to form -- began a stealthy process of disengagement as soon as it became obvious that the "full monty" on Kyoto would never fly.

What's more, Mr. Chrétien did this so skillfully that none of his new friends appear to have noticed. For a politician bleeding power by the week, that's quite a feat.
mdentandt@globeandmail.ca