There was dancing on the streets of Kyoto last Wednedsay morning as the anti-global-warming pact that carries the city’s name took effect, thanks to the decision of Russia to join in last year. Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize, made a speech.

What does it all mean? What does it mean, especially, that I got that piece of information from the Al Jazeera website, which had worldwide coverage, and which I stumbled upon while cruising the Internet after growing frustrated at finding so little in the U.S. papers. Notably, The New York Times had only a small story in its science section, the day after the treaty took effect, which pointed out the hostility of most U.S. industries to any curbs on pollution; although it did note a weary awareness in U. S. business circles that “eventually something must be done.”

Alas, whether we’ve signed on, as 141 nations have, or not, as the U.S. has not, the dominant notion at the heart of the matter, despite some exceptions, is still that “eventually” something must be done. It’s like St. Augustine’s characterization of the sinner’s prayer: “Lord, make me good, but not yet.”

As in all such calculations, the question is whether there’ll be time for a death-bed repentance. Although we didn’t quite feel it in the Maritimes, last year has been declared the fourth hottest on record worldwide — after 1998, 2002 and 2003. With the glaciers and the polar icecaps melting and the ocean rising enough already to threaten some low-lying Pacific islands, it looks as though a grim race is on. If this continues, we’ve got a mere couple of decades before increasing swaths of the world — perhaps our own — become less and less habitable.

So the Kyoto Accord, in which Canada promises to cut greenhouse gases by six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012 (although they’ve actually risen by 20 per cent since then — making that a required cut of 26 per cent, which we’re unlikely to meet), is progress of sorts, even if it is only a promise. It’s an acknowledgement, at least, of the seriousness of the issue, perhaps a precursor of more dramatic action to come — in or out of Kyoto.

Yet, whenever an environmental breakthrough occurs these days, I find myself clapping with one hand: Although better late than never, it’s all stuff that should have been taken seriously 35 years ago when the OPEC oil crisis told us something was amiss. Now the hour is late and the situation is vastly worse.

In the dubious breakthrough category, consider this: The Bush administration has swallowed hard and admitted that global warming is real, after denying it for three years (and after the Pentagon last winter warned that climate change is likely to be a bigger threat to world security than terrorism). This should at least do something to damp down those hordes of industry-paid scientists who still claim that it’s all a myth.

But much damage has been done in four years. Not only has President George W. Bush encouraged energy waste but, as U.S. commentators are increasingly pointing out, he has deepened his dependence on, and increased the wealth and power of, oil dictators like Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Sudan. Conservation would have been good for security, good for the trade balance, good for everybody but the wastrel polluters who bankroll the Republican party. But no.

And in Canada, we may hold the applause as well, for the opposite reason. We’ve already spent nearly $4 billion on Kyoto-related programs with no effect — in fact, negative effect. In addition to cutting back on pollution, in Canada the other challenge is preventing the program from turning into another gun registry — or sponsorship-style boondoggle. How do they actually manage to do these things right in places like Denmark or Germany?

Now that climate change is avowedly real, the argument against Kyoto is that pollution caps, regulation and environmental bureaucracy will cripple economic growth. But the way we measure it, “growth” is almost equivalent to energy waste. In the end, the question is how much of this kind of growth the Earth can take. It may already have taken too much. And now, following our lead, India and China are kicking in. The global will to stop the partying and repent, death-bed or otherwise, is weak indeed.