Offering prophetic visions of doom, they are trying to get the world to reform its ways before it is too late. These people are not preaching the word of God, they are spreading the word of the environmentalist.

International discussions are currently underway in Kyoto, Japan. These talks, attended by representatives from over 150 countries, aim to draft a treaty which would limit the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from most countries in order to slow global warming. Countries such as the United States and those in Western Europe would be required to reduce emissions to 1990 levels or below, while developing countries would face few or no restrictions at all.

Backed by statistics, models and a lot of research, the environmental scientists predict a warmer global climate caused by the emission of greenhouse gases by man. Chief among their concerns is the emission of carbon dioxide, which is crucial to life on earth, but which, if in too great quantity, will trap heat in the atmosphere; the atmosphere of Venus, for example, is 95 percent carbon dioxide and 534 degrees.

Over the past few decades, carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere has effectively doubled. And though it has been shown that carbon dioxide can lead to global warming, there is no conclusive evidence that demonstrates the magnitude of these effects. They may be insignificant, causing little more than a small temperature increase over the next few decades, or may be much more far-reaching over longer periods of time. There are also plentiful ambiguities regarding the effects of warming, some good, most bad.

Just because scientists can't predict with certainty what's going to happen, however, doesn't mean the threat is fantasy. In fact, the threat may be very real, which is why the issue deserves continued attention and research.

But the provisions of the Kyoto conference are unreasonably expensive for what may be a rather insignificant reduction in emissions after all of the other factors are considered. By some estimates, it could cost the United States nearly 3 to 4 percent of its GDP in order to achieve the proposed goals.

And if industrial production in the United States becomes too costly because of the emissions standards, business will merely move to developing countries that are not restrained by emission constraints. In the end, emission levels may not decrease significantly overall, while the United States concomitantly loses billions of dollars in output and thousands of jobs.

It makes more sense to more efficiently invest our energies and resources into developing alternatives to gasoline, coal-fired plants and the like. Such technology could then be shared with other industrial and developing countries, so that the worldwide problem can be ameliorated, not simply passed off from developed to developing countries.

Regardless of whether or not the prophets of doom are correct, the proposals set forth thus far at the Kyoto conference do little to improve the situation. Better, more efficient and more permanent alternatives need to be found.