We are subjected to a constant drumbeat of propaganda about the supposedly dire results of "global warming" – an alleged increase in the planet's surface temperature, some uncertain portion of which is claimed to be caused by emissions of carbon dioxide resulting from human economic activities. All sorts of ecological catastrophes, real and imaginary, are attributed to this development – from the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps and the retreat of various glaciers to the potential extinction of numerous plant and animal species whose habitats are affected.

The fact that Earth's temperature has varied over the centuries and millennia by far more than the largest changes predicted by the global-warming hysterics is disregarded. We are warned that, if we do not maintain the Earth's temperature at precisely its present level, life as we know it may well become virtually unlivable. And the only way to do this is to stop the human economic activities that are supposedly contributing to the warming.

In practice, this comes down to sharply cutting back on economic activities in the United States. The Kyoto treaty (or "Protocol"), designed to effect large cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide, calls for much smaller cutbacks in the emissions caused by other industrialized nations, and exempts altogether the worst offenders (China and India), on the grounds that they are "developing nations" that cannot afford to reduce their allegedly noxious emissions. In other words, the agenda of the "global warming" propagandists turns out to be the same as that of their fellow environmentalists of all stripes: stopping economic growth in the United States. No wonder the Senate voted 95-0 to reject the Kyoto treaty.

But while scarcely a week passes without reports of fresh disasters on the ecological front, as a result of America's stubborn refusal to accede to the Kyoto limitations ("Polar bears are starving as the ice they hunt on vanishes, along with the seals they eat" – ABC's "World News Tonight" reporter Bill Blakemore on Nov. 8), we are rarely reminded of what it would cost the United States to keep those polar bears well fed.

According to a report on the projected annual costs of the Kyoto treaty to the United States, issued by the federal Energy Information Agency in October 1998 (which is to say, smack in the middle of President Clinton's second administration), "The total cost to the economy can be estimated as the loss in actual GDP (the loss in potential GDP plus the macroeconomic adjustment cost) plus the purchase of international permits ... Total costs range from an annual average level for the period 2008 to 2012 of $77 billion to $338 billion 1992 dollars depending on the carbon reduction case and how funds are recycled back to the economy."

And this, mind you, despite the fact that plenty of highly qualified scientists dispute the allegation that there is any serious problem of "global warming" at all. (For one thing, the warming found in some land-based thermometers is not confirmed by data from satellites and weather balloons.)

But you won't hear about the high cost of conforming to the Kyoto treaty from America's TV news programs. According to a new study by the Media Research Center (of which – full disclosure – I am board chairman), coverage of global warming on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox from Jan. 20, 2001, to Sept. 30, 2004, involved 107 stories. Of these, not one mentioned the 1998 report of the Energy Information Agency quoted above. And just two – one each on ABC and Fox – reported the conservative estimate that the Kyoto limits would cost millions of American jobs and punish families to the tune of approximately $2,700 a year.

What liberal environmentalists really hate is American business. You can see this in their zeal to destroy the northwestern lumber industry and its thousands of jobs in order (allegedly) to preserve the habitat of a single subspecies of spotted owl. The Kyoto treaty is their bid to close down entire sectors of American business under threat of as-yet-conclusively proven scientific horrors to come.