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When politicians from around the world meet in Indonesia in two weeks to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto climate-change treaty, a forceful and alarming scientific report that was released this weekend will be fresh in their minds.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes there is "unequivocal" evidence that human-induced global warming is already under way and, if left unchecked, will lead to rising sea levels, more fierce storms, and more floods and droughts.

The Conservative government says the findings are powerful, but environmentalists are concerned that Canada may resist efforts at the Bali conference to lay the groundwork for a new agreement that will adequately address the need to curb emissions.

The more than 3,000 scientists who helped produce the report say the carbon dioxide we produce when we drive our cars and heat our houses is trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing temperatures to rise, melting snow and glaciers.

The report was a synthesis of three others produced earlier this year. Its tone was urgent, and the timing deliberate. The December meeting in Bali will be key in determining what will happen after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

"What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. "This is a defining moment."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released the report on Saturday in Valencia, Spain, and stressed the need for urgent global action.

"Slowing - and reversing - these threats is the defining challenge of our age," he said.

In Ottawa, federal Environment Minister John Baird sounded some of same urgent notes in his response to the IPCC's report, describing it as powerful and overwhelming.

"The science is clear and Canada, like the rest of the world, needs to take immediate action on climate change."

But his critics say Mr. Baird has learned how to say the right things about climate change, but not how to do anything meaningful about it. They say the Conservatives' plan - which aims to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 - has so many loopholes it will fall far short of that goal, and far short of what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

They worry that Canada will quietly try to undermine any proposals to dramatically curb emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.

John Bennett, with the group ClimateforChange.ca, says he expects Canada will be "quietly obstructionist and publicly supportive."

Canada has not said in much detail what it would like to see in the new climate-change treaty. But in a speech in New York this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada wants a new agreement that contains binding targets for all of the world's major emitters - including China.

This is similar to a position taken by the Americans, says Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute, and it could be a problem. China, India and other developing countries have historically contributed far less to global warming than developed nations, but are now big emitters. They might be persuaded to agree to a stronger commitment to reduce emissions, Mr. Bramley said, but will want to be treated differently from Western nations. Insisting that they agree to binding targets might be a deal-breaker.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Baird said that to be successful, the post-Kyoto deal would have to include targets for all the big emitting countries, including China and India. But he wouldn't comment on whether that position could scuttle an agreement.

"I'm not going to speculate on failure."

Then again, Canada won't have much credibility in the negotiations for a post-Kyoto agreement because of its failure to live up to its commitments under the accord. In 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, the Liberal government agreed to reduce emissions to 6 per cent below those of 1990 by 2008-2012.

But it didn't implement any policies that reduced emissions, which have now increased by at least 25 per cent over what they were in 1990.

When the Conservatives took office, they were stridently anti-Kyoto, which did not go unnoticed in the international community, Mr. Bramley said.

Mr. Harper has suggested that Canada can act like a bridge between the United States, which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and the European Union, which is pushing for much deeper emission cuts.

"In reality, the government of Canada is much closer to the Bush administration side of the bridge then the EU side," Mr. Bramley said.

In both Canada and the United States, individual provinces and states are moving on their own to fight global warming, leaving Ottawa and Washington to watch from the sidelines.

In British Columbia this week, the provincial government is to table legislation to entrench targets. Premier Gordon Campbell was recently in Portugal, where he signed an international accord to promote a global carbon-trading market.

Last week, Manitoba Premier Gary Doer signed an accord with the governors of nine midwestern states to set targets for absolute reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. To meet those targets, industry and power generators will take part in a cap-and-trade system in which those who surpass their targets can sell credits to those who are failing to meet theirs.

Manitoba, along with British Columbia, has joined the Western Climate Initiative, which commits California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington to reduce overall emissions to 15 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.