People might be forgiven for asking whether the growing number of international conferences on global issues in recent years are anything more than a modern version of the circuses that brought entertainment and diversion to rural towns in the 1950s.

Amid a fanfare of razzmatazz, presidents and prime ministers from countries large and small jet into a designated city - Cairo, Rio, Copenhagen, Beijing - and perform their well-prepared acts in the full glare of the global media.

In well-crafted speeches they bemoan human rights breaches, racism, inequalities, population growth, the plight of women and children and, especially, the destruction of the environment.

A few, in magician style, pull some rabbit-like initiatives out of the hat to the applause of the media, even though what is on offer is neither comprehensive nor radical enough to deal adequately with the problem. After a week or so the tents are dismantled; the leaders return home, and things return to normal until the next circus gets under way.

One would expect that the Kyoto conference on climate change might be different. After all there is a consensus among the 2,000 scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming is already under way and that the consequence will be disastrous for future generations, especially the poor.

Remedial action needs to be taken now. The scientists insist that their apocalyptic predictions are based on sound science.

These include the widespread flooding of large cities and coastal plains as polar ice-caps melt; the increase in the frequency and ferocity of storms; and major disruptions in global ecosystems with a consequent fall in food production leading to malnutrition and famines.

Irish people who might secretly welcome a few extra degrees to make our climate more tolerable will share the anxiety of Sir Robert May, the chief scientific adviser to the UK government.

Recently he highlighted research which indicates that the melting ice in the Atlantic is slowing down the Gulf Stream, our island central heating system. If this is true, global warming will mean cold and possibly stormy winters*. Not a very pleasant prospect.

Since global warming will cause massive dislocation, pain and death, and wreak havoc on the planet, one might expect that the political leaders who will gather in Kyoto next week would be anxious to take the necessary steps to address the issue urgently.

Frankly, I don't expect this to happen for the simple reason that present-day politicians, even supposedly powerful ones like Bill Clinton, are not the real movers and shakers in our world today. With the erosion of democracy in the past two decades politicians are often merely puppets: the real power lies with corporations, in this instance the fossil fuel corporations.

Their basic concern is not about human welfare or a healthy and fruitful planet, but about protecting and sustaining their profit margins.

For the past decade the fossil fuel corporations have led a concerted campaign to prevent any treaty being signed that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions or favour a tax on carbon. They have promoted the work of so-called independent scientists like Patrick Michaels, who pours cold water on the greenhouse predictions without pointing out that his research has been funded by Cyprus Mineral Company, Edison Electric Institute and the Germany Coal Mining Association.

Over 50 US and European corporations drawn from the oil, gas, coal, car, chemical, airline, electricity and plastics sectors set up a think-tank known as the Global Climate Coalition to persuade the public and the politicians that global warming was not a real threat.

In 1992, when the Dutch government proposed an energy tax as a way of tackling global warming, a variety of energy-generating and -using transnational corporations, including the petrochemical giant Shell, the steel-maker Hoogoverns and the chemical producers Akzo and Dow, raised a hue and cry. They threatened to close their Dutch plants and move to countries like Kazakhstan unless the proposal was dropped.

In the face of such blackmail by corporations, whose economic power rivals Holland's itself, most countries simply cave in.

The most dramatic and vicious intervention aimed at blocking any progress at Kyoto took place in the US. With only 5 per cent of the world's population, it accounts for over 22 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

At the Earth Summit review in June 1997, President Clinton promised to support legally binding targets and timetables at Kyoto. Corporations associated with the fossil-fuel lobby saw red.

Twenty such organisations began a $10 million campaign of TV ads designed to scare the people and thus ensure that the politicians would torpedo any realistic proposal at Kyoto.

They have succeeded. The US will not even sign up to the agreements reached at Rio in 1992. They want to postpone compliance for another 13 years.

Unless there is a major U-turn, Kyoto will be a victory for the fossil-fuel industry, but will entail pain and devastation for people and the planet. Other sectors of the economy, like the insurance industry, will also suffer.

On the surface Kyoto will appear to be about negotiating greenhouse gas limits. The real issue is whether powerful corporations will continue to rule the world or whether politicians will have the courage to stop being puppets and take decisions which protect the interests of people and the Earth rather than always pandering to narrow corporate interests.

Sir Robert May's Scientific Report on Climate Change to Prime Minister Tony Blair, October 1997

Sean McDonagh is a Columban missionary priest and chair of VOICE (Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment)