First, we educate all the lawyers

The University of Washington School of Law fired an opening volley Friday in the energy revolution. The school hosted its first annual climate-change conference to explore the legal and economic impacts of global warming.

High-powered panelists and a full house in William G. Gates Hall are in the first wave over the ramparts of old thinking and conventional wisdom about energy generation and carbon expenditures and their impact on the world around us. The velocity at which this public discourse has picked up speed from a dead start is extraordinary. Rep. Jay Inslee, D- Bainbridge Island, noted that Congress held its first hearing on what to do about global warming only last week. The ice is melting in the Arctic, Inslee noted, but it's also melting in Washington, D.C.

Politicians in Congress will have to sprint to get ahead of their constituents. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is a national leader in enlisting city halls to remediate climate change. His success and the visceral impact of the issue is seen in a map of cities across the United States that have adopted campaigns to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Coast-to-coast through the heartland, they dot America's environmental consciousness.

Here in Washington, impacts of climate change will be warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather and reduced snowpack. They influence the ability of this region to clean up Puget Sound, nurture salmon recovery and provide drinking water, said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology.

Climate-change topics are not new in Olympia or the King County Courthouse, but the degree to which the public is listening and contributing to the discussions is just getting started.

Inslee and others invoke the power of technology in two interesting ways. One is the capacity of the American culture to invent new things, from the light bulb to the airplane and the Internet. Second is the economic bounty to be unlocked by technological responses to climate change: U.S. ingenuity marketed to eager customers around the globe.

The UW Law School has launched a conversation and taken it into the community. It could hardly pick a better topic for continuing education.