The global-warming debate: delusion vs. symbolism

Global warming is a puzzle. Begin by recognizing the stink of politics. Support for the idea of human-caused warming correlates with political ideology. One side wants it and the other side doesn't.

Conservatives, who fear a problem that can't be solved by the market or, perhaps, by any of the political institutions we now have, reach for the saving idea of faulty measurement, a hotting sun, anything other than human agency. Progressives embrace the theory of global warming and propose to deal with it symbolically.

I am no scientist. I don't like the political implications of human-caused warming, but the Earth does not care what I like. The melting of glaciers and the rise in global carbon dioxide do make a case for the theory.

Seattle has decided that it is a fact. A panel chosen by the mayor now offers a plan. To fight global warming, it proposes such measures as an increase in bus service of 40 percent, tolls on some roads and a new tax on downtown parking. The aim is to get us out of our cars.

Here a thought about psychology. When people believe a thing strongly, their inclination is to fit new information into what they already think. One of the strongest beliefs of the political class is that we should all get out of our cars. They have wanted it for a long time. And so, to tackle this new problem of global warming, their first proposal is — we get out of our cars.

Maybe they are right. Maybe automobiles are making the oceans rise. But no more ours than other people's. Seattle has less than one ten-thousandth of the population of Earth. "Think globally, act locally" is a fine slogan for planting a tree, because you can enjoy the tree. You cannot detect even a whole city's contribution to the sea level.

Here the talk switches to politics. San Francisco and Portland have declared adherence to the Kyoto Protocols, which set targets for greenhouse gas in 2012. Maybe if Seattle joins them, it could start something.

In other words, this proposed municipal program is really a kind of lobbying.

Assume that it works. America is persuaded to embrace Kyoto. Would it matter? Most European countries will miss their Kyoto targets. China and India have no Kyoto targets. People there are too busy buying their first motorbikes, refrigerators and air conditioners to worry about it.

"China is building the equivalent of a 500-megawatt power plant every week," said Bill Ruckelshaus, the former EPA administrator.

Human-caused global warming is not the sort of problem our institutions are set up to handle.

Finally, if that obstacle were surmounted, and all of humanity were riding the bus, using spiral light bulbs, recycling the trash, etc., would it be enough?

There was a hint on the front page of Monday's Seattle Times. The story had a happy-talk subhead, "It's Easy Being Green," and a little drawing of a spiral light bulb. The text, however, quoted scientists saying global warming is inevitable.

Inevitable.

Ed Miles, climatologist at the University of Washington, agrees. "Kyoto represents a very small step which cannot and will not prevent doubling of the carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere by 2100," he writes. He says humanity should do things in this century to minimize the warming in the 2100s.

Miles advocates a steep tax on petroleum fuels and coal and a big research program on ways of taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Even that, he says, is a strategy of buying time — and that means it's still not enough.

I don't know that Miles is right. But if he and the other proponents of the theory are right, then neither side of our political divide is taking this seriously. The conservatives are buying a delusion and the progressives are buying a Prius.

Maybe we get warm.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com