The conquest of global warming.

SOMETIMES the fastest way to fix a problem is to ignore it.

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

I remember learning from Ray Bradbury that the quickest way to send a man to Alpha Centauri (after the sun, the star system nearest to the earth) is to not even bother for the next century. If we sent a manned rocket to Alpha Centauri right now, the occupant would die centuries before he got there. And when the rocket did arrive, people from earth would probably be there to greet it, I hope in Star Trek uniforms. That's because some future generation will figure out how to do in weeks, days, or even minutes what it would take centuries to do with existing technology.

Right now, Al Gore insists that we have less than ten years to figure out how to stop global warming. I'm sure he means it, but it's a convenient diagnosis, as it requires everyone to drop what he's doing and follow Al Gore's instructions. If, on the other hand, people see global warming as possibly worrisome but not for a long time, they'll probably concentrate on more pressing matters. A modest increase in global mean temperature over the next century won't be enough to make us ditch the internal-combustion engine.

Global-warming skeptics are caught in an awkward Catch-22. If they concede that the earth is getting warmer because of human activity (as most do; the debate is over how much and whether it's dangerous), they empower the greens who own this issue. The problem is that many of these greens are actually what the Brits like to call "watermelons"--green on the outside, red on the inside. They assume that any serious problem requires economic planning and "collective action."

Conservatives ...