Warming up to global issue

The weather has my attention.

I feel it down in my bones every time I go outside and I'm glad this cold spell is just temporary.

I'll be glad when the weather gets warmer, but a warmer climate would be a different story, with some serious consequences.

Climate change needs more of our attention and I think it's about to get it.

Just before the snow came, I was sitting at my desk wearing a sweater with a fleece jacket over it, and reading that global warming is about to be on the national agenda again.

The Bush administration has kept it on ice for much of the past eight years, but Monday Barack Obama named an energy and environment team that plans to get the nation focused on the issue.

I especially like that he appointed a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu, as energy secretary because energy policy is central to addressing global warming.

Obama said his policies would be based on science and facts. "We value science."

That'll be a nice change. George Bush spent most of his tenure questioning the science that said people play a role in global warming and didn't mention the subject in a State of the Union address until last January.

That was just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report that said human activity has likely been the driving force in the warming trend since 1950. For scientists, not being absolutists, the phrase "very likely" is as strong as it gets.

The Earth has natural warming and cooling cycles, but we've tampered with the pattern. Scientists have been talking about global warning for a long time, but it's been difficult getting action.

I spoke with K.C. Golden, policy director for Climate Solutions. In his presentations, Golden uses an illustration from a 1956 New York Times article on how carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels traps heat and is accountable for rising temperatures.

He said individual Americans and other nations have both been waiting for U.S. leadership for decades, yet we still don't have a national policy; in fact, he said, the federal government has been "the primary roadblock," to developing a global response.

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, but the U.S. would not ratify it. Eventually the rest of the world moved forward, but only because U.S. cities and states stepped in to show Americans are willing to make changes. (Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has been a leader of that movement).

Golden said individual Americans also are ready to do their part, and more will, when the national leadership gets serious. He recalled a focus group in which a woman said, "I don't think it's that big of an issue because nobody is doing anything about it."

People need the same sense of common purpose Americans had during WWII, he said.

He likes the team that Obama has put together.

"We wasted a lot of time that we really needed." he said. "It's going to be a harder, steeper hill to climb, but it's not too late."

The sun is about to shine on a critical issue.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.