The leftwing, antigrowth folks at the Wall Street Journal have gone and done it. In their news columns they reported this week: GREENHOUSE GASES IN AIR ARE AMASSING AT FASTER RATE. Carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 2.4 parts per million in 2007, the Journal reported, citing newly released federal stats.  Concentration of the gas now amounts to 385 parts per million, up from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm - until around 1880.

Now the dissenters will say that CO2 concentrations have climbed and fallen in the past due to non-human forces of nature, or that there is no convincing evidence that CO2 levels are changing the climate.

Folks that I respect, like an MIT scientists and Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems, will tell you that there is a preponderence of evidence that rising CO2 levels are warming the atmosphere.  What is a certainty, they say, is that we buy home an car insurance on the chance that a fire or crash might occur. Cutting back on CO2 emissions would amount to global climate insurance that even skeptics should be willing to purchase.

Sure. Few would argue with that. Consider one other thing. It makes sense to evolve our energy sector to a higher level of technology and efficiency - regardless. That is why I find it tremendously exciting to visit with the folks at Vestas wind in Denmark, or the fusion research center in Cadarache, France, or the solar folks at NREL.  Change is coming in the energy world and - if CO2 emissions by humans is a real threat - that change will be icing on the polar caps. One hopes.