Only yesterday we were shivering in dread of the nuclear winter. Now, as superpower relations thaw, people who carry fashionable worry beads are in a great sweat about the coal-induced summer. It's meltdown time again. Come to think of it, it's always meltdown time at the frantic fringes of the environmental movement. But this time, it's the polar icecaps that are heading for China.
Global temperatures go in cycles, too.
One must also maintain a sense of perspective about mankind's role. More than 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide move through the atmosphere every year. Enter environmentally rapacious man, who gladly supplies 5 billion tons by burning fossil fuels and another 2 billion tons through deforestation. That creates a guesstimated greenhouse gas surplus of 3 billion tons. All this greenhouse gas puts environmentalists in an awkward position when it comes to thinking up clean ways to generate new electricity.