Gravity and Levity.

• Position: Political cartoons

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a cartoon by Mick Stevens shows a group of men sitting around an executive desk. Outside the window, the U.S. Capitol building and Washington Monument are visible - ne can see that these men are the leaders of the realm. One also notices that the buildings are half immersed in water, which has risen nearly to the knees of the assembled men. The fellow in the executive chair is saying, "Gentlemen, it's time we gave some serious thought to the effects of global warming."

The appearance of that cartoon is a good sign. Cartoons don't work unless the humor taps into an anxiety that is shared, or implicitly understood, by most of the people who see it. While The New Yorker may not be a representative barometer of public sensibilities at large, it still represents a broader population of readers than any scientific journal or environmental magazine. It's a population of conspicuous consumers, for one thing - people who use disproportionate amounts of jet fuel, leather-upholstered Range Rovers, and Omaha beef. But nonetheless, in the evident judgement of The New Yorker editors, those readers are people who will probably laugh appreciatively at this "it's time" cartoon. And that reaction would not be forthcoming if those readers didn't have some sense of the foolishness of a leader who can't see the gravity of an issue until he's sitting in it.

A cartoon is a light touch, of course. It doesn't accuse, exactly. But in some respects it's more powerful than an accusation because it has the weight of social sanction. A joke is a form of sharing: the people who are laughing (note that you rarely hear a sane person guffawing all alone) are enjoying the fact that they see something that someone else does not see. That someone - that "humor character," to use the term literature professors use - is the butt of the joke. It is the naked emperor parading in his new clothes, the Falstaff, the fool. When humorists and editors agree that lots of people now find the environmental myopia of public officials to be good grist for ridicule, something has changed.

The week before this cartoon came out, the Washington, DC-based National Public Radio carried a segment that began with a story on the drought that had struck the Eastern United States. It began with Noah Adams saying, "Oppressive heat continues to cover most of the United States," and it went on for 1,280 more words. As I listened, I waited to hear some discussion of...