Greenhouse Blues.

Confronted with this summer's record drought. government officials are suddenly rediscovering "the greenhouse effect." Now, while it is parchingly obvious, Americans are being told that we've tampered with our environment so much that even the climate is changing.

But for all the hand-wringing, the response has been astonishingly inadequate and short-sighted.

Joseph Mullan, senior vice president for environmental issues at the National Coal Association, points out, by way of exonerating the coal industry, that some scientists predict a coming ice age, which will cancel out the greenhouse effect anyway. He also says the role played by coal in polluting the atmosphere is "still unknown."

This year, the U.S. government did take one long-overdue step in response to the global warming trend: It signed a pact to limit the output of chlorofluorocarbons. But for the most part, the government seems ready to live with a ravaged climate. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, is planning dams and storm drains to deal with the rising oceans, and...