Recent evidence suggests that the fine-structure constant α=e²/h bar*c, a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between photons and electrons, is slowly increasing over cosmological timescales. High-resolution measurements of quasar spectra suggest that there has been a variation Δα/α =-0.72 ± 0.18x10^-5 over the past 6-10 Gyr.To model this, we propose variability in the speed of light that produces a cosmological time |αdot/α| = 10^-15 and 10^-16 yr^-1 at z = 3 which also agrees with the observational spectral data.