Candace

Talmadge

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July 17, 2009

Limiting Carbon Dioxide: It’s Merely Critical to All Life on Earth, So What Could Go Wrong?

How did carbon dioxide go from a trace atmospheric gas and the foundation of all life on Earth to Public Enemy No. 1?

The Environmental Protection Agency, in its infinite wisdom, has proposed putting carbon dioxide among the ranks of methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, and declaring all of these atmospheric gases a danger to human welfare under the 1971 Clean Air Act. The dirty half-dozen of so-called greenhouse gases, as it were.

It’s all part of a $1 trillion drive to cut back on human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide – based on the assumption that such emissions are the primary cause of global warming. That is the public explanation for the House of Representatives recently passing H.R. 2454, which mandates limits on carbon dioxide emissions and sets up carbon cap-and-trade.

There are several problems with that assumption, however. First and foremost, at present there is no global warming. Our blessed Earth stopped heating up in 1998, even though human-generated carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise. Temperatures, in fact, are falling.

Second, the amount of warming that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes is utterly insignificant, according to Laurence I. Gould, professor of physics at the University of Hartford. “It’s like turning on a flashlight and worrying that it causes your home to heat up.”

Third, Gould maintains that reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could threaten food crops worldwide. “Carbon dioxide is utterly vital to life on earth,” the professor says. “Plenty of experiments show that when you increase carbon dioxide levels, plants grow better and are less prone to heat stress.”

Carbon dioxide is critical to all green plants, meaning plants that contain chlorophyll. Green plants take in carbon dioxide, and through the miracle scientists describe as photosynthesis, create energy in the form of carbohydrates and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. Photosynthesis is the foundation of our planet’s food chain, and the only process known to create more energy than it consumes. All life on Earth ultimately depends on photosynthesis, and for that process to work, plants require atmospheric carbon dioxide.

And yet we want to put caps on that very gas. Talk about insanely cutting our noses off to spite our faces!

This has all the earmarks of another biofuels fiasco like the one in 2005-2006, in which large tracts of arable land were diverted to grow corn for ethanol instead of food. As a result, worldwide food prices spiked, which in turn contributed to increased starvation and greater numbers of deaths in developing countries. Except the carbon cap fiasco will be larger by several orders of magnitude and send the prices that Americans pay for energy soaring skyward.

Never mind that Gould and hundreds of other scientists say that cap-and-trade is utterly pointless. According to Gould, if all the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol had actually implemented the carbon-reduction terms of the agreement, the net reduction in worldwide atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would have amounted to one-tenth of 1 percent. That’s a boatload of money and effort for scant results that really don’t matter anyway.

Still wonder why the House passed this bill and why the entire Obama Administration supports this environmentally irrelevant boondoggle? Look no farther than the end of an article skewering Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs. It was written by journalist Matt Taibbi and recently published in Rolling Stone.

Taibbi’s piece cites "a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an 'environmental plan,' called cap-and-trade.” It notes that Goldman Sachs estimates that this new carbon-credit market is worth $1 trillion and greased the way for it by shelling out more than $4 million in campaign contributions to Democrats during the 2008 elections. Chump change, of course, if the firm’s predictions are correct, and they usually are.

As always, follow the money, especially when it comes in a so-called environmentally friendly wrapper.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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