Perhaps to make Earth Day 2009 more significant, carbon dioxide (CO2) was officially categorized as a pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This overhauls the grand scheme of things through the climate change bill which has already survived the US House of Representatives, and is awaiting an equal approval by the US Senate. The impending law will set up a national cap and trade system, as well as mandate the US to cut carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

Climate change skeptics and CO2-as-pollutant oppositionists paint a dark scenario looming up ahead over the next number of years: the climate change legislation will ‘inflict gross domestic product losses of $9.4 trillion, raise an average family’s energy bill by $1,241, and destroy some 1,145,000 jobs.’ If we are to go by these estimates, it can be clearly seen that carbon regulations will bring on more adverse effects than CO2 being a pollutant. CO2 is actually the base of the food chain.

Climate change dissidents in the scientific field assert their opinion on the right concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere: ‘1,000 parts per million would provide an ideal atmosphere for plant life, accelerating plant growth and multiplying yields, thereby sustaining far more animal and human life than is currently possible.’ The earth’s atmosphere right now has a CO2 concentration of approximately 385 parts per million.

The climate change bill has overlooked certain facts: human activity causes less than 4 percent of global CO2 emissions, CO2 causes only 10 or 20 percent of the greenhouse effect, water vapor is actually the most common greenhouse gas, and the world is composed of billions of other people, not just Americans, who would continue to emit CO2 as they aspire to be as materially wealthy as Americans are perceived to be.

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Via The Christian Science Monitor