Our Friend CO2  Wed, 2009-04-01 12:46Mitchell Anderson Mitchell
Anderson's picture  Our Friend CO2  One of the stupider
arguments making the rounds in the media is that “carbon-
dioxide-is-not-pollution– it’s life”.  In fact, the Competitive
Enterprise Institute (CEI) produced a hilarious commercial
saying just that.  Friendly footage shows how CO2 comes from
little girls blowing dandelion seeds, and prancing gazelles.
Then cue the ominous music: “now some politicians want to label
carbon dioxide a pollutant – imagine if they succeed. What would
our lives be like then?  Perhaps a bit of back-story is in
order. The CEI has received a whopping $2,005,000 from
ExxonMobil since 1998. Their point person on climate change is
the notorious Myron Ebell who is so pathologically pro-oil he
once claimed that good gas mileage is a mass killer.  So what
are the CEI (and their funders in the fossil fuel industry) so
worried about? After decades of the atmosphere being used as a
free dumping ground for astronomical amounts o