Prop 23s Anita Mangels wants you to know that greenhouse gases are ˜emissions, not ˜pollutants


Brad Johnson interview Mangels in this WR cross-post.



Greenhouse gases “” while they may be associated with global warming “” have no direct impact on the environment or health in California. The nature of greenhouse gas emissions is not at all compatible with other emissions that have been subject to environmental laws.


Although Mangels “” a project director for the Woodward & McDowell ballot initiative lobbying firm “” accurately described the judge’s decision on the ballot language, her conclusion is false. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized that greenhouse gases are pollutants by any reasonable definition in 2007. Greenhouse pollution not only raises sea levels, intensifies extreme weather, and causes heat waves and droughts, but also increases allergens and worsens the effects of other pollutants “” all described in the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding.

Moreover, new scientific research by Mark Z. Jacobson, finds that carbon dioxide pollution is a two-fold killer “” causing not just global warming but also forming “domes” that trap other pollutants in urban areas. Even if “CO2 in adjacent regions is not controlled,” Jacobson estimates, “reducing local CO2 may reduce 300-1000 premature air pollution mortalities per year in the U.S. and 50-100 per year in California.” Mangels claimed that greenhouse pollutants are “unlike localized emissions that have a tangible impact on the health and the environment “” if you spend money on that, you can see a tangible result in that.” In fact, greenhouse pollutants are just like other pollutants “” they make people sick, they kill ecosystems, and the less that’s emitted, the better.


When you cut through the greenwashed rhetoric of the “California Jobs Initiative” “” the Yes on 23’s other name “” all that’s left is yet another attempt by fossil fuel companies and their ideological allies to prevent the growth of a green economy.

— Brad Johnson

JR:  Hmm.  Given her Orwellian effort to destroy the English language, I think her last name is all too fitting. Read previous posts on Prop 23’s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.

5 Responses to Prop 23s Anita Mangels wants you to know that greenhouse gases are ˜emissions, not ˜pollutants

  1. Bob Doublin says:

    “In a gracious telephone interview with the Wonk Room, Mangels argued that the “semantics are important,” ”

    There was a problem from the very start. When she spewed her bullshit, the interviewer should have laughed in her face and said something like “Are you shitting me?!?”
    We are giving this scum a thousand times more respect than they deserve. By out-Orwelling poor George they are trying to destroy language and the basic means of communication between humans and should be TREATED AS SUCH and never tolerated. It’s way past time to take off the kid gloves.

  2. catman306 says:

    Using ‘pestilence’ rather than ’emissions’ or ‘pollution’ may some strike pay dirt with those who are familiar with the Book of Revelation’.

    Pollution is Pestilence

  3. kenshin says:

    just call it smog. if we’re gonna argue semantics, call it something that people can visualize. it’s as bad as smog. i mean, if they can get away with calling their prop a Jobs Initiative, u can call ghg smog.

  4. Albert says:


    Greenhouse gas emissions have both local and global implications, and the scale of the difference between their impacts and the impacts of “other emissions” makes her statement as offensive as someone saying “Hitler was not at all like other murderers, so we should not call him a murderer.” In the concentrations they are reaching they are WORSE than other pollutants, not better.

  5. Chris Winter says:

    Anita Mangels is right: Semantics are important. Here are some.





    Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.


    pollutant (n): (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Environmental Science) a substance that pollutes, esp a chemical or similar substance that is produced as a waste product of an industrial process




    I think that pretty well wraps it up. Carbon dioxide can be a pollutant.