Why CO2 is Different Than Other "Pollutants"

I read a surprisingly interesting pair of pieces in Monday's Wall Street Journal section on going green.

The pro-carbon cutting point of view, represented by Robert Stavins, was utterly predictable. Aside from some dubious claims about pollution and economic effects of substituting so-called new energy sources for coal, oil and natural gas, nothing Stavins wrote was of note. As with most cap-and-tax proponents, he airily claimed that not taking action would cost "hundreds of billions of dollars," but declined to provide details.

The one really interesting aspect of the argument was supplied by the other side's representative, Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute.

Hayward pointed out a really key fact that I had never realized prior to reading his piece.

For the past 35 or so years, since the original Clean Air Act, the US, and other countries, have significantly reduced pollution associated with the combustion of fossil fuels.

But combusting fossil fuels generates carbon dioxide as a direct consequence. There's no way to somehow reduce its incidence, as with true pollutants.

Thus, only by reducing total energy consumption can one actually reduce carbon dioxide.

It took a rich US to afford the original effort to reduce air pollution. And, so argues Hayward, will we, again, as a society. But not if we impoverish ourselves by taking on crushing debt to fund totally new, unproven, expensive alternative energy projects, escalating the cost of our energy.

However, that is beside Hayward's main point. And that really is, carbon dioxide is simply unlike real pollutants emitted by combusting fossil fuels. The attempt to legislate or decree carbon dioxide to be a serious pollutant is folly.

In time, for reasons of economics, this will have to be delayed, if not reversed. Most Americans don't wish to live in the past, in terms of energy and standards of living. But if the wrong-headed pursuit of lower carbon dioxide emissions now being discussed is not derailed, that's where most Americans will find themselves headed, courtesy of their government.

That will not end well for the party leading Americans down that path.