This is the second in a series of posts answering a popular way of defending drastic efforts to reduce global warming that I encountered recently on social media. For the first, click here.

The second point “Bob” made was this: “Whether you think climate change is manmade or not, I don’t know a single person who likes pollution. Everyone I know loves experiencing the beauty of our planet and thinks it’s a good idea to preserve and conserve what we have. No one wants a mini-continent of plastic in the pacific, pollutants in the air, or the destruction of so many incredible parts of our country—much less the world!”

That’s a common argument, and it certainly sounds like common sense. But is it? Five points suggest otherwise.

First, true enough, no one “likes pollution.” But we also all recognize that there are diminishing returns to how much we should do to reduce it, and we all make cost/benefit analyses that lead us to accept certain levels of pollution. For example, if you spent ten times as much time cleaning and disinfecting your kitchen and bathrooms as you do, you would reduce, by some undeterminable percentage, your risk of contracting a germ-borne disease. But you don’t do that. Why? Because you consider the benefit not worth the cost in terms of time (and cleaning agents).

The interesting question is “How clean is clean enough?” And the appropriate answer is “As clean as when the cost of getting any cleaner exceeds the benefit of getting any cleaner.” The answer to that question changes with time, circumstances, and technology, but in principle that question is unavoidable, and we all live by it all the time—or at least we try to.

Second, what those who demand action to reduce anthropogenic global warming want us to curb is our emission not of anything traditionally known as pollution (gases, liquids, and solids that put those in contact with them at risk of harm/disease) but of carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is an odorless, colorless gas that isn’t toxic at levels that could ever be reached in the open atmosphere.

Occupational exposure standards for CO2 are 0.5% (5,000 ppm) average through a 40-hour work week and 3% (30,000 ppm) for short-term exposure. But those standards are overcautious. The National Research Council reports that “Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm [0.35%] with a range of 0–10,600 ppm [0–1.06%], and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm [0.41%] with a range of 300–11,300 ppm [0.03–1.1%].” And we trust those submariners with control of nuclear ICBMs.

The breath we exhale contains about 40,000–53,000 ppm (4–5.3%) CO2. Exposure to CO2 only becomes dangerous to life at about 35%, i.e., 350,000 parts per million—nearly 875 times the current atmospheric concentration..

Yet, (a) every breath you exhale contains about 40,000 parts per million carbon dioxide, and (b) ambient concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now is about 410 parts per million, about 1/13^th the 5,000 ppm occupational safety standard for average exposure in a 40-hour work week—a standard that, as just noted, is unjustifiably too restrictive.

Further, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is essential to all plant growth. Plants use it in photosynthesis, and the more of it they get, the better they grow. On average, every doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in which plants grow causes about a 35% increase in plant growth efficiency. They grow better in warmer and cooler temperatures and in wetter and drier soils. They make better use of soil nutrients, and they resist diseases and pests better. Consequently, they increase their range, and they improve their fruit/fiber ratio. That means more food for everything that eats plants—and for everything that eats anything that eats plants.

Who benefits the most from that? The world’s poor, who need more abundant and affordable food.

In short, carbon dioxide isn’t pollution, it’s the elixir of life. The world needs more of it, not less. (The 280 ppm of pre-industrial times was near the threshold below which photosynthesis stops—about 175 ppm—and far lower than the 4,000 to 8,000 ppm that prevailed in past geologic times, when vegetation was far more abundant on the earth.) The increasing atmospheric CO2 over the past 200 years, and especially, the past 60 years, has contributed to the greening of the planet and the production of trillions of dollars’ worth of food.

Third, I don’t want a mini-continent of plastic in the ocean, either—and the idea that it’s there is a myth. Yes, there is far more plastic in our oceans than we should want to see there, but it’s a manageable problem that will be overcome as developing countries (mostly in Asia) become richer and control their plastic emissions better. (Comparatively few emissions come from developed countries.)

Fourth, about whether anyone wants pollutants in the air, I repeat my first point above. Then I add this:

Pollution emission rates and ambient concentrations tend to rise, peak, and fall in what’s called the environmental Kuznets curve.” In early industrialization, pollution emissions and concentrations rise, and so do the risks they impose, but the benefits of the industrial activity—higher agricultural yields, better housing, safer transportation, etc.—far outweigh the risks of the pollution. How do we know that? Because which mortality rates decline during the same time.

But as societies reach various levels of GDP per capita, their citizens begin to demand—because they can now afford it—reduced emissions through the adoption of more expensive production techniques and emission controls than were affordable in the earlier stage. Consequently, the emissions soon peak (at various income levels, and various emission levels for different pollutants, because the processes required to control them differ in expense). Then they begin to decline. Eventually, the air, water, and land are less polluted than before industrialization.

That’s historical fact traceable in every country that has industrialized—although there are certain factors about culture and governance that make the process go more or less quickly from place to place. (I discuss that in my chapter “Is Capitalism Bad for the Environment?” in the book Counting the Cost: Christian Perspectives on Capitalism, edited by Arthur Lindsley and Anne Bradley and published by the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics.)

Fifth, neither I nor any skeptic of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” (CAGW) I know wants “the destruction of so many incredible parts of our country” or the world. What we contest is the notion that such destruction will ensue from continued use of fossil fuels to generate the abundant, affordable, reliable energy that is absolutely indispensable to lifting and keeping any whole society out of poverty.

Before I expand on that, let me point out something else. The risks from poverty are far greater than any from climate. On income equivalent to about the bottom tenth of Americans anyone can thrive in any climate from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert. On the equivalent of $1.50 to $2.00 per day, no one can thrive even in the best tropical paradise. We Americans, so long and so far out of poverty, have no institutional memory of how deadly deep poverty is.

But to continue with the direct response. The computer models on which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the various government agencies that basically take their cue from it rely predict, on average, two to three times as much warming as actually observed over the relevant period, which means the empirical evidence falsifies them. They therefore provide no rational basis for any predictions about future global average temperature, and therefore no rational basis for any policy related to global average temperature. The best empirical evidence suggests that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (the amount that global average surface temperature would rise in response to doubled CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, after all climate feedbacks have had their effect, i.e., in about 200 years) is more on the order of 0.5 to 1.8 degrees C (0.9 to 3.24 degrees F), not the 3C (5.4F) “best estimate” of the IPCC, let alone the 4.5C (8.1F) upper bound of the IPCC’s estimates of what would happen in what it paints as the worst-case scenario of CO2 emissions, and even the IPCC doesn’t forecast serious harm from warming in that range. In all other respects, a warmer world is a healthier world, for both people and all the rest of life on earth—a truth well established historically.

Bob’s third point was this: “For most people, I think this would be a no-brainer issue if it weren’t politicized. But if the above two points are true, your political party affiliation doesn’t matter. Desiring to see the world less-polluted is non-partisan.” For my reply, click here.

Photo by tam wai on Unsplash.