I have to call out the Princeton professor, William Happer, who implied recently on CNN that carbon dioxide cannot be a pollutant because we exhale it. And yes I feel comfortable calling out a Princeton professor despite my lesser credentials because – and this is important – I have common sense, and common sense is all that’s needed here. Here’s what he said:
“There’s this myth that’s developed around carbon dioxide that it’s a pollutant, but you and I both exhale carbon dioxide with every breath. Each of us emits about two pounds of carbon dioxide a day, so are we polluting the planet? … Carbon dioxide is a perfectly natural gas, it’s just like water vapor, it’s something that plants love. They grow better with more carbon dioxide, and you can see the greening of the earth already from the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Say what?! Saying something can’t be a pollutant, or in other words something that’s bad for the environment and for those of us who live in the environment, because it’s natural is nonsense. What matters is the amount of the substance that occurs. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. Take water for example. We need it to live. We mostly think of it as a good thing. But it can also be bad – very bad, as in lethal – if the water occurs in excessive quantities. Think floods and drowning.
And here’s another example. We have the same situation with carbon dioxide. It’s necessary for life. We exhale it; plants inhale it. It’s a very important part of the life cycle. So there’s the good. The bad is when it occurs in excessive quantities. This can happen in two places – indoors and outdoors.
Indoors. Breathing in a confined space without adequate ventilation can cause the amount of carbon dioxide to build to levels that cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, and eventually loss of consciousness and death. The oxygen in the room is gradually displaced by carbon dioxide which causes asphyxiation.[1]
Outdoors. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing more heat to be trapped in the lower atmosphere. The warming brought on by the thickening layer of atmospheric gases is predicted to cause continued sea level rising and shifting weather and climate patterns, according to NASA.[2] Just because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere won’t directly poison us like it can in a confined space does not mean it can’t be harmful to us.
Arsenic anyone? A person who says a naturally-occurring substance can’t be bad for us is either ill-informed or attempting to deceive – both of which are equally dangerous to our individual and collective well-being. There are many naturally-occurring substances – like arsenic, lead, and asbestos, for example – that are perfectly safe at naturally-occurring levels. But when humans get involved, they can occur in deadly amounts – in water, paint, and insulation, respectively.
Let’s be real. Simply put, natural does not always mean safe. Excessive amounts of naturally-occurring substances can wreak havoc on the well-being of individuals or large groups of people. It’s OK to debate the specifics of how data collection and modeling are conducted as part of the scientific process, but to make a blanket statement like ‘carbon dioxide can’t be a problem for us because it’s natural’ is naive. We need to pay attention to the amount of the substance in question if we want to make informed choices about our collective future.
And another thing. To only focus on how much plants love carbon dioxide is missing the forest for the trees (literally in this case!). It doesn’t make sense to ignore the many concerning effects of global warming and only focus on a single harmless-sounding one. That would be like saying “I don’t know why everyone’s so worried about the hurricane that’s coming – all that water will be excellent for the plants!”
[1] https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=6
[2] https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
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