Global warming: a blessing in disguise.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: National Affairs - Cover story

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HOW OFTEN have you read something like "There is a growing scientific consensus that humanity is rapidly approaching a global climate catastrophe"? This usually is followed by the claim that we face this future because of human emissions of carbon dioxide driven by an economic model that requires continued growth, a consumer culture, and the global inequality of wealth distribution. The April 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court, which required the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to make a determination as to whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare, has buoyed supporters of this view.

Since then, the EPA Administrator, under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, signed a proposal with two distinct findings:

* "The Administrator is proposing to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]), methane (C[H.sub.4]), nitrous oxide ([N.sub.2]O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (S[F.sub.6])--in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. This is referred to as the endangerment finding."

* "The Administrator further is proposing to find that the combined emissions of C[O.sub.2], [C.sub.H4], [N.sub.2]O, and HFCs from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding."

Although the EPA states that, "This proposed action, as well as any final action in the future, would not itself impose any requirements on industry or other entities. An endangerment finding under one provision of the Clean Air Act would not by itself automatically trigger regulation under the entire Act," one is left with little confidence that future actions--under pressure of the global warming juggernaut--will not impact economic growth severely and constitute a regressive form of taxation.

Carbon dioxide routinely is referred to as a "pollutant" even though without it there would be no life on Earth. One no longer hears about the real pollutants that cause tens of thousands of cases of morbidity and death each year. This is not a result of insensitivity to these issues, but rather public fear of the impending climate apocalypse that overshadows every other environmental issue. The "green" solutions proposed to prevent the coming catastrophe are technologies that the International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Agency project as having no possibility of being able to displace fossil fuels any time soon, if ever. All such sources of energy are expected to amount to less than two percent of the total global energy mix by 2030.

Is the rising concentration of C[O.sub.2] in the atmosphere actually the cause of the...