Tag: “carbon footprint”

An Earth Day Musing

The Clean Air Act (CAA) was signed on December 31, 1970, seven months after the first Earth Day. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which I worked under for more than 27 years, reaffirmed and strengthened regulation of the six criteria pollutants under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Those pollutants are Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Particulate Matter, Ozone, Lead, and Carbon Monoxide.

From The CO2 Coalition Substack

By James “Jed” E. Dukett

The Clean Air Act (CAA) was signed on December 31, 1970, seven months after the first Earth Day. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which I worked under for more than 27 years, reaffirmed and strengthened regulation of the six criteria pollutants under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Those pollutants are Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Particulate Matter, Ozone, Lead, and Carbon Monoxide.

Not Carbon Dioxide (CO₂).

That is the point of this commentary.

These six pollutants were chosen because they have direct and immediate health effects. My work focused on their secondary environmental impacts. CO₂ was not included in the 1990 update for one primary reason, it is not a pollutant.

It is also worth remembering that the 1990 amendments were among the most bipartisan environmental laws in American history. Support in the Senate was close to 90 percent. Support in the House was over 95 percent.

So what changed? How did CO₂ get pulled into Clean Air Act discourse, and what does that mean now?

Before the rise of fear-based climate messaging, environmental stewardship in the United States was grounded in human environmental conservation, or HEC. HEC is the philosophy that people are part of the environment, not a threat to it. It guided the creation of the CAA. It guided the criteria pollutant framework. It guided the bipartisan consensus that environmental protection and human flourishing are not in conflict.

About 30 years ago a different idea began to take hold, misanthropic environmental preservation, or MEP. MEP is not a medical condition. It is a cultural posture. It treats human existence as an environmental liability. It replaces stewardship with suspicion. It replaces conservation with guilt. It replaces HEC with a worldview that sees fewer people as the solution.

The best early treatment for MEP is simple. Thoughts and prayers, followed by a healthy dose of children. Coaching a youth sport, preferably 3- to 5-year-old T-Ballers, also helps.

Still, MEP is powerful. A false understanding of CO₂ acts like a drug. Once someone accepts the idea that CO₂ is inherently harmful, the logic becomes a trap.

Here is how it works. Well-meaning people follow the ubiquity of CO₂ down a rabbit hole and calculate how much they personally “contribute.” The outcome is predictable. Helplessness, hopelessness, and shame for simply being alive. Because CO₂ is everywhere, this is not a fringe conclusion. It is a precise conclusion built on a false premise. That premise is the core of MEP syndrome.

And the cultural results are easy to see.

NBC News ran a piece titled “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.” It claimed that having a child is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.

Two advocacy groups pushed similar messages. Population Matters launched its “Fewer Feet” campaign, using condoms to promote the idea that fewer children mean a cooler planet. The Center for Biological Diversity followed with its “Endangered Species Condoms,” distributing more than a million condoms to link human reproduction to environmental harm. The message was clear. We do not just need smaller footprints. We need fewer feet. That is MEP in its purest form.

And our kids heard all of it.

Teenagers absorbed the rhetoric. Climate anxiety rose. Fear about the future grew. Doubts about having children appeared. Therapists report eco anxiety. Teachers hear despair. Young adults reconsider marriage or family plans. They were told to calculate their “carbon footprint” as if their existence were a problem. That is MEP syndrome working exactly as designed.

The #NoFutureNoChildren pledge is real. It was launched by 18-year-old Emma Lim, who vowed not to have children unless governments take stronger climate action. “I have always wanted to be a mom,” she said, “but I will not bring a child into a world where they will not be safe.” That message is deeply sad, and now circulates through media and into schools, where it lands directly in front of our kids.

Critics of MEP saw it coming. If you tell children the planet is dying, and then tell them they are the reason, they will lose hope.

And the effort has worked. A major UN backed study found that nearly one in five people are having fewer children than they want because of fear of the future, including climate change. Harvard researchers note that Americans increasingly cite climate change and overpopulation when explaining their views on family size.

Now, about CO₂.

Yes, humans are the limiting factor. We exhale it. We add more of it when we bring new life into the world. But the idea that CO₂ is a pollutant on par with Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, or the other criteria pollutants is a category error. It is the central scientific mistake that fuels MEP syndrome.

Physics tells the story. CO₂’s radiative effect drops off sharply after its first few hundred parts per million. Beyond that point, the marginal warming impact becomes negligible.

And here is the part the “carbon footprint” scolds never mention. Every breath you exhale is 40,000 parts per million CO₂. The atmosphere is 420 parts per million. You emit two to three pounds of CO₂ every day just by being alive. That is more than our avocados from Mexico or that fancy Lululemon purse.

And here is the uncomfortable truth for MEP logic. If CO₂ is the villain, then human existence becomes the crime. Unless we all drop dead, maybe rethink the role of CO₂ in the environment, because none of this is true.

For anyone trying to help someone caught in MEP syndrome, it helps to mention the photosynthetic benefits of CO₂. Global greening. The revival of arid regions. The simple molecule that makes life possible. For goodness’ sake, at the very least, remind them that without CO₂ there is no beer.

Most importantly, the CO₂ humans emit is not remotely comparable to the six criteria pollutants our nation identified when HEC, not MEP, guided environmental policy.

That distinction mattered in 1970. It mattered in 1990. And it matters even more today.

Originally published on Substack on April 22, 2026.

Jed Dukett is a CO2 Coalition Member and former acid rain scientist.

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Climate Alarmists Indifferent to Geopolitical Realities and Human Suffering 

As war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine, as missiles and drones claim new victims every day, and as the global order is threatened—with all the attendant consequences of human misery—a strange persistence haunts the comfy living rooms of certain remote corners of the West, tucked away warmly and safely from the turmoil. A segment of our elite, obsessed with the quest for carbon neutrality, seems indeed incapable of lookng away from its Excel spreadsheets to contemplate the human drama unfolding before its eyes.

From Watts Up With That?

By Robert Girouard

As war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine, as missiles and drones claim new victims every day, and as the global order is threatened—with all the attendant consequences of human misery—a strange persistence haunts the comfy living rooms of certain remote corners of the West, tucked away warmly and safely from the turmoil. A segment of our elite, obsessed with the quest for carbon neutrality, seems indeed incapable of lookng away from its Excel spreadsheets to contemplate the human drama unfolding before its eyes.

In an article titled “When War Drives Up GHG Emissions” recently published in Montreal-based La Presse Plus, journalist Éric-Pierre Champagne poses the question that seemingly haunts climate alarmists: “Do armed conflicts like those in Iran, Ukraine, or Gaza drive up global greenhouse gas emissions? But is this pollution significant or marginal? In short, does war hinder our efforts to reach carbon neutrality?” In this scholarly exposé, where numerous experts are consulted, there is not a single word regarding the economic and human costs engendered by these conflicts; only carbon accounting holds any importance.

There is something deeply disconcerting, if not morally suspect, about seeing experts ponder the “carbon footprint” of an invasion or a bombardment. This attitude reveals an unprecedented derailment of reason: the elevation of a technical indicator—the CO2 molecule—to the rank of an absolute divinity, before which every other reality, even the most atrocious, must bow.

Morality demands a hierarchy of urgencies. Yet, the ideology of carbon neutrality operates a flattening of all values. How have we reached this stage of emotional anesthesia, where the survival of a nation or the agony of a civilian population is passed through the filter of greenhouse gas accounting? Prioritizing “net-zero” while the world tips into geopolitical brutality is not foresight; it is a form of narcissism totally disconnected from geopolitical realities and human suffering. It is the stubbornness of one who, seeing their house burning and their family trapped, worries about whether the fire trucks are electric.

War should be a wake-up call. It should remind us that heat, electricity, and the capacity for self-defense are not negotiable options in the name of climate virtue, but the very foundations of civilization. Even Germany, a champion of the energy transition, did not hesitate to reopen its coal mines to avoid freezing in winter, having suddenly rediscovered, through pain, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Those who continue to place decarbonization above basic security and human dignity demonstrate a lack of morality hidden behind the shroud of “science.” By refusing to see that peace and freedom are the prerequisites for any environmental policy, they condemn societies to helplessness.

The senseless quest for carbon neutrality at any cost, disconnected from the needs of ordinary people, has become an ideological drift that blinds us. It is time to denounce this indecency. A ton of carbon avoided will never be worth a life saved. A world freed from fossil fuels but enslaved or destroyed by violence is not progress; it is an ecological cemetery. True reason consists in admitting that there are realities greater, more urgent, and more sacred than the planet’s thermostat. War forces us to look horror in the face. Let us at least have the decency not to ask for its carbon footprint.