CO2 = Pollution. Now What?

Amanda Worley, Entry 13

It’s about time we call it official. Carbon dioxide, the bubbles in beer, is a pollutant in the context of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Friday, April 17th. The long-lived heat-trapping gas, while benevolent in a bar, is deemed a threat to public health and welfare through its growing impact on climate and, in the long run, sea levels.
Environmental campaigners and many climate scientists had long pressed for this action. But the question now is, will it matter?
Then there’s the global nature of global warming. Molecules of carbon dioxide spewed by a taxi cab in Beijing or a power plant in Boston mix freely in the atmosphere, adding to global-scale heating. And nearly all of the projected growth rates in emissions of carbon dioxide (and five other heat-trapping gases) in the next few decades are expected to occur in fast-growing developing countries, led by China and India. India of which is expected by midcentury to be have more people than China and even today has the population density of Japan.
Over all, carbon dioxide and climate remain a very tough fit for the legislative and legal arenas. This reality was on display during Supreme Court arguments in November 2006 that laid the legal foundation for today’s announcement. Confusion arose over which layer of the atmosphere was the repository for smokestack and tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide. James Milkey, assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, corrected Justice Antonin Scalia, saying: “Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It’s the troposphere.”
“Troposphere, whatever,” Justice Scalia replied. “I told you before I’m not a scientist.” Over a brief flutter of laughter from observers, he added, “That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.” However to me it looks like the courts will have to deal more with global warming in the months and years to come.
What surprises me is that there’s still this debate over whether dealing with carbon dioxide, as a traditional pollutant (regulate and it will go away) is the way to make this particular emission go away. Partly why I suppose is that the transition from deeply rooted energy systems based on burning fossil fuels to new norms emitting ever less of this gas, is seen by many as requiring a sustained energy quest including much greater direct government investment on the frontiers of relevant technologies (batteries, photovoltaics, superconductivity, photosynthesis).
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/co2-pollution-now-what/