Enviro-whiners, Luddites antagonistic to every form of human progress from which they cannot wrest extortionate gain, scream outrage at the Greenhouse Effect. Atmospheric carbon dioxide traps otherwise expelled infrared radiation within imprecise or undeniably whimsical computer climate models, dooming simulated Earths to self-incineration. So serious is the Greenhouse Effect that real global daytime temperatures are dropping no matter where measured (Science 268(5211) 710 (1995)). Who cares about real reality when political reality, Official truth, can levy a Carbon Tax on Everything upon First World residents? Naughty, naughty healthy, wealthy, educated, advancing First World humans must be destroyed - or at least surcharged. It is either that obligatory penalty, or Enviro-whiners must join the work force (or the jobless).
Science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing have already done something about each year sequestering trillions of grams of elemental carbon equivalent, thwarting entry into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Every gram of elemental carbon is tantamount to 3.664 grams of carbon dioxide. We use all that carbon to make survivable organic compounds - plastics - enriching First World lives, nurturing the environment, and making a fat profit without government subsidy. Is this to Luddites' liking? Hell no!
1994 USE, % CARBON TRILLION GRAMS OF
PLASTIC billion lbs by weight ELEMENTAL CARBON
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HDPE 11.1 85.63 4.31
LDPE 12.6 85.63 4.90
PS 5.80 92.26 2.43
PP 9.52 85.63 3.70
PVC 9.17 38.44 1.59
PET 3.21 62.50 0.91
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17.84 trillion grams
[HDPE - high density polyethylene; LDPE - low and low low density polyethylene; PS-polystyrene; PP - polypropylene; PVC - polyvinyl chloride; PET - poly(ethylene terephthalate); Chemical & Engineering News 73(21)34 (1995)]
Our opulent First World standard of living prevented 65 trillion grams of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere in 1994. When was the last year in which Enviro-whiners planted 65 million trees, said costs being volunteered from their own pockets? Never! Not in the past, not now, and not in any foreseeable future will all the fish kissers and tree huggers summed across the whole of Terra ever contribute to environmental homeostasis what one year of American plastic manufacture safely sequesters as irrigation pipe, soft drink bottles, swizzle sticks and supermarket plastic shopping bags.
Next year, we'll do it again, only on a larger scale.
Where are we of the First World going? We are going to the bank to make a deposit. $36 billion worth of US plastic raw materials in 1994 became $80 billion dollars worth of products sold to enhance our grand lifestyles. The primary function of government regulation was to impede our further progress, to increase the price of raw materials, facilities, and labor; and to decrease the quality of finished goods via the mandated incorporation of recycled waste and "renewable resources." Fermentation ethanol added to gasoline requires a $0.52/gallon subsidy to be competitive with traditional hydrocarbon feedstocks, and damages gaskets, seals, hoses and other elastomeric engine components. Gasohol offers perceptibly lowered miles/gallon versus real gasoline. Thank you, Washington, DC.
Our scientists and chemical engineers are already running pilot plants using carbon dioxide as a co-monomer to synthesize advanced plastics on a commercial scale. Direct catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide to fine and bulk industrial organics is a hot research topic. We foresee a future-soon-to-be in which every power plant smokestack will be scrubbed for its precious carbon dioxide lest it be lost to the atmosphere. Soon we will be mining the very air of Earth for its carbon dioxide, reducing its ambient concentration to the lowest levels in Earth's history. Abstruse and self-serving computer models could already predict a fearsome Greenhouse Hole allowing life-giving Gaian warmth to drain away into space. What will Enviro-whiners then do, burn trees? Burn cities? We will not tolerate the cremation of the biosphere to re-establish the Greenhouse Effect!
The March of Dimes was thrown for a loss when the Salk and later Sabin vaccines put an end to First World polio. It no longer had a reason for existing save to pay its own expense vouchers. It found new and better groups of hopeless human genetic culls to feature on its posters (recombinant DNA therapies are against God's will just like anaesthesia, the telephone, and alternating current). It was back in business better than ever, running up huge bills and proselytizing the public at flank speed. Every turn of predicted human consumption or waste discharge into disaster has proven absurd because science got there first with an answer better than any problem imagined. The First World puts its money where its mouth is, on the groaning board, preparing ever more delicious and abundant feasts (and inventing dishwashers to aid in post-prandial cleanup).
Enviro-whiners look backward. The First World looks forward. Guess who will win the human race - the idiots! All that evil requires is for good men to do nothing. Support evolution, shoot back.