Watch what you’re calling pollution

I am commenting on the Canadian Press story on your website, “Global carbon pollution rises after 3 straight flat years.”

It is a mistake to call carbon dioxide (CO2) “carbon pollution.” In reality it is aerial fertilization for plants.

Dr. Craig Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change told the America First Energy Conference (http://americafirstenergy.org/) on Nov. 9 in Houston, Texas, “the whole of the terrestrial biosphere is reaping incredible benefits from the approximate 40 per cent increase in atmospheric CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.”

Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will result in “reduced agricultural yields, higher food prices and growing food insecurity that will disproportionately burden the poor,” said Idso. This would cause “undernourishment and potential starvation of hundreds of millions of persons just a few short decades from now,” Idso warned.

Speakers at the Houston conference explained that coal, oil and natural gas has given us a world vastly more healthy, wealthy and clean than that of our ancestors. Instead of trying to phase out fossil fuels due to their CO2 emissions, conference presenters advocated a rapid expansion of hydrocarbon fuel usage to yield even greater benefits for people and the environment.

Tom Harris, executive director International Climate Science Coalition Ottawa