Guest Post by Eric Peters
It had to happen – and now it has.
VW – and soon, everyone else, inevitably – is under the gun over “emissions” that aren’t even pollutants.
Carbon dioxide.
This inert gas (look it up if you missed it in high school chemistry) doesn’t contribute to smog, cause acid rain, deplete the the ozone layer, irritate the lungs, or harm babies. Plants breathe it and by breathing it, produce the oxygen we need to breathe. If C02 is a “pollutant” then according to the same logic, so is water vapor (oy, don’t give them ideas).
But carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that contributes to “climate change,” the new (and pope-approved!) catch-all phrase that encompasses warmer and colder weather, neatly pathologizing both of them.
Cows produce it; we produce it and cars produce it.
VW is in the crosshairs because of this.
A couple of days ago, the company issued another apologia (here) for “understating” the “emissions” of this inert gas by its gasoline-powered (note italics) powered cars. The “affected” vehicles (about 1 million of them, so far) this time aren’t U.S. models but they aren’t diesel models.
In Europe, you see, they already treat carbon dioxide – an inert gas – as a motor vehicle exhaust subject to government regulation. This is not yet the case in the U.S., but it is only a matter of time.
As they used to say in Germany before the war – der tag kommt.
The Europeans have fully embraced the climate change tar baby – which means they’ve accepted the idea that the inert gas, carbon dioxide, is something that must be “controlled.”
Continue reading “The C02 Trump Card”