Martinez’s article is somewhat of a mixed bag. As Daren notes, he comes out in favor of “energy efficiency” programs, which are just another excuse for micromanaging people’s behavior and purchases but he also argues against further investment in bio fuels and joining a regional greenhouse gas initiative. Although on this last point the only reason he gives is that the Feds are likely to do something anyway.
But what I find particularly disappointing is his willingness to embrace the terminology of the environmentalist left. Martinez invokes the term “green” may times in the article, presumably, although he never defines it directly, to mean practices that minimize CO2 emissions. He, for the most part, uncritically uses all the usual buzzwords–green technology, green appliances, green building practices, etc. But without CO2 nothing would be green. Increased atmospheric CO2 leads to greener more lush vegetation and increased crop yields.
In the mid 1990s a study by Elizabeth Cullota in the Journal Science concluded that 10 percent of the increased crop yields over the previous hundred years were attributable to enhanced atmospheric CO2. She concluded that “CO2 is more than a greenhouse gas?it?s also an essential nutrient for vegetation, an aerial fertilizer providing the carbon that plants use to make sugars, carbohydrates, and other compounds they need to live … [I]n the agricultural realm, experimental evidence suggests that higher CO2 concentrations may be a boon, helping many crops grow faster and yield more.”
Furthermore, a 1997 study, also in Science, points out that CO2 allows plants to use water more efficiently. “For the individual plant, water use efficiency is almost directly proportional to the level of CO2 … doubling the CO2 concentration is almost like doubling the rainfall as far as plant water availability is concerned…”
The conclusion reached in this study is that “[g]iven that the availability of water for agriculture is already becoming such a problem, this aspect … of atmospheric change is a welcome one.”
Others have estimated that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would increase crop yields by as much as 40 percent. The point is that to suggest that less CO2 is more green turns science on its head. I hope that Rick meant something else by his use of the term but if he did it is not obvious from the context.
