Carbon Dioxide Is Good for You

No, this is not my tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic quote of the day lampooning conservative climate change deniers. Why bother when they’ll do it for me.

The line can be heard in a current ad campaign by a conservative, small government group called the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The ads are running in 14 U.S. cities from May 18-28, 2006. The cities include Albany, NY; Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Austin, TX; Charleston, WV; Dallas; Dayton, OH; Denver; Harrisburg, PA; Phoenix; Sacramento and Santa Barbara, CA; Springfield, IL; and Washington, DC.

Far right conservatives agree with many of those on the other side of the aisle on one key angle, however: “The campaign to limit carbon dioxide emissions is the single most important regulatory issue today,” says Marlo Lewis, a CEI senior fellow in environmental policy. Of course, CEI only thinks it’s important because of the need “to counter the flood of scare stories on global warming.” (Nice touch with the flood metaphor)

To show this is not necessarily a left/right issue, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group of more than 85 influential evangelical leaders, issued the statement Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action in February – another fault line between pro-business and social conservatives.

Locally, I have seen the ad, which can also be found in the dictionary next to the phrase Greenwashing. (For more on this phrase, see the previous post: SCANDAL WATCH: Jury Out on Enron?)