The Obama Administration: An Argument Analysis

A very debate-worthy topic during the Obama administration has been the question of whether or not carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The Obama administration has put together countless efforts to try and make this as clear as possible, with the EPA in 2009 stating that carbon dioxide is indeed a pollution. However, that has done nothing but increased the debate. I am going to try my best to approach this question from both a legal standpoint and from the view of a climate change advocate. So from a legal standpoint, I feel the appropriate first step should be to define a pollutant. A pollutant is defined as a substance that is released into the environment and has negative effects or degrades the usefulness of a resource. Immediately after reading …show more content…
Although it is common knowledge that excessive carbon dioxide emissions are a hazard to human health, there has been some disputation about whether carbon dioxide, a gas that is so natural, and valuable in our environment, can actually be a pollutant. In 2007, in a case between the state of Massachusetts and the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, the supreme court, stated that carbon dioxide did indeed fit the definition of a pollution. An argument I have heard a lot is that carbon dioxide is not toxic, so how could a non-toxic gas be a pollutant. My answer to this is incredibly simple, according to the definition, a pollutant is something that is harmful, and yes, carbon dioxide is not toxic, but a substance that is not poisonous can still be very harmful. An example is phosphorous, which is an essential plant fertilizer, it would take a lot of phosphorous to actually be poisoned, however excess phosphate is incredibly harmful in rivers in lakes. Phosphorous is thus, considered a pollution, which should be the same case for carbon …show more content…
An argument that is common for climate change deniers, is that carbon dioxide, is fertilizing the plants and agriculture, however, that point is moot, because it distracts from the point of carbon dioxide being incredibly harmful, and a pollutant in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is classified as a greenhouse gas. So if we as a society can accept the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, why is it not clear to us that carbon dioxide is a pollutant? The greenhouse effect is a natural effect of gases trapping sun’s radiation in the atmosphere of the Earth. Yes, it is natural, the greenhouse effect is used to maintain the Earth’s temperature. However, when carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere at such a rate, it creates a “heavier” trapping and causes more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere. So, again if carbon dioxide is clearly having a negative impact on the Earth of causing severe problems such as the warming of our planet, how could it possibly not be considered a pollutant. I have done extensive research of arguments against carbon dioxide being a pollutant, so I saw it due that I mitigated all of those arguments in this