le." Mankind can no more regulate Earth's temperature than it can the tides.
Even if the "greenhouse effect" were greater than it actually is, the EPA and Congress would be powerless to alter it for several reasons:
1. Human activity accounts for less than 4 percent of global CO2 emissions.
2. CO2 itself accounts for only 10 or 20 percent of the greenhouse effect. This discloses the capricious nature of the EPA's decision to classify CO2 as a pollutant, for if CO2 is a pollutant because it is a greenhouse gas, then the most common greenhouse gas of all – water vapor, which accounts for more than three-quarters of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect – should be regulated, too. The EPA isn't going after water vapor, of course, because then everyone would realize how absurd climate-control regulation really is.
3. Even if Americans were to eliminate their CO2 emissions completely, total human emissions of CO2 would still increase as billions of people around the world continue to develop economically.
Clearly, it is beyond the ken of mortals to answer the metaquestions about the right concentration of CO2, or the optimal global average temperature, or to control CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I feel sorry for the professionals at the EPA who are now expected to come up with answers for these unanswerable questions.
However, I do not feel sorry for the political appointees, like climate czar Carol Browner, because it looks as if they are about to get what they evidently want – the power to increase their power over Americans' lives and pocketbooks via CO2 emission regulations.
From higher energy bills to lost jobs, the impact of CO2 regulations will hurt us far more than CO2 itself ever could. Let's nail shut the lid on this Pandora's box before it swings wide open.