GM's sarcasm regarding CO2

Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of GM has been quoted making fun of the role of carbon dioxide pollution in global warming.

“All of us standing here right now — anybody who exhales is polluting like mad,” Mr… Lutz said. “If we have CO2 limits, I think we should all contribute, and we’re all going to have to train ourselves to breathe fewer times per minute.”

Yikes. Okay, let's have fun with the sarcasm in the other direction.

The original charge by environmentalists was a moral one: when undue amounts of a chemical are put into the environment, people can suffer.

The sarcastic response by conservatives is that if one complains about any form of pollution that the human body also emits, then you are also complaining about human physiology, per se, and people should stop living.

Here's the sarcastic environmentalist response. If a conservative says that you better not complain about pollution of any chemical that the human body also happens to emit (lest you be against human physiology, per se), then conservatives need turn a blind eye to any harm created by any abusive use or disposal of such chemicals. It must not be a crime to dump a ton of salt on my neighbor's grass, because, hey, I emit small amounts when I sweat. It must be an outrage to regulate anything to do with sewage disposal, because, hey, people gotta poop. Laws against drownings ought be taken off the books, because, hey, people sweat water droplets all the time. And I guess we don't have to get into the hypothetical case of a factory that wants to start dumping massive quantities of uric acid into the river.

EPILOGUE: After I wrote that, I spent a weekend in a hotel with a swimming pool. The sign said that spitting and expectorating into the pool were prohibited. I wonder how Lutz would think of that sign? Seriously, though, I was imagining that every person in the pool probably released a gram of snot into the water, unintentionally, as an inevitable part of being a human being in water. I'm guessing the writers of the sign are NOT asking us to slit our wrists over the possibility that we may add some germs to the water. No, I'm guessing the people who posted the sign were upset over someone who would expectorate into the pool intentionally, for fun, or to prove some kind of point about indifference or masculinity, or maybe to make the lily-livered cringe. Can't you imagine a certain kind of teenager doing that? Uh, and then as they get older, driving a Hummer?