EPA Head Lee Zeldin Apparently Doesn’t Think Carbon Dioxide Is That Dangerous

“The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Saw There

We are now fully through the looking glass. Up is down and black and white and the Environmental Protection Agency is about to declare that greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution are no threat to either the planet or to human health, and I am not joking about any of that. From USA Today:

Republican President Donald Trump’s pick to run the EPA, Lee Zeldin, announced the agency’s plan to rescind the “endangerment finding” on the Ruthless podcast on Tuesday, saying it will save Americans money and unravel two decades of regulation aimed at reducing carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from cars, power plants, oil production and other sources.

It is significant that Zeldin chose as the platform for his nonsense a podcast composed of Young Devil May Care Conservatives who fit the late Christopher Hitchens’ immortal description of people who believe they are wits and are half-right—because, wow, is Zeldin being stupid.

“With regard to the endangerment finding, they’ll say carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that’s the end of it. They’ll never acknowledge any type of benefit or need for carbon dioxide,” Zeldin told the podcast. “It’s important to note, and they don’t, how important it is for the planet.”

Holy Jesus, what a moron. Yes, CO2 is important to the planet. All the plants and trees depend on it, and so do all the little forest creatures that feed on the plants. We all learn that in third grade, or we used to, before this administration got loose in school libraries. But Lee Zeldin believes that three generations of scientists were not aware of CO2’s importance.

What Zeldin apparently doesn’t know is that, in certain concentrations, it is also damned deadly. And that’s not even to mention what high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are doing to the climate around the world, and the seas and the deserts don’t give a damn what a two-ply idiot Lee Zeldin is. And I am dying to learn from Zeldin how healthy for all living things unlimited methane release is.

If I could work my will, Lee Zeldin would be sentenced to a year living in a shotgun shack in Iberville Parish right in the middle of Louisiana’s “cancer alley.” Maybe two years. Let him get healthy breathing the air produced by thirty petrochemical plants.