This piece is a response to Carbon Footprint and to its many short sided interpretations. During my English class with Mr. Tangen we saw a video called “Carbon Footprint: Perverts Importance of CO2” by Kristie Pellitier. Before I saw this video, I did not know much about Carbon Footprints. I mean, I had heard about the term but I had no idea what it really meant. After I saw this video, I was very skeptical about Kristie Pellitier’s message as I found her arguments not very convincing.

Right off the bat she affirms that labeling CO2 as a pollutant is simply stupid. She goes on proclaiming that all life on earth is carbon based, that carbon is the basis for all life and that without it we would not live. She believes that we are all made up of carbon and that carbon is NECESSARY to life. Furthermore, she asserts that Carbon Footprints is non sense and that lowering carbon emission is “just plain stupid”.

No feedback or support is given to her argument that, far from being a pollutant, CO2 has an essential role in all life on Earth. I find this very simplistic because it has been scientifically proven that CO2 can be a pollutant: the primary impact of CO2 is its greenhouse warming effect and clearly too much warming can have a very negative impact on our environment. So as emissions of carbon dioxide can be deteriorating to the world we live in, we have to control them. I agree that carbon dioxide is necessary to life but in a moderate way and that we are not doing. The point is that the increase in CO2 emissions over the past centuries has had more adverse than positive effects on our environment: every time we burn fossil fuels such as gas, coal or oil, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Kristie Pellitier only focuses on the positive effects of carbon dioxide and totally ignores to present the negative impacts that the increasing CO2 emissions have on our environment. The “full picture” of CO2 is not presented.

Life has changed over the past centuries and Kristie Pellitier’s arguments fail to even address the burning fossil fuels issue that is at the center of the debate. To wrap it all up she accuses scientists and those that came up with the idea of Cap and Trade as extremists. In general, I find her remarks to be excessive. As I said before she does not give explanations or scientific feedback in support of any of her arguments. One thing is for sure, she has not convinced me that CO2 is not a pollutant.