This is a classic example of a "slippery slope" argument. No one is claiming that EPA is going to regulate human breath.
As it is at the moment, the EPA regulates all sorts of compounds e.g. NOx, Hg, CFCs etc. What this really means is that the EPA regulates the emissions of the substances caused by certain processes not the substances themselves. To give a simple example of this, power plant emissions of NOx are regulated, however emissions of NOx from your camp fire or camp stove are not.
By the same token EPA already regulates several substances that are emitted by humans, such as ammonia and carbon monoxide.
Finally to put a rest to this somewhat silly argument, human respiration is not a net source of carbon to the atmosphere, all the CO2 we exhale comes from the plants we eat or the plants that our steaks ate. In order to feed ourselves we will always raise crops, which will remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. We are part of the carbon cycle but not a bet source of CO2.
Re your last paragraph, so the same with coal. Or oil. The emissions of either are the result of plants or dead animals.... No net change over history.
Elements on earth are a zero sum game, what was here essentially stays here, what results from combining elements, whether natural or man caused, doesn't change what the earth started with - so far as we know.
As far as CFC's, well the popular opinion is one thing and the reality perhaps another. Want to cut down on carbon and compound, NOx, S emmissions from powerplants? Bring back CFC's, they are the most efficient heat transfer medium discovered so far. Have your "Food Safety" refrigeration/freezing and have it with less fuel burned, by far, by having your refrigerant a CFC banned or regulated about out of existence in the US compound. Ditto A/C. Want a more energy efficient building?
Use CFC refrigerants. The parodox of gov't regulation. "It must be more efficient... but you can't use the most efficient compounds..."
Yes, we will always raise crops, but for what purpose? You think food price increases in the last few years are the result of of increased demand? BS. They result from centralist planning which promotes the substitution of one carbon source for another. Abscent reguation of CO2, or anti-regulation subsidization of other sources of CO2, and the corn/sugar beet/ sugar cane, etc, fuel market wouldn't exist, and it shouldn't. Hell, even you ought to acknowledge that it is more damaging than fossil fuels.
Yes, the EPA regulates some emmissions from human invented proccesses. But it shouldn't. It should regulate the proccesses instead. It does that as well, btw. As far as NOx, here in the Eastern US there have been EPA, or EPA sponsored, (somewhat successful) attempts to regulate individual NOx emmissions from BBQ's, campfires and wood fires in homes. There have also been attempts to regulate CO2 and other emmissions on the home front from lawn mowers to BBQ's to wood fires as well. No comfort from gov't strangulation there, it isn't limited to the distant "corporation." Especially when the regulation of the power plant building or operation is an alternative. And the EPA is active there, so why with the naturally occurring compounds (as on the home front) as well?
The EPA wants to regulate CO2, therefore it will regulate human breath, whether it publishes this or even whether it currently intends to or not. This issue, despite your denial, is not in doubt, merely the timing.
Take a look at leftist/liberal/socialist writings regarding human life, it will, or should be, quite an awakening.
As for the "classic example" of a "slippery slope" argument, tell me why would the EPA even approach the slippery slope of regulating naturally occuring substances when that alternative of regulating human behavior, aka "human invented proccesses," has a foundation for us Americans as old as English Common Law? (About 400-500yrs.) And even while the gov't regulates proccesses? The answer lies, or may lay, in the greater desire of the EPA and its bretheren to regulate the life and even the being of individual humans. Again, read the leftist/socialist/liberal works, more than an handful all but demand regulating human existence. The slippery slope is real, and easily, readly avoidable.
I don't know or care how old you are, but the dicussion, open or otherwise, of Chineese food shortages began when I was a child, but stopped in favor of political correctness some time ago. Chineese food issues, Chineese population issues... Never in the decades of these dicussions did the idea or the thought emerge that a nation would attempt to prohibit its population from reproducing beyond a less than replacement rate, or even attempt to prohibit its population from growth as the population saw fit to attempt. How far is this from regulating the existence of a human being? Not far, too f'in close. What distinguishes our current gov't from the central planners in China? Not F'in much. What distinguishes the too much CO2 argument with the not enough home grown food issue? Not enough!
BTW, "controlled substance" laws do not actually regulate any substance, only human behavior and invented proccesses. For example, it is illegal to possess, make or distribute, say, cocaine. The cocaine isn't really regulated or controlled, only human proccesses or activity, as it should be. And cocaine, or heroin, or most controlled substances are man made and not naturally ocurring. But with regard to even those substances which are naturally ocurring, like pot, the laws actually regulate human behavior, not the substance, as it should be.
On topic, the regulation of proccesses which result, or may result, in the harmful siltation of salmon streams is a discussion worthy of debate and perhaps, even probably, resolution. Unlike the regulation of mud. But again, don't overlook a known cause of stock declines in similar fisheries, overfishing, as the root problem, as the main cause of the issue of depleted salmon stocks. Another call for regulation of human invented proccesses.
JPK
