Carbon baiting
I certainly agree with Steuart Campbell (Letters, 13 March) that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but to claim that it has no practical value is truly astounding. It is, in fact, the stuff of life.
Below 150ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere, plants would not survive. At the much quoted “pre-industrial level” of 280ppm,would our present world human population survive? A few years ago China restricted its birth rate simply because it could not feed its then population. Genetically modified rice crops, plus a higher level of CO2, in the atmosphere to feed them has allowed that population ban to be lifted.
We now expect to have a supply of any type of vegetable at any time of year. Much of that supply comes from greenhouses (polytunnels) fed with CO2 up to about double the present atmospheric level. It amuses me to see the “Stop Big Oil” campaigners with their plastic bottles (made from oil) of fizzy (CO2 impregnated) water, the so-called carbon footprint of which is about 1,000 times that of tap water (and even the latter often has a coal-bed purification process).
A McCormick, Terregles, Dumfries
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