The climate alarmist agenda is shifting all the time and we should seriously ponder the latest twist. Most of the time, alarmists have targeted anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Now, they attack carbon in general, as can be seen on the personal site of Barack Obama: “Carbon pollution causing climate change is responsible for air that can be unhealthy to breathe, contributing to health risks for many children.” Everything in this sentence is a familiar lie, but what is “carbon pollution?” Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the product of our breath, and plant food. Soot, which is emitted when burning wood or other local fuels in primitive furnaces, is a serious pollutant and is dangerous for human health and the environment. Airborne soot is a big problem in India and other developing countries, but only tiny amounts of soot are emitted in the US, and hardly any by coal power plants.

More to the point, 18% of the human body is carbon. Who exactly is the “carbon pollution” here? Deep ecology, an extremist wing of the environmentalist movement, holds that the humanity is the problem and a threat to the planet. John Holdren, Obama’s chief science adviser, is on the record supporting some ideas of the deep ecology movement. Obama owes us some explanations on this part, if he has any.

As an aside, I cannot help but notice the picture of Obama on his website, taken from below at a steep angle, and reminiscent of the infamous Leni Riefenstahl photos. I have not seen previous American presidents promoting themselves this way.