Who cares about carbon pollution?

Is carbon pollution really a form of pollution? President Obama's remarks about the Keystone Pipeline and carbon pollution touched off some thoughts about climate change, politics, and environmental activism. The constant references to carbon pollution annoy me. This post explains why, and why you as an activist should care.

Carbon Pollution is not Pollution

First of all, there is a major factual error here - Carbon is not a pollutant unless it is introduced into the air in truly extraordinary amounts. Forest fires and volcanic eruptions dump lots of carbon-rich soot and ash into the air over a short period of time. We all know that sort of event is bad news indeed. But the carbon atoms themselves don't do anything in everyday life.

A pollution problem develops when carbon, in the form of methane or carbon dioxide starts to build up in the air. These greenhouse gases are what is really being talked about when President Obama and others talk about carbon pollution. Why do they oversimplify? I know what Obama's opponents will say - Obama voters are too stupid to understand what greenhouse gases are.

Simplification is a reasonable way to go sometimes. An oversimplification that introduces an actual error into your thinking is not reasonable. It is an error to think or say that carbon pollution is a major contributor to global warming.

Is carbon pollution just a shorthand way of expressing the idea that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change?  Yes it really is. That's hard to argue with. What I don't like is the introduction of scientific inaccuracy to discussions of the subject.

The Correct Use of Shorthand

The shorthand might be misunderstood or even taken as a statement of fact over time: "Carbon is dust you know. You can't even see carbon coming out of tailpipes and stuff. How can carbon pollution be causing so much trouble. Environmentalists are full of it. Must be."

Shorthand leads to misunderstanding in other ways. If your message contains shorthand for some health concern, social impact, or environmental risk I, being new to the subject, might not understand. Now, your pithy headline contains what I see as a logical or factual error. Do you think I am going to study your message closely after that?

"Gun control is people control." - No. What does "people control" even mean? Do you mean that regulations on the ownership of firearms represent a form of oppression? That just sounds loopy and irrational.
"Carbon Pollution Threatens Us All" - No. Greenhouse gas emissions are a threat. Carbon is a non-metallic element, one of the most common elements in the universe.
"Abortion - Hitler Would Have Loved It" - Just absurd. Is this invocation of Hitler supposed to make me hate abortion because "Hitler" is a shorthand for horrible, hateful social policies that no sane person would support? If so, then this slogan fails. To a sensible person, that Hitler liked abortion, or dogs, or German beer is completely irrelevant.
"Hitler was a vegetarian. Do you want to be like Hitler?" Now I'm just fooling around.

So, in conclusion, exercise extreme care in using shorthand to get your point across. A related tip would be to check the conclusions that might be drawn from using shorthand in headlines, taglines, subheadings, slogans or the body of an article. Take a second look at the above examples and see what you get out of them, and I hope you will that writing about "carbon pollution" should be done with caution.