CO2 - Pollution or life?

Thanks to John Biesnecker's blog for highlighting this one.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute are, apparently, called “the best environmental think tank in the country” by The Wall Street Journal.

Their goal, if I'm reading this correctly (their website is broken as I type so some of this is from memory) is to stop governments from legislating in what they believe to be the best interests of the people, on the grounds that people are better placed to make decisions for themselves. As they put it:

"We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace."

One can only imagine that the final point above means that they want individuals, not governments, to make these decisions because big businesses are more successful at manipulating the actions of individuals than governments.

Now, from what I've read, there are some sensible ideas in the mix - regardless of what I've said about Health and Safety Legislation/Practice in China (clearly underdeveloped) there is a real danger that Health and Safety legislation is becoming overdeveloped in Western countries and is becoming tremendously restrictive and preventing people from taking even reasonable risks that they are happy to take.

The advertising campaign that they're publishing re: global warming is promoting the production of carbon dioxide emissions in their advertisements (They call it pollution, we call it life - you can find transcripts here if you don't want to watch the vids). How can this be anything but blatant lobbying from the oil companies to try to keep people on the track of buying their 12-cylinder 6 litre trucks? Despite my tongue-in-cheek dig at oil prices earlier, surely being economical with our use of energy for the potential benefit to the environment can't be a bad thing?

Even more worrying are the number of people that will probably subscribe to this thought just so that they can 'stick it to the government'.

I'd like to see the follow-up ads promoting an increase in carbon monoxide emissions.