The Clean Air Act (CAA) was signed on December 31, 1970, seven months after the first Earth Day. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which I worked under for more than 27 years, reaffirmed and strengthened regulation of the six criteria pollutants under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Those pollutants are Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Particulate Matter, Ozone, Lead, and Carbon Monoxide.

Not Carbon Dioxide (CO₂).

That is the point of this commentary.

These six pollutants were chosen because they have direct and immediate health effects. My work focused on their secondary environmental impacts. CO₂ was not included in the 1990 update for one primary reason, it is not a pollutant.

It is also worth remembering that the 1990 amendments were among the most bipartisan environmental laws in American history. Support in the Senate was close to 90 percent. Support in the House was over 95 percent.

So what changed? How did CO₂ get pulled into Clean Air Act discourse, and what does that mean now?

Before the rise of fear-based climate messaging, environmental stewardship in the United States was grounded in human environmental conservation, or HEC. HEC is the philosophy that people are part of the environment, not a threat to it. It guided the creation of the CAA. It guided the criteria pollutant framework. It guided the bipartisan consensus that environmental protection and human flourishing are not in conflict.

About 30 years ago a different idea began to take hold, misanthropic environmental preservation, or MEP. MEP is not a medical condition. It is a cultural posture. It treats human existence as an environmental liability. It replaces stewardship with suspicion. It replaces conservation with guilt. It replaces HEC with a worldview that sees fewer people as the solution.

The best early treatment for MEP is simple. Thoughts and prayers, followed by a healthy dose of children. Coaching a youth sport, preferably 3- to 5-year-old T-Ballers, also helps.

Still, MEP is powerful. A false understanding of CO₂ acts like a drug. Once someone accepts the idea that CO₂ is inherently harmful, the logic becomes a trap.

Here is how it works. Well-meaning people follow the ubiquity of CO₂ down a rabbit hole and calculate how much they personally “contribute.” The outcome is predictable. Helplessness, hopelessness, and shame for simply being alive. Because CO₂ is everywhere, this is not a fringe conclusion. It is a precise conclusion built on a false premise. That premise is the core of MEP syndrome.

And the cultural results are easy to see.

NBC News ran a piece titled “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.” It claimed that having a child is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.

Two advocacy groups pushed similar messages. Population Matters launched its “Fewer Feet” campaign, using condoms to promote the idea that fewer children mean a cooler planet. The Center for Biological Diversity followed with its “Endangered Species Condoms,” distributing more than a million condoms to link human reproduction to environmental harm. The message was clear. We do not just need smaller footprints. We need fewer feet. That is MEP in its purest form.

And our kids heard all of it.

Teenagers absorbed the rhetoric. Climate anxiety rose. Fear about the future grew. Doubts about having children appeared. Therapists report eco anxiety. Teachers hear despair. Young adults reconsider marriage or family plans. They were told to calculate their “carbon footprint” as if their existence were a problem. That is MEP syndrome working exactly as designed.

The #NoFutureNoChildren pledge is real. It was launched by 18-year-old Emma Lim, who vowed not to have children unless governments take stronger climate action. “I have always wanted to be a mom,” she said, “but I will not bring a child into a world where they will not be safe.” That message is deeply sad, and now circulates through media and into schools, where it lands directly in front of our kids.

Critics of MEP saw it coming. If you tell children the planet is dying, and then tell them they are the reason, they will lose hope.

And the effort has worked. A major UN backed study found that nearly one in five people are having fewer children than they want because of fear of the future, including climate change. Harvard researchers note that Americans increasingly cite climate change and overpopulation when explaining their views on family size.

Now, about CO₂.

Yes, humans are the limiting factor. We exhale it. We add more of it when we bring new life into the world. But the idea that CO₂ is a pollutant on par with Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, or the other criteria pollutants is a category error. It is the central scientific mistake that fuels MEP syndrome.

Physics tells the story. CO₂’s radiative effect drops off sharply after its first few hundred parts per million. Beyond that point, the marginal warming impact becomes negligible.

And here is the part the “carbon footprint” scolds never mention. Every breath you exhale is 40,000 parts per million CO₂. The atmosphere is 420 parts per million. You emit two to three pounds of CO₂ every day just by being alive. That is more than our avocados from Mexico or that fancy Lululemon purse.

And here is the uncomfortable truth for MEP logic. If CO₂ is the villain, then human existence becomes the crime. Unless we all drop dead, maybe rethink the role of CO₂ in the environment, because none of this is true.

For anyone trying to help someone caught in MEP syndrome, it helps to mention the photosynthetic benefits of CO₂. Global greening. The revival of arid regions. The simple molecule that makes life possible. For goodness’ sake, at the very least, remind them that without CO₂ there is no beer.

Most importantly, the CO₂ humans emit is not remotely comparable to the six criteria pollutants our nation identified when HEC, not MEP, guided environmental policy.

That distinction mattered in 1970. It mattered in 1990. And it matters even more today.

Originally published on Substack on April 23, 2026.

Jed Dukett is a CO₂ Coalition Member and former acid rain scientist.