Plants Need Global Warming Pollution

That's what Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) believes.

At a House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment he argued against a cap-and-trade system to limit CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. His theory is novel. Speaking to British global warming denier Lord Christopher Monckton, Shimkus claimed that capping CO2 emissions will steal "plant food."

SHIMKUS: It’s plant food. … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.

Watch it:

Matthew Yglesias points out:

The point about our CO2 emissions is that the rate at which fossil fuel use puts new carbon into the atmosphere greatly exceeds the rate at which plants remove it. The aim is not to eliminate the CO2 from the atmosphere but to stabilize the amount of CO2, which means curtailing emissions to a level much closer to the rate at which plants consume it. It also means minimizing the extent to which we destroy the plankton, rain forests, and other plant life that take carbon out of the air.

Center for American Progress has a guide to what cap-and-trade-means and how it can be succesfully implemented.