Diabetes on rise, CO2 likely culprit

The diabetes rate has doubled in the last 30 years, according to a report in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation. A growing consensus within the international nutritional scientific community attributes the drastic rise to an alarming rate of consumption of non-domestic foods and carbonated drinks. Sales of such foodstuffs have soared since the 1960’s as post consumerism has swept society, and it is this phenomenon in particular that has those worried about diabetes pointing fingers to the obvious correlation.

Most scientists agree that the entrenched eating habits of a collective national diet dependent on non-natural foods only guarantees the trend will hasten and, in the form of increased healthcare costs, will burden other consumers seeking healthier dietary habits. With few exceptions, most in the scientific community also agree that a national policy of CO2 budgeting (in foods) can be an adequate first step in slowing the upward trend.

Some have even suggested that such a policy, although unlikely to be endorsed by a skeptical GOP administration, should commoditize CO2 and assign allowances and credits to consumers with smaller amounts of CO2 in their personal menu, the idea being that over-consumers of CO2 would have to purchase these credits in order to stay within the suggested boundaries of compliance.

Fewer in number yet more vocal are the critics, who, in most cases, are loathe to monetize personal habits with “fake” economic reward, and who suggest that it would be impossible to measure success or even to set milestones. Bureaucrats worry that the concept can even pass any organizational muster to begin with. Others have problems with the methods that collected the data in question.

Others simply do not place the same emphasis on empirical data. Yet others see technical and theoretical problems with man-made simulations; although dozens of computer models all point to an indefinite continuation of the trend, no individual model can itself demonstrate a clear relationship between, say, and individual’s consumption of a beverage saturated with CO2 and the actual risk of diabetes.

If such a national program of credit is established, what milestones could be set? If the milestones are unmet, what are the penalties? An even smaller number of skeptics simply reject the premise of such an endeavor entirely, most likely because of electoral politics or, more selfishly, because it would be an anti-business initiative.

Facts are what they are; but if they stand between inaction and finding a solution to one of America’s most pressing problems, count this blog as an activist.