The correct approach is to pursue a net benefit & drawback analysis. In things like the politicized IPCC reports there is hardly a sentence on the benefits of oil and gas, whereas there is a lot of discussion in drawbacks of human generated co2. To the specific point of “co2 is life” -plants die at 150 ppm. Humans reversed a trend of a decrease towards this, saving humans, and the broader ecosystem from collapse. -co2 is plant food and fertilizer. Looking back at geological scale, there have been eras with an order magnitude more co2. Check out the Cambrian Explosion at 7000ppm. Life was booming then. -professional greenhouses add co2 in order to increase crop yield -NASA shows net planet greening due to the co2 fertilizer effect Let’s imagine the above evidence of “co2 is life” /i.e. the benefits of co2 did not exist for a moment and/or was not spread evenly through the world. Lets say your region is experiencing drought. What do you do? You use oil and gas powered tech to adapt - e.g. drill a water well, build a pipeline, bring in water intensive food from other regions etc. The “co2 is life” statement was a provocation intended to highlight that in the so-called climate & energy “debate”, the outcome is predetermined exactly because the benefits of the “co2 is life” side are not given thought or analysis.