 Fickle though it may be, tells you it's mere 97 degrees. Dr. Patrick Moore. One of my missions is to turn on its head the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and somehow dangerous. What? When in fact it is the most important nutrient for all life on Earth, and without it this would be a dead planet. So I say not only is carbon dioxide good, it is essential, and it's a good thing that we're putting some more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because it was running low before we came along.