Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less – May 24, 2022 by Alex Epstein

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less – May 24, 2022
by Alex Epstein
Portfolio (May 24, 2022)

“While we are almost universally told that more fossil fuel use will destroy the world, I am going to make the case that more fossil fuel use will actually make the world a far better place, a place where billions more people will have the opportunity to flourish, including; to pull themselves out of poverty, to have a chance to pursue their dreams, and-this will likely seem craziest of all-to experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate.”

“…by default most people today, instead of considering the full context with regard to fossil fuels (benefits and side-effects), will look only for the negative side-effects of fossil fuels (and wildly distort them) while ignoring their fundamental benefits to our ability to flourish.”

“…From a human flourishing perspective, what will be the benefits and side-effects of continuing, massive fossil fuel use in our naturally deficient and dangerous world?

…four fundamental truths…

1.      The uniquely cost-effective energy we get from fossil fuels makes the world an unnaturally livable place-including unnaturally safe from climate-for billions of people.

2.      The world is still a barely livable place for billions of people who lack cost-effective energy.

3.      No combination of alternative, least of all unreliable solar and wind, can replace fossil fuels’ ability to provide cost-effective energy for the billions who have it and the billions who need it.

4.      Fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions have contributed to and will continue to contribute to slow, masterable, and often beneficial warming as well as significant global greening-nothing resembling a crisis. 

“…our anti-energy knowledge system tells us to blame the fossil fuel industry for many of the world’s problems and promises us a wonderful, opportunity-filled world that we will have when governments get rid of this industry.  This 180-degree-wrong evaluation is both unjust and dangerous;  if we don’t associate our ability to choose fulfilling work with fossil-fueled machine labor and the time it frees up, as well as fossil fuel materials, and if we see fossil fuels as a negative force in our world, we will make very, very bad decisions-decisions that could literally destroy the world as we know it.”

“It is an intellectual crime that our knowledge system renders us clueless about how amazingly opportunity-filled today’s world is and how fundamentally that depends on humanity’s fossil-fueled productive ability.  This intellectual crime is so widespread that when we hear proposals to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels (and nuclear and hydro) almost no one even thinks about what that will mean for their opportunity to pursue fulfillment-or their ability to be nourished-or their ability to be safe.”

COMMENT:

“Net zero” and “Green New Deal” are euphemisms for an anti-impact, anti-human and anti-energy globalist agenda condemning billions of people in the unempowered world to lives of poverty and premature death.

Solar and wind, intermittent and unreliable energy sources, represent only 3% of world energy and are technologically incapable or replacing fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) representing 80% of world energy (with natural attributes of natural storage, natural concentration and natural abundance), not to mention the cost-effective energy of fossil fuels, responsible for the empowered world’s standard of living.

 

CEI Book Forum: Fossil Future Book Forum featuring Alex Epstein and Richard Morrison
Jun 2, 2022
(56:49)