Fossil Future Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

You got it. Fossil Future.

I happen to have a book coming out, but I think it's really that this is just a pivotal moment in terms of our country's history as it relates to energy.

So it ended up, it was supposed to take two months at the beginning and then it took three years.

So the book has a lot of warnings about, look, if you follow these bad policies, you're going to have an energy crisis.

But now it's coming out during the energy crisis that it talks about, so it makes it even more clearly true to the reader because there's no speculation.

I'm going to try to persuade you that if you want to make the world a better place, one of the best things you can do is fight for more fossil fuel use, more burning of oil, coal and natural gas.

And then you go on to say this is going to seem craziest of all, that you think that we will experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate if we do so.

You don't have to teach me how to think very few of you would be alive without cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. Everything you're wearing, whatever made it possible for you to get here is made possible by energy.

And it's not just energy in general. You have to produce it cheaply, reliably, scalably, efficiently.

But as long as your life is being made possible by the people of the fossil fuel industry, I think you should be grateful. And I think it is a crime, a moral crime that you are damning anyone by association.

...But Epstein has pointed out in his new book Fossil Fuel Future...

I've just been reading Alex Epstein's book Fossil Future and in that book he details out, first of all his belief that in the foreseeable future that not only should we, not only will we have to use Fossil Fools but we should use them and he explains why I would say on ethical and practical grounds.

But he also says something that struck me is very interesting which is that the view that's being put forward to young people of the role of human beings on the planet in relationship to the environment is essentially predicated on an implicit religious metaphor and I want to lay out the metaphor and I want to lay out why I think his claim that it's a religious metaphor is technically correct.

Epstein's book Fawcett's Future he cites some of these the more radical environmentalist types who say things like I think it was McKibben he quoted who said something like as far as I'm concerned the vista of an unspoiled river so any natural environment that's completely untouched by human beings is so valuable that it would that one person or a billion isn't worth that it's something very close to that.

Well, I think one thing that's relevant I'm not sure if you know this but there's a new book 2022 called fossil future which is the successor or replacement to the moral case for fossil fuels.

So I talk a bunch in that about what how the moral case for fossil fuels has fared and I think in terms of a predictive book it's not primarily a predictive book but it has been extremely accurate because if you look at what people have said in the last eight or so years.

I point out I was born in 1980 since 1980 we've gone from more than four and ten people living on less than two dollars a day and this is adjusted for inflation to one intent so as you said this is the greatest alleviation of poverty in human history.

I do think a lot of it is the modern anti-human environmental movement because what they've done is they've taught us that our impact ruins the planet and so we just assume that because the world used a lot more fossil fuels particularly China and India did which drive with which drove much of the increase in prosperity they just assume that the world is worse and and what I call I don't use this term in moral case but I use it in fossil future our knowledge system so the institutions we rely on for expert knowledge and guidance they've done a totally failed at educating us about how much the world has improved from a human perspective.

Why global human flourishing requires more oil, coal, and natural gas--Not Less.

Alex is the author of two influential books. One, the first one, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and the second one, Fossil Future.

I noted, remembered that you had written these two books, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and then Fossil Future.

If you think of the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future, they're really, you know, it was really designed to sort of create the ultimate guide to evaluating energy sources.

I was very proud that I forecast this in Fossil Future. So Fossil Future was completed in 2021, came out in 2022.

Legacy media outlets, environmental activists, and many progressive politicians are calling for President Biden to declare a climate emergency amid the recent heat wave sweeping the US. In this episode, we talk to energy expert Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, about the growing calls for aggressive government intervention and whether or not we're really facing a climate crisis.

Joining us now to discuss the growing pressure for President Biden to declare a climate emergency is Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future.

Alex, thanks so much for joining us. That was Alex Epstein, author of fossil future and this has been an extra edition of Morningwire.

And then Morning Wire spoke to energy expert Alex Epstein. He's the author of the book Fossil Future. And he agrees with Spencer.

Alex Upsign wrote an awesome book about this. I don't know if you guys have ever had him on this show. He would be an awesome guest. He wrote a book called Fossil Future and it was basically making the case that just what you said, more people would die if we actually did these green energy deals than if we did this because the third world countries are the ones that rely on fossil fuels the most even though they're not the greatest culprit of pollution but they rely on it the most because it's the cheapest form of energy.