The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels
A Moral Case For Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein
My coffee cup rating 5/5:
☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ ☕️
“Ultimately, the moral case for fossil fuels is not about fossil fuels; it’s the moral case for using cheap, plentiful, reliable energy to amplify our abilities to make the world a better place—a better place for human beings.”
-Alex Epstein
The climate narrative has been the same for over thirty years- we need to get off fossil fuels yesterday or suffer consequences. With this idea now deeply entrenched in the current culture discussion, how in the world would it make sense to advocate using even more fossil fuels? Alex Epstein attempts to answer that question and more in his book, The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels.
Fossil Fuels are a marvelous tool that transforms the world around us to promote human flourishing. They allow us the freedom to move wherever we need to go, give us food to eat, clothing to wear, and energy to power machines and computers. All of these benefits make our life so much better- not to mention drastically improves life expectancy. And as Alex argues, the pros far outweigh the risks of using them. This is why it's crucial to understand what Epstein calls the standard of value. When studying arguments about energy, it is essential to ask the question, what standard of value do they hold? Alex breaks this down into two ideas- holding human life as the standard of value- or holding human non-impact/wild nature as the standard of value. Understanding this distinction is essential because this is the lens through which people look at energy policy, climate change, and climate advocacy. This idea alone is worth its weight in gold and is one of my biggest takeaways from the book. Here are a few more ideas I found interesting.
Leading Climate Scientists Don't Have The Best Track Records.
Climate science is far from being conclusive, and with so many conflicting/exaggerated reports, it's hard to know what is really true. These reports aren’t facts but predictions based on models, and as Alex points out, the only facts we have are from the past. So what track record do these top climate scientists have over the last 30 years? Virtually zero. Here is just one failed prediction from the book:
“Recall that in 1986 James Hansen predicted that “if current trends are unchanged,” temperatures would rise .5 to 1.0 degree Fahrenheit in the 1990s and 2 to 4 degrees in the first decade of the 2000s.37 According to Hansen’s own department at NASA, from the beginning to the end of the 1990s, temperatures were .018 degrees Fahrenheit (.01 degree Celsius) higher, and from 2000 to 2010, temperatures were .27 degree Fahrenheit (.15 degree Celsius) higher—meaning he was wrong many times.”
So how could all these experts be wrong? Well, as Alex explains, predicting the climate is not easy whatsoever. That doesn’t mean we should give them a pass. Cry wolf too many times, you start losing credibility, or do you? Some of the biggest names in climate change have been very, very wrong on their predictions over the last 30 years, yet we still hold many of them as "experts" on climate today.
CO2 Can Only Be Bad.
Most of what I hear about CO2 is negative, but I never thought of its benefits. Epstein lays this out by what he calls the fertilizer effect. This idea hinges on the premise that OC2 is essentially plant food. This, in turn, has made the world greener allowing more plants to flourish- including our food supply.
Nature First. No Matter What.
Another striking point Alex brings up goes back to the standard of value. If the goal is to limit CO2 emissions, why do the biggest climate proponents oppose hydro[dams] and nuclear around the world? Alex hypothesizes that it’s not about giving people access to energy that can transform their lives, it's about keeping nature untouched. The idea that we somehow need to return to a pre-human climate state is a fantasy- nature has never had a naturally perfect state. Of course, there are many arguments to this idea, but to have a proper discourse, you need to see both sides of the equation. Sadly, climate change has turned into a mostly one-sided discussion.
Alex provides many statistics to support his claims, but many have changed since his book was published in 2014. That’s why I’m excited to see that Alex has a new book coming out next year [at the time of this writing] called Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, And Natural Gas–Not Less. From the spoilers I’ve gathered, it’s a sequel to this one with updated statistics, ideas, and more. I will be picking up a copy when it’s available.
All in all, I very much enjoyed this book. It's right up there with Michael Shellenberger's book Apocalypse Never, albeit a bit dated. I would recommend The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels to anyone who wants a more rounded view of our current climate and energy discourse.