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Oil & Gas
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels By Alex Epstein
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The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own and not those of Alaska Business Publishing Company, Inc.
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“With more politicians in climate science than scientists, the refining fire of debate has devolved into the burning of heretics. Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels may make your blood boil, but his cool reason and cold, hard facts will lead us beyond hysterics to a much better future.” —PETER THIEL, technology entrepreneur and investor
opular opinion about fossil fuels can be summarized in one word: addiction. The industry’s attackers have successfully portrayed its core product, fossil fuel energy, as a self-destructive addiction that is destroying our planet and the fossil fuel industry as a fundamentally immoral industry. Like any immorality or addiction, the argument goes, we may not pay for it at the beginning, but we will pay for it in the end. Thus, the only moral option is to use “clean, renewable energy” like solar, wind, and biofuels to live in harmony with the planet instead of exploiting and destroying it. And we need to do it as soon as is humanly possible. This is the moral case against fossil fuels. But, as I explain in a new book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” if we truly think critically about the morality of fossil fuel energy, both its benefits and its risks, fossil fuel energy is not a dangerous addiction but a healthy choice. But what does it mean to be moral? I believe an activity is moral if it is fundamentally beneficial to human life. By that standard, is the fossil fuel industry moral? Yes. By producing the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy in the world, the fossil fuel industry makes every other industry more productive—and it makes every individual more productive and thus more prosperous, giving each person a level of opportunity to pursue happiness that previous generations couldn’t even dream of. Energy, the fuel of technology, is opportunity— the opportunity to use technology to improve every aspect of life. Including our environment. Any animal’s environment can be broken down into two categories: threats and resources. (For human beings, “resources” includes a broad spectrum of
“If you want to see the power of fine logic, fine writing, and fine research, read Epstein’s book. In my long career, it is simply the best popular-market book about climate, environmental policy, and energy that I have read. Laymen and experts alike will be boggled by Epstein’s clarity.” —PATRICK J. MICHAELS, director, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute “Alex Epstein has written an eloquent and powerful argument for using fossil fuels on moral grounds alone. A remarkable book.” —MATT RIDLEY, author of The Rational Optimist “In this brave book, Alex Epstein provides a clear, full-throated response to the catastrophists who want us to replace nearly all of our existing energy systems with expensive, incurably intermittent sources like wind and solar. We need more people like Alex who are willing to make the case for hydrocarbons. As Alex shows, those fuels are allowing billions of people to live fuller, freer, healthier lives.” —ROBERT BRYCE, author of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper
ISBN 978-1-59184-744-1
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TH E MORAL CAS E F OR FOSS I L F UE LS
the facts
U.S. $27.95 | C A N A DA $32.95
ALEX E PSTE I N
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cope with the often hostile climate of Mother Nature. Energy is what we need everything we know about toCould build sturdy homes, to purify water, fossil fuels be wrong? to produce huge amounts of fresh food, to generate heat and air-conditioning, to irrigate deserts, to dry malaria-infested swamps, to build hospitals, and to manufacture pharmaceuticals, among many other things. And those of us who enjoy exploring the rest of nature should never forget that oil is what enables us to explore to our heart’s content, which preindustrial people didn’t have the time, wealth, energy, or technology to do. Nowhere is the necessity of energy, and thus fossil fuel energy, more evident than in protecting us from the climate. The climate is inherently dangerous (and it is always changing, whether we influence the change or not). Energy and technology have made us far safer from it. In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have risen from an atmospheric concentration of 0.03 percent to 0.04 percent, climate-related deaths have declined 98 percent. Take drought-related deaths, which have declined by 99.98 percent. This has nothing to do with a friendly or unfriendly climate, it has to do with the oil and gas industry, which fuels high-energy agriculture as well as natural gas-produced fertilizer, and which fuels drought relief convoys. Fossil fuels make the planet dramatically safer. And dramatically richer in resources. Environmentalists treat “natural resources” as a fixed pile that nature gives us and which we dare not consume too quickly. In fact, nature gives us very little in the way of useful resources. From clean water to plentiful food to useful medicines, we need to create them using ingenuity. This is certainly true of energy. Until the Industrial Revolution, there were almost no “energy resources” to speak of. Coal, oil, and natural gas aren’t naturally resources—they are naturally useless. (Or even nuisances.) Those who first discovered how to convert them into energy weren’t depleting a
THE
MORAL C AS E FOR
FOSS I L F U E LS
For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be?
The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance . . .
Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil
ALEX EPSTEIN
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fuels far outweigh the risks. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally clean environment and make it dirty; they take a naturally dirty environment and make it clean. They don’t take a naturally safe climate and make it dangerous; they take a naturally dangerous climate and make it ever safer. (continued on back flap)
things, including natural beauty.) To assess the fossil fuel industry’s impact on our environment, we simply need to ask: What is its impact on threats? What is its impact on resources? The moral case against fossil fuels argues that the industry makes our environment more threatening and our resources more scarce. But if we look at the big-picture facts, the exact opposite is true. The fossil fuel industry makes our environment far safer and generates new resources out of once-useless raw materials. Let’s start with threats. Schoolchildren for the last several generations have been taught to think of our natural environment as a friendly, stable place—and our main environmental contribution is to mess it up and endanger ourselves in the process. Not so. Nature does not give us a healthy environment to live in—it gives us an environment full of organisms eager to kill us and natural forces that can easily overwhelm us. It is only thanks to cheap, plentiful, reliable energy that we live in an environment where the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat will not make us sick and where we can
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Alaska Business Monthly | May 2015 www.akbizmag.com