B (2:08)

So my name's Alex Epstein. Maybe the most interesting thing about me is people think I wrote a book called the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And people think, oh, you must have been paid by the fossil fuel copy right here, by the fossil fuel industry or something. And I actually grew up in a liberal environment, Chevy Chase, Maryland, right outside Washington, D.C. and I was told for my whole life through Duke University that fossil fuels are an addiction. So they might be convenient, but there's this self destructive thing that it may be convenient in the short run, but it's destroying us in the long run. And so I grew up believing many of the things I now speak up against. And the short version of how my views changed is not that somebody paid me to say anything or not that I had family or anything like that. It's that I come from a philosophy background. And what I concluded is the way people are thinking about energy is really illogical. And just to give you one example of it, in medicine, for example, we think you always need to weigh both the benefits and the side effects of a vaccine or an antibiotic. And I noticed that in fossil fuels we don't do that. We only look at the side effects and we don't look at the benefits. Whereas when we talk about green energy, we don't look at the side effects and we do look at the benefits. And just even observing that from a philosophy perspective made me realize there's a certain kind of bias in the discussion. I didn't know what the truth was, but it made me very interested. What's actually the truth about the benefits and side effects of different forms of energy?

A (3:35)

And so you have been very outspoken in favor of fossil fuels. You wrote the book the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. You said it yourself, one of the greatest pieces of criticism you receive is that you're funded by these companies, which is not true. No. And so you're, I should say, I

B (3:51)

charge people to, I charge people to give speeches. So I just want to make clear, and hopefully by the end of today, by the way, there are many people whose livelihood is. They just get paid directly by the fossil fuel industry. That's not my livelihood. But hopefully by the end of today, people will think, you know what, those people are good people today because we think fossil fuels are so destructive. We think, oh, if you're connected with that industry, you're bad. But if you actually think of them like you think of medicine.

A (4:14)

Yeah.

B (4:15)

Then you think, oh, wow, that's heroic to be involved in that.

A (4:17)

Let's get to the root first and then make the moral case for fossil fuels. Tell us what fossil fuels are, because not everyone can define that.

B (4:23)

Nobody ever asked that question. Interestingly, it's such a good question.

A (4:26)

Okay, well, and then tell us what the moral case for fossil fuels is.

B (4:29)

Sure. So fossil fuels, I mean specifically they refer to coal, oil and natural gas. But the way to, the way to think of them is this is a little bit of a complex definition, but it'll make sense. You can think of them as high energy hydrocarbons derived from Ancient life. So high energy hydrocarbons derived from ancient life. And I'll explain that. But it's important because it actually connects to climate change and everything else. So high energy hydrocarbons means that there are molecules that are made primarily of carbon and hydrogen and they store a lot of energy in a very small space. Particularly oil does this most of all. That's why we use it for transportation, because it has such a high. You can think of it as like a strength to weight ratio. So when you're transporting something, you need something really dense. An oil with these hydrocarbon molecules that are liquid stores it in a really dense place. Now what happens is when you burn them, you add oxygen to the situation. And this is why this is important for climate. You release hydrogen and that bonds to oxygen, that makes water, but you also release carbon, which connects to oxygen, and that makes carbon dioxide. So the same thing that's generating the energy that's powering say an airplane is also putting more CO2 in the atmosphere. Also because it comes from ancient dead life, including plants, it sometimes is connected to things that were part of the plant, like nitrogen or sulfur, and that can make things like nitrous oxides or sulfur dioxide, which is involved in smog. So we've got this ancient life that created these amazing molecules, but when we burn them, we get CO2 and sometimes we get these other substances. And so they're really interesting questions of how do you weigh the benefits of the energy and how do you weigh the different side effects of those other substances?

A (6:03)

So that's a great explanation of fossil fuels, probably the best I've heard. So now that we know what fossil fuels are, what is the moral case for fossil fuels?

B (6:12)

Well, let me say first, what is the moral case for anything? The moral case for anything depends on how you define morality. And I think this is really the key issue at stake. And I would say specifically, how do you define morality with respect to our environment? Because the whole concern about fossil fuels is they're hurting our environment, Right. They're destroying the planet. And I think this is really interesting because we hear this idea of fossil fuels are destroying the planet. Like most people think the planet's getting worse, Right.

A (6:41)

It's a well held belief, especially in higher education.

B (6:44)

Yeah. And I'll emphasize that. And just to bring up one quick thing, evidence of that, there's this Oxford University study that asks people what's happened to extreme poverty over the last 30 years. So extreme poverty means people living on less than $2 a day. Has it gotten worse? Has it stayed the same or has it gotten better? What do you think the average answer is of a college educated European adult?

A (7:05)

Most of them probably say either stay the same or worse.

B (7:08)

You got it. So 55% said worse, 33% said stayed the same, 12% said better.

A (7:13)

When it's dramatically better.

B (7:15)

Yeah. So you're one of this 12%. Maybe you didn't finish college. Right.

A (7:18)

That's probably why.

B (7:19)

I know. Yeah, exactly. So no, but it's really instructive that what we can think of as our mainstream knowledge system. So the people who are telling us supposedly what's true, they've communicated to us so that we think the planet is getting to be a worse place to the point where they think extreme poverty is getting worse. And it's actually gotten better at a miraculous rate. So if you just take, let's say the last 30 years, it's gone from over 30% or about 30% to 10% or under 10%.

A (7:47)

So extreme poverty went from 30% of the world population to under 10%.

B (7:50)

Yeah. And when I was born, I just think of it, I was born 1980, so 40, exactly 40 years ago now. And it was 42% the year I was born. So you think about it, 4 out of 10 people are living on less than $2 a day. And now that's less than 1 out of 10. Now we can talk. We're not going to talk about coronavirus policy, but that's actually starting to bring it up past 1 out of 10, which is a whole horrific thing. But there's this general trend and why am I bringing this up? Because when people say fossil fuels are destroying the planet, and yet overall it's not just extreme poverty, the planet has never been a better place for human beings to live. We have record population and at the same time we have record life expectancy and record income, which means the amount of opportunity the average individual has. So from a human perspective, the planet has never been a better place to live. And, and yet we're educated to think that the planet has been destroyed and fossil fuels are the cause. But yet I would say from a human perspective, again, the planet has never been a better place to live. And what's going on there? This is not a scientific issue, it's a moral issue. The question is, are you evaluating the planet by the standard of human life, and I would call it human flourishing? So human beings ability to live to their highest potential? Because if that's your standard, the planet has never been better. And, and then you need to explain how fossil fuels maybe have made it better. But if you think it's bad, then you have a different standard. It's not a human standard. And here's what's going on. The dominant standard we were taught to use morally and environmentally is the standard of unchanged nature. So we regard the planet as bad, even though it's better for human beings because we've changed it so much. But my view is if we change the planet and it's overwhelmingly for the better, even if some of it is worse, but if it's overwhelmingly for the better, then that's a better planet. And my argument for fossil fuels is fossil fuels make the planet a far better place to live. But before you can process that argument, you need to know what standard are you evaluating the planet by? And the key to my argument, the moral case for fossil fuels is a human case for fossil fuels.

A (9:45)

So when you talk about the moral case for fossil fuels, I would imagine you actually get more people disagreeing with your interpretation of what is moral than even before you get into fossil fuels.

B (9:55)

Actually, this is interesting. Yes and no. And this has a lot of implications for how to make the case. Because if you make really clear to people, okay, when we're looking at the planet, we can look at it from the perspective of what I would call human flourishing. So is this the most human friendly planet possible? And you need to make clear this doesn't mean human beings versus every other species. Although sometimes we're adversarial, sometimes we're not. It really means human beings having the best possible relationship with the other species. So I want a really good relationship with my dog. I want a very hands off relationship with a polar bear, right? I don't want him to just thrive and eat me, but I'm okay for him to exist in certain places. The malarial mosquito I really want to kill, right? So human flourishing perspective just means the planet. We have a good relationship with the other species doesn't mean that everything is a parking lot because that's not the best thing for us. But it means that we change the planet a lot. We need to build factories and farms and automobiles. And I think of all of that as improving the planet. And when most people hear that, when they recognize that you can be pro human and, and as part of that, you're pro environment because you value the environment, you value our environment for human beings. They see that makes a lot more sense than saying we shouldn't change anything. So when you make it clear, people will believe it, but by default, people are not Taught to think of the world in a pro human way. And just to give you one quick example, this is why there are 3 billion people in the world who have virtually no energy, which that's almost a guarantee of a terrible life. Because if you don't have energy, you don't have machine power and you can't be very productive and your life is very rough. Three billion people don't have it. We talk about energy every day. Nobody cares, right? Nobody cares that 3 billion people don't have energy. But everyone is obsessed with what our energy use does to the habits of polar bears, right? We have so much sympathy for what's going with polar bears. Most people don't even know polar bears, my favorite animal, by the way. But, but still, most people don't know anything about polar bears. They've never seen one, they never plan to see one, and yet they'll shed a tear if they hear that the polar bear had to move to a different piece of ice. But they don't care that 3 billion people don't have energy. What this indicates is that even though most people would be pro human if they really thought about it, they're not thinking about the earth in a pro human way. They're thinking about it in an unchanged nature way, which is really an anti human way. So so much of what I try to do in persuasion is to explain these issues from the outset. So to say, look, do you agree that we want to look at the benefits and the side effects? Do you agree that ultimately we want the planet to be the best possible place for human beings? And, and then if you can frame it that way, you start the conversation that way, then people are really open to what the facts are. And then actually the moral case for fossil fuels is pretty obvious.

A (12:31)

So let's pretend that people say they're pro human.

B (12:35)

Yes.

A (12:35)

And they still are very worried about what fossil fuels are doing to the world around them?

B (12:40)

Yeah.

A (12:41)

So I'm going to ask just a series of questions here because a lot of our listeners get so many questions about this and you guys can email us@freedom charliekirk.com around climate change, global warming, fossil fuel emissions, carbon dioxide. Before I get into some of these questions and give you an opportunity to explain them, I think it's very important that we look at things independent of another, not conflate them. I think first we need to look at how fossil fuels have made our life better. And then if they are emitting carbon dioxide, is that carbon dioxide even attributable to what they consider to be the climate changing and global warming, I think it's conflated far too often. So let's start.

B (13:17)

Okay, we'll talk. But you're going to see they run together in a certain way because insofar as there are any negatives, like when you have an antibiotic and as a side effect, the benefit of the antibiotic is you weigh it and then you have the side effect and you see which is bigger. But actually we're going to see with fossil fuels, the benefit of fossil fuels gives you more machine power and you can actually use that to counteract the side effects. So imagine you made a storm 10% worse, but then you also gave yourself the ability to build a sturry home. So fossil fuels are fascinating, but because they have universal fundamental benefits that can offset their side effects indirectly and directly.

A (13:50)

So yeah, let's start with just Bernie Sanders says climate change is an existential threat to humanity. What's your thoughts on that?

B (13:59)

Well, so how are you measuring that? And the interesting thing about Bernie Sanders and what I would call climate catastrophists is they have this view that fossil fuels have made the climate bad and it's going to get much worse.

A (14:11)

Would you agree that that's their, that's basically dogmatic belief?

B (14:15)

Well, whether it's dogmatic or not, I mean that's, that's just the claim, right? It's made the climate bad and it's getting worse. And so an interesting question is how do you. I'm again philosopher, so I ask how are you measuring the climate being bad or not? I primarily measure it by how many human beings die from climate or what percentage of human beings die from climate. You can call this the climate death rate. So before I studied the data on the climate death rate, what I figured was the climate death rate has gone up a little bit because we hear all the time about how climate's more dangerous. But there are offsetting benefits of fossil fuels that are way more important than the climate death rate going up. But what was interesting is when I learned the data and I'll give you the most up to date data on this. The climate death rate in the last hundred years as we've been using more and more fossil fuels, has gone down by 98%. So this means the number of people dying from everything that's supposedly getting worse, storms, flood, flood, extreme heat, extreme cold, wildfires. Right. You have to believe this has gotten worse, right? There's more death, et cetera. No. 98% decline. So this means you are 1/5. Anyone in the world on average is 1/50 as likely to die from a climate related cause than they were 100 years ago. If you're commenting on the future, here's a view I have. I don't trust you to predict the future if you can't predict the present. So anybody who says that climate is terrible and getting worse, that's a non starter. If you're saying that, hey, climate is safer than ever, and I want to understand that, but I'm worried about the future. That's coherent, but it's related. The people who say climate is terrible today and who predict it to be terrible in the future, there's a reason why those go together and one reason is they don't recognize the role of adaptation in climate. How livable or how safe the climate is. It's a function of two things. What's going on in the climate and what's going on with human adaptation. And what we find is that the overwhelming thing that matters for how livable and safe the climate is is the state of human adaptation and what fossil fuels have done. Fossil fuels, energy more broadly, that's machine food. So that's the calories that our machines operate on. Machines make us way more productive because we don't have to use as much manual labor. We can use machines. So machines, our machines in the US do two, do 100 times more work than we do more, 100 times more physical work that allows us to build a really durable and resilient civilization. And so the reason climate is so safe, part of it is because climate hasn't gone out of control like people say. But the main reason is our adaptability is so high. And when you're predicting the future, you have to recognize whatever you predict, you have to factor in adaptability. So one example I covered on my podcast recently with a guy named Bjorn Lomborg who has a book about this called False Alarm. He gives a good example where they'll do studies, quote studies, where they're predicting the climate, which people are not very good at anyway, but they'll make a prediction and they'll say, you know what, if nobody adapts at all then, and this happens to the climate, then 187 million people will be homeless, at least temporarily. And what happens, the New York Times, Washington Post, they run with this and they say 187 million refugees. But the study also says this is if people don't adapt. But of course they will adapt, just as they adapt constantly, right? And, and then what happens if they do adapt? I think less than 1 million people will be homeless. How many people move every year? It turned out the number according to Bjorn was actually something like 300,000. So less than half the people who move from California every year. So it's a fascinating thing when you're talking about climate. The main cause of the catastrophe view is not understanding human adaptation. The other thing that's going on because I mentioned that climate has never been safer, how can they say that it's so bad? It's because they're not using the human standard, the human flourishing standard to evaluate the state of climate. They're using the unchanged nature standard. Notice the term is climate change. People think if we change climate it must be bad. But why is that? That's an anti human view, that if humans change something it must be bad. Right? If the rest of nature changes, climate doesn't matter. But if human beings do anything, then it must be bad. But wouldn't we want to neutralize hurricanes? Wouldn't some forms of climate change be good? So when we look at the impacts of rising CO2 levels, we can't assume they're good, we can't assume they're bad, we can't assume they're neutral. We have to look objectively, how good are these or bad are these for human life and then how to weigh those against the incredible adaptation benefits that fossil fuels give us.

A (18:33)

Would you say that carbon emissions contribute to rising global temperatures?

B (18:38)

Probably, I think they probably do. And so we have to look at how much have global temperatures risen. And there's some controversy, but the mainstream view that's cited by the catastrophist, so I'll give the catastrophist view, and I think this is more or less true, is about 1 degree in the last 170 years. So 1 degree Celsius, that's 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you think about that just on a common sense level, that's not a big temperature rise. The other thing people don't realize, it's called global warming often. But global warming isn't really global the way it works, and this is according to the un, ipcc, that's the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is the basis of many catastrophe predictions. But if you look at what they say, they'll say, you know what, the warming actually occurs mostly in colder areas, so it occurs more toward the poles. This is interesting because you hear so much about the Arctic. Why do you hear so much about the Arctic? Because warming, it doesn't happen that the equator gets a lot hotter, the poles get hotter. Places like Siberia get not hotter, but they get, they thaw a little bit. Right? And in the history of the planet, that's why in the warmer periods of the planet, the planet has been on average 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is today. So there's not unprecedented warmth. But in those periods, what's happening is it's not the equator is 25 degrees warmer, it's the planet is overall more tropical. So if you think the, and the reason I'm stressing this is the thing that we're supposedly worried about, fossil fuels causing is very minor and quite possibly beneficial because you have again, 1 degree Celsius mostly in the colder regions and actually mostly at night and mostly in the winter. So it's actually warming where you would like it, when you would like it. And at the Same time, more CO2 in the atmosphere definitely has caused a lot of plant growth. So you have a slightly warmer planet in the colder places and you have a more lush planet. And again, this is not what I'm saying so far. We could talk about the future and the evidence for the future because they do say more dramatic things. But, but notice that again we have a slightly more tropical planet, including more plant growth, and people say it's terrible. It's not a scientific issue, it's a moral issue. The reason they think it's wrong is because they think even if the change is good for us, it's bad because it was caused by us. And a term I have for this, I call this human racism because I think everything the human race does is bad. Everything the rest of nature impacts is good, but every human impact is bad. That's why we have a whole ideology and a whole commercial movement, the green movement. That means minimal human impact. You think about that. Imagine, imagine if you said, oh, I want to minimize the impact of bears. Somebody said, I want to minimize the impact of bears. You would say, you must hate bears, right? You just want to kill all the bears because the bears survive by impacting their environment. What does it say that we have a huge cultural and commercial movement that says minimize the impact of our species. That is a very anti human idea. It's not a scientific idea, it's an anti human idea that, that distorts the interpretation of science.

A (21:31)

Some people will say that the rising global temperatures because of CO2 emissions, which is debated. There are other scientists that we plan

B (21:40)

to have on this and the amount of it is often the extent of it. Is often debated in the future. Is often debated, yeah.

A (21:45)

And a lot of some scientists have come out and said that's not even close to being true. It depends on what type of analysis you're doing. And sunspots could be contributing to it until to the earth, all sorts of different things or all of those things could be correct. So however, some people will say, and they're convinced of this, and even some conservatives are, that even if you're pro human, the ice caps are going to melt. We are going to have flooding, earthquake disaster worse than we've ever seen before. We need to slow down our addiction to fossil fuels so we slow down the coming of the catastrophe that's going to happen.

B (22:18)

Can I ask a question, and I love that you play devil's advocate. Can I ask a devil's advocate question to your devil? So isn't it weird, and I'm not

A (22:27)

saying I hold this position.

B (22:28)

No, no, I understand. But I think it's good, it's always good to address the positions that are commonly held and commonly taught. Isn't it weird that everything is going to be bad? You just think about a scientific view like the climate, the atmosphere is a very complex system. All things being equal, you'd imagine, okay, if we change things, there's going to be some good and some bad. But notice it's all bad. Right? Everything is going to get bad. And then if we look at. I know, maybe we'll address some predictions from the past. What's interesting about the global cooling predictions that occurred in the 1970s, we can talk about those. But one interesting thing is they were also predicting more storms, more drought. All the negative consequences were going to get worse if the earth cooled and then it's going to get worse if the earth warms. So again, no matter what human beings do, it's expected to be bad. So let me just connect this to philosophy because you say, well, people say they're pro human, even if we care about human beings, but they're concerned that the world is going to end or there's going to be really bad things. But here's how these connect. We're taught the moral view of the modern environmental movement is that unchanged nature is the goal, which means that all human change and human impact is immoral. It's intrinsically immoral. So it'd be like if there were a tablet for the modern environmental movement, commandment number one would be thou shalt not impact nature. That's. And the whole supposedly secular, actually religious green movement is all about that. Right? It's thou shalt not impact. And you notice that if you just told people you shouldn't impact anything and anything is bad because you impacted it, it probably wouldn't go over too well. So what goes along with it is they say, no, it's not just that it's wrong for you to impact things, it's if you impact things, then you're going to disturb the delicate balance of the planet and everything is going to go haywire. And I call this, and this is a mythological view, but it's portrayed as a scientific view. I call this the perfect planet premise, which means that unchanged nature is stable, it's safe and sufficient. So it won't change much if we don't do anything, it won't endanger us, it keeps us safe and it's sufficient, it'll give us what we need. And the problem with this is just not at all true. But the view is if we change anything, then it's going to get unstable and unsafe and it's going to become deficient. And in reality, the reality is what I call the imperfect planet. So nature is not stable, it's dynamic, it's not safe, it's dangerous and it's not sufficient, it's deficient. But if you believe this perfect planet premise or by promoting this perfect planet premise, what people, the anti impact environmental movement, they make people afraid that if we change anything, the whole perfect Earth is going to be destabilized and punish us. And it has the same function. It basically says if you violate our commandment not to impact things, you're going to go to hell. And global warming is a kind of earthly hell where it's saying, you know, if you do the wrong thing, you're going to cause this. But it's really the nature, nature is conceived of as a God, that if we violate the commandment, it's going to punish us. And that's why it's this universal thing. It's like no matter what we do, it's going to be bad. And so again, I consider this allit's all a philosophical issue. And I consider the whole anti impact focus. I consider that a religion, a moral religion says it's wrong to impact things, and then a mystical belief that if we impact things it must be bad. Even though in reality when we impact things it's overwhelmingly good. And when the impacts are negative, we can adapt to them.

A (25:50)

It's absolutely a religion. On the left, it's become pathological. They have turned the green movement into a form of worship. In one way or the other that

B (25:59)

implies that it wasn't one before.

A (26:00)

But yeah, it's even more so than ever. And so one of those, for example, the French foreign minister in May of 2014 said we have 500 days to avoid a climate chaos. So it's always bad, it's always catastrophic.

B (26:12)

Yeah. And it's usually what they do is it's always, I think AOC had 12 years or 10 years or something like that, but it's always that there's some upcoming political deadline so they want some commitment made. And it's always we have like 12 months to, you know, because then we always have to, they always have a 10 year plan that they want agreed on in the next 12 months. And if you look at the history of these things, and I love looking at the history, and I talk about this in chapter one of Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which is, it's titled the Secret History of Fossil Fuels but it's really the secret history of Fossil Fuel predictions because it goes back to the late 60s and it shows people predicting climate catastrophe, but also pollution catastrophe. There's going to be so much pollution we, we can't breathe and we won't even be able to see. And also resource depletion. We're gonna run out of fossil fuels, we're gonna run out of everything. The whole world's gonna starve. And what you see is there's always this expectation that catastrophe is gonna happen. So for example, John Holdren, President Obama's science advisor, predicted in the 1980s that by the year 2020, so now a lot of bad stuff has happened in 2020, but he predicted that a billion people would die from climate related famine. Now if you know anything about the history of the world, I mentioned extreme poverty going down. We have the best fed population in human history as well as the largest. So what's happened is actually using modern agriculture, which is all powered by fossil fueled machines, especially diesel powered agricultural equipment, we've actually fed billions of people. And what you see over and over is you have these catastrophists predicting that the world is going to get much worse and it actually gets much better. What's going on? It's this perfect planet premise. They assume it's if we're impacting things it must be terrible and there will be no good. So what happens is they exaggerate the side effects beyond all recognition and they ignore the benefits, including the benefits of adaptability. And that's what you see with the future. The same people, the reason why you can expect these Predictions to continue to be wrong is because they keep exaggerating the side effects and they keep ignoring the benefits of fossil fuels, including greater adaptability. So when I look forward and I hear somebody say, well, oh my gosh, you know, the arc. I mean, the Arctic melting, by the way, doesn't do much in terms of sea levels. But if you talk about like, they'll say, it's really actually hard to think about something climate wise that would be a real problem for human beings that have fossil fuels and are adaptable. I mean, you think even. And this, there's no chance of this whatsoever, but imagine that there were five times as many hurricanes. Would that overwhelm civilization? It would not overwhelm civilization. Like, we could definitely deal with that and we'd just get a little better at dealing with hurricanes. And I mean, it's not the ideal, but the idea that it's an existential threat, it's going to kill people, it's going to kill people en masse and we should stop using energy. No, what we need is there are billions of people in the world who have no energy, no machine power, very low adaptability. The whole focus in terms of climate should really be get them energy, get them machine power, get them adaptability. That way, whatever happens to the climate, which nobody really knows what will happen, will be ready for it.

A (29:10)

So I want to dive into some more of these kind of headlines and they kind of echo what you're saying. But before I do, I want to kind of dive into something which is some people might not be completely in the unchanged nature camp. I think some people, I think everybody

B (29:26)

is partially in it. It's always held, it's no I started interrupt, but no evil view is ever held completely consistently. So it's always. I mean, I think you're somewhat of an Ayn Rand fan, at least. This is a big point in Atlas Shrugged.

A (29:41)

I was gonna say you're talking like an objectivist.

B (29:43)

Yeah, well, no accident, but. And I learned these views of.

A (29:46)

I mean, I have some problems with Ayn Rand, but I think she's generally great.

B (29:50)

We can do another episode on that sometime. But it's. I was just rereading Atlas Shrugged. So I was thinking about this. The point is that bad ideas always put themselves over by concealing themselves by blending themselves with good ideas. So this whole idea of unchanged N blends itself with, well, we want to minimize. We don't want pollution, we don't like pollution. Right. So they say, oh, we're against pollution, so let's be green. Let's minimize our impact. And when you say minimize impact, people think, oh, that means I have clean air and clean water and good food. But they don't realize that that's being packaged together with anti development, with not building roads, with not building factories. But if you look at the green movement, they oppose all development, virtually all production. So they'll oppose roads, they'll oppose, I mean, certainly things like pipelines. So what's happened is the green movement has packaged together anti pollution and anti development. And part of what I'm trying to do is unpackage those by saying, look, we're for human flourishing, which means that of course we want to minimize negative impacts, but we want to maximize positive impacts. So I think most people, the reason to tease it out is not to accuse everybody of holding it consistently. It's that insofar as you hold it at all, it's bad because if you hold a human flourishing standard, then you just don't change nature when it makes sense to not change nature. So if you want to preserve a beautiful place, that's great, but you're doing it because it's what's good for human life. You're not doing it because you have a duty not to change nature. Because if you have a duty not to change nature, how do you draw the boundaries? If unchanged nature comes above human life, then that necessitates human sacrifice. Whereas if human life is the primary, then you change nature or not, depending on what's good for human life.

A (31:32)

I think some people would say they have human life as a primary and they'll say that's why they oppose coal powered fire, cold coal fired power plants. I always screw it up. Coal fired power plants. Yeah, talk about coal.

B (31:48)

Okay, so I remember I talked about these high energy hydrocarbons coming from ancient dead life. So coal is the solid version of these. It stores a lot of energy in a small space. One of the things about it is the life that it came from is fairly near the surface of the earth and there's a huge amount of it. And so this is one thing that somewhat differentiates it from oil and gas, which often you have to go very deep to and are often a little more rare or difficult to get. Coal is super easy to get. It's quite concentrated and as part of that you can transport it anywhere in the world really easily. And this is why you see so much coal in the developing world, because you can dig up the stuff and you can transport it at low cost and you can bring it anywhere you want. Compare that to say hydropower, where hydropower is great, but if you don't have the right kind of river, you can't make a dam and you can't make a hydroelectric plant. So if you look at say China, but also lots of other places in Asia, including Japan, is using more and more coal. Coal is generally the lowest cost form of electricity in most places in the world. And so to say what do I think of coal means what do I think of people getting low cost electricity? And what I think is that is an unbelievably positive thing that is very, very tied to the dramatic decrease in extreme poverty. Because how do you decrease extreme poverty? You do it with extreme productivity. How do you get extreme productivity is you give people who are doing manual labor and you have them do machine labor. And so that's what coal has done. And so you have to look at any side effects of coal in that context. And what we find with coal is the richer the country, the fewer side effects it can have with coal. And so over time, initially this happened historically too, we used coal and it had way more pollution than China has today. Much, much more. But as you become wealthy, then you can develop and afford better forms of pollution control. So in the US you can have places like North Dakota that use coal and have very, very good air quality. So it's all about all the fossil fuels right now. You can use all of them. And with the right technology, you can get a lot of energy and relatively low pollution. But in some places it makes sense for people to have more pollution because that helps them with the cost. And it's really dangerous for us in the wealthy world to tell people in the poor world, oh, you need to have pollution free coal. Well, what if you can't actually feed your family? What if you can't heat your home doing that? What if you can't purify your water? So there's just a whole condescending attitude to say, oh, the whole world shouldn't use coal. Well, there's a reason why the whole world is using coal and a lot of the world is using more and more is because that gives them electricity. And for them, electricity is life.

A (34:16)

For some people, though, they say, America is a wealthy country, we don't need to use coal here. What do you say about that?

B (34:22)

Well, that would depend on what are the different options. So it always depends on what are the different options.

A (34:28)

Natural gas is much cleaner in emissions, right?

B (34:31)

Well, that's, I would say that it always depends on the process. So there's a Mythology about energy, that people think of energy as the material and they think, oh, do I like the material or not? So do I like coal? No, coal's black. I don't like, interestingly, it's just a weird kind of thing. But it's like, oh, I don't like black energy, I like green energy. Sort of a weird thing given other dynamics in our culture. But wait a second. Like it just. It all depends on what's the process by which you transform the coal into energy. Because if you could take the black stuff is just carbon. If you could take that carbon and make that into steel, right. And it didn't get in the air, then you could generate really clean electricity and you could get other stuff. Whereas solar panels and wind turbines, if you have a process that involves mining a lot of things in poor countries done by children, that's bad safety practices, that can be really dirty and dangerous. So the whole thing with coal is you shouldn't say, oh, I don't want it to be out of done. With coal, you should look at is the process, the process that we're using with coal, how does that compare to the other processes in terms of costs and side effects? And so that just depends on. In the US I think there are still many places where I think coal is the most cost effective, where it can be done cleanly and where they have existing power plants that are generating relatively clean energy and the communities really depend on the cost of electricity. So if you take places like Kentucky and Indiana, if they're shutting down their coal plants and they're putting up natural gas plants, that's going to make their electricity more expensive and that drives out industry. So I think these things should be decided on a local basis. But for somebody to say, oh, I'm against coal because it seems dirty to me and they're ignorant of the costs and the processes and the side effects, that's a really bad attitude. And certainly around the. And those same people, by the way, should be very in favor of freedom for natural gas. One of the ominous trends we have is we've got an anti coal movement, we have an anti fracking movement. Fracking is how you produce 60% of America's oil, 75% of America's natural gas, and we've got an anti pipeline infrastructure movement. And that's really terrifying because whether people know it or not, we live in a world that is hugely dependent on transporting energy from one place to another. If you can't get natural, natural gas doesn't store well, that's One of its disadvantages, it's a gas. It's not like coal or oil. It's not very dense. So you need pipelines to transport that clean stuff all over the place. If we're saying, oh, let's use natural gas, but we're opposing pipelines that's guaranteeing that people are going to freeze to death or something close to it, we're already starting to see that happen around the country. Like in the Northeast, people are, utilities are saying, you know what, I can't sign up new people for natural gas because nobody's allowing us to build a pipeline. This is one of the big election issues this year is what's going to happen to infrastructure if certain people get elected.

A (37:10)

So from your morality that is pro human, of which I share, and I have some questions about that that I want to get to in a minute. Is there ever a moment where the pollution or the side effects of fossil fuels would make you pause and stop and say human flourishing is now being put at a disadvantage just because of fossil fuels, for example, polluted rivers, polluted lakes, water supply being corrupted?

B (37:33)

I mean, I think there's got to be obviously, has that level or that

A (37:37)

threshold ever happened in your mind?

B (37:38)

Well, so we have to distinguish between using a technology in general and then abusing a technology. So the most obvious thing is abusing technology. So just take somebody's irresponsible, a gas line explodes and three people die. Like, do I think that's okay? Do I think, oh, that's great, well, we still have it. No, I mean that's a tragedy that's happening. And you can have. So you can have, you know, deliberate abuse, you can have accidents. So those are kinds of bad things. And then you can have different communities making the wrong decisions. So let's take say in certain places in China, maybe they're engaging in coal burning practices that are overly polluting because they're not valuing the lives of the local citizens. This is part of why you want to be in a free country that has some respect for property rights, because the pollution is going to be viewed in context versus the Chinese government saying, you know what, we want to produce as much stuff as possible at as low cost as possible. And we don't care about the well being of our citizens. So it'd be exactly like saying, do you believe antibiotics ever have more side effects than are worth it? Of course. I mean, antibiotics have way more problematic side effects actually than fossil fuels because they develop resistance. And we don't have that with fossil fuels. There's no fossil fuel resistance, but yet any technology has negative side effects. And so it's all about using it in the best possible way. And I would just stress that when I say the moral case for fossil fuels, it's really the moral case for the freedom to use fossil fuels. So I'm in favor of using the best form of energy everywhere, and that's going to depend on different things. So I'm a big advocate of hydroelectric energy where it's the best. I'm a big advocate of nuclear energy. And part of my political platform that I promote or that I encourage politicians on is they should be decriminalizing nuclear energy. And I in favor of freedom for solar and wind. But we might talk about that. But they need to compete in producing reliable energy right now. They get special privileges which get them paid the same amount or more for producing unreliable energy as producing reliable energy, which would be exactly the same as if the government said, hey, Charlie, Turning Point usa, you have to. If somebody's an unreliable worker who only comes in one third of the time, you don't know when that'll happen. You have to pay them the same amount as you would a reliable worker. You would say, no, I can't do that because then I need to pay the reliable worker and the unreliable worker. And that's what we have with solar and wind. So solar and wind are being given special privileges, but if they had a way of producing reliable electricity that was competitive, I'm all for that.

A (40:01)

So the question a lot of people have, and the issue of the environment is constantly being brought up with young people on campuses, especially young conservatives, is that we have a moral obligation to make. To do less to the earth than we are right now.

B (40:21)

Yeah, that's a really bad.

A (40:23)

It's on the spectrum of unchanged earth. But I don't think all of them are necessarily all there. Do nothing.

B (40:29)

No. I think almost nobody has it clearly thought out, but part of it is they don't have a positive pro human conception of environment. So even I don't use the term the environment. I accidentally used it earlier in this interview and I corrected myself and I'll explain why, because what does the environment mean? Everyone uses this, right? Conservatives use this.

A (40:49)

I use the term.

B (40:50)

Right. But people use it and they talk about the environment, but that's weird. Would you use the term the habitat? Would you say like, oh, I want to preserve the habitat.

A (40:58)

Well, you'd probably like which habitat.

B (40:59)

Yeah, whose habitat? Right. So habitat really captures what environment captures. Yeah, but environment always means the Environment of something for some purpose. So when you're thinking of the planet, you have to think of it as whose perspective are you thinking of it from which species? And you can't say I'm thinking of it from perspective of all species because the interest of species conflict I mentioned earlier, like is it the malaria mosquitoes environment or is it the human environment? Right. And so when I think of the planet, I think of it as a human environment. So in that I'm concerned about my surroundings from a human perspective and I want the relationship with it that's best for humans. So I like thinking about our environment. And if you thought about it as we should change our environment as little as possible. If you want to kill billions of people, yeah, that should be your view. But otherwise you should think, if I want the best human environment possible, I want to maximize my positive impact and minimize my negative impacts. So I'm really trying to encourage pro human environmental thinking, not this anti human. Let's preserve the. Because they want to save the environment. But it's usually save the environment from human beings, whereas I want to improve our environment for human beings.

A (42:07)

So some of these predictions and you're not as much in the kind of global warming science space. Right. You're more kind of in the moral.

B (42:15)

I mean, I'm very, I'm very aware of it. I just think the range of plausible predictions, all of them are extremely things that we can adapt to.

A (42:24)

Prince Charles says in 2009, 96 months to save the world. I think he was wrong there 10 years ago. I want to ask you about this. Al Gore predicted the north polar ice cap would be gone. Still there. 2018. You actually did a challenge to Al Gore to debate that, right?

B (42:44)

Yeah. It has not worked yet. But the genesis of this was in 2012. I challenged this guy named Bill McKibben who's one of the. Someone called him the thinking mans Al Gore. So I offered him. I was really mad at something he wrote in Rolling Stone and it was against the fossil fuel industry, which I didn't know anyone in the industry. But he basically said the industry is evil and we need to divest from them. And I said, this is a terrible idea. The fossil fuel industry should stand up. And I waited a few weeks and nobody stood up. So I'm like, all right, screw it. I had no money, but I'm like, all right, I'll give you $10,000. I figured I'd get it somewhere. I'll pay you $10,000 if you debate me. Because he had Ignored me before that. And then he said, okay, I'll do it. So we debated at Duke University, which is where I happened to go to college. And so I thought, okay, I got that to work. So then Al Gore, I forget, you know what? Al Gore was leading this charge by attorneys general to go after different people, including they went after ExxonMobil, and they basically said, oh, if you ever funded anybody who challenged climate catastrophe, then we're going to sue you for destroying the planet. And basically saying, anyone who has these views has no right to free speech. And I was named in the subpoena, even though I never got any funding from ExxonMobil or anything. But I was pissed off. And so what I did is the Massachusetts Attorney general had done this, and so I just wrote her this, said, like, regarding your demand. Because she said, sees any emails between me and ExxonMobil, I'm like, you don't have a right to even ask about that. So I don't know if you're allowed to curse on the show, but I wrote her an email that said, regarding your demand. And it was just like, f off fascist. But Al Gore was part of that. So I'm like, all right, if you're going to come after me, why don't you actually debate me? So I offered him $100,000, but he is not accepted.

A (44:18)

He said in 2008 that the north polar ice cap would be gone.

B (44:21)

But what if. I mean, let's just. Let me just ask. What if he was right? Yeah, but. Okay, but, like, if he was right and the ice cap would have gone, I mean, the question is, what's the significance of that? I mean, it's important that they're wrong because it shows that they tend to always exaggerate the science involved. But the biggest thing he hasn't been telling us is he's been advocating against fossil fuels for 40 years. And for 40 years, fossil fuels have been improving billions of lives. So the really important thing about Al Gore is not that he's made wrong predictions, but that he's made wrong predictions in the pseudoscientific way, ignoring all the benefits of fossil fuels and thus advocating policies that would have killed billions of people. Like, that's the problem.

A (44:58)

So let me push back a little bit on one thing. So your metric is human flourishing, right?

B (45:04)

Yeah.

A (45:04)

So I think some parts of our country, being untouched, actually maximize human flourishing.

B (45:09)

Right? That's what I said. You want to maximize positive impacts and minimize negative. And by the way, just we should say politically, the way you have to do this is via property rights ultimately. So it's, you just think about your, you know, people can earn different plots of land and then they have. And if the government is deciding it, which I don't think the government should own 40% of whatever of the land that means nobody owns it. Right. So I think it should virtually all be privatized. But whether it is, if the government owns it they still have to think about what's a good pro human way of using this. And that means at least it has to be either we're developing the resources and, or we're enjoying it versus what the government has done with the so called wildlife refuge in Alaska which is basically this place nobody goes and they've said nothing can happen there ever. Even if you can develop oil and it's a tiny little space and even if the caribou like it. So that's unchanged nature. Right. The government should not be permitted to value unchanged nature over human life. Anyone should be able to say yes, I want this particular piece of nature unchanged for human life.

A (46:07)

I think there's, I think Yellowstone is a good thing that we didn't have fracking in Yellowstone.

B (46:13)

It depends.

A (46:14)

Well and it depends like, or Grand Teton National Park.

B (46:16)

I mean it just, it's gonna, it would depend, I mean what if there was some, I mean not, not take fracking but imagine there was some resource that would just save. Well but okay, but, but I'm, what we're talking about is, is the method by which you make the decisions. So it's possible that a government on the, but the government on the beauty

A (46:33)

outweighs whatever rent natural resource would possibly.

B (46:36)

Okay, but I mean you have to really go back to those things and think okay, was it because in a lot of cases people were kicked off their land, a lot of times their homes were destroyed and so I have,

A (46:44)

they were given fifth amendment rights for that. But yeah, I think it's fifth Amendment.

B (46:47)

Yeah, yeah. Okay. But I think this is a broader discussion but I think we should, if we, if we're going to look back to these decisions we should ask like how were these decisions made? And it's the main thing is if they're being, they need to be made with some human benefit in mind. So it has to be human enjoyment. So part of Yellowstone is it's configured in such a way that people are actually able to enjoy it if they had it there, no one was allowed to see it. That would be an unchanged nature view and that would be evil.

A (47:12)

So like Teton National Park I go every summer. Yeah, right. It's gorgeous. It's generally untouched and without being too absolutist in it. And I'm very sympathetic with your. What you say. I think it's a good thing that there is no oil rigs, you know. Right, of course, but Jenny Lake.

B (47:29)

Of course, but just with private property. People make that decision all the time. Right. I mean there are people who have oil under their land that say, you know what, I don't want this rig there. Overall, I don't think that's.

A (47:38)

Of course, generally I think that's right.

B (47:39)

There's not. I'm not saying there's a universal moral obligation to drill for fossil fuels wherever you could. What I'm saying is people should be free to make these decisions and when the government is making them, it really needs to have a pro human idea.

A (47:52)

So you would agree that if the idea of Grand Teton is for human relaxation, enjoyment and basically being able to appreciate the beauty. I don't know if you've seen the Tetons. It's extraordinary. Not all land is created equal when you see the Tetons. Right. That there is a moral case to be made that human beings should enjoy this untouched in its current form without having an excavation site at the bottom of the Grand.

B (48:17)

So the way to think of it is unchanged nature is sometimes a means to the end of human flourishing. So sometimes it's the right policy.

A (48:26)

Okay.

B (48:27)

But it's not the goal to say it's the ultimate goal.

A (48:31)

So it's not that certain parts of unchanged nature is necessarily bad. Is that if unchanged nature is a means to have human beings live a better and more fulfilled or fulfilling or flourishing life, then yeah, so be it.

B (48:42)

But then the green movement would say the green movement, but it's never really untouched. And that's the thing. So that they're like if you're traveling there, if you're walking there. So sometimes people get mad at that too. Exactly. So this is, this is an issue of standard. If it's there for human enjoyment, then obviously you need to touch it a little bit to enjoy it. And so that's again, they don't even

A (49:00)

want people to go to some of

B (49:01)

these things, of course. What do you mean? They don't even want people? Of course. Because the goal is not people. The goal is non people. Unchanged nature means not changed by humans. It's an anti human view. It's again human racism. It says if the human race does something, it's bad. If the rest of nature does something, it's good.

A (49:17)

So I think we find, I think I find agreement with you in that. And so why do you think the environmental movement is so persuasive? A lot of people believe in it. And when I say environmental movement, you know what I mean? Green movement, whatever. Why do you think it's so persuasive?

B (49:31)

I think one reason is some of what's motivating your last question, which is our environment, including the beauty of the planet and enjoyment of nature, that's a huge value. I mean, in a sense, environment, that's almost, that's where we live, right? So the whole modern environment, what I would call the anti impact or anti human environmental movement, that's monopolized the issue of environment morally for the past 50 years. So even though historically it's actually capitalism, that really helped our environment, in part by defining property rights, which allows you to enjoy nature, and in part by creating enough prosperity where you can enjoy nature. If you're a subsistence farmer, you're not enjoying nature. If you're walking three hours a day to get water, you're not enjoying nature. But if you have machine power and you're so productive that among other things you create leisure time, then you can enjoy nature. So the issue of environment morally belonged to to capitalists, but it was taken over by anti capitalists. And so what they could do is they could take their anti capitalist views, but also their anti impact views and as I said before, package them together with pro human views. So people think, oh, if I love nature or if I want a clean environment, then I must want to minimize human impact. And what I tried to do, I started my organization, it's called center for Industrial Progress. But the idea when I started in 2011 was a pro human alternative to the green movement. So you can think of it as a pro human environmental movement that owns the issue of environment for the people to whom it belongs, which are the advocates of human life and the advocates of freedom.

A (51:04)

Do you see a future coming where fossil fuels will become increasingly irrelevant?

B (51:10)

I mean, if we have that future in the near future, that'll just mean a lot of people's lives become a lot worse. I mean, we want anything to become irrelevant if it's out competed by something superior. So I would love it, for example, if nuclear energy developed on a trajectory that it could actually out compete fossil fuels, which means that it could produce everything we need. So electricity, heat for our homes, heat for industry, transportation, if it could produce all of those reliably at low cost for billions of people, if it could do that better. Of course I want that. But we're nowhere near that reality. In part because much of the modern environmental movement has criminalized. Nuclear energy is actually unfortunately becoming less prevalent and much, much more expensive. It's all a regulatory kind of issue.

A (51:55)

It's safer than anything else.

B (51:56)

Yeah, it's the safest form of energy ever developed. So the current economics of fossil fuels is just Fossil fuels provide over 80% of the world's energy. So that means fossil fuels are more than four times all other alternatives combined. And they're still the fastest growing source of energy in the world. So more energy every year is added from fossil fuels than from any other source. And if you just think about that, if they become irrelevant, the reason why they're relevant is not because there's a lot of favoritism toward them, we know there's actually a lot of antagonism toward them, but because nothing can match them at producing energy for all of our types of machines reliably at low cost for billions of people. Like that's the game you have to play that nobody else is close to doing. There are interesting reasons why, and part of it is just the materials of fossil fuels are quite special in terms of these high energy hydrocarbons that store a lot of energy in a small space. There aren't that many materials like that. The closest nuclear material, which is actually even more concentrated. That's why I'm excited about it. But the other thing is with fossil fuels we have literally generations of millions of people innovating and refining super efficient processes to turn these ancient dead plants into really low cost energy. So to compete with fossil fuels you need to have something that can compete with the material and compete with generations of innovation. That's why I think nuclear is ultimately going to be it. But we're criminalizing it. So if so it's generations away from being a true substitute. Which means that if fossil fuels become irrelevant in a world where billions of people are still using virtually no machine power, that will mean we've committed an act of international genocide by preventing people from using them.

A (53:32)

I'm a huge fan of nuclear energy and it's been ridiculously slandered by.

B (53:36)

Yeah, it's, I mean demonized and criminalized are the two words.

A (53:38)

I, France used to have almost all their power.

B (53:41)

Well, all their electricity.

A (53:42)

Yeah. They have now basically shut down plants

B (53:46)

some, but they're still dominantly powered by it. It should be which if you are concerned, revealing. Because if you were concerned about CO2 emissions, even if nuclear are More expensive, you'd say, okay, well this is the only way we know at least of producing electricity on a large scale like solar and wind. We can go into it. Basically they don't produce reliable energy on any scale. So they're always just an unreliable supplement added to the network. But they're always backed up by what I call the reliables. So they're always backed up by coal, gas, oil. Sometimes that's mostly transportation or nuclear, hydro. So there's like reliables and unreliables. The unreliables are solar and wind. I think we should call them unreliables, not renewables because hydro is renewable, but it's opposed mostly by the green movement. So the unreliables, those right now are nothing close to a scalable solution because you need a really cheap way to store them and nothing like that remotely exists. So basically those are just wasteful supplements. Right now for most purposes, the only thing that could potentially hydro is great, but only works in certain locations. So even for just electricity, let alone transportation, nuclear is the only thing that we know of that could really provide reliable electricity all around the world. And who are the biggest opponents of nuclear energy? Not me. I'm a big champion. Not, you know, the Republicans, if you want to categorize it that way. It's the modern environmental movement. And why is it? Well, it's because they think nuclear is impacting nature too much. So it's really not about human life or preventing climate catastrophe. It's about we shouldn't be changing nature. It's wrong to split the atom, it's wrong to create this kind of waste, even though the waste you can handle it really safely isn't causing problems, they're just against changing nature. If people get that, if they get that, the modern environmental movement, it's not an environmental movement, it's an anti impact movement. And it's not a scientific movement, it's a religious movement. Then that makes sense of all of these crazy positions, including people saying, I want to lower CO2 emissions, that's my purpose in life. But you can't build a dam and you can't split an atom.

A (55:40)

Joe Biden has now come out and said he wants a fossil fuel, fossil fuel, fuel free future by 2035.

B (55:47)

He probably pronounced it much better than he did.

A (55:49)

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's not saying much. Fossil fuel free Future. Say that five times. Yeah, fossil fuel free future, four Fs. Go figure. By 2035 or something. Something ridiculous. This has now become a top tier issue of the Democrat party. Leonardo DiCaprio has come out and said that he wants to leave a better planet for his kids and his grandkids. So he's trying to take a pro human lens to some of that. Yeah, maybe, maybe not.

B (56:15)

Oh well, yeah. I mean every, almost every advocate of climate catastrophism and these anti fossil fuel policies say we're gonna make the world better for human beings. The question is, are they in any way advocating actions that would do that? And if you're Leonardo DiCaprio and you don't recognize that reliable low cost energy, it makes life possible for billions of people, including just agriculture, like if we didn't have modern oil agriculture or something like you can't feed billions of people. I mean, at best you go back to a largely manual labor world, but you'd have literal starvation even before modern agriculture. 40, 50 years ago. 50 years ago they predicted a population bomb. New York Times, you can go read their back issues. They said basically the whole world is going to starve with a population of 4 billion people.

A (57:02)

Almost 8.

B (57:02)

Now we're at almost 8. Yeah. Why is that? It's because our technology is so good. But our technology is all powered by reliable low cost energy, almost all from fossil fuels. The thing I really want to convince people about is that just in terms of our method, we need to look at the benefits and the side effects and we need to be really focused on human life, human flourishing. And if we're not, of course you can always say, I mean, an example is animal testing. This is a really clear cut example of the same thing. That's simpler, right? Some people think animal testing is intrinsically wrong no matter what. Including some scientists think animal testing is wrong. Animal testing is definitely beneficial to human life in some situations. There's no chance that no animal testing has ever beneficial. There's just a zero percent chance. Why are people against it? Because human life is not their standard. Right. The lives of the animals are their standard. Now what you'll notice is that the people who are saying we shouldn't animal test, they're always making up that, you know what, we don't really need animal testing. They make that up, right? They say, oh, you know, it's not really necessary. It doesn't work here, it doesn't work there. But they're trying to rationalize a view that people wouldn't swallow and this would. What's happening with the modern environmental movement. It's people saying, you know what, we shouldn't impact nature because we have no right to. And it's wrong even though it benefits us to impact Nature, people won't swallow that. So they say you shouldn't impact nature. It's wrong. And if you do impact nature, it's going to kill you and you're going to go to hell. That's why they're so focused on these hell narratives. And if you look at climate, it's a really good example because let's say flood, they say like, oh, this region flooded. I'm so concerned about them. Like really, you're concerned about them? Why don't you help them build a dam? Like that would actually help them. What's their policy say? Let's have the whole world stop using fossil fuels in 30 years and then maybe there'll be a little less flooding. Does that count as caring about the people who are victims of the flood? No, what it shows is the people claiming to care about the flood. They're not concerned with flood related deaths. They're using flood related deaths as an excuse to promote their anti impact, anti human agenda.

A (59:01)

One thing that always strikes me is how we in the west have had the luxury of using fossil fuels to build our incredible civilization and now we want to deprive third world countries from having that very same opportunity. That bridge that we had.

B (59:14)

Well, but it's not a, it's not a bridge. I agree with that entirely. Except there's no bridge. We're using more of them than ever.

A (59:20)

So we're not using coal as much as we did in 1920?

B (59:24)

No, we're probably using it more than we did in 1920.

A (59:26)

Not a percentage though.

B (59:27)

Okay, but, but fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas. So we're using. I don't have the exact numbers in the US but definitely over 70% of our energy.

A (59:34)

There's only, there's only like one active coal power plant that's been built in the last decade.

B (59:39)

Okay, but in, but there's a lot of coal. But anyway, fossil fuels is not just coal. So I'm talking about coal, oil, gas.

A (59:44)

Right, but natural gas is more prevalent and I want to get in the fracking. I do. What I'm saying though is that the pie chart is decreasing in terms of coal.

B (59:53)

Okay. But in terms of, right now, the US is using as much energy as ever.

A (59:58)

We all said 340 million people.

B (60:00)

Yeah, but it's overwhelming coming from fossil fuels. But the reason I'm pushing on this is we can't think of our fossil fuel use as something that happened in the past. As I mentioned, this is the leading. This is the overwhelming and fastest growing source of energy in the world. And what's important is this is perpetually fueling the machines that are keeping us alive right now. If you just think of agriculture, like if the, our whole agriculture thing where 2% of the people produce enough food for everyone else, that's wholly machine driven. If those machines can't get energy, they don't work like we start to start.

A (60:31)

I'm not suggesting, but I'm not saying

B (60:34)

you're suggesting getting rid of it, but there's this. The reason I'm pushing on this is because sometimes people in the industry act like, oh, fossil fuels, they were good in the past, but maybe we don't need them anymore. No, we're using them now. So when we talk about opposing fossil fuels, it's both hurting ourselves now and then depriving people in the poor world of having any opportunity.

A (60:51)

I just don't think they're all made equal. I don't. I mean, coal is a different animal than natural gas.

B (60:56)

I mean, I don't know what that means. I mean, it's a better animal in some places and a worse animal in other places.

A (61:01)

It does have higher emissions. It is harder to expect. Depends on what.

B (61:06)

Depends on the situation. You can have a coal plant, I'm speaking generally.

A (61:11)

For example, when you extract natural gas, you've done the fracking method. It's just like opening up a Coca Cola can. The fizz is the, is the gas and you get the oil when you extract it. The, the coal mine, you have to do something that coal mine afterwards and usually have to pump water out of it so extraordinarily fast. Like in Pennsylvania, if you just abandon those coal mines, you're going to have rivers, which is what's happened. Completely polluted right there. There are more external costs to coal mining than just natural gas extraction.

B (61:39)

Yeah, it'll depend. But I mean all of these things,

A (61:41)

what I'm saying, I think those costs now are worthy of pause.

B (61:45)

It depends on the situation. So I mean, you can, as I explained my views on this before, so I won't go into them again, but I'm open to that in certain places. But it really has to be that the people who are affected by it get to make a decision based on the full benefits and the side effects from them. I'm just very wary of anyone saying like, oh, I don't like coal, I like gas more like, no, it's about the people in the situation making the best decision given all the factors.

A (62:10)

So what I was saying, and you took exception with the bridge, but I'll use It again, that's fine in some ways.

B (62:14)

Yeah. I'll take exception again.

A (62:16)

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, they're being deprived of even the baseline of any sort of fossil fuel coal power plant.

B (62:24)

Well, it's being, I mean there's international pressure and like Vietnam is using a lot of coal, but there's, there's pressure

A (62:29)

for them to stop.

B (62:29)

Yeah. Right.

A (62:30)

And that's which I think is completely unfair given their substandard living conditions versus the Western world.

B (62:36)

Yeah. I mean, so I think it's all evil, but it's particularly evil to say to somebody who's really poor, you cannot use low cost energy.

A (62:44)

I completely sympathize with that.

B (62:46)

Yeah.

A (62:46)

And because they were never given the opportunity to build their civilization for hospitals, for schools, for technology.

B (62:52)

I don't mean by given the opportunity, I mean it's an achievement of the US that we built these things. And part of the reason we built

A (62:59)

them, they weren't given the opportunity because they had dictatorship.

B (63:01)

Yeah, no, exactly. Right, right. But it's, but it's, it's important that there's a virtue involved is in when you have a free country and you develop early.

A (63:08)

Completely agree.

B (63:09)

Yeah.

A (63:09)

But Pol Pot was controlling Cambodia and that whole region. There was no development.

B (63:14)

Right.

A (63:14)

There was firing squads.

B (63:15)

Right. Yeah. Well, it's a good lesson that we maybe we shouldn't give one or two people control of our entire economy.

A (63:20)

Yes, I agree. So whether we like it or not, your viewpoint is losing.

B (63:29)

Yeah, it's definitely. Well, it's interesting because people are still using more fossil fuels than ever completely. But they're not using as many as they should be.

A (63:35)

But if we're honest with ourselves politically, culturally, more and more people are sympathizing with the unchanged nature view, to use your own terms. Is that probably fair?

B (63:44)

Yeah. But indirectly, I mean, fossil fuel sentiment is getting really bad for sure. I mean the anti fossil fuel movement is sort of shockingly popular like in the corporate world is really alarming in particular, you just see there's something called the divestment movement that I originally debated McKibben about. Universities are doing, I mean universities you might expect, but just corporations. I mean, Amazon just renamed, they bought an arena for something like $2 billion and then they, they renamed it Climate Pledge Arena. And it's supposed, I mean, it's supposedly going to be run by solar, even though the games are at night. So there's all this accounting fraud that people are pretending that unreliable energy is doing things it isn't.

A (64:21)

I like that term.

B (64:23)

But if you just yeah, so it's the, I mean, the religion, the green religion, but in particular the fossil fuel opposition. Yeah, it's massive. I mean, it's part of the reason why I'm out there, because it's a bad trend and it needs to be corrected.

A (64:36)

The trend will result, in my opinion, in a lot more human suffering than is necessary.

B (64:42)

Well, it's already happening. But yes, if you just take like what Joe Biden is advocating for the U.S. yeah. I mean, that would be by far the worst event. Like if his energy plan happened, that would definitely be the worst event in the past. I mean, let's say since World War II, at least in terms of American death. Well, but yeah, it relates to. So you can think of energy as machine food. Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. What he's saying is, I mean, if you take what he's advocating, he's saying, I want a carbon neutral grid. He always changing the dates. But it's something like 2035, right, I heard 2035. Okay, so 2035, so that's 15 years arbitrary. But where, where is that energy going to come from? And especially he's not really supporting nuclear, is not doing anything to deregulate nuclear. So it's basically saying we're going to use solar and wind dominantly. So nobody has any idea how to do that. That hasn't been done anywhere where they try it, like In Germany, they're 33%, but the 33% is totally dependent on the reliables. So, right, you can use 33% unreliable. You could have 33% unreliable workers. It would be a pain in the ass and it would cost you a lot of money because you would still have to have the reliable workers and the unreliable workers. So it would drive your cost up. So Germany pays, average German pays three times for electricity what the average American pays. And the average American pays way too much. And we know this in part because natural gas, our major electricity source, our major heating source, has gone way down in price thanks to fracking and other related technologies. And yet electricity prices go up. Why? How does electricity. Did we forget how to generate electricity? Did we get worse at the other things? No, we added a bunch of wasteful solar and wind and transmission lines to the grid. So what happens is the unreliables always add costs to the grid. They don't replace costs on the grid. There's no way for them to actually run the grid. Nobody has any idea how to do that whatsoever. And so if Biden actually got this thing, we would just have Constant blackouts in a totally different economy. And you have to realize that our whole way of life is actually very fragile. People think it's fragile because the planet is fragile. Planet's not fragile. Planet changes all the time. We adapt just fine as long as we have fuel, as long as we have mobility, and as long as we have electricity. But as soon as you stop having mobility, you stop feeding New York City and every city, as soon as you stop having electricity, all your factories stop working, all your equipment stops working. Like it's so. Everything is. It's so precarious if energy is precarious. So our whole standard of living is based on having machines do 100 times more physical work than we do ourselves. If you take away the machine power, that is a catastrophe. That's why. What's the worst economic thing that's happened in the last 50 years? 1970s energy crisis. Right. I mean, that was. And people experienced that as a tragedy, and that was as much oil being taken off the market in 73 as Joe Biden would do just by banning fracking, which now Kamala Harris has just been a total advocate of banning fracking. So you think about that. Banning fracking would just take as much oil off the market. That's not banning the use, that's just banning the production as the 1973 energy crisis. Like, it's so important for people to know how vital energy is and how deadly it is to oppose energy.

A (67:52)

52% of people in Pennsylvania say they oppose fracking. Why should people support fracking? And what is fracking? Can you go into it really quick?

B (68:00)

Yeah, yeah, sure.

A (68:01)

Couple minutes we have remaining.

B (68:02)

Yeah, yeah. And then I'll give people a resource for this.

A (68:05)

Actually do a quick.

B (68:07)

I posted some stuff.

A (68:08)

It's amazing. But a quick topic.

B (68:09)

Yeah, yeah, but no. It's basically a new process for getting oil or natural gas out of the ground. Oil and natural gas, there's a lot of it in the ground, but most of it is inaccessible because it's really tightly wedged in rocks. And this is basically a process for fracturing. That's why it's called fracking. You fracture the rock and you open it up in such a way that the oil and gas can come out that couldn't come out before. And if that doesn't sound like a big deal right now, we've gone from. I mean, I'm trying to think of the numbers I have these on. If people go to energytalkingpoints.com, they'll see the exact numbers, but it's something like, I think it's in the hundreds of billions of gallons a year. Think of a gallon of oil. It's hundreds of billions of gallons a year worth of energy. If you take the oil and the natural gas combined. And we have gone from a massive, massive importer of energy to actually often now an exporter of energy in terms of oil in particular. So it's 60% of our oil production, 75% of our natural gas production. And that's why I said if you banned this, just you banned this one process, it would be a huge blow to the US economy and also to the world economy. So if we look at benefit side effects, that is a huge benefit and there's a huge catastrophe of opposing it. The side effect, what is the side effect that people are concerned about? They're usually concerned about groundwater. Right. Like it's going to contaminate groundwater. So interestingly, fracking is one of the safest processes, industrial processes for groundwater. And the reason is simple processes that contaminate groundwater have one thing in common. They are near groundwater. That's what actually contaminates groundwater. If you're near groundwater, fracking takes place a mile below groundwater and is shielded by a mile of solid rock. So how are you going to contaminate groundwater that way?

A (69:49)

How do they get that talking point then?

B (69:51)

Interestingly, the way they get it, and this is really revealing, is they find natural gas in the local groundwater and they say it was fracking. Now, there are ways that can happen with conventional oil and gas drilling, but the basic way it happens is the number one polluter of nature put the natural gas in the water. Who's the number one polluter of nature? Mother Nature. Right. So Mother Nature is the number one polluter. And so Mother Nature puts a lot of natural gas in the water along with arsenic and salt and Frack nation.

A (70:21)

They go and they turn on these faucets.

B (70:23)

Yeah, yeah.

A (70:24)

And out comes well water that you

B (70:27)

can light on fire.

A (70:28)

Methane.

B (70:28)

It has methane in it. Right.

A (70:29)

Which is natural, right?

B (70:30)

Right.

A (70:31)

Why is that wrong?

B (70:31)

Overwhelmingly, it's because that existed in. Well, it's not. It happens, but it's because the methane

A (70:36)

was already in the water. That sort of thing existed 100 years ago, right?

B (70:39)

Exactly. Again, because it's naturally. Methane in the water is a natural phenomenon. Part of the whole anti impact movement is they pretend that nature is really clean, absent us, whereas nature is actually dirty. We haven't taken a naturally clean world and made it dirty. We've taken a naturally really dirty world and made it Overwhelmingly clean. Yeah.

A (70:57)

That's interesting.

B (70:57)

Same thing with the climate. We didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous. We took a dangerous climate and made it safe.

A (71:02)

That's a good point. Yeah. There were thunderstorms and hurricanes that predated us.

B (71:05)

Can I just refer people to something that they might find useful? I have one question for you. I know we gotta go.

A (71:10)

No, we're good. I think we're good. They'll yank me off. So you go. You go.

B (71:13)

Actually, let me ask you the question, then I'll give the rest. So how equipped do you think candidates, and I know you're focused on Republican candidates. How equipped do you think, let's say pro energy, pro freedom candidates are for dealing with all these energy and environmental

A (71:27)

issues this election, incredibly ill equipped or unequipped.

B (71:31)

Why do you think that?

A (71:32)

I think that many of them are pandering to some of these green movements and some of them quite honestly lack either a consistent philosophical or moral framework and, or they just are afraid to discuss these issues correctly. And they only look at once, one metric when they, when it talks about energy. That's just jobs. That's the only metric they look at.

B (71:52)

Yeah. Because jobs.

A (71:53)

Jobs are misleading.

B (71:55)

Good. If the activity is good, like let's say, you say, well, let's have more mafia, because that'll create more mafia jobs. Right. That's not an argument. Right. If the thing is bad, then the jobs are bad.

A (72:06)

It's also only good if the job is a productive job. I mean, the one thing, right. We have a million people filling in ditches to, you know, digging ditches and filling them in again.

B (72:14)

And that's part of the, the green jobs thing. I mean, it's, it's true in a sense. If you had green energy, then you wouldn't really have much energy and then we'd all go back to manual labor, so you'd have to work a lot more. Is that a good thing? No. I mean, you want energy, you want everything to eliminate less productive jobs so you can have more product.

A (72:32)

That's my point, is that if we just focus on the disenfranchisement of labor, right. Then we actually should shut down all of our.

B (72:40)

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's.

A (72:41)

That'll create more jobs.

B (72:42)

Yeah. So it's really interesting. And I didn't bring up jobs, but it's an interesting point that, that's kind of the, the standby argument. And the Greens can just argue that

A (72:49)

just the same, they're gonna win on that argument.

B (72:51)

Right, Right. So, yeah, and my, my experience has been the same, like people are just. But it's interesting because some people, they're just conceding the argument. But many people I meet, and I want to try to educate those people too, but many people I meet have the same kind of sense that I do. And I think that mostly you do, but they just have no clue of what to say in different situations about different issues. And there's really nobody who's been giving them different kinds of things. And in my experience, I mean I've done some work with the oil and gas industry and the coal industry. Like they don't pay me to speak, but I'll help them with their talking points and stuff and just talking to them. It's such a crisis state right now for the energy industry. If you look at the state of their jobs and stuff, even less than usual they're giving any kind of valid information. So I just decided, okay, I'm just going to create a free website, energytalkingpoints.com and any candidate, any citizen can get talking points on every issue. So you asked about fracking, I gave some facts. But if you just go to that website right now it's just a Google Drive, just click on that and you get facts about fracking. Everyone is a tweet length and everyone is perfectly referenced. So people have started using it, but I just want people to use it again. There's nothing to do besides look at it, learn from it and use it. Because I think that if most people, if they know the facts about energy and particularly if they're being given the facts from a pro human, including pro environment perspective, it's super clear that at least on energy there is one direction that is much better than the other. And there's this false idea that oh, we're going to do some of the stuff Biden's advocating and it's to going, going to save the planet and that kind of thing. The only thing that those kinds of those fossil fuel abolition plans are going to do is they're going to unilaterally ruin the US and do very little about the rest of the world. China and India, they're using coal and more coal for a reason and that's because it's the lowest cost source of reliable energy for their needs. They are using it and they should be using it. We're not going to change the trajectory of global emissions. The only way we can do that is by contributing to the development of low cost, low carbon energy. And I would say start with decriminalizing nuclear.

A (74:54)

Completely agree.

B (74:54)

Because there's no, you're not going to. Unless you want to go to war. That's really the only.

A (74:58)

I mean, some people do.

B (74:59)

Yeah, but if you want to actually go to war and you want to like go to nuclear war, that's the only way you're going to stop emissions from rising around the world because it's too big a sacrifice for people and they won't do it. So it's not. People act like, oh, if we follow this plan, maybe it would be tough for us, but we're going to save the planet from rising CO2 levels. As I said before, you shouldn't be afraid of rising CO2 levels because the influence they have on warming is pretty minor and we're super adaptable, we don't need to worry about it. But if you are worried about it, you cannot solve it by making a unilateral sacrifice by the U.S. the thing you can do is keep the U.S. as a free and prosperous country and focus your efforts, if you want to, on innovation and low cost, low carbon energy. The only way people will use lower carbon energy is if it's actually cheaper to do so.

A (75:43)

So you are a self described philosopher.

B (75:46)

Yes.

A (75:46)

What philosophy do you describe yourself articulating?

B (75:50)

Well, it depends on the situation. As you mentioned, I'm hugely. Or it came, I'm hugely influenced by Ayn Rand. So that would be objectivism, objectivist philosophy. But on this issue, I mean I describe myself as a humanist or some of us describe ourselves as environmental humanists. So it's, I think of it as I'm bringing a human or human flourishing based philosophy to this issue and the major tenants are the standard of evaluating or the standard of value is human flourishing. The planet is not perfect, it's imperfect. And intelligently impacting the earth is a huge virtue, not a vice. So as I said, I'm for maximizing positive impacts and minimizing negative impacts. And then the other thing I'm for is always looking at things in their full context. I mentioned at the outset, look at the benefits, look at the side effects and weigh them. So it's all about, we're looking at things from a human flourishing perspective. We're recognizing the planet is an imperfect place that we need to impact a lot. And then when we're deciding what impacts to do, we need to look at the benefits and side effects with as much precision as possible.

A (76:49)

The book is the Moral Case for fossil fuels. Energytalkingpoints.com you got it. Thanks for coming on, Alex. This is great.

B (76:56)

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

A (76:57)

You bet. Thanks. What a great conversation that was with Alex Epstein. Please consider supporting our program by going to charliekirk.comsupport email us your questions. Freedom charliekirk.com and if you want to get involved with Turning Point usa, the nation's largest student movement fighting for freedom, liberty, the Constitution, and the American way of Life, go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com thank you guys so much for listening. God bless you. God bless our great country. Talk to you soon.