The campaign against fossil fuels makes as much sense as a campaign against life itself.
There’s a war that can kill mankind… slowly, not all at once, just a little bit, day by day, like a slow suicide.
It’s the Energy War.
One side seeks to eliminate fossil fuels because the CO2 allegedly contributes to catastrophic, man-made climate change.
The opposing side believes that fossil fuels are the most reliable, needed, and cost-effective source of energy, allowing us to live in any climate and mitigate any potential negative effects of their use.
It’s up to you to decide which side and course of action gives us the best chance of flourishing as human beings.
Let’s begin with their basic arguments:
Anti-Fossil Fuel, Climate Catastrophe side:
- Nature is delicate and benign.
- Humans severely and negatively impact nature with modern agriculture, mining, and industrial development
- Increases in temperature caused by CO2 emissions are causing seas to rise, severe weather, and potential doom.
- We must restrict and eventually stop the use of fossil fuels, and switch to wind and solar power.
Pro-Fossil Fuel, Human Flourishing side:
- Raw nature, including the weather, is harsh and dangerous.
- Agriculture, mining, and industry (powered by fossil fuels) have made it possible for humans to flourish all over the world.
- The increases in temperature caused by CO2 emissions are relatively infinitesimal compared to the positive impact of fossil fuels.
- Restricting fossil fuels will severely impact millions of humans, especially in the developing world where such restrictions would cause mass starvation and death.
- Wind and Solar power cannot supply the amounts of energy needed to run modern industrial society, including the energy we individually take of granted in our everyday lives.
So, which side is right and which side is wrong? You be the judge.
To find out more about the anti-fossil fuel arguments, look no further than the New York Times as well as most of the mainstream media. There are a slew of books supporting the anti-fossil fuel argument. Here’s one that led the charge: An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming by Al Gore.
The latest and best book available today for the Pro-Fossil Fuel and Human Flourishing side is Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. Also recommended is his earlier book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Both of Epstein’s books are jam-packed with reliable information and will help you see how the anti-fossil fuel advocates cherry-pick facts to make their case.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration and the Democrats are at war with fossil fuels, which are reliable, portable, and readily available in the U.S.
Their campaign against fossil fuels makes as much sense as a campaign against life itself.
Here in South Florida, we recently were hit by hurricane Ian.
It ripped up homes, docks, trees, cars, and boats on the coast of Naples and Fort Myers.
On my recent drive back from Massachusetts to Florida, I noticed an armada of utility trucks, construction equipment, and service vehicles heading to the hardest hit areas of Florida.
They all had one thing in common: they are powered by gasoline and diesel fuel.
Electric vehicles would have been out of luck since electric power was out for hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses. And they couldn’t have handled the immense clean-up work needed.
The Administration and its media enablers blame this hurricane on “climate change,” which fits conveniently into their narrative that the use of fossil fuels has severely affected the climate.
Yet hurricanes have been with us since time immemorial.
They seldom if ever mention that fossil fuels make it possible to live in tropical environments as well as conducting clean-up operations when natural disasters strike.
Wind and solar power cannot accomplish all the things we take for granted.
But the climate change lobby claims that we must eliminate fossil fuel use to mitigate the potential increase in temperature, allegedly brought about by CO2 emissions.
Nevertheless, they also are against nuclear power which emits no CO2.
What gives?
For the answer, grab a copy of Alex Epstein’s book, Fossil Future, which deconstructs and demolishes the entire climate change narrative on fossil fuels.
It’s the most comprehensive treatise yet on the underlying justification used by climate change fanatics to take away the best and most reliable energy source we have.
They seek to replace it with solar and wind which cannot replace the gargantuan power needs of industrial civilization and modern life.
Here are some key points from Fossil Future:
- Climate change arguments are based on the “delicate nurturer” premise:
“The delicate nurturer assumption is the assumption that Earth, absent human impact, exists in an optimal, nurturing ‘delicate balance’ that is as stable, sufficient, and safe as we can hope to expect. The delicate nurturer assumption is everywhere in our knowledge system, from elite universities to popular movies.” p. 91
- Underling the delicate nurturer idea is an anti-human, radical environmentalist idea:
“A key aspect of the delicate nurturer assumption is the incredibly negative view of human beings that it implies, which I call the ‘parasite-polluter assumption’: humans’ essential impact on our environment is to parasitically plunder our environment of resources and to pollute it to make it unsafe and unhealthy. p. 92
- Epstein urges us to think in terms of human needs and more…
To think about energy and other issues in terms of human flourishing, we need clear, pro-human environmental terminology. In this regard I advocate using the phrase “improving our environment” instead of “saving/protecting the environment” and “our world” or “improving our world” instead of “saving/protecting the planet.” p.98
We value oxygen in the air, a beautiful waterfall, the majesty of the Pacific Ocean — and we value farms, skyscrapers, and roads. They’re all “our environment” and “our world.” p.98
Epstein urges us to embrace a pro-human framework for evaluating fossil fuels, not a skewed, anti-human knowledge system pushed forward by uncritical media.
The anti-impact framework drives our knowledge system to use brazenly irrational methods of evaluation: ignore the benefits of cost-effective energy to human flourishing and catastrophize its side-effects. The human flourishing framework makes possible a pro-human, rational method of evaluation: full-context evaluation. p100
Amen!
Fossil Future offers 480 pages of information and insights that can dramatically open your eyes to the disastrous policies of the anti-fossil fuel advocates, especially today under the Biden Administration and the Democrats.
If you have limited time to read, listen instead to the wonderful Audible.com edition, narrated by the author, Alex Epstein.
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