This review doesn’t
substitute for reading the book but it does make a few of Epstein’s key
points. I know it’s a long read, but if you don’t read and understand
it (and ultimately Epstein’s book) you have no business commenting on
climate change and the use of fossil fuels.
natioal review online NOVEMBER 12, 2014 4:00 AM Fossil Fuels and Morality “A
few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up,
to put it bluntly.” I came
across this
quote, along with many others of comparable value, while reading Alex
Epstein’s
just-published book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
But
Epstein’s book is much more than a fantastic collection of such
delightfully
mad environmentalist pronouncements — although that part alone is worth
the
purchase price. Rather, what Epstein presents is a powerful,
systematic, and
relentlessly logical philosophical case for the moral value of the
fossil-fuel
industry, and the fundamentally immoral basis of the movement that is
seeking
to demonize and destroy it. In
short, the book is unique, and utterly terrific. Epstein
is a clear-minded philosopher, so he begins by stating the ethical
standard of
his case. “This book is about morality, about right and wrong. To me,
the
question of what to do about fossil fuels and any other moral issue
comes down
to: What will promote human life? What will promote human flourishing —
realizing the full potential of life? Colloquially, how do we maximize
the
years in our life and the life in our years?” He then proceeds rapidly
through
a great number of well-known data, demonstrating the powerful
historical link
between increased fossil-fuel use and rising living standards,
increased life
expectancy, decreased infant and child mortality, and so forth, as well
as some
surprising material showing drastic drops in climate-related
misfortunes,
including deaths from droughts and storms. He has a nice section
dealing with
the global-warming debate itself, where he cleanly separates the
truthful
introduction to the climate alarmists’ argument — that enriching the
atmospheric CO2 content will cause the trapping of some infrared
emissions from
the Earth’s surface in the troposphere — from its completely
unsupported and
demonstrably false conclusion that this phenomenon will generate
self-accelerating feedbacks with catastrophic consequences. After
showing how small are the warming effects of carbon dioxide atmospheric
enrichment, Epstein then reports on its powerful beneficial impact for
the
biosphere. This considerable “fertilizer effect” is almost never
mentioned by
the alarmists, as it does not benefit their case, so we should be very
grateful
that Epstein takes the trouble to present the real “inconvenient
truth.” To
give a flavor of this argument, here is a summary of some of the data
he
reports from experiments with growing crops in the 700 ppm CO2 atmosphere
that could result if humanity continues to increase its fossil-fuel use
for
another two centuries (the atmosphere today has 400 ppm of CO2, up
from
300 ppm in 1900). As
Epstein comments: “What’s most striking is that these extremely
positive plant
effects of CO2 are scientifically uncontroversial yet practically
never
mentioned, even by the climate science community. This is a dereliction
of
duty. It is our responsibility to look at the big picture, all
positives and
negatives, without prejudice. If they think the plant positives are
outweighed,
they can give their reasons. But to ignore the fertilizer effect and to
fail to
include it when discussing the impact of CO2 is dishonest. It is meant
to
advance an agenda by not muddying it with ‘inconvenient’ facts.”These
numbers
come from reproducible lab experiments, but such results are not
confined to
the lab. In fact, we have photos taken from orbit since 1958, and they
show a
15 percent increase in the rate of growth of wild plants on Earth since
that
time. Epstein
goes on to discuss the even more demonstrable climatic impact of
fossil-fuel
use, which he calls the “energy effect.” Here he makes a very important
point
regarding the desirability of any particular climate: “The Holocene
[the
current climatic age] is an abstraction; it is not a ‘climate’ anyone
lived in;
it is a summary of a climate system that contains an incredible variety
of
climates that individuals lived in. And, in practice, we can live in
pretty
much any of them if we are industrialized and pretty much none of them
if we
aren’t. The open secret of our relationship to climate is how good we
are at
living in different climates thanks to
technology. . . . There is no climate that man is
ideally
adapted to, in the sense that it will guarantee him a decent quality of
life.
Nature does not want us to have a life expectancy of seventy-five or an
infant
mortality below 1 percent. Nature, the sum of all things on Earth,
doesn’t care
about human beings one way or another and attacks us with
bacteria-filled
water, excessive heat, lack of rainfall, too much rainfall, powerful
storms,
decay, disease carrying insects and other animals, and a large
assortment of
predators. . . . To put it bluntly, in our ‘natural
climate,’ absent technology, human beings are as sick as dogs and drop
like
flies. . . . Climate livability is not just a
matter of the
state of the global climate system, but also of the technology (or lack
thereof) that we have available to deal with any given climate.” And
“having that technology is useless unless we have the energy to run
it,”
Epstein adds. This last point is no mere philosophical abstraction, as
any poor
pensioner struggling to stay warm this winter — in the face of the gas
and
electricity prices artificially rigged up (to quadruple American
levels) by the
European Union’s pampered elites for the purpose of reducing carbon
consumption
by the masses — will certainly understand. Epstein
continues: “We know that the way to make climate livable is not to try
to
refrain from affecting it but to use cheap energy to technologically
master it.
Thus if the underdeveloped world is having trouble dealing with
climate, it is
not because of our 0.01 percent change in the atmosphere, it’s because
they
haven’t followed the examples of China, India, and others who have
increased
fossil fuel use by hundreds of percent. And the goal should be to help
them do
so — especially because the benefits of fossil fuels go far beyond
climate:
cheap, plentiful, reliable energy gives human beings the power to
improve every
aspect of life, including productivity, food, clothing, and shelter.
You can’t
be a humanitarian and condemn the energy humanity
needs. . . . To oppose fossil fuels is ultimately
to oppose
the underdeveloped world.” Epstein
then discusses the extraordinary improvements in the environment —
notably in
air and water quality — made possible by fossil fuels. “We don’t take a
safe
environment and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous environment and
make it
far safer,” he summarizes. He then takes up the fracking controversy,
laying
bare not only the specific fallacies in the anti-fracking propaganda
movie Gasland but
the systematic methods of lying employed — a discourse
that makes this section of the book a real treat. These include
the
abuse–use fallacy, the false-attribution fallacy, the no-threshold
fallacy, and
the “artificial is evil” fallacy. The
last item on this list returns Epstein to his central theme, which is
the
contrast between humanistic and antihumanistic ethics. “It is perverse
to be
against the man-made as bad per se. To be against the man-made as such
is to
have a bias against the mind-made, which is to be against the human
mind, whose
very purpose is to figure out how to transform our environment to meet
our
needs.” He continues: “Fossil fuel development is the greatest
benefactor our
environment has ever known. This needs to be mentioned in our
environmental
discussions, and so-called environmental groups need to be taken to
task for
omitting it. The only way fossil fuels are a net minus for ‘the
environment’ is
if by ‘the environment’ you mean our surroundings not from our
perspective, but
from a nonhuman perspective. From the perspective of
organisms . . . we need to kill or use to survive,
such as
the parasite, the malarial mosquito, the dangerous animal, or the trees
we need
to clear to build a road, we are a negative for the
environment. . . . The general opposition to
development as
anti-environment reflects a view that equates environment with
wilderness, . . . i.e. a nonhuman view of
environment,
which leads to an environment that is harmful to human beings because
it does
not sufficiently protect against natural threats or produce the
resources
necessary to overcome natural poverty.” Epstein
deals in a profound manner with the issue of “sustainability,”
explaining the fundamental
concept that “resources” do not exist in and of themselves but are the
result
of human technological innovation. “Resources are not taken from
nature, but created from nature,” he says. “What
applies to
the raw materials of coal, oil, and gas, also applies to every raw
material in
nature. They are all potential resources, with unlimited potential
to be
rendered valuable by the human minds. . . . There
is no
inherent limit to energy resources — we just need human ingenuity to be
free to
discover ways to turn unusable energy into usable energy. This opens up
a
thrilling possibility: the endless potential for improving life
through
ever growing energy resources, helping create ever growing resources of
every
kind. This is the principle that explains the strong correlation
between
fossil fuel use and pretty much anything good: human ingenuity
transforming
potential resources into actual resources — including the most
fundamental
resource, energy. “Growth
is not unsustainable. With freedom, including the freedom to produce
energy, it
is practically inevitable.” In this light, what are the
ethical implications of our decision
to use, or forbear to use, energy? Epstein poses this question by
focusing on
its implications for a child of today. “What choices will we make that
define
the world that he lives in? Will it be a world with more opportunities
and
fewer hardships or more hardships and fewer opportunities? Will it be a
world
of progress — a world where he has more exciting career options, less
chance of
getting sick, more financial security, less chance of going to war,
more
opportunities to see the world, less suffering, and a cleaner, safer
environment? Or will it be a world gone backward, where some or all of
these
factors get worse? . . . Think about your
generation. From
the perspective of previous generations, you are the future
generation. . . . What actions of theirs — and
generations
before them — benefited us most? “If we look at history, an
incredibly
disproportionate percentage of valuable ideas have come in the last
several
centuries, coinciding with fossil-fuel civilization. Why? Because such
productive civilization buys us time to think and discover, and then
use that
knowledge to become more productive, and buy more time to think and
discover.
We should be grateful to past generations for producing and consuming
fossil
fuels, rather than restricting them and trying to subsist on something
inferior. . . . The more resources that have been
created
in the past, the more prosperous societies have been, the more
resources they
leave for us to start with.” In
fact, we have effectively unlimited amounts of matter at our disposal,
says
Epstein. Time is what we need most: “If we want to
talk about
a resource, if human life is our standard, then the most important
resource we
should be focused on is our time. Using fossil fuels buys us time. It
buys us
more life. It buys us more opportunities. It buys us more resources.
Fossil
fuels are an amazing tool with which to create this ultimate form of
wealth,
this supreme resource: time to use our minds and our bodies to enjoy
our lives
as much as possible. “Time,
and the quality of the life we can live in that time, is already less
than it
should be, and threatened to become far, far less than it should be,
because
even though using fossil fuels is moral, our society does not know it.
The
voices guiding our society have convinced many of us that the energy of
life is
immoral and are calling for restrictions that, from the evidence we
have, would
be a nightmare.” This
brings Epstein to his concluding chapter, which involves a discussion
of
environmentalist mental pathology. “As you read this, there is a real,
live, committed
movement against fossil fuels that truly wants to deprive us of the
energy of
life. That movement is named the Green
movement. . . . In
place after place, the energy of life is portrayed as deadly, its
producers
immoral. Why? . . . Here’s my answer: The reason we
come to
oppose fossil fuels and not see their virtues is not primarily because
of a
lack of factual knowledge, but because of the presence of irrational
moral
prejudice in our leaders and, to a degree, in our entire
culture. . . . The
prejudice, which is held consistently by our environmental thought
leaders and
inconsistently by the culture at large, is the idea that nonimpact on
nature is
the standard of value.” Thus
Epstein returns the policy battle to one between two conflicting sets
of
philosophical premises. “The environmental thought leaders’ opposition
to
fossil fuels is not a mistaken attempt at pursuing human life as their
standard
of value. They are too smart and knowledgeable to make such a mistake.
Their
opposition is a consistent attempt at pursuing their actual standard of
value:
a pristine environment, unaltered nature. Energy is our most powerful
means of
transforming our environment to meet our needs. If unaltered,
untransformed
environment is our standard of value, then nothing could be worse than
cheap,
plentiful, reliable energy.” Epstein
provides substantial material to back up this insight into the
environmentalist
mind, but I’m not sure I agree entirely with his way of presenting it.
His
discussion is a bit too abstract and otherworldly, leaving out material
considerations that clearly play a role in the debate. For example, the
anti-fracking movement in Europe is currently being vigorously
supported with
funds, organization, open propaganda, and secret operations by the
Kremlin. Is
this happening because Vladimir Putin has chosen a flawed philosophical
standard of value, or because he wants to keep the Europeans dependent
on
Russian natural gas so he can loot and manipulate them at will? The
United
States was once the world’s leading fuel producer, and could be again,
if our
political class were more supportive. Such a development would be of
enormous
benefit, not only for Americans but for nearly the entire
civilized world,
which would receive cheap, reliable energy supplies in consequence. Yet
there
would certainly be losers among those abroad whose wealth and power
depends on
maintaining artificial global energy scarcity. Every new well fracked,
and
every coal-fired or nuclear power plant that is allowed to remain open
in this
country, is a direct threat to their vital interests. Currently, OPEC
money is
flooding into our political system via hundreds of think tanks,
university
departments, lobbyists, PR firms, and media organizations. Is it too
much to
imagine that such lucre might be helping to influence the selection of
thoughts
embraced for promotion by our “thought leaders”? Epstein
is much too polite to bring such sordid considerations into his
discourse, and
perhaps, after all, pulling this particular punch could ultimately
add to
the strength of the book. For while the “thought leaders” may allow
material
rewards to guide them in their choice of thoughts, the question remains
as to
why the populace at large should be vulnerable to the mental poison
dispensed
from such quarters. In order to be misled by demagogues seeking to
demonize one
of its principal benefactors, a body politic must have a suitable
prejudice
available for exploitation. In this respect, Epstein may well have hit
the nail
right on its head. The key question, after all, is not why some
malefactors
might seek to create fuel scarcity, but why people accept irrational
ideas that
let them get away with it. And
so, if the battle for fuel and freedom is to be won, the ultimate
requirement
is for “moral clarity.” He thus concludes: “Here, in a sentence,
is the
moral case for fossil fuels, the single thought that can empower us to
empower
the world: Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous —
because human
life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels
transforms our
environment to make it wonderful for human life.” Well said. If you are
looking
for a gift to send to friends in need of enlightenment this
holiday
season, put this book at the top of your list. —
Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Energy,
a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, and the author
of Energy Victory. The
paperback edition of
his latest book, Merchants of Despair: Radical
Environmentalists, Criminal
Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism,
was
recently published by Encounter Books. |