The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

Author:Alex Epstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00


CLIMATE MASTERY

Even as we are taught to think of ourselves as in mortal climate danger, human beings are progressively becoming masters of climate. There are two components to mastering climate. One is control over the climate you’re in. Two is the ability to make the most of the climate you’re in.

At any point in the last billion years, the Earth has been full of all kinds of different climates with different levels and patterns of heat, cold, precipitation, etc.—and there will always be a wide variety of desirable and undesirable places. But even once human beings came on the scene, with their fantastic brains, they couldn’t choose their climate very easily because of lack of mobility. Thanks to the internal combustion engine, which in 1992 Al Gore said should be outlawed in twenty-five years (i.e., 2017), we can go anywhere, anytime.18

You can also, incidentally, choose more dangerous areas that have other benefits. You can choose to expose yourself to hurricanes and flooding on the coasts because you like other features of the area. Or you can go to blizzard-prone areas because you want to ski and snowboard every day. This is the ultimate climate freedom. And we have this freedom, not just once but (to the extent we can afford it, which is closely related to the affordability of energy) throughout the year.

If you think of climate in a real way, not as some vague, mystical, “global climate” but as the climate around you, you are a master of climate just by virtue of the fact that you can change climates.

Of course, moving is not always easy (especially for the undeveloped world, which I’ll discuss in a moment), but climate changes, even in the worst scenarios proposed by the most alarmist of the failed models, occur over periods of fifty to a hundred years. As with everything else in life, if we need to enhance our ability to do something—such as move—we need to be doubling down on energy production, not restricting it.

Again, mass movement with regard to climate changes seems very unlikely, but it’s still worth mentioning because mobility is desirable, period, for the sake of the pursuit of happiness and because someday, some future generation is going to be faced with a dramatic climate change, and they’ll need the energy and mobility to cope with it.

So fossil fuels give you the climate freedom to move, but as we have seen, they also give you the climate freedom to stay and thrive pretty much anywhere. Cheap, plentiful, reliable energy from fossil fuels amplifies our ability to build an infrastructure that insulates us from nature’s climate dangers and discomforts. And cheap, plentiful, reliable energy from fossil fuels amplifies our ability to enjoy the benefits of a given climate (or multiple climates).

Bottom line: Fossil fuel energy, by enabling us to cheaply build and run wondrous machines that give us the mobility to choose any particular climate and the ability to increase the livability of that climate, has made us masters of climate.



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