Name: Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
ISBN: 9781591847441

Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Could everything we know about fossil fuels be wrong? For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance... Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the risks.

What Hacker News says

dtagamesApr 2022

We're seeing a lot of these crypo-meets-energy stories lately and, while I'm all for stopping the horrible waste and gas flaring that goes on in our country (I'm in Texas), this is a really a PR spin story.

The fact of the matter is that natural gas and methane are available in hundreds of places which appear remotely and often spontaneously during drilling and production. The reason that Exxon and others have not captured and sold that gas is that they did not want to. There have never been any technical limitations on capturing or storing the volumes of combustible gas released every day in our energy industry. The limitation has been that it wasn't viewed as profitable enough.

Burning that gas on site and using it to power crypo mining is the low-hanging fruit of utilizing wasted gas. It could just as easily be converted to electricity using on-site fuel cells to create a charging station for electric cars, for example. It doesn't take a petroleum scientist (or a crypto engineer) to figure out that if burnable gas is coming out of the ground, that gas can be captured, stored, sold to someone, and later burned as electricity or heat. Most children can figure that out, so this is not a big "advance" for the petroleum business.

I say this as a supporter of our use of fossil fuels which are critical to maintaining the standard of life we've come to enjoy. I recommend The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels for background on that viewpoint. But there is much more the industry can do to stop throwing away combustible fuel. The war in Ukraine with energy at its centerpoint is the kind of issue that it will take for US energy companies to focus on maximizing the utilization of the resources we already have and can already exploit in the US. Like other entrenched industries (auto, media), oil companies are recalcitrant to consider or invest a future where the key means of production differ from the ones in which they've sunk costs.

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ComradePhilMar 2022

Not really what you asked for but I think they are more important to gain perspective:

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America by Peter Zeihan

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abtinfJul 2021

What if our best method of dealing with the consequences of climate change is further development? What if a clean environment is the product of industrialization?

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels shows how to think about energy and how to choose the best energy source: https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

An interview with the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip3XoAKRKHs

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runbathtimeJun 2021

It wasn't a rounding error, the wind wasn't blowing, which is the problem with these renewables, they don't work when the wind doesn't blow.

If you are really open to a different framework for analyzing energy policies, I recommend The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein.

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AntiImperialistDec 2020

Understand this basic thing:

Regardless of what we do (or don't), climate can and will change drastically at some point, most likely due to variables we have no control over. It's just a matter of time. It can happen now, it can happen next week, next month, next year, in the next 10 years, next 100 years, next 1000 years, next million years. They say that they know it will be in 5 years or 10 years or some made up number. But no, it's not possible to say for sure. It could very well be tomorrow.

There is absolutely no way to control climate in any meaningful way by doing or not doing something as humans. Even if we did manage to identify the right variables and control it a few times does not mean we'll be able to do it every time.

Environmental change will most likely wipe off our species too, just like it has done to countless other species in the past couple of billion years.

Having said that, we as humans have managed to survive some big environmental changes, like the last ice age when several other species perished. Not all of us will survive but enough of us will.

So, what are some of the climate catastrophes we need to protect ourselves against and are we doing enough to prepare for that?

One big problem today is that most humans don't have access to energy to heat or cool their habitats artificially if the planet warms up or cools down significantly. In developed nations, this is taken for granted but poorer countries lack the infrastructure for it.

Solar, wind and hydro are unreliable if say some climate catastrophe causes sun to be blocked (say because of volcanic clouds or asteroid impact or something similar) and there is no heat or light from the sun. The only good sources are fossil fuels and nuclear. Do we have infrastructure for it spread out around the world so that no matter what part of the earth the asteroid impacts, as long as it doesn't wipe off everything all at once, we can rise again?

What other problems might we face climate-wise? And assuming it happens, are we prepared such that enough of us will survive?

No, we're not thinking about any of that shit because the entire fucking world is hung up on "Global Warming" and "Climate Change", the PR material that CleanTech Industry in the U.S. fabricated to get tax breaks on their investments when they thought that the world was running out of oil... and moved the production to China... except China stole the technology and built upon it... while the U.S. found and perfected fracking... and now China is using the same PR infrastructure to promote selling solar fucking panels and wind turbines... while using their pawns in politics to try to stop fracking and natural gas projects in the U.S. because it hurts Chinese energy business.

Get a grip.

Get a job in the industry. They need technologists in energy industry too.

Read a book or two and widen your view of the subject.

How about "The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America" by Peter Zeihan?

Or just to see another side of it, how about "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" by Alex Epstein?

Anything but repeating this PR nonsense over and over again.

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sparkieOct 2020

Try to look from another lens.

Climate hysterics want to avoid responsibility for the economic damage that their carbon-neutral policies are going to have on society. They want accountability from others, but not themselves. How many have done the calculations to work out the second and third order effects of their zero fossil fuel agenda?

Many of the most ardent callers for climate action are themselves not even climate scientists, but merely offload their thought processing to the intellectuals who are. Almost without fail, neither them, nor the intellectual are educated in economics.

The reality is that nobody can work out the second and effects and so on for these drastic changes, because they have incomplete information. The intellectuals and 'thought leaders' themselves have a fraction of a percent of the actual tacit knowledge that drives economic activity. The knowledge is very widely distributed, which is why central planning is less efficient than the market almost all of the time.

The tension isn't caused by the "status quo" fighting back. It is caused by hysterics calling for action on things they know nothing about. How many extinction rebellion fanatics have read The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels? It's not like they would if they were recommended it - the mere name will put them off because they have a preconceived notion and will ardently resist any information which is likely to cause cognitive dissonance in themselves.

Which tells you everything you need to know.

It isn't intellectualism driving them - it is misplaced fear due to grossly exaggerated climate scare claims, drummed up by the status-quo.

Almost always, it is the same crowds who babble on about equality and wealth distribution too. Many of them from wealthy or middle-classes, who have resources to help the people they claim to want to help, but rarely, if ever, engage in altruistic acts of voluntary work or charity because they'd rather spend the time talking about it. They won't put their own money or action where their mouths are, but demand it of others - many of whom are not in such fortunate positions.

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