Alex Epstein > Quotes

“We don’t want to “save the planet” from human beings; we want to improve the planet for human beings.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“Net-zero policy, if actually implemented, would certainly be the most significant act of mass murder since the killings of one hundred million people by communist regimes in the twentieth century—and it would likely be far greater.”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“The open secret of our relationship to climate is how good we are at living in different climates thanks to technology.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“The more opportunity you have to do what you want with your time, the more opportunity you have to be happy.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“There are two lessons here: First, weather, climate, and climate change matter—but not nearly as much as they used to, thanks to technology. 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. Second, having that technology is useless unless we have the energy to run it.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“The Earth is not a naturally nurturing “delicate balance” but rather a naturally (1) dynamic, (2) deficient, and (3) dangerous place that we must massively impact if we are to survive and flourish.”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“Have you ever, in any mainstream discussion of “climate change,” seen any concern expressed about whether restricting fossil fuel use might increase climate danger by decreasing fossil-fueled climate mastery”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“I live in the United States, in Southern California, which is naturally a near desert where I would have died of drought (or not lived here) in previous generations. But thanks to irrigation, air-conditioning, sturdy homes, and other technological advances (especially high-energy transport, which enables me to trade with people far away for goods I could not create under the local circumstances), this is one of the most wonderful places on Earth to live: I can enjoy warm, temperate, low-humidity weather without the downsides of the desert.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“let’s be clear: If fossil fuels have catastrophic consequences and it makes sense to use a lot less of them, that would be an epic tragedy, given the state of the alternatives right now.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“In one sense, the answer to “Why do we believe the wrong thing about fossil fuels?” is simple. Lack of education. We haven’t been taught all the right facts. We aren’t taught in school how energy makes our climate safer, only how CO2 emissions supposedly make it more dangerous. We aren’t taught in school how energy makes our environment better, only ways (usually exaggerated) in which fossil fuels make it dirtier. We aren’t taught in school how the fossil fuel industry is a resource-creating industry; we are taught that it is shamelessly exploiting dwindling natural resources. If only the truth were taught, the world would be a different place, right?”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“My reading of the evidence is that there is a mild greenhouse effect in the direction human beings have always wanted—warmer—and a significant fertilizer effect in the direction human beings have always wanted—more plant life. I believe that the public discussion is prejudiced by an assumption that human impacts are bad, which causes us to fear and disapprove of the idea of affecting climate, even though climate is an inherently changing phenomenon that has no naturally perfect state.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“There are some quotes from a story in the Los Angeles Times called “Fear of Fusion: What if It Works?” Leading environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin: “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.”13 Paul Ehrlich: Developing fusion for human beings would be “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.”14 Amory Lovins was already on record as saying, “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”15”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“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.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“We are told that rising CO2 levels will cause a “sixth mass extinction”—a species extinction so devastating that we literally won’t be able to live. Given that previous mass extinctions involved phenomena that blocked out massive amounts of light and warmth, like the giant asteroid that left a ninety-three-mile wide, twelve-mile-deep crater 66 million years ago in what is now Mexico, there is an incredibly high bar to claim that an increase in a warming and fertilizing gas will cause mass extinction.”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It’s based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“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 impacts of CO2 is dishonest.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“the public discussion is prejudiced by an assumption that human impacts are bad, which causes us to fear and disapprove of the idea of affecting climate, even though climate is an inherently changing phenomenon that has no naturally perfect state.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“allegedly outweigh it so much with “too much” heat. This is dubious, given the observable increase in plant growth under conditions of increased CO2 and given that the heat predictions are failures. What’s also striking is how, even though we all know that plants live on CO2, almost no one in the culture thinks of potential positive impacts when he thinks about his “carbon footprint.” This is prejudice—the belief that man-made impacts on our environment are necessarily bad, that the standard of value is nonimpact, and that there’s no possibility of improving on Mother Nature.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“The amount of raw matter and energy on this planet is so incomprehensibly vast that it is nonsensical to speculate about running out of it.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“Decline in U.S. Air Pollution Source: U.S. EPA National Emissions Inventory Air Pollutant Emissions Trends Data”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“three crucial, undeniable facts about the benefits of fossil fuels that hold true to this day—and yet are ignored by our knowledge system when it advocates for the rapid elimination of fossil fuels. These facts are: Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy. Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing. Billions of people are suffering and dying for lack of cost-effective energy.”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“Technology enables us to live in practically any climate. Consider that in the United States, a large country, we are home to every type of climate imaginable: from polar Alaska to desert California to swampy Florida to scorching Texas. And yet in each state we have a life expectancy of over seventy-five!11”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“We take the materials around us and make them more valuable; that’s how we went from starving in a cave to producing a cornucopia of food that we can enjoy in comfortable homes. The thought leaders did not sufficiently consider these virtues of human beings.”
― Alex Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“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 an unaltered, untransformed environment is our standard of value, then nothing could be worse than cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. I’m saying that if fossil fuels created no waste, including no CO2, if they were even cheaper, if they would last practically forever, if there were no resource-depletion concerns, the Green movement would still oppose them.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“if you go through the multi-thousand-page IPCC synthesis reports, you will not find any quantification of climate-related disaster deaths. And if you review the world’s leading source of climate disaster data, you will find that it totally contradicts the moral case for eliminating fossil fuels. Climate-related disaster deaths have plummeted by 98 percent over the last century, as CO2 levels have risen from 280 ppm (parts per million) to 420 ppm (parts per million) and temperatures have risen by 1°C.[6]”
― Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

“We often talk about Mother Nature as if it is really our mother—a being that deliberately nurtures us and has our best interests at heart. But it isn’t, and doesn’t. Nature, including the climate, is a wondrous background that gives us the potential for an amazing life—if we transform it.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“Fossil fuels are superconcentrated ancient dead plants. When we burn/oxidize them, we increase the amount of CO2, plant food, in the atmosphere. Thus, on top of getting energy, we should get a lot more plant growth—including growth of the most important plants to us, such as food crops.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“Just like us,” says Bill McKibben, “our crops are adapted to the Holocene, the 11,000-year period of climatic stability we’re now leaving . . . in the dust.”10 This argument does not reflect reality. First of all, the Holocene 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.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“If we look at history, an incredibly disproportionate percentage of valuable ideas have come in the last several centuries, coinciding with fossil-fueled civilization. Why? Because such a 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.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

“Actually it is the top environmentalist intellectuals who lack climate wisdom. Because they are unwilling to think in an unbiased way about the benefits and risks of fossil fuels according to a human standard of value, they are blinded to the fact that the fossil fuel industry is the reason they’re alive and not “helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.”
― Alex J. Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels