Alex Epstein, the author of Fossil Future, takes us to school on fossil fuels. When climate extremists like AOC are warning about the end of the planet, what's the truth? And why are they more concerned about the earth than human life? Also, why is the Biden administration punishing Americans with higher gas prices? Lisa tackles all of these questions and gets you answers with Alex Epstein.
So what do the left war on fossil fuels begin and why did they wage it? And AOC told us that we've got about twelve years to live a couple of years ago, so we've got I guess ten left. Does that mean anything? We're gonna get to all these issues and more with a guy who wrote the book The Case for Fossil Fuels. His new book is called Fossil Future, Alex Epstein, and he also previously wrote the book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. We're gonna get into some of these issues with him. Also, what can we do about rising gas prices in America? I mean, it's pretty obvious that the Biden administration wants to push people towards their green agenda, even though it's causing pain, even though it's hurting Americans, even though gas prices continue to rise. I mean, what did his energy secretary said when she was asked about rising gas prices? She said, Oh, if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you. They don't care about you. They don't care about reducing gas prices and energy prices. They don't care about what's good for us as humans. So we're going to get into so many of these issues with Alex Epstein, the guy who wrote the book about this, he's acknowledged expert of subject matter expert on the issue of fossil fuels. I want him to take us to school today. We're going to get into the history of fossil fuels, how we use them as a country. So I hope at the end of this conversation you not only have a general understanding of fossil fuels, but we all have a deep understanding of fossil fuels. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation. I hope you learn a lot. I know I did so. Alex, thanks so much for joining the show. I appreciate you coming on my pleasure. Thanks for having me. So. You have taken some positions with these books that we're going to get into in the conversation that are short of against the green right now, right like, you're basically evil if you consume fossil fuels. You're a terrible person, and you know you want the destruction of the country and the environment and the entire world is more or less the prevailing the hearative right now, How much hate do you get for taking these positions that you have and making the case for fossil fuels, I don't get enough hate yet. And the reason I say that is because I think that there's a tendency among I mean, I know that there's a tendency among opponents of fossil fuels to want to portray their position as logical, scientific, inarguable, and so what they tend to do is ignore my position because my position, I think is clearly very logical, scientific, and hard to argue with. And so what happened with say, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, my first major book on the topic. It was a New York Times bestseller. It was one of the best selling and the most influential energy books in the decade, and yet the left almost completely ignored it. Uh and more broadly, the anti fossil fuel movement almost completely ignored it. And I think it was because they didn't really have an answer to it. And what we saw with the lead up to Fossil Future, which comes out is that, say the Washington Post, along with small organizations, instead of actually engaging the book, they tried to run a smear campaign accusing me, of all things, of racism, which is particularly bizarresen something individualists, but it really shows that they're afraid of the book and that they have no way of engaging with the content of the book. Well, they'll always find a way, Alex. This is what we know. So I want you to take us to school today and this conversation that we're having. I think a lot of people have a general understanding of fossil fuels, but not a deep understanding of fossil fuels. So my goal is at the end of our conversation that people have a deeper understanding of it. So if we can begin, you know, we obviously know fossil fuels are used for things like powering, you know, engines, electricity, you know, things of that nature. But take us through sort of the history of fossil fuels, how we get them, what we use them for, and how reliant we are on fossil fuels in America. And I'm glad you asked this, since I don't even think most people really know what fossil fuels are. And one way this came up there was somewhat funny to is the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was saying natural gas is not a fossil fuel. This is several years ago, so it just shows we don't know much about this. So the fossil fuel is just they refer to specifically oil, coal, and natural gas. And what things these things are is there a liquid, solid, and gaseous form of what's called the hydrocarbon, which is a set of hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms, along with some other smaller concentrations of other things. And essentially what these things do is they're very very good for generating energy because they store a large amount of chemical energy and a small amount of space or in the case of gas, a low amount of weight. And so when you have energy, it's really good to people to have it in a small amount of space, among other things, because transportation, uh, it really benefits from that. That's why we use oil for over the world's transportation, including things like cargo ships and airplanes that really have no other substitute. So we started using these things. Really, oil, the largest fuel in the world, became started being used in the mid eighteen hundreds, and but the cold before that, gas after that. And the thing that these things could do that nothing else could do and still really nothing else can do as well, is they could provide the most cost effective energy by far, and so energy I think of it as machine calories or machine food. It's the things that our machines eat to run. And to say cost effective means it's low cost, it's reliable, it's versatile, so it can power every form of machine, including those cargo ships and airplanes that I mentioned, which other things can't. And then it's on a global scale, so billions of people in thousands of places. And basically what people found and what industry found is that we can do this amazingly using these deposits of oil, coal, and natural gas, and we don't know how to do it anywhere near as well with anything else. With I think the most promising thing being nuclear, because that's also a very concentrated uh store of energy. But we've we've seen that the same movement, the green movement, that opposes fossil fuels, is also so anti nuclear to the point where they've really held it back by generations, and it's still generations away from replacing fossil fuels, you know, so talk about you previously written the book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, you know, arguing about fossil fuels ability to lift people out of poverty and lift countries out of poverty. Go through for the audience your moral case for fossil fuels, sure things, and and I mean that that case is really replaced and amplified in the new one because I thought that it needed to be made for the future, and it needs to be made better, It needs to be made with all the latest data. So so the basic idea of that and fossil Future are going to be the same. Fossil Future is just much more comprehensive and current and focused on the future. Um But the basic idea is that the basic idea is a method of thinking. So it says, when we're evaluating this issue, what do we do about fossil fuels, we have to carefully look both at the benefits of fossil fuels and at the side effects of fossil fuels. And I argue that what we typically do is that we only look at the side effects, and specifically the negative side effects, and we tend to what I call catastrophies them. So it's not to say fossil fuels don't have negative side effects, but it's one thing to say, hey, fossil fuels have caused one degree of warming, and here the negatives of that, and here the positives is that, but also here the positives of the energy versus saying, you know, the world is terrible, it's unlivable, there's unprecedented everything, etcetera, etcetera. And what I found is it's just simply not true, at least so far, that we have this unprecedented negative climate damage. In fact, if you look overall, we're safer from climate than ever. So even if we've caused more droughts, say, which is dubious, um, drought related deaths are down over the last hundred years in large part because we have the benefits of fossil fuels, such as irrigation, such as drought relief convoys to neutralize and I would argue a master drought. So the basic message of the book is methodologically you have to look carefully at the benefits and the side effects, and if you do that, you find that fossil fuels are amazingly positive, in part because their benefits can neutralize their side effects. Because fossil fuels give you energy. Energy allows you to use machines, and machines allow you to do pretty much anything. So again if you even if you made drought a little bit worse, technically, your capacity to master drought would far outwag that. And that's certainly what we've seen so far. Well. And you know, we've heard from the left to some the points you've made. We've heard from the left say, you know, look, fossil fuels are responsible for sea level you know, in carbon emissions, all this stuff, climate whatever, the sea levels are rising, droughts. AOC told us a couple of years ago, we've got like twelve years left, so that you know, the clock is running here. But but you're making this alternative case that no, you know, fossil fuels are the future, are not sort of some of these alternatives that they're looking at, like you know, solar and wind and what have you. You know, what are they what are they missing? And is it intentional? Um? Yeah, it's really interesting, is it? Is it intentional? So? I think what they're missing are they're seeing the benefits of fossil fuels, including the superior cost effectiveness of fossil fuels to the alternative, and especially to solar and wind, which have all sorts of issues for the foreseeable future. Part of the context here and we're talking about the benefits of fossil fuels, is that energy is crucial for human life, particularly cost effective energy is crucial for human life, and the vast majority of the world uses very little energy by our standards, including one statistic I like to use is that three billion individuals are using less electricity than one of our refrigerators. So you just think about that, like how much refrigerator uses and then there are people their whole life is that say that number one more time for the audience. There are three billion individuals, So if you look at how much electricity they use, it's less than one of our refrigerators. So in their entire life, that's what they're using the equivalent of refrigerator, which means if this happens in real life, like if you have a hospital, they have to choose between having the lights on and refrigerating the vaccines and operating the instruments on the operating table. You have whole billions of people around the world who don't have reliable electricity and so they don't have things like incubators for babies. As when you're thinking about fossil fuels and people are talking about eliminating them. Fossil fuels are of the world's energy, and the world doesn't have nearly enough energy. So you asked what you asked something about the motive, And I think it is important to ask about the motive because you're talking about rapidly eliminating the leading source of energy in a world that needs vastly more, and nobody talks about the benefits that would be lost, even though they're enormous and they involved like the most humanitarian things imaginable. And I think ultimately I mean this, this is what I argue in Fossil Future. It takes a little while to get there, but is that the leaders of this movement, they don't think of benefits in the same way that you or I might in terms of a pro human way. They're not that concerned with human life. They're concerned with eliminating the impact of human life on the rest of the planet. So that's why they're so fixated on how do we get rid of fossil fe is, how do we get rid of nuclear or how do we oppose hydro electric gams. They're so fixated on eliminating our impact versus advancing human life around the world. I think that's the only way somebody knowledgeable can ignore the benefits of fossil fuels to the extent that we see now. I think that's a really interesting and good point, you know. So, But when we look at this war that the left is waged on fossil fuels, and we saw with Obama, you know, the war Uncole. We've seen the Biden administration essentially laugh in the faces the people struggling with gas prices, saying, oh, just get an electric car, you know whatever. But when did this war begin and why do you think it began? So that there are different phases of the war. I mean, in a sense there's been hostility towards fossil fuels for over a century in the sense of opposition to big business, but really the modern opposition, the idea that we need to eliminate it for the sake of quote, the environment or the planet, that really begins in the late sixties and early seventies, and it did have consequences. Then it was part of the cause of the energy crisis because guess what, there was a big pipeline back then. This was an Alaskan pipeline and guts who eliminated it or who stopped it for a while was actually Richard Nixon. So Richard Nixon interestingly stopped a pipeline, and he also imposed price controls, So basically he restricted the supply and then he artificially lowered the price, and so he created shortages, which, by the way, is exactly what today's Democrats are doing, right because they're stopping a pipeline and now this week they're talking about price controls in terms of the president should be able to say you can't raise gasoline prices beyond this point, regardless of supply and the man. So that's an interesting parallel. But however that it was in the sixties and seventies, it's gotten much much worse today, I think because the modern anti fossil fuel environmental movement really took over the schools, which ultimately means taking over the media as well, because the media members go to the schools, and so by the time on born in, I think mine was the first generation really indoctrinated in this fully, you know. But my generation now is leading the media, and what we're doing is we're saying, yeah, we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. That's priority number one, and it's gotten to the point where the number one goal espoused by companies, by governments, by leaders is eliminate fossil fuels rapidly. That they'll often call it net zero or carbon neutral by but that just means eliminate fossil fuels very rapidly, which is really scary to me, because again they're not thinking about the benefits of fossil fuels, and they're they're real focus is how do we eliminate human impact versus advancing human life. We're gonna take a quick commercial break more with Alex Epstein after the break, walk through the damage on human impact. If we reach some of the goals that the Biden administration and Democrats want to set out of being oh, we're going to be you know, carbon zero at whatever, you know, two thousand whatever, what's the impact of all of that on humans? I mean, if you look at the fact that I have in fossil future, you won't believe what I would say. I mean, let's you really know those sects, because it really means killing billions of people prematurely. There's simply no way of getting around that. And part of what I show is that if you look at what human life was like before we had low cost, reliable energy for a lot of people. You know, our average life expectancy is thirty uh was very high death rate, very little opportunity, very low income. The planet can support very few people. And the reason is because the planet, contrary to what we're told, is not a very nice place to live absent human beings being very very productive. And to be productive, we can't just use our physical bodies. We need machines. And so when you hear these proposals to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels in a world that needs far more energy, when there is no alternative that can provide energy at today's scale, let alone the needed scale for tomorrow, that just means billions of people are going to be less productive, which means they're going to be poor, which means they're going to die early. We're already seeing this when we talk about Green New Deal and Biden plants. Tiny versions of this have been implemented by Europe, and look what happens to their fuel prices. Look at what happens to their security, because you start to if you don't produce fossil fuels yourself, you depend on agents states like Russia, and we're just at the beginning. So we we've been trying this and already we're seeing the pain of far higher prices for for fuel, of far higher prices for electricity. But I just want to stress there is no viable alternative to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. By far, the most promising alternative is nuclear. That's still generations away from global scale, and that is also opposed by the anti fossil fuel movement, so it's really it's a murderous movement. Now part of this is it won't happen. So one point I make at the end of Fossil Future is the whole world is not going to do this. I mean, obviously China and Indian Russia won't do it, but we won't do it either, because we will cause these catastrophes getting there. But but my goal is not I don't want to just cause catastrophes and learn and not do the ultimate apocalypse. I want to actually improve America, particularly because we're in a world where China and Russia are going to avidly pursue fossil fuels, and that puts US at a strategic and ultimately existential disadvantage. Well, it isn't that kind of the joke of what's going on right now that we are not doing the things in America to produce, you know, more oil and energy, yet we are relying on hostile nations who are going to do it in a less keen, clean manner that we could do it here in the United States. Yes, and so one way of thinking of this is people are very clear that they want to destroy fossil fuels, and they're not serious at all about what would replace it. Because you really want in the replacement, you would actually look to hey, is there anything on the market that can provably replace fossil fuels before you started talking about restricting them. But instead, look at what Biden did. What's his first action just shutting down a pipeline. What's his second action on energy is um is banning leasing on federal lance. And notice that he destroyed America's ability to produce fossil fuels. But he did not do anything to replace fossil fuels effectively because he doesn't know because there isn't anything on the timetable. He he claims that that he wants, but we still need the fossil fuel. So then what happens He suddenly realizes that, and so now he's begging to every dictator around the world, hey can I have some more fossil fuel? And what we're seeing this with Europe on an even greater scale because they've been been even less wise than we have. Well, and Trump warned about that when he was president, and I remember he gave the u n speech in two thousand eighteen and he specifically said that reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. Was also warning about Nordstream too, and warning Germany to not engage in that with Russia. And now, you know, to your point, Europe's really struggling right now on this very issue because they ignored Trump and instead actually laughed in his face about all of this. Yeah, I definitely agreed with him when he said that there's actually there are actually quite a few good things in that speech that he gave, and it it was it was ridiculed. Another aspect of up the security thing, which again shows that the opponents of fossil fuels are not at all serious about energy, is that the alleged replace but for fossil fuels, which is unreliable, solar and rent which which is a terrible replacement for the foreseeable future. For reasons we can discuss. But an obvious thing is the whole entire supply chain depends on China, particularly what's called the processing of the raw mind materials. They do a lot of mining that, they do even more of the processing of raw materials. And so you have that entire thing where China can cut it off at a moment's notice. And yet China is in many ways hostile. It wants to be the dominant superpower by and we are talking about an energy future that is overwhelmingly controlled by China, which is totally different to say, than fossil fuels, which we can produce in very large quantities domestically and trade with a bunch of allies to get. So what can we do, you know, today, if Biden wanted to, which obviously doesn't because his intent is to drive us away from fossil fuels. I mean, his energy secretary when asked about gas prices is if you know, if you drive an electric card, this would not be affecting you. So clearly they want Americans. I mean, I mean, let's be honest, they want Americans to suffer because they want to push people towards this green agenda that they have. But let's say we live in a world where the president actually cares about the suffering of the American people, actually wants to drive down gas prices, energy prices. What can be done today to to reduce that burden on so many people who are really struggling right now financially. I think it's it's it's very very clear and simple, and everyone wants to evade it because most of the people cause the problem. But the very simple thing is Congress, and I'm emphasizing Congress. You know, along with the President, they need to pass a bill that commits the government to stop destroying and threatening fossil fuel production, transportation, and investment in the United States. We have this concerted campaign to stop production, to stop transportation, to stop investment, and it really we really need to have laws that that's say that we are going to be free to do this, that we reject the Paris Agreement, we reject net zero row because as long as you have these threats, what's going to happen is the industry is rightly not going to invest as much as it otherwise would in production, because why would you invest in something that our government has openly said they're going to destroy. So this is the lie about Biden, is that I mean his he claims he's not doing anything negatively to negative affect the industry. That's a lie one because he's been participating in the movement for fifteen plus years to restrict production, transport and investment in the stuff. But also his he ran on I guarantee you we will end fossil fuel. What do you think that does to the confidence of an industry. Investment happens based on confidence in future profitability. If you threaten the future profitability of the industry, Uh, then it is not going to invest as much, nor should it invest as much, because it has a duty to its shareholders. Not too so. I talked to a lot of people in the oil industry. It's very simple. If they had a guaranteed stable environment where they could drill and explore and off it and not be not have the threat, not have the threat of destruction by government, of course they would expand production. They want to make money and they want to produce energy for America and the world. You can look at states like California that have moved towards, you know, some of this green energy stuff, and they've had rolling blackouts and things like that, you know, and I believe their prices have increased exponentially as well. Talk a little bit about California. Is that an accurate assessment? Take us through that a little bit. Yeah, I'm I live in California, so I've I've experienced this and I had to well, I love Florida, I love the I love the weather here, and I live in the Gunda Beach, which is somewhat isolated from from some of this stuff. But yeah, I mean I remember in you know, I had two virtual events, which is part of how I make my living, and both of them had to be moved because of blackouts. Uh here, So what's going The basic thing to understand? So, so you were right about the basic submarine, But the basic thing is we're trying to replace fossil fuels as well as nuclear and hydro which are controllable, reliable sources of electricities. That means you can get them on demand when you need them in the quantities that you need them. And so what happens is we're trying to replace that with uncontrollable, unreliable solar and wind. Well, but if you have something that's unreliable and with solar and wind they can go near zero at almost any time, what that means is you need a reliable backup. So what that means is you have to pay for the reliable grid plus the unreliable infrastructure on top of that. That puts pressure on prices, and so what people tend to do sometimes is that they will reduce the reliable electricities. In California was shut down, a big nuclear plant was shut down, a bunch of natural gas plants, and I call this reliability chicken. We try to shut down as many reliable power plants as we can, have as much unreliable solar and wind as we can, and then we hope it doesn't get too hot, it doesn't get too cold, and the sun shines a lot, there's not too many clouds, and the wind blows a lot. So it's really a primitive lifestyle right where you're you're kind of gambling on the weather. And part of how we survive in California with this arrangement is we import a lot of electricity from our more reliable neighbors. But there was a heat wave, wind died down, our neighbors wanted more of their electricity, and so we had statewide blackouts. But this is even more going to happen in the future if our neighbors emulate us, which they're starting to. So this whole scheme of unreliable solar and wind, these are right now are parasites on the broader grid that add cost and when you try to reduce costs, they undercut reliability. And I think the exact same thing has happened in Texas taking quick break more on the case for fossil fuels with our except signs stay with us, you know. And so the core argument to the left with alternative energy is that it's better for the environment, is it? So my background is philosophy. I don't like the term better for the environment because it's it's deliberately vague. Does it mean a better environment for is it better for a human environment? Like does it make the world a better place for human beings? Or is it better for an environment that has fewer human beings having less impacts? So what I think of it is I want a world where human life is really good. I call this advancing human flourishing around the world. And by that standard, fossil fuels make the world a far better environment because they make us far more productive and prosperous. The world is a much more abundant and safe place. And it's also a lot cleaner, which people don't realize, but you know, naturally say water is dirty and distant, you know, we make it clean and nearby through purifying it and pumping it. You think about something even like air pollution. The places in the world with the worst air pollution are places that have indoor pollution from wood and animal done because they have primitive fuels. And we know, and this is shown all throughout fossil future, is that we can reduce emissions of standard air pollution dramatically while increasing use of fossil fuels dramatically. The United States has proven that this is doable. So basically, you cannot have a good environment for human beings, including a clean and safe environment, without a lot of fossil fuel. Now, the claim that you hear is, oh, well, it's destroying quote the climate. But as I mentioned before, fossil fuels help you protect yourself from climate so and and we have very strong data on this because we've been burning fossil fuels for a long time. We have very good data on what's called climate related disaster deaths, the number of people who die from climate related disasters for the last hundred years, and we've seen that rate go down, which means that you are one is likely to die from a climate related disasters such as a drought, storm, flood, wildfire, et cetera. So it's amazing, as I like to put it, fossil fuels haven't taken a safe climate and made it dangerous. They've taken a dangerous climate and made it safe. Is wrong. Well, that's kind of the obvious thing. But she's the most interesting thing about that prediction though, which I talked about in chapter or is You know what she said was, scientists are telling us the world is going to end in twelve years, and you're asking us about the price. It's something very close that, you know, you're talking about the price and the idea is that, oh, the price of energy? Who cares about that when we're talking about the livability of the planet, the future planet. But the point I make is the planet is not livable without low cost, reliable energy because then we have. If we don't have that, then we can't use machines, We have to use manual labor, and we have to live in nature. And I don't think AOC would want to be in one of the places that's using less, where the people use less electricity than one refrigerator of ours. Well, you know, also, I get frustrated with you know, they always say, well, the science has settled on this, the science has settled on this when they push their you know, religion and their agenda. But science is never settled. And I think what we saw, particularly with you know, COVID, is that we're allied to quite a bit as well. I have a couple of issues with the way that that term is used because I think that the first thing is what do you mean by the science here? What the allegedly scientific question that's settled? And what happens is the question people? The question that is quote settled in any way. We can talk about how much is the idea that human beings have some impact on climate primarily due to the if CO O two emissions when we burn fossil fuels, and I do agree with that, but that has that that agreement in so far as it exists, so you could also argue, Okay, well it could be wrong, and you can argue that, but even if it is true, that doesn't mean that it's settled that we need to get rid of fossil fuels, because it doesn't even say that the climate impacts are bad, let alone so bad that we should deprive billions of people of the benefits of fossil fuels. So this in philosophy, that's called an equivocation. They're going from, fossil fuels have some climate impacts, that settled. Two, we should rapidly get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with unreliable solar and wind, which is not remotely settled. And I would actually argue that it's settled that we shouldn't do that if you look at the facts, because the benefits of fossil fuels are so well known, so massive, and the potential negative side effects on climate can't be that bad because we're so good at mastering climate. And they're talking about, oh, it's warmed one degree since the eighteen hundreds, and if it warms two degrees, the whole world is gonna end. I mean, how could that possibly be possible given that the world is amazingly better at one degree warmer. So you mentioned religion. There is really a primitive religious view that the earth is perfect without us and that everything we do ruins it. And that's part of why people think, oh, yeah, if it warms one more degree, the earth is going to be terrible. No, the earth has been, has been fourteen degrees celsius warmer before and life thrived. It's had fifteen times more CEO two and life thrives. It's a different world, it's more tropical world. But this idea that our impact is ruining the world, that's a primitive, anti human religious view. It's not a it's not a scientific view. You're obviously, you know, very passionate and knowledgeable about fossil fuels. What are your interest in this originally? You know, when when did you start sort of taking up this mission of making the case for fossil feels to the public. So it started very unexpectedly about fifteen years ago. Now, so my my background is philosophy, so I'm really hopefully it comes out, but I'm fairly obsessed with how do you think logically about issues? And I like to step back a lot and think about Hey, what are our thinking methods? Do they make sense? So? Does it make sense the only look at the negative side effects of those? No? What are our assumptions? Are we assuming the Earth is perfect without us? Is that a true assumption? No? What are our values? Is our goal to advance human flourishing on Earth? Or is it to eliminate human impact on our So I think a lot about methods, assumptions, and values, which are all part of philosophy. And I wrote about all sorts of issues, and I never found one that I really wanted to become an expert on. But energy really appealed to me because it's so fundamental because energy is the industry that powers every other industry. It really is, or the technology that powers every other technology, So the decisions about it are so important and pretty clear. It pretty early became clear to me that our philosophy about energy is terrible because it's really based on this terrible methodist thinking of only looking at side effects. It has this totally false assumption that the Earth is perfect without us. It's not focused on advancing human flourishing. And so I thought there was a tremendous opportunity to really re educate the world from a pro human perspective about the full benefits and side effects of fossil fuels. And you know, fifteen years later, I finally achieved it with Fossil Future. It took a long time to really understand all of this, but I mean not to say that I won't learn more, but I think I really have it all worked out now where it's obvious that we need more fossil fuels and that the anti fossil fuel movement is really a very deadly movement for the world end in particular for America's security. And how many jobs are tied to the fossil fuel industry, Well, you have different estimates. So sometimes you'll you'll see some trade associations say, well, there are nine million jobs indirectly, but I would say every job is tied to it, because name a job doesn't use machines even directly, let alone indirectly to produce the things that are part of that. So what machines are just amazing because they make human beings far more productive and prosperous. So every industry that we have depends on the ability to use machines to produce value. If energy becomes too expensive, you can't use machines, you default to more manual labor, or what often happens now is you just offshore to China. So because they're using huge percentage of coal for their electricity, fossil fuels more broadly provide over of their energy and so, yeah, well it's really scary. Is another reason it's scary for us to unilaterally stop using fossil fuels, because then our industry becomes uncompetitive, and then we have less and you know, there are fewer job opportunities here and more and more of our economy depends on other places, but with us being you know, us making ourselves less and less productive. So it's a very precarious situation, particularly because we're the world's superpower, and our security not only depends on us, but the world security depends on us. And one of the keys to security is a really really powerful economy, and without low cost, reliable energy, you cannot have that. Did anything surprise you in your research? Did you learn anything new in the process of writing the book? I learned a lot of stuff in the process. One thing I talked about at the beginning of it, which is um the very beginning of it, is that I was a little bit out of the issue for a few years between the moral case and fossil future, and I actually expected that fossil future, that moral case wasn't as right as it was, because I thought, Okay, for sure, given everything I'm hearing in the media, climate stuff must have gotten worse, considerably worse, and the ability to replace fossil fuels of soul and when maybe it's really happening, like I was, just I was a little bit out of it, and I was just following the media, and it was so overwhelming that even I thought, oh, yeah, maybe maybe this is more right than I thought. And then I looked at it and then it turned out of more wrong than I thought. In particular, I had had a philosopher working with me, and he really helped me think about these issues in a very pro human way. And so one thing I noticed with let's say the climate issue, is that I was too much assuming that c O two was all bad, that US causing warming, and I knew plant growth was good, but US causing warming was all bad. When you look at the data, we have five times more cold related deaths in the world than heat related death and if you look at the science. When the world warms, it warms more in colder regions than in warmer regions, So there's a lot of reasons to regard warming as desirable. And what this cluded me and on was we really have this view that human impact is bad and that view needs to be checked and it's it even existed some in me. So in Fossil Future, I think got much more consistent in having a pro human view and not having any of the anti human bias that's so easy to pick up in our culture. Is there anything else you want to leave the audience with before we go? Yeah, I would say that the we're really at a tremendous point right now. That is precarious, but there's also a big opportunity because we have this energy crisis which is getting worse. But the one silver lining of it is there is an educational opportunity because people can see that the establishment that's telling us, hey, stop investing in fossil field, stop producing them, stop transporting them, that is clearly leading to a lot of bad consequences, and we're experiencing that. People are experiencing that, of course with gasoline prices, with electricity prices, with with blackouts, so I think there's a new openness to hey, maybe there's something wrong with this anti fossil fuel movement UM, and that leads to an openness to be educated. And so I would I would h encourage people check out Fossil Future. You can. You can pre order or just learn about it at fossil future dot com and um, if you get it before I guess it comes out on May twenty. To get it before then, there's a bunch of a sational resources that you'll get, including people might be interested. I have a really interesting conversation with a billionaire investor and futurist Peter Tile, as well as with Palmer Lucky, who if people haven't heard of as an amazing guy, he's a he found it Oculus, he sold it for billions of dollars to Facebook. But most importantly, he runs the most pro America pro technology defense company right now, and he and I talked about what energy means for our country's security. So I'm really just trying to give the world this incredible energy re education from a pro human perspective, and I think the world is more open to it than ever. So if you're probably open to it, if you're listening to the show, but even you might have friends who are more open to this kind of thing than they would have been in the past. Well, Alex, I know I've learned a ton from you today. This has been a very fascinating and interesting conversation. I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. Everyone go out and get the book Fossil Future. Alex, thanks so much, appreciate your time. Thank you. There was such an interesting conversation. I'n't have you, but I learned so much about fossil fuels. I wanted Alex to take us to school. He did. I learned so much. I want to thank you guys at home for listening. I also want to thank John Cassio, my producer. We worked really hard to put this podcast together and if you wouldn't mind, it really appreciate it. If you go to Apple, rate us five stars, leave us a review, and please share this podcast with your friends, your family, shared on social media. Any amplification is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for listening to the Truth with Lisa Booth.