Alex Epstein - The Energy War | SRS #026

as the national average of gasoline. approaches five dollars a gallon. i thought it would be a good idea to. have our next guest on alex epstein who. is a fossil fuels philosopher. guys we are in an energy crisis this is. actually a global. energy war this is tying into why. inflation's running rampant sign into a. lot of things in this episode we discuss. how. china is involved. talk about the green new deal green.

initiative. what that means how it affects us all. that good stuff guys if you want to pick. up alex's new book which is already an. amazon bestseller and it hasn't even. been released yet releases on the 24th. of this month links below also. i've talked about many times we are. having problems reaching the audience i. don't even know how much time i have. left on this platform so. what we're doing. doing an email newsletter we don't spam. we only.

release the newsletter when there's a. new srs episode i'd appreciate if you. sign up if you want to be notified you. don't want to miss an episode sign up. like i said it's only like two emails a. month anyways and if not that's cool too. but hey this is an important episode i. hope you guys like it i love you all. thank you for all the support and if you. can leave us a review on itunes. excuse me. hey excuse me this is private property.

[Music]. right now the united states is in an. energy crisis a bad one this is a global. energy war that's happening right now. we're losing and the only country that's. going to benefit out of all this is. china the energy industry is the. industry that powers every other. industry to the extent energy is cheap. plentiful and reliable human beings.

thrive. to the extent energy is unaffordable. scarce or unreliable human beings suffer. it's so bad the united states should. learn from the failed experiment. instead our president is doubling down. on it and just as ominously he's calling. for even the poorest countries to use. unreliables instead of reliables this in. a world where three billion people have. almost no access to energy but since. unreliable energy can't be relied upon.

it has to be propped up by reliable. energy mostly fossil fuels the solar. panels and wind turbines are an. unnecessary and enormous cost to the. system mr epstein are you a scientist. no philosopher you're a philosopher yes. okay. well. this is the environment and public works. committee i think it's interesting we. have a philosopher here talking about an. issue it's to teach you how to think. more clearly well you don't have to. teach me how to think more clearly. you don't have to try running for the.

senate on your platform i think you. should be grateful and i think it is a. crime a moral crime that you are damning. anyone by association and i wish senator. whitehouse were here because what he is. doing to the free speech of those of. those companies and anyone associated. with it is unconstitutional i think he. should apologize or resign. what's going on patreon.

[Music]. join me on vigilance elite patreon. for a live video teleconference. alex epstein. welcome to the show man thank you. so. i believe there is somewhat of an energy. war going on in between throughout the. world and with the with the rising. prices and fuel and electricity and. everything that basically that has to do.

with fossil fuels. which is also. driving inflation i thought you would be. the perfect guest to come on and speak. about this. so. you are in. energy theorist slash philosopher. you're the author of two books newest. one coming out. may 24th you got it fossil future. and um so go pick up a copy of this. and uh you're the.

founder of the center for industrial. progress. so. again welcome to the show i'm really. looking forward to this i think it's. like we're at the perfect moment to. discuss this issue i happen to have a. book coming out but i think it's really. that that's just a pivotal moment in. terms of our country's history as it. relates to energy did you time this. perfectly or is this just a coincidence. which my publisher would be the first to. tell you is i. they would consider me a perfectionist i.

would just say i had a certain vision. for the book. and i kept thinking it would be three. months away for a couple years oh man. well originally i was going to revise my. first book the moral case for fossil. fuels and then i just thought well i've. learned 10 times as much i know much. more about the issue. everything has changed in the world so. i'm just going to totally redo it and do. something much better and yeah so it. ended up they were supposed to take two. months at the beginning and then it took. three years. so it happens to be.

that everything i was predicting when i. was writing the book. turns out to have come true so the book. has a lot of warnings about you know. look if you follow these bad policies. you're going to have an energy crisis. but now it's coming out during the. energy crisis that it talks about so. it's even more. it makes it even more. clearly true to the reader because. there's no speculation what i predicted. and what i talk about is already. happening in europe and it can clearly. get much worse how long have you been. working on this book.

so i've been working on the issue for 15. years so i really think of it as i mean. a book is just that's just a way of. communicating something i've been. thinking about this issue of energy. and how to think about it in a pro-human. way which is i think something that will. come up but like how do you think about. in a way that's really focused on. advancing human life around the world. which i think actually most energy. thinking is not focused on even though. it pretends to be and then also how do. you look at what i call the full context. so looking when you're looking at say. fossil fuels and alternatives you look.

carefully at the benefits and the. negative side effects whereas i think. there's a tendency today to just look at. the negative side effects of fossil. fuels and nuclear for that matter and. then only look at the benefits of solar. and wind so that's that's why i think. it's relevant that i'm a philosopher by. background is i'm very obsessed with. before i start thinking about something. what's the method and like what i call. the framework that i'm going to use to. think about the issue and i think if you. my basic idea is if you think about it. in a pro-human way and you really look.

at the full context it's actually. obvious that the world needs more fossil. fuels even though that's 180 degree. opposite. to what we're told yeah. and i can't wait to dive in but first. every guest. gets a gift i already got some gummy. bears well. any guesses. any guesses to what's in here yeah. is there a different gift for every gift. oh there's a customer no yes you never. know what it's gonna be.

hmm well i don't think you knew that i. was into jiu jitsu when you would have. procured a gift for me no. uh it doesn't feel like oil i do know. you're into fossil fuels you do know i'm. into fossil fuels okay is it a fossil. oh my god more gummy bears more gummy. bears well those are probably the last. ones of the stash oh my god you know for. at least for a while but this is gonna i. gotta consume these after the book tour. because i'll be i'll be dysfunctional. but i like them so much i'll just eat.

all of them but uh. wow thank you yeah you're welcome of. course the packaging made of fossil. fuels that's right. that's right and they were delivered. all right where do i put where do i put. my box just. just throw it yeah just throw it behind. you wherever you want wherever you want. to put your gift all right thank you. but um. all right so. once again fossil future it's already an. amazon best seller and it.

it's good it's already creating. controversy watching that washington. post already personally attacked you. tried to get you canceled what what was. that. you want to go into that at all. yeah so just i i think it's useful for. people to be able to put themselves in. the position of this so just imagine i. know most people aren't authors but. imagine you know you write a book and. it's like okay your publicist sends the. book. to. uh different outlets right then the. washington post is a major outlet so of. course it makes sense that they're going.

to do that. what you don't expect is i woke up one. monday morning and my publicist says hey. look at the washington post just sent us. an outline of a piece they're going to. release on wednesday this is monday. and they they're saying as a courtesy. they'll allow you to comment and so the. piece is a is an outline with quotes. accusing me of being a racist saying. that because i am a racist. you shouldn't listen to my views on. fossil fuels. so. i knew i wasn't a racist so and also.

is that how you argue against a book on. fossil fuels is like you call someone a. race so like i knew this was a hit piece. right and then i look into it and what. they did is they. they work with a group called documented. and documented is not about documenting. it's about destroying so what they do is. they try to look up your whole past. everything you've ever done or created. and then find something controversial so. in my case when i was a freshman and. sophomore at duke university i wrote. some very individualist articles i want. to emphasize individualist articles.

about the issue of culture and i said. specifically that i regarded western. culture as superior because it is the. culture that valued individuals. regardless of skin color and gave them. freedom and i argued that everyone. around the world should emulate this but. in the washington post's warped world. view this is racist even though it's the. opposite of racist and i was very clear. but what they did is they took they took. various things and then they got some. academics to say yes this is racist and.

so then the idea is imagine you know it. is not good it's really bad to be called. a racist in general but by the. washington post one of the most powerful. media institutions in the world. like that could easily get pressure put. on the publisher to cancel the book. resellers can say hey i don't want to. sell this a book by this racist right. and so once once you have a story that. washington post is saying you're racist. and literally using that language that. is a very dangerous thing to have out. there yeah and.

i for an hour or two i was like what am. i gonna do about this because i thought. okay what what happens if i if i comment. to the author. and it's like well clearly the story is. intended to destroy me they didn't want. to understand me and so if i give them a. comment they'll either ignore it or. they'll just mangle it and distort it. like they distort everything else so i. knew that wouldn't work and what if i. say no comment then they say oh we. reached out to alex epstein for comment. and he had nothing to say. and then i'm also endorsing the story so. like no matter what i did in the. conventional way of responding i would.

be endorsing the story so i thought okay. the only thing i can do. is i'm going to publicly comment. preemptively so i'm going to tell the. world hey there is a hit piece that is. falsely going to smear me as racist. intending to cancel me and the. washington post should fire the author. and they should apologize to me and they. should explain why they're never gonna. how they're gonna reform so they don't. do this again so i created a one hour. video where i just. i don't know if you saw this thing but. like i refuted this idea this piece.

beyond what anyone could ever do like. you could not watch this video and think. there was any. any credibility this piece and it got it. was pretty viral got two million. impressions on twitter uh my friend. michael shellenberger who's running for. governor of california with with my. support by the way he mentioned it on. joe rogan's show so it got a lot of. attention there and wednesday came when. they're supposed to publish the piece. wasn't published that was interesting. it's like thursday wasn't published. friday so they published a version the. next wednesday but it was stripped of. about 90 of the bad stuff including.

there was no references to racism so i. really considered a victory because i. was able to preempt this hit piece that. was really going to try to cancel me and. it really took almost all of its power. away and so the lesson i took. was. you know when you get when somebody's. trying to do a hit piece and you get. wind of it don't comment privately and. don't fail to comment comment publicly. and preemptively if you're in. if you're in the right so that's that's. what happened i guess there's the. question of why are they doing this and.

i think. because they're afraid yeah it's that's. good knowledge for everybody to have is. yeah you know being canceled it's. becoming more and more of a thing it's. part of why i spent time on it because i. had seen other people with the so. sometimes someone gets canceled and they. did a lot of stuff wrong that's a. different kind of situation but here. like i was 100 clear i did not do what. they said and this was totally unjust. and i know that happens to a lot of. people and they just sort of wait for. the story to come out and they try to. fight it or they sue the people once. it's out in a huge institution it's out.

it's really they're where they're going. to print a retraction on page 30. in a month. or on some obscure portion of their. their website yeah so i wanted to to try. this idea and fortunately it worked and. so yeah i did i wanted to provide a. model for other victims of these unjust. cancellation attempts. you're the only person i know that's. beating that that's incredible. um the other thing i wanted to bring up. is i found out that so the chinese have.

contacted you and they wanted they. not all of them they. they wanted to. they wanted you to redact a lot of the. stuff in your book correct yeah yeah so. i got a i got a. quote-unquote generous offer from a. state-owned chinese publisher. and so the way it works is. uh well first of all i was reluctant to. publish in china at all because i was. asking like what can the government like. the government's going to look over this. and they can change stuff and what but. the the state-owned publisher beat me to.

it because they had several sections of. the book. guess what the sections that were. critical of china and called it a. dictatorship that doesn't respect rights. and in some cases called it a threat. and they said like basically we suggest. deleting this. and i just said no. i said here i'm not publishing with you. and that's it. um. and you know you just think about. how. the only thing notable about this. because i think it's pretty. straightforward right that you don't.

want to participate in a regime that is. engaged in the censorship of ideas. what's unusual what's the only notable. is that it's so rare that people do this. because we have so many businesses that. are just that have no. there's no real. set of principles to them i guess. because like if you're in the business. of ideas. like i ideas only work if you're allowed. to express them openly and discuss them. openly. it can't be that somebody gets to say no. this aspect i don't want to talk about.

and they think oh i could make a lot of. money and they won't be getting all the. ideas but just like no i want to be. clear this is not an acceptable way to. run a government and this government in. particular is. i believe in many ways hostile now there. are i praise china in certain ways for. doing more rational things on energy. than we do so i think it's very possible. the book could have become a massive. bestseller. in china but i just want to be clear. with the people of china like those of. you who want and there are many good. people in china those of you who like. care about freedom and certainly the.

people in taiwan like i stand with you i. do not stand with this government yeah. yeah that's a good way to put it. man i can't i just can't believe how. many waves this is creating already well. this is just this is just it hasn't even. come out yeah right so the theory i. don't know there's this kind of. interesting issue why did this happen. because the washington post like they. invested a bunch of resources to do this. piece. on me right and so in a lot of people. watching this probably most people. watching this have never heard of me so.

it's like why are you going after it's. not like they're going after jordan. peterson or something i mean i'm sure. they have or would in different ways but. it's not it's not an obvious person to. go after a famous famous congressperson. um but i think what what they've started. to pick up on is i've been having a lot. of influence in the world of energy that. that's starting to become known. nationally and in particular i work with. a lot of elected officials and staff and. there have been a couple of stories. about how my messaging has been used by. them and how i'm trying to influence.

their policy and having some success and. i think that's great you know i want. those stories out there i think. because this is part of my life's work. as i'm trying to have better thinking. about energy better ways to talk about. it and better policy. but. so that's great but what worries the. existing side. is i come at it from a very like logical. and pro-science perspective and part of. my perspective is i do believe that. fossil fuels co2 emissions impact. climate. and they want to cast everyone who.

opposes them as a so-called climate. change denier. whereas my view is that the benefits of. fossil fuels far far outweigh any. negatives of their climate impacts just. like you know a good prescription drug. the benefits far outweigh the negatives. of any side effects. and they don't have an answer to that. that's the bottom line like when you. actually look at the full context of. fossil fuels they're incredibly positive. and they don't have an answer to this. but their whole identity is around. fossil fuels being evil so what they.

really hate is somebody who's logical. and pro-science and articulate and. starting to be influential like they. don't want that and that's why they. pulled the racism card yeah. it's it's just it's that's like the. go-to play on everything that they don't. agree and the other one is science. tonight right so they they the problem. is they couldn't use science denier very. well because i'm clearly not that. so but yeah that the so racism like oh. this guy wrote something and it. mentioned skin color so maybe we can.

twist it somehow to be. yeah. like once you point it out it's absurd. so but but if you don't point it out and. you let them do it and you react then. again it's it's a problem. well moving on. you're talking about. i want to go into the green new deal the. green initiative. and help me and my audience understand. that a little bit better and. i'm sure you can give a great. explanation on that then we'll move into. the benefits of fossil fuels and all the.

stuff that that that initiative is. overlooking so. could you just. give us an overview of green new dl. green initiative. better yeah for sure so i think that. like the green new deal. is a term. that sort of captures the current. leading global energy agenda right now. and i think the the. the broadest way to put it. is it's the rapid elimination of fossil. fuels that's really the goal and and you. want to put it a little bit more.

precisely it's it's the rapid. elimination of co2 emissions or. greenhouse gas emissions but i'll just. say co2 emissions because that's the. main greenhouse gas so. involved here so. the basic view is. um. co2 emissions from fossil fuels are. quote destroying the planet through. catastrophic climate change and so we. need to rapidly eliminate them so that's. kind of step one. it's then interesting i want to. highlight step two and this goes to the.

green in green new deal step two is we. need to replace them specifically with. solar and wind right it's overwhelmingly. solar and wind specifically with green. energy i just want to highlight that for. a second because you could believe that. we faced catastrophic climate change. from co2 emissions and you could be open. to all alternatives regardless of. whether they were classified as green or. not for example you'd be open to nuclear. and hydro which nuclear is almost never. considered green and hydra these days is. rarely considered green so i just want.

to point out this this is should strike. people as weird that we care so much. about co2 emissions and yet we insist on. just the sun and the wind yeah right. we're not willing to split the atom or. dam a river. and whatever just as a as a preview like. what i think is going on there. is for them green is a religious idea. it's it's the idea that our impact on. the planet is immoral and so we should. eliminate all of our impact on the. planet that's really what green means at.

the core like minimize or eliminate. impact and i think that's they think of. the sun and the wind as natural and so. what it's really about is a more natural. world it's not it's not about. it's not specifically about eliminate. the problems caused by fossil fuels but. still have really good energy it's. really about a more natural way of life. and i think that's that's the only thing. that can explain why they're so hostile. to nuclear and hydro which don't emit. co2 and are much more practical. uh and successful in practice than solar.

wind but the the basic sort of the core. of it so it's like you're eliminating. the co2 emissions and then and then. you're replacing it with overwhelmingly. solar wind and so when you saw the green. new deal in the u.s this was exactly. what they did it was all about we're. going to eliminate our emissions we're. going to limit around the world and. we're going to build up this solar and. wind economy and they particularly like. aoc specifically excluded nuclear in. their original documents so there are. different diluted versions of that but. the thing to highlight is. this is the dominant energy agenda in.

the world. right now i mean. at least the kind of long-term energy. agenda if you look at everyone's plans. at the moment. pursuing this agenda has led to a total. disaster so right now everyone is. scrambling for fossil fuels. like joe biden ran on i guarantee you we. will end fossil fuel there's just a. couple of years ago now he's begging. every dictator in the world for fossil. fuels and he's pretending that he's done. nothing against fossil fuels like he's. because people are upset about gasoline. prices so there's this short-term.

change to focus on fossil fuels but. still every government says by 2050. which is just 28 years from now we need. to eliminate our emissions and replace. and mostly replace it. with green energy so it's important that. this is the number one energy idea in. the world and just to take one step. further it's actually the number one. moral idea in the world right now so if. you take say. any big company like i i would challenge. you to name a company that does not have. a net zero by 2050 goal apple.

google facebook car companies oil. companies have net i mean you could ask. how that is possible but that's the one. i do want to ask is how is this possible. how do they actually have a realistic. plan on how this is going to happen no. so let me just say one thing about so. it's just it's universal everyone. believes this. or not everyone believes this but the. leading institutions and many of the. leading thinkers in the world say that. our number one priority of any area in. the world. is to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use.

in co2 emissions and replace it with. green energy and to answer your question. you might think oh wow they must have an. amazing plan. but no i don't think there's any plan in. particular the oil companies are uh. it's particularly farcical that they. will do that i mean one of the ways they. do it the the dishonesty of this stuff. is really staggering one way they do it. is they they only look at the emissions. they cause but not that their consumers. cause and they say we're net zero so.

they're like oh we'll so producing the. energy it takes to produce oil. is a lot less than the energy it takes. to consume oil like most of the. emissions that come from oil are for. from us using oil right like to drive. cars and other vehicles and to make. petroleum products and bags for your. gummy bears and stuff like that right. that's that's where most of the. emissions come from drilling for oil has. some emissions but not as many so what. they'll say is well we're gonna. we're gonna use somehow we're not gonna. admit as much drilling for it and we're.

gonna plant some trees somewhere which. is called offsetting which we could talk. about that but they're ignoring the fact. that their whole product. is emitting a lot of co2 so there are. it's just one example among many there. are all these different deceptions. that companies do to claim that they're. close to net zero now but i would argue. the reality is. 80 of the world's energy is fossil fuels. fact one. it's growing particularly in the places. that care most about low-cost energy. such as china and then fact then the.

next fact is. the world is still very poor in terms of. energy so there are three billion people. in the world who are using less. electricity than one of our. refrigerators. uses so again enter again fossil fuel is. 80. growing in an energy starved world so. the idea that we're going to get off. that and by the way solar and wind three. percent. totally dependent on fossil fuels or. some other reliable power because. they're what's called intermittent right. they don't go consistently so they need.

100. uh backup system so the idea that this. is gonna so it's it's what's weird is. the number one moral idea in the world. on its face should seem completely. impractical. yeah. and i would argue it is. how can. i i don't understand how anybody can. think that. only solar and only when. is going to is going to power the entire. everything i mean we just saw the. catastrophe last winter in texas i.

believe it was last winter yep in 2021. and that was. solar wasn't working wind turbines were. frozen and people a lot of people died. well. so it's interesting so let's let's talk. the broader idea they have is there are. kind of two. two broader ideas and and the important. thing to say about both of these ideas. is these have worked in exactly zero. places so these are all. i would say wild speculation about the. future but they're at least speculation.

about the future. and again we're 28 years away from what. they say. is going to is this happening right so. this is again this should be my my view. is if you really look at all the facts. this should be viewed as a crackpot idea. that you're going to do this but their. argument is one is we're going to build. enough batteries. to. uh so that you can you can build so many. solar panels and wind turbines and then. so much battery capacity. that when the sun is shining and the. wind is blowing a lot.

you charge up the batteries. and then when you go go through lulls. when there's not much sunlight or not. much wind then you you know you deploy. the energy from the batteries. so who's. who's making all these batteries. well obviously china but that's that's. whoever makes them even like at you know. the slave labor that's involved in a lot. of today so i ran the numbers on this. because elon musk whom i have a kind of. mixed relationship with because i admire. a lot about him but he's also.

he also says a lot of false stuff and. he's also i mean he blocked me on. twitter for saying something very true. which is that his car is a good fossil. fuel car which is what a battery car is. um but. yeah so he said he said you know oh the. whole world could be powered by solar. panels and tesla batteries. um like he said it's easy he likes to. say things that have never been done or. easy. and so i just ran the numbers on what. would it take. for um. for three days of backup for the world.

which you would want a lot of backup. because you can have whole seasons where. sun and wind are low relatively speaking. like say winter in germany will have a. lot of those laws. and. it's 400 trillion dollars. in of tesla mega packs. so that's many times more and that's. that lasts 10 years. right because the batteries wear out. so. that's like 400 trillion dollars as many. times the all the income of the entire. world. so that's just for batteries. so it's just a total crazy thing there's.

no. and then the other thing that people. have is they have this idea of. we're going to interconnect every region. of the world in a giant they'll often. call it a smart grid. so the idea is that oh this they'll say. the sun is always shining somewhere and. the wind is always blowing somewhere so. we're just going to massively over build. solar and wind everywhere in the world. and we're going to link it all up via. cables and so then you know there's a. lot when we have a drought of sunlight. and wind in the u.s some other place. halfway around the world's get but again.

this is just totally made up this has. never worked at all it's prohibitively. expensive just because you don't need to. build so much infrastructure. and by the way with both of these ideas. and all the other green ideas there's. one other variable which is that the. green movement is anti-development. yeah so they have their whole solution. involves a crash program of. unprecedented mining. and development and it's part of a. movement. and infrastructure i would say and it's.

part of a and both those involve. development. and it's an anti-development movement so. if you look at the us it'll take if. you're lucky ten years to approve a. lithium mine but we're gonna make. thousands of times as many batters so. it's it's what all this should show is. that there's something very unserious. about the claims of replacing fossil. fuels and so what i would argue is this. movement is much clearer about what it. wants to destroy than what it wants to. create well they also.

the new administration is claiming that. we can go energy independent. if if we go all green correct. but i don't understand how. they're claiming that when. all our batteries are gonna come from. china. they're mining they just took. afghanistan you know this huge lithium. deposit africa they're doing it in. mexico they're producing all our. batteries i believe they're going to. produce all our solar panels. and.

and then you just said those batteries. are good for 10 years so to me that. doesn't it's not energy independence at. all. yeah so this is another is a great. example it's another case in which this. is a totally unserious argument because. above all what china controls the entire. i don't stress this the entire supply. chain of solar wind and batteries china. can bring can stop at any time. that it wants and the number one thing. it controls so when you have this supply.

chain there's the mining and china does. a lot of mining and they're increasing. their mining interests but the number. one thing they do is controlling the. processing of these elements so these. these facilities that can process the. mined materials. into useful materials and. they just control basically every. element there and so they have so the. idea that that's that's the opposite of. independence right it's literally they. can shut it all down. uh. whenever they want whenever they want. and we're talking about becoming.

relying on this now the main problem. with this is it's not a cost-effective. way to power a society so that that's. kind of problem number one. but. so. but but also yes it has an unbelievable. increase in our dependence on hostile. foreign powers yeah and whereas take. fossil fuels. fossil fuels we are masters at getting. and we have an unbelievable amount of. the material the raw material on earth.

so. we have a very obvious way to deal with. say hostility from russia or somewhere. else with respect to energy which is we. can just double down on our own energy. production so the people who claim to. care about energy security and they. claim that the thing that we can double. down on is insecure and the thing that. we depend 100 on china for is secure. again they're much. all their quote solutions are not. thought through at all but yet they're. proceeding full steam ahead with the.

destruction of fossil fuels and just to. give one final example with biden notice. what biden did it would be one thing to. say hey i'm joe biden i've got this. amazing vision. i mean the idea of binding having like a. vision is a weird but like i've got this. amazing vision for a grid. and it's gonna it's gonna work so well. and i have all these solar panels and. wind turbines and batteries and let me. build it and then once i validate it. then we'll we'll shut down those fossil. fuels right that i would listen to that. right at least he has an idea but what's. the first thing he did.

no keystone xl pipeline. no drilling on federal land so his first. acts were acts of destruction of. america's energy production ability not. acts of replacement and so i think one. thing i want to keep highlighting is. that this green movement is really clear. on what it wants to destroy and what it. wants to create is a complete fraud that. it's not willing to prove. before it. outlaws fossil fuels. i i also i don't underst so i like how.

many of your questions by the way but. this is good it shows that you're. thinking about it which most people are. but i like how many of your questions. begin with i don't understand because i. would say. there are so many everyone should be not. understanding. and almost no one does not understand. even though these things make no sense. the minute you said biden had a vision i. was like oh boy. but anyways um. the the other thing that i do not. understand is he keeps blaming.

our or our. our gas and oil shortages on. on the on the drilling right on the. people that other companies on the. companies. and. but he already said that he was going to. shut them down. so why would they. how much does it cost to to do this. the whole. how much would it would one of these. companies have to invest to start. drilling and producing oil and gasoline. you know depending on the scale of a. multi-million dollar i mean many many.

millions tens of millions i mean this. it's a huge capital intensive industry. which involves so the way you once you. put it the way you put it it's sort of. obviously wrong because the way you put. it is you're blaming the companies i. mean i would think of it as you're. blaming the companies for not drilling. enough. and yet you have threatened them with. massive punishment. for drilling. that's kind of what i'm saying is. you want you already showed your cards. yeah.

your vision is to shut them all down. right and completely go away from fossil. fuels so why would they. continue to invest. multi-million dollar. deals to. to extract the fossil fuels when they. know. as soon as as soon as it smooths out. with this with the with the shortage. right now then he's gonna he's gonna. shut him down again immediately it would. just be throwing money in the garbage so. what they want to pretend is that they.

haven't been waging that they haven't. been giving these threats and basically. waging war against the fossil fuel. industry i mean biden had the. the. you know the gall to say that he had. done nothing to restrict domestic. production. it's like my administration has done. nothing and part of their argument. though is we haven't had enough time to. do everything we wanted. but but what that's evading is that. they're part of a global movement that. has been doing this for the last 15 plus.

years so in the u.s and around the world. the green movement has been pushing. three things. the uh. elimination of investment in fossil. fuels production of fossil fuels and. transport of fossil fuels and the bite. administration has been involved in all. of them it has a lot of threats against. companies and financial institutions for. investing in fossil fuels it has a lot. of restrictions on production and has a. lot of restrictions on transportation. like the keystone xl pipeline stopping. that but it's important this is a global. movement and it's been going on for a.

long time including in the us including. under the obama. biden administration but they they want. basically when you look at it the way. you're looking at it's obvious it. doesn't make any sense but they want to. pretend all of that didn't happen and. what they're looking at is they're just. looking at the fact that the producers. aren't producing as much as people want. right now. and they're treating it as oh they're. just being greedy right they just want. profits that's so bad. but. that's not true at all.

if you are a company companies want to. invest profits like companies want to. grow in the future that's what leads to. a higher stock price if people are. optimistic about your future but for the. reasons you gave a lot of these. companies are not optimistic about. drilling in the future because they know. that they will be punished sooner or. later they can't have long-term. confidence so if you can't have. long-term confidence in reinvesting your. profits you are morally and legally. obligated to give those profits to your. shareholders but the administration is.

basically saying you should violate your. fiduciary obligations and your moral. obligations to your shareholders so that. we don't look so bad. uh because people are mad about gasoline. prices that's really what their position. amounts to yeah the one one other thing. that i want to hit is back to energy. independence which they keep claiming. we're going to get if we go green. even though we're not because we're. getting all our batteries and solar and. all the materials and it's not really. energy independence if the energy. doesn't work yeah and on top of that it.

doesn't work it doesn't work all the. time it does work some of the time but. it doesn't work ever doesn't work ever. no i mean there's no there's no grid. that just. is. nothing that we would recognize. but that's just like solar panels and. wind turbines and you just access i mean. the way it works is it's. just physically the way the technology. works it needs to be constantly. supported by. reliable electricity so there's there's. no. there's no freestanding solar wind and. battery grid okay in the world so i just.

want to make that point it's it's not. and even. it's just nothing resembling what we. know of as electricity. is possible and again like the number i. gave 400 trillion dollars i mean that's. that's like that's just bankrupting. everyone in the world. in is we all starve right so we can make. some batteries so i just want to like. economically it's nowhere in the. universe. of a viable replacement for for fossil. fuels and the thing to stress about. energy is. the cost of energy is crucial because.

that determines the cost of everything. that involves machines because energy is. just machine food right so. if when we increase the price event we. don't just want energy at any price we. want low cost energy because if the. price of energy goes up we're seeing. this right now right the price of food. goes up the price of clothing goes up. the price of shelter goes up the price. of medical care goes up so. if these things even remotely happened. life would just become catastrophically.

expensive compared to what it is today. and we're already seeing this with just. price inflation and a lot of that. connected energy but this is just with. you know you could say like three. percent four percent of the green new. deal agenda it's like what europe has. done. and that's it's and what we've done it's. it's just. it really i can't stress this enough. like to actually do what they're saying. i believe would be like just global mass. murder and mass starvation well look. what's happening in europe right now. they're completely dependent on.

russian oil yeah and. you don't do you want to go into that at. all well sure i mean i think it's it's. pretty straightforward right it's this. isn't. what i what kind of i like about where. you're coming from is you're i think. you're looking at the essentials of. these issues. and the thing is the essentials of these. issues are pretty simple the problem is. the people who cause the problems want. to over complicate them because the. simple and true explanation. indicts them as the obvious cause. so you take the situation in europe.

europe needs huge amounts of natural gas. to function because it uses natural gas. for heat it also uses natural gas for. electricity and europe has had this idea. that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels. with solar and wind so that's been their. idea but solar and wind as i said cannot. exist at all on their own they need. natural gas in particular natural gas is. basically like an amazing natural. battery that's very cheap so it can ramp. up and down very quickly like a jet.

engine to accommodate the massive. fluctuations. of sunlight and wind so actually when. you when you do a lot of sunlight and. wind you don't become free of the need. for fossil fuels you become particularly. dependent on one fossil fuel which is. natural gas or technically you can. substitute oil but usually gas is a lot. cheaper so they use gas so in effect. it's they're hugely dependent on natural. gas. but they had this idea that we're going. to restrict investment production and. transport of fossil fuels so what did. they do when fracking developed like.

frackie's the best. broadly shale energy technology that's. the that's the most. uh revolutionary energy development of. the last 20 years as soon as europe saw. it they preemptively banned it they. banned it in france banned it in the uk. abandoned ireland abandoned in spain. right they banned it all over the place. and they did nothing to secure reliable. sources of energy from free uh allied. countries like the us because they had. this idea we're gonna rapidly replace. fossil fuels with solar and wind but.

that didn't work. so they reduce domestic production. domestic so what what happens they they. depend on foreign production it's that. simple if you if you try to rapidly. replace. uh fossil fuels with solar wind which. doesn't work then you become more. dependent on foreign sources if you. don't produce it domestically yourself. so it's just it's very simple but. everyone wants to pretend it's something. else because it's but the the what's. great about this moment is the public is. really starting to see because they they. know that for decades people have been.

saying we shouldn't drill we shouldn't. invest in this stuff this is bad and. then they see wow the prices are going. up and we didn't get this magical. replacement. and they're starting to blame the people. who. were against fossil fuels that's part of. why i'm excited to have. to get attention on this issue now and i. happen to have a book right now that's. telling the full story of of energy. today and in the future because i think. people are uniquely open to it because. we're witnessing a crisis now it's it's. it's a lot easier to for people's minds.

to open when they see the problem in. front of them versus when it's a. speculated problem a few years in the. future. we're. we're in the middle of an energy war yes. it's it's green versus fossil fuels and. it's also china. watching everything that's going on. taking all the lithium deposits in the. world mining them and they're going to. produce it all which means they control. everybody's energy yeah if we were to go. all green so i haven't been using that.

term but i think it's a really good term. so i'm probably going to start using it. because it is. you know the way i've always thought. about it is war depends on energy like. world war one world war ii were both one. by the side with the longest term secure. sources of oil because oil is. historically the fuel of mobility and mo. you know advances in mobility are how. you win often how you win wars you can. get to places more quickly. et cetera you know you can drop large. bombs that kind of thing i mean now we. have nuclear energy which is another. thing we should be pursuing more of.

but. so it's crucial in military conflict. that's one aspect of it but another. point is it's just crucial in any kind. of. like that i was asking um a guy. mentioned to you before the show he's a. real guy really admired him palmer lucky. who's basically invented modern br vr uh. sold his company for a lot of money to. facebook and then started a modern. defense company that's very very. pro-america and i asked him i recently. got to talk to him i said like what's. what's your biggest what's the biggest.

threat to the u.s and he said like and. he said something that wasn't what i. expected which is my biggest threat is. that we stop becoming an economic. superpower because when you're not an. economic superpower there's so you're so. much more vulnerable it's harder to wage. war you can't engage in that you can't. engage in the production and what scares. the hell out of me is that the uh china. is taking all of its actions to become a. dominant economic superpower. and america is either just obsessed with. like gender pronoun type things that are.

not nearly as important or we are. actively waging war against ourselves. like this green new deal anti-fossil. fuel movement this is overwhelmingly a. domestic movement that in america. and in europe there are some there's. some evidence of say russia sponsoring. some of it and maybe china encouraging. it but it's mostly domestic. intellectuals so china is very. strategically taking over critical. industries and of course securing all. the fossil fuel that they can. and it's.

and we are actively. making ourselves less secure so it's. really. that really scares me because i just. feel like everyone's going to look back. in history if we don't reverse course. they're just going to say what the hell. were they doing china said we want to be. the world's dominant superpower by 2049. that was their goal they secured the. entire like modern technology supply. chain including the elements of solar uh. wind and batteries the us was just. obsessed with these weird domestic. things as the number one issue and they.

actively destroy tried to destroy their. own energy system. which is the key to being an economic. superpower and militarily prepared. yeah i think they're seeing the. direction and they're. jumping on the train they're going to. control it and they're smart you got to. hand it to them they are smart they're. it's interesting because the government. yeah the government is strategic and our. government. i would say as anti-strategic. i mean i don't think we've. it's hard for me to think of a president.

republican or democrat who has like a. real long-term foreign policy and really. thinking about. these things i mean i think some are. better and some are worse but the. advantage we have if we take advantage. of it is. we have 330 million people. who if left free can come up with. amazing innovations that. make us a superpower and then that. incredible productivity and. innovativeness can be leveraged if we.

have a remotely strategic government so. the chinese government's more strategic. but their productive ability all things. be equal is not going to be what ours is. because we have far more freedom and far. more innovation in many ways but problem. is we're undercutting it with a strategy. with with the lack of strategy but we're. also undercutting it with the green. movement being anti-development. so because. to innovate and to be productive you. need to develop nature you need to. impact things like a factory has an.

impact a farm has an impact mining has. an impact if you just take mining which. is. everyone now realizes is key to any kind. of energy future but in the u.s mining. is almost illegal it can take ten. you it can it can be impossible to get a. mine approved it can easily take 10. years. what that does is that limits prog it. makes us a not free country and in many. ways we're not as free economically as. china is because while china has a lot. of evil anti-freedom stuff. they have they have much more freedom of.

development than we do and without the. freedom to develop. most of what most of production cannot. occur because most of production is. physical. interesting. let's take a quick break when we come. back i want to talk about you you give a. great rundown on how fossil fuels. benefit us every day. nobody talks about that and i'd like to. dive into that awesome cool. hey guys let me tell you about this. subscription service that i've been. working real hard on.

called vigilance elite. patreon basically on patreon we have it. broken up into three different tiers. we've got tier one tier two and tier. three let's dive in our tier one patrons. get all the behind the scenes footage of. the sean ryan show that could include. behind the scenes photos that could be. side conversations that we have in. between breaks that could be specific. questions that our patrons give us. for the guests on the sean ryan show.

and a ton of bonus content that doesn't. really fit into any specific category. for our tier 2 patrons they get access. to our tactical training library which. consists of well over 100 videos. we've broken those videos up into. separate categories and those categories. are rifle fundamentals pistol. fundamentals. drills. tactics. driving. gear and weapon setups and.

everybody's favorite. mindset. also on tier 2 you will get a live. update from me on the 1st and the 15th. of every month where we talk about the. upcoming guests on the sean ryan show. plus. all the benefits of tier one. our top tier which is tier three. gets full access to all the other tiers. plus they get full access to me where we. do. video teleconferencing. vtc once a month.

we discuss anything from tactics to. current events to who's coming on the. show i take suggestions and it's very. interactive no matter what tier you. choose the support is greatly. appreciated and it is the only thing. that makes this show drive on so thank. you for all the support. see you on patreon. all right alex we're back from the break.

i tried the gummy bears you did that was. really good uh i was a little worried. because i couldn't lie to you if i. didn't like them. but i really wanted to try them so yeah. that i knew they would be fine as soon. as i've been good even more than fine i. felt them because you can i don't like. the ones that are overly hard yeah. and you don't want them overly soft. either but i felt i'm like oh this is. going to be good they got a nice texture. that took in like 25 of those hey let me. know if you need some more we got i got. a good we got plenty of them we had a.

good supply. but um well we just got back from the. break and so it seems like everybody. that's behind the green initiatives. none of them ever talk about any of the. benefits. from fossil fuels and you do. a great explanation on how they affect. and benefit our our everyday lives and. you there's some phenomenal charts in. your new book that we talk about. the um.

upping energy production and how that. actually saves lives. uh versus um. we'll get into it but. when we talk about. individuals that are in there who are. saying we should all be dead. right now so we got. so. just highlight what i said before again. 80 of the world's energy so you think of. energy as machine calories or machine. food so this is what our machines need. to operate again 80 of that comes from. fossil fuels around the world.

and it's growing. and. as i also said billions of people. have very little energy use very little. energy right now so i use the date the. statistic of three billion individuals. using less electricity than one of our. refrigerators so you just let that sink. in what would that be like if you had to. you know decide. like obviously you can't just use a. refrigerator right so you have the. lights you have the refrigerator you. have all sorts of different appliances. like do you want to use a washing. machine do you want to use a dryer do. you want to use a computer do you want.

to charge yourself in like. these are just and then it's not just. you at home doing this maybe even more. significantly it's industry like if. industry can't use a large amount of. electricity then you can't have a very. productive country so. with that in mind. you would expect that the best thinkers. and the leading let's say the leading. thinkers in our society when talking. about. say rising co2 levels from fossil fuel. co2 emissions you would expect them to.

look at not just the negatives of that. but you would also expect them to look. at well what are the benefits of the. energy that we get with that so when we. burn fossil fuels and emit co2 yes we. could talk about what are negatives also. what are positive to that. but the elephant in the room is it. energy that's why we're burning them in. the first place is to get a lot of. energy and again it's it's the. overwhelming source of the world's. energy i would also add there have been. competitors to fossil fuels for well. over a century most of these. technologies have been around for well. over a century in one form another so.

there's something very special about. fossil fuels and so i think it should. seem very odd. that we don't talk about the benefits. and that our but in particular that what. i call our designated experts don't talk. about the benefits because what. have you heard this refrain listen to. the scientists. before yeah it's like a common type of. thing like listen to the scientists you. know all i remember george clooney i. mean lots of people says but i'm saying. like you know if i wanted to know what. to do about a medical condition i would.

i would listen to my doctor and if i. want to know what to do about climate. change i'm going to listen to the. scientists right. now one fallacy there is. the climate expert isn't an expert on. the benefits of fossil fuels. so it would be like a doctor who didn't. know about the benefits of an antibiotic. only the negatives right so that would. be at least only the the side effects. it's there's something but but. maybe maybe the climate you would expect. okay maybe the climate people or. whatever whoever we're designating as.

the scientists the experts i mean it's i. call it designated expert because it's. the person we're turning to we're told. to turn to for here's the person who can. provide you guidance. informed guidance on what to do so you. take one of the leading designated. experts on what to do about energy which. is a guy named michael mann who's a. professor he's a climate scientist. and activist. and i point i document this in fossil. future he has a book. on energy and climate called the mad. house effect and it's all about how.

fossil fuels are allegedly. having a harmful impact on climate. that's a fine thing to study you should. study you should study the impacts on. climate for sure but one thing that. really struck me as he talks about. agriculture and he says rising co2. levels are going to have these cause. these challenges for agriculture i said. okay that's fine and then i'm looking. through the book and i'm like okay but. where's he gonna talk about the benefits. because. the benefits of fossil fuels for. agriculture are literally the ability to. feed eight billion people like the. fertilizer we have we're seeing this now.

with rising fertilizer prices fertilizer. is derived physically from natural gas. and it's produced using natural gas. energy it's just totally dependent on. natural gas and natural gas prices. that's in large part why the prices are. going up because natural gas prices are. going up so there's that so the literal. fertilizer that makes the earth as. fertile as it is so we can grow enough. food for eight billion people that. depends on fossil fuels and then all the. machines. that produce the energy rather all the.

machines that use energy to allow us to. produce far more food than we otherwise. could and so one example i like is a. modern combine harvester can reap and. thresh 1 000 times more wheat than a. really good manual labor. 1000 1 000 times so you become like if. i'm not i'm not a really good manual. laborer for that kind of thing but i. imagine i could be trained to be i could. be trained to be fairly good so but if. you put me on a combine harvester i can. just sit there. and produce you know 500 a thousand.

times more. so what that's why we have very small. percentage of people in agriculture. in the countries that have you know are. using low-cost reliable energy and the. ones that aren't you have very high. percentages of people. in agriculture so you know that that's a. it's just so this is just one example. but it's a huge example of literally i. once in a debate with a guy named bill. mckibben another designated expert. i said. you know if bill mckibben came here and. said we should eliminate you know 95. of the food you'd think this guy's a.

maniac. but he said we should eliminate 95 of. fossil fuels which are the food of food. and literally like because they feed the. machines. right and they provide the fertilizer. and yet in this whole best-selling book. by michael mann the designated expert we. are supposed to listen to he does not. once mention the benefits of fossil. fuels to agriculture. so. this is a madman like in effect right. because he's telling us you should be. concerned we should get rid of fossil.

fuels and it'll help agriculture because. it'll get re like we won't have to worry. about this warming in some region but. he's telling you to get rid of the thing. that makes agriculture possible is there. any validity to that at all is there. anything. that getting rid of fossil fuels would. help with agriculture is there any. aspect of it you mean the climate part. of it yeah well but the thing is you oh. everything is a package. so we could talk about so there's two. questions so overall getting rid of. fossil fuels would destroy agriculture.

and you'd have mass starvation. 100. but there's a question of. so i just want to focus on that's the. number one point here is just this is an. example of how our leading thinkers you. know our designated experts so the. people we're told to listen to and stake. our lives on and stake our security on. are making a very very basic. error. of their evaluating something. by only looking at its negative side. effects and not its benefits and so by.

the same method when the polio vaccine. came out you'd say that's evil. we shouldn't use it because they say oh. it has these side effects and it's bad. let's get rid of it and it's like wait a. second it stops polio what about that. well fossil fuel stops hunger yeah right. it stops starvation around the world so. we can talk about the co2 part of it but. what is for sure is there is nothing. resembling a danger. uh that's on the level of the danger of. getting rid of energy and i think i. would just say.

as an intro to the issue and how to. think about it it's also revealing that. people don't talk about the benefits of. co2. very much so if also if we burn fossil. fuels it emits well it emits a bunch of. things but emits water vapor emits. energy. it releases energy emits co2 sometimes. there's certain pollutants that are. emitted particularly with uh coal and to. some extent oil. but okay it emits co2 so that's a side. effect but the main thing is the energy. benefit but then the co2.

why do we think that the co2 is so bad. it's so bad and it's all bad the all bad. is particularly revealing because if you. just. if you had somebody who didn't. who didn't have a bias against humans. and human impact they didn't think that. we were unnatural which i think is a. very common view like our impact is bad. that's the view why that's why we're so. against mining and development because. people view our impact as just it's a. wrong thing but if you didn't have that. bias and you decide okay humans are part. of nature often what we do is really.

good for us sometimes we make mistakes. but there's certainly nothing to be. hostile to in our impact in general we. want to have a lot of impact because. that makes the world an abundant and. safe place and when we didn't have much. impact the world was pretty terrible for. the average person. and the more successful people often got. around it by enslaving the less. successful people because we didn't have. machines to do work. for us so if you didn't have the bias. against human impact and you heard co2. is going up. would you think it was bad i'm not so.

sure i think you would think at least it. would have some obvious good things. number one plant growth more co2 in the. atmosphere means more plant growth. that's very very significant we're. talking about agriculture crops benefit. very significantly. but warmth as well i mean warmth five. times or more people die in the world. from cold right now than heat. right and so. that's a big thing a lot of people want. to live in warmer climates. and the way warming is supposed to work. and in practice has mostly worked is it.

tends to be have more warming in the. coldest regions of the world so it's not. evenly distributed it's not like the. same at the equator and the same at the. poles it's more particularly in the. northern part of the world that's why. people are so focused on the arctic but. that's actually a good thing like we. would prefer to have warming. concentrated in colder places than. equally spread around the world we also. know that the world has been 25 degrees. uh fahrenheit warmer uh like what is it. 14 degrees celsius i think it is.

um. warmer so we're at a pretty cold point. in the planet's history so. there's nothing to there's a lot of good. of it and then you would also say there. are some negative things. particularly in the place even if if the. places aren't getting super warm they're. getting warmer and you'll have increased. incidence of heat wave and that kind of. thing but even with the heat waves. you'll have more air conditioning which. can totally more than offset the heat. wave so. i think it's legitimate i think there. will be some aspects of rising co2. levels that on their own.

will be negative for agriculture in some. places i don't think it's plausible that. overall they'll be negative for. agriculture in particular. because in general a warmer. more co2 rich and wetter this is another. aspect a warmer world is a wetter world. like that's all good for life that's why. we had these think about the dinosaurs. and the amazing you know these huge. dinosaurs eating huge amounts of plant. food. like that's in a natural world that has. so much co2 and more warmth than is a. more tropical world so.

in general what global warming means. like climate change you can translate it. to. a slightly more tropical world that's. its objective meaning. when you're talking about the warming. and all the benefits what about. the thing you hear all the time is the. rising oceans it's gonna yeah the. glaciers the the. it's all melting it's raising sea level. everything's gonna be underwater. supposedly right right so so that is i. would say rising sea levels is the most. plausible.

uh danger. of rising co2 levels because i think. there's a lot of reasons to want it the. world to be quite a bit warmer than it. is today all things be equal and. certainly not any kind of crisis again. we have far more cold related deaths. than heat related us and then to take. some of the other examples first you. know with storms and floods and this. kind of thing. it should seem very bizarre that those. all are supposed to get worse and like. way worse. because if you think about climates as a. very integrated system so why would it.

be that us changing something makes. everything worse you never hear about oh. we avoided this storm today because of. fossil fuels you only hear oh this storm. everything is worse. that that it's really a like they're. really treating the nature as a god. and it's really like we angered the god. by impacting it and so the god is. punishing us. because it's it's it's it can't be a. scientific perspective that everything. gets worse yeah in a system like that. when you it just doesn't make any sense. and but the plausible thing that could.

get worse. is sea levels because sea levels are. particularly sensitive to our previous. investments so we have civilizations. that are built uh near the sea for very. good reasons a great place to live you. know commerce that kind of thing and so. if sea levels rose quickly enough. that could be a challenge it could be a. disruption it's not going to be a. catastrophe or the end of the world or. something like that but it's worth. looking into but as long as we do what. we've been focused on which is you. always have to look at the benefits of.

fossil fuels that will be lost. if you oppose fossil fuels so if you. recognize fossil fuels today and for the. foreseeable future that's literally. what's feeding the world that's what. makes it possible for us to have shelter. mobility things like education which. takes a lot of time you know research. medical like all these things totally. depend on low-cost reliable energy that. only fossil fuels can provide on a. global scale for most people for the. foreseeable future like if you look at. that. you would totally be willing to accept.

quite a bit of sea level rise along with. that versus get rid of the energy and. then everything is terrible so it's we. always have to look at the benefits but. then. the sea level rise is kind of crazy. because if you look at what the current. i'm i'm just i don't want to know your. view i'm wondering what you would guess. from the media how fast do you think the. average person would guess the sea level. is rising like how many feet per century. based on the media. two feet two feet of century.

oh that's that's i wish they thought. that i mean in al gore's movie he talks. about 20 feet. 20 feet as if it's imminent it's like oh. well this this ice sheet can melt and if. that happens and you get the sense of. this is all if you got the sense of it. was happening over thousands of years it. wouldn't be so alarming right but he he. talks about 20 feet and he's not very. specific but it seems like this is. decades away. which that would be really scary right. yeah but no so. so uh actually it's right now it's one. foot a century one foot a century that's. the current rate and then the ex here's.

the crazy thing the extreme extreme. speculation is about three feet a. century and so to put that in context. we have a hundred million people around. the world who already live. below the sea level at high tide. so think about that look we are very. good as a species at dealing with higher. sea levels you have places in the. netherlands you know where people live. well below sea levels and this is with. technology that existed before so and. we're talking about this is over a.

century and of course we have no. specific confidence that it's even going. to happen so we can wait and see what. happens but this is a very slow moving. thing this is nothing resembling and. this is the official un projection that. in on the extreme end. that's three feet and so what what. people are not getting. is that if you look at the real benefits. of fossil fuels. even the kind of extreme projected. negative side effects that are very. speculative. are nowhere near the benefits of fossil. fuels like not even close and then the.

final thing i'll say about that is. this is particularly true because one of. the huge benefits of fossil fuels is it. enables you to master climate danger so. let me just explain that i've used the. example of a prescription drug you need. to look at the benefits and the side. effects so if it if it saves your life. but it causes a severe rash you would. still want for you know a week you would. still do it but the interesting thing. about fossil fuels is. they can do something a prescription. drug can't because a prescription drug. the benefits can outweigh the negative.

side effects but they can't cure the. negative side effects on their own. you'll still get the rash but fossil. fuels can cure their own negative side. effects so for example let's take. let's take something like drought let's. say fossil fuels caused more drought. which i generally doubt because it makes. a warmer wetter world which makes less. drought but let's say they caused more. drought. in at least somewhere. well. okay but they also give you the ability. to irrigate an area to totally. neutralize and overwhelm the drought. they also give you the ability to bring.

food from a region of the world that. isn't having a drought into the region. that is so that the end product you're. much better off drought wise right so. even if they had a harmful side effect. they would cure that side effect and. they would actually overwhelm it and. this is what we see with drought if. fossil fuels of energy negative because. drought-related deaths are down 99. over the last century and it's largely. all these fossil fueled machines. irrigation transport that are protecting. us so. when whenever we think of climate we.

need to always remember. that whatever negatives fossil fuels are. causing. there is a very high likelihood they can. also cure and then some and the number. one statistic i like to share about this. is that we actually have numbers on how. many people die from climate-related. causes like storms and flood and heat. and cold extreme heat extreme cold and. before i started researching this i. thought. i thought that these were obviously. getting worse we're having more. climate-related disaster deaths but that.

it was being exaggerated and the. benefits of fossil fuels were. underestimated but it turns out these. climate-related disaster deaths have. gone down by a rate of 98 percent. over the last century you have some good. graphs on your boat on this and i repeat. them because it's but that that should. just be i don't want to curse but mind. blank you know that should be the. experience that people have right like. that's what happened to me because i. thought. you know the model everyone is operating. on is fossil fuels took a. a safe climate and made it dangerous.

right and the real thing is it no it. took a dangerous climate and made it. safe and it's like the here's the crazy. thing the thing that fossil fuels are. supposed to harm most as in the. livability of our climate. are one of the things they've most. improved. and so that's really like that that just. really struck me when i realized it. because that means we're going to be not. only are we going to starve if we get. rid of fossil fuels but we'll also be. far more in danger from the climate.

because climate is naturally dangerous. and if we don't have the ability to. protect ourselves using all these. amazing machines to build shelter and. heat and cool and irrigate and transport. then we are totally screwed by the. natural climate this is what you meant. by avoiding a storm with fossil fuels. you mentioned that a little bit earlier. avoid it what did i say could we avoid a. storm because of fossil fuels oh i. forget exactly what i said but but you. can i don't know if you can neutralize a. storm with fossil fuels i mean you can.

so so the fact that the fact that. climate-related deaths or. climate-related disaster deaths in. particular are way down and you can see. all the different ways and i gave a lot. of them and which fossil fuels. uh. caused that what that really means is. that fossil fuels have a have a huge. climate mastery ability that they. facilitate and what that means is it's. very very hard to think of anything that. could happen in the future as a side. effect of fossil fuel use that would. actually be a problem climate wise and i.

mentioned i thought the most plausible. was rising sea levels but they're super. slow i mean way slower i have another. graph of this in the book this this is. the graph wikipedia uses which is super. biased against me for that matter but. everything fossil fuel related they're. very biased against and yet they still. admit. that you know if you look at the history. like our ancestors 10 000 years ago they. have a sea level rise like this. and then it goes like this and so the. question is just. is it slightly less flat. but it's it's still super slow and we.

have a lot of time and it's speculative. so the idea of. of. de-energizing the world in an energy. poor world to avoid this is just. it has to be you're denying the benefits. we're going backwards yeah we're going. backwards. with many fewer people if you really did. it so the thing is i want to stress i. should say. the the green new deal net what's called. net zero agenda fossil fuel elimination. agenda.

there is no chance it is going to happen. in that the whole world is going to. totally do it like lemmings. but the danger is that even if you do it. a small fraction it's deadly and in. particular it's deadly for our security. which is part of the reason why i was. particularly excited to talk to you. because what the us is doing is you use. the term energy war which i like like. we're leading the energy war against. ourselves so we are disempowering i call. it unilateral disempowerment because we.

are destroying our own ability to. produce energy. while others above all china are. increasing their ability to produce. energy and making us dependent on them. and that is very very scary because it's. china. do you expect china to follow net zero. no. i mean they're about 85 fossil fueled so. we're told though they're eating our. lunch they're also like this is nonsense. they're producing our solar and wind. using cheap coal electricity uh low. environmental standards.

uh some quite a bit of slave labor it. turns out and then actually a lot of. at least temporary subsidies by the. government they're making the stuff but. they're making the stuff using fossil. fuels and they're mostly powering their. world using fossil fuels and of course. they're not going to do this. so but the us which is a much more. honorable country in many ways and in. this case that works against us because. we're much more likely to honor these. commitments to rapidly eliminate fossil. fuels so. so much of the world is obviously.

pursuing a fossil future. but even though they claim that they're. all producing they're all pursuing a. fossil fuel uh elimination future but. what that means is the freest countries. and often the most honorable countries. are going to disempower and they're. going to leave themselves in a totally. new level of vulnerability i just don't. understand how. i don't know if they i don't know how. this doesn't compute in people's brains. well i think it's starting i think well. i think we're helping it compute so. let's just take the thing about the. benefits right.

the thing that strikes a lot of people. or particularly this idea of the climate. benefits that fossil fuels actually make. us safer from climate. i've met i've talked to tens of. thousands of people about this kind of. thing like. not even one in a hundred thought of it. before they learned it for me and i. didn't even think of it myself i learned. it from some other people. right and so it's. we're taught to think about this issue. in a really bad way and in particular. we're taught to only look at negative. side effects and not benefits but we. don't realize that we're doing that.

often. and i talk a lot about in the book about. why that is and how that works but in. any case that is a fact that we're. taught not to i mean we look i showed. you michael mann or i explained like. leading guy just totally evades the. benefits of fossil fuels for agriculture. which is its most kind of obvious. benefit. so what happens what's great that's. really bad but i find that when you. point that out when you make it explicit. that hey we need to look at the full. context the benefits and side effects. with precision.

people can really start to do it that. they really see it it's i think it's. part of what i try to add as a value is. i give people like the thinking tools. and. everyone agrees i've never had here's. this how about this i've never had one. person disagree with me that we need to. look at the benefits of fossil fuels but. yet almost no one does and so the more. we just make that principle out there. the more people will do it and the more. they'll be aware that the other side. isn't doing it. i want to go back to the china stuff.

good because it's so important and they. have us in so many different aspects i'm. glad we're bringing this up. you know and so us we're trying to. decrease fossil fuels. this let's think of this as like a. triangle. right so we're decreasing fossil fuels. china is. upping. fossil fuel usage. to produce the solar panels and the. batteries that then they in turn are. going to export to us. thinking.

that we're energy independent. on on. solar and wind. and then they can just cut it just. cut production even though it doesn't. work yeah so they control. our energy which means they control us. and we're seeing the exact same thing. right now in europe with russia right in. china's plan is occurring in russia. already. with with a tiny like europe has not. done a full-fledged screen new deal by.

any means they're still dominantly. fossil fueled in europe so even when you. pursue this is part of why i'm motivated. if it was just as if you get rid of. fossil fuels it's bad and if you fall if. you go 50 it's okay no it's not okay to. go anywhere in this direction because. every. every penny you add to the price of. energy leads to higher costs. of everything and all this increased. dependence is a total. is a total disaster so i think we should. be highlighting it and i think people. are realizing people from both parties.

happily are starting to see this this as. a real thing like. they're a little slower to recognize. that solar and wind are not real. replacements for fossil fuels. but nobody. even an idiot can see where the stuff. comes from you can just look on a map. and see where this stuff is made like do. we have. are we we have all these poly silicon. facilities are we processing all of. these materials we send even if we mine. materials we need to send them to china. to be processed so it's.

and the notable thing is. you know you hear a little bit of. acknowledgement of this people say oh we. got to do more on shore. but they're not willing to give up their. anti-development policies because. there's this very deep opposition to all. human impact and so we have all these. talk about oh let's reassure american. industry and let's tax china in this way. and this but as long as you're not. allowed to develop in your own country. you are not going to have a real and. growing industry just to give one stat. that shocked me.

china has five times our industrial. electricity use. five times five times. china. this is basically a third world country. 40 years ago. and you know our electricity use has. been flat for a long time. in part because we offshore. uh industry so it is what's really. needed. fundamentally what's needed is we really. need to embrace. like human impact done intelligently as. a good thing.

and then in particular the freedom to. use fossil fuels as a big part of that. but as long as we have this idea that. it's wrong for us to impact the planet. we're gonna we're gonna keep we're just. gonna have hostility toward all forms of. energy which is really what the green. movement have because they're against. fossil fuels they're against nuclear. they're against hydro but they're also. against solar wind because they oppose. solar and wind mining projects they. oppose massive construction projects. which have a big footprint right a big. impact and they oppose the building of. these massive transmission lines.

so how the hell are we supposed to get. our energy you're not you're not. supposed to is this a control thing what. is this but it's it's there's a control. element. but it's this is why i think i have such. an advantage having a background in. philosophy and i've been interested in. environmental philosophy a long time so. that i think of that as a philosophy of. how we relate. the relationship between us and the rest. of nature like how are those things and. you know i think there are two basic.

views. the dominant view. is that. our environmental goal so you can think. of it as a goal of our environment or. the world as a whole is to. eliminate human impact on earth so. that's the environmental goal that's. what it means to be environmentally good. is to eliminate our impact on earth. and that is deadly i'm fortunate enough. i learned when i was 18 before i knew. anything about energy like that's deadly. because we survived by impacting the. earth so if you have a if you have an. environmental philosophy that says it's. bad for us to impact the earth. then you are anti-human whether you know.

it or not whereas my environmental. philosophy is to advance human. flourishing on earth which means i want. to me the earth is a good environment if. it is more hospitable to human life and. so that includes clean air and clean. water and natural beauty but it also. includes things like farms and factories. and i don't think of those as unnatural. because i don't think of humans as. unnatural i think of those as part of. our environment in the way a tree is. part of our environment and i judge. everything by whether it's good for.

humans so like the malarial mosquito is. bad. even though it's natural. um and there are many things that are. that we create like scientific. laboratories that are good. even though they're quote unnatural but. again it's not unnatural it's just. man-made. or not man-made but i think that the. deep thing that's going on is we've been. taught this philosophy that set that. says our impact is evil. and our goal should be to. eliminate it and i think that's.

so there's a question of what's the. agenda there but that is the dominant. philosophy. particularly the environmental. philosophy. in the world today and that's what's. driving us so that's when you say where. are we going to get our energy we're not. thinking if your goal is to eliminate. human impact you're not thinking about. giving humans energy because actually a. it's out it's not on topic but b. i make this point in chapter. energy three. lot energy is impact.

like when you use energy like think. about you have this great studio like. that took a lot of energy to make all. the materials and bring them here and. build stuff right like that's what. energy allows us to it's literally like. the capacity to do work to do work means. to change physical things in nature so. if you hate human impact you hate energy. and it's not that you hate it's not just. you hate the negative side effects so. people think oh they just don't like the. smog they love the car. but they hate the smog but no they hate. the car right because they hate the road.

they hate the fact that you had to pave. something they hated the mining that. went into the car the transportation. that went like all of that impacted. nature so the whole modern green. movement is an anti-human impact. movement which means it's an anti-human. movement and so our whole obsession is. how do we eliminate all of our impact. and that's why. we ignore the benefits because our. because they're not if our goal is to. eliminate human impact. fossil fuels have no benefits. interesting that's a.

very interesting way of thinking i've. not heard that before it's sort of their. way of thinking but just. getting it to the essentials of it. because they they say to us you know be. green. don't have an impact we're like oh yeah. we think that. we we trans we falsely translate it for. them we think oh you just want clean air. and clean water but that's not what they. said. they said minimize all impact. all human impact so it's only it's an. anti-human thing it's you have to get. not you but people have to get out of. their head the idea.

the environmental movement. is about loving nature because it's it's. not it's not about like if you love. nature and you want to enjoy nature like. say i live near the beach in laguna. beach california like that has a hell of. a lot of impact involved in living near. the beach and enjoying the beach. including just having enough. industrialization where you can live. near the beach and you can get resources. there etc etc. so it's really about a hatred of human. impact in particular because do they.

hate uh beavers building a dam no that's. great. a bird building a nest that's great. that's natural. a human building a home no that's impact. that's bad so. all impact is good except human impact. so the way i think of it is like every. all impact is good except the impact of. the human race and so i call it human. racism that is what it is it's a deep. it's and it's very analogous to the. racism that we think of. except in a sense it's worse i mean all.

racism is evil because but it's. the regular racism we think of as. somebody is saying like. one type one. you know people of different kinds of. skin color than i am usually they are. not as human and therefore as good as i. am and so that's evil because it's false. but. this is saying that everything human is. bad. so you have you have an you hate the. whole human race. but that is a real motive and you see it. with some of these designated experts.

historically who like will say. occasionally say things about you know. what we shouldn't use technology or we. need a lot sometimes here we need a lot. fewer people. which that means i want to kill a lot of. people like there's nowhere like michael. mann i've been picking on him deservedly. but he'll say stuff casually such as. yeah you know the the world's it really. it's carrying capacity which is a term. for like how many people it can or. should hold it's like more like a. billion people. it's like a billion. a billion people that's if i was like.

that's like me saying the carrying cap. we have another person's room the. carrying class in this room is one. person. that's like yeah one of two of us need. to die. but that that we i'm just i'm just. pointing out there are these glimmers of. this anti-humanism when i'm exposing its. essence but you see these examples also. when they say like. you know humans are a cancer you'll. sometimes hear that or a cancer. sometimes you'll see these images if. it's an earth and it's got like a. thermometer on it like it's sick like. we've made the earth sick so again it's.

it's the earth is the superior god-like. being. and we are the evil. that impacted it what we're supposed to. do is leave it the way it is. and and not. impact it and that that is a you know. i'd say evil idea anti-human idea kind. of a primitive religious idea. and it is uh. but it is a it's the dominant way of. thinking about. our relationship to our environment and. in society today. yeah it sounds like they want to.

eliminate human existence you know if if. somebody came to you and said like hey. you know what i i'm part of the green. bear movement so i want to eliminate. bear impact. wouldn't you think they just want to. kill all the bears yeah. so i think it's the same with the humans. let's go through some of these. designated experts that you're speaking. of starting with. paul. ehrlich from stanford yeah. there you go so yeah and the thing i'll. say about designated experts i think. just one thing that's important is you.

know we're told the scientists or the. experts say we need to get off we're. causing climate catastrophe we get all. fossil we need to get all fossil fuels. it's important to know. that we do not have access. certainly the typical person does not. have access to the actual experts in the. in the relevant fields like in this case. it's experts on climate experts on. pollution experts on energy and in. particular when i say experts here i. mean researchers so the people who are. actually looking at the data who are.

actually studying it like we we. the the decisions we are making have to. involve knowledge discovered by. thousands and thousands and thousands of. actual expert researchers and so what we. need is we need a system that somehow. takes what the best people have found. and then helps put it you know. synthesize it so that it's more compact. and then disseminate it so that we have. access to it and then somebody helps to. help us evaluate what to do about it so. i in the book i have this detailed.

discussion of what i call the knowledge. system and the key thing about it is. this is the system that produces these. expert allegedly expert conclusions so. it starts with the researchers then. they're the synthesizers. so the synthesizers in climate would be. something like the un intergovernmental. panel on climate change so they their. job is to take all the climate research. and put it together in an accurate way. where the most important stuff is. revealed and it's important that even if. all the climate researchers are right. they can do a bad job and give a.

distortion of that. and that actually happens uh which we. could go into and then the disseminators. are the people who take kind of those. synthesis that those can even be. thousands of pages and it's the new york. times the washington post they're the. ones who tell us what are the major. scientific developments in the field and. then the evaluators. are the people or institutions who are. helping us decide okay now that we know. this let's say we knew that that fossil. fue you know co2 emissions from fossil. fuels were increasing drought which i. don't think is true but let's just say.

we knew that the evaluators tell us what. do we do about that and a good evaluator. would tell you you need to look at the. benefits of fossil fuels along with this. right you can't just look at this. negative on drought you have to look at. the positive on drought. and the positive of everything else so. the key thing to realize i'm going in. this whole song and dance is that the. system that tells us the expert. evaluation of what to do it can be wrong. on in four ways so the researchers can. be wrong in different ways but. especially the synthesizers can be wrong. the disseminators can be wrong the.

evaluators can be wrong and so what i've. argued so far. is that the people. people telling us to evaluate things. like evaluate to do they've been. ignoring the benefits and that's a total. failure so even if they're right about. everything else all their conclusions. are worthless because they're ignoring. the benefits and so to go to the. designated experts the designated. experts are really the the. representatives that the knowledge. system selects to help us put everything. together to help us evaluate what to do. based on the knowledge of the fact so.

take paul ehrlich that you mentioned he. is the number one designated. environmental expert of the last 50-plus. years in terms of the society his his. status in the society he uh so. from the 60s to the present he has. listened to in terms of hey what do we. do about these issues that affect our. environment. and so i i point out in the book he's. got a 50-plus year track record of being. 180 degrees wrong about everything so he. predicted a population bomb in the 60s.

as in we had too many people when there. were fewer i think than 4 billion people. now we have double that and the world is. better fed than ever and but he's. predicted a pollution would be so. terrible it just kills so many people. um he was involved in predictions of. catastrophic global cooling then mass. death from catastrophic global warming. one of his allies his close allies you. might ask about is a guy named john. holdren who was a close collaborator of. ehrlich's and what became he became. rewarded for his great scientific work.

by becoming president obama's chief. science advisor so i'm being a little. sarcastic with great scientific work. because in the mid 80s he predicted that. a billion p up to a billion people would. die from climate related causes due to. fossil fuels by 2020 a billion yeah and. we're recording this in 2022. so from famine. but the world is better fed than ever in. climate-related disaster deaths are at. an all-time low so he was 180 degrees. wrong i realized when i was writing this. book we don't even have a term.

until now for how wrong these people. were. because not just completely wrong they. said the exact opposite. of what happened that's why i call it. 180 degrees wrong because their exact. opposite direction. was the truth but yet these people are. considered the experts so the system is. telling us hey listen to these guys. right they won't lead you astray. and yet among other things so the two. things about them is they deny the. benefits of fossil fuels and they catas. what i call catastrophize the side.

effects so if you take something like. warming what happened there is we did. cause some warming but in general they. predicted way more warming and in. particular they predicted way more. damage from warming and and no ability. of us to master warming and that was. just totally wrong. so these designated experts this is the. point i make in chapters one and two. they ignore the benefits of fossil fuels. and they don't just only focus on the. side effects they catastrophize the side. effects they wildly overstate the side.

effects and this is why. you get these crazy predictions that the. fossil fuels are going to ruin the world. you've gotten these predictions for 50. years and they've made the world. incredibly better yeah. who's designating these experts. well so it's i call it the knowledge. system which is a there wasn't a good. term for what this is so it's it's the. the institutions. that are charged with giving us usable. expert knowledge as a general public so. for instance take take uh paul ehrlich.

like he will be cited in major. newspapers you know in the popular media. even as an example i cite of his. dominance he was on i think over a dozen. times the johnny carson show which just. shows how you know he says the new york. times will feature him on something. and um. you know the it's the people that we. hear we hear from a lot but it's it's. really the the system of in usually that. particularly now there's a whole reason. why. i think it's more uniform than it used. to be and my my theory about this is.

that it's because government controls so. much of. knowledge today particularly research so. much research academically is funded by. government and that tends to lead toward. a monopoly type of thing versus. competition. so whereas in the past we might have had. more competing knowledge systems there's. really one mainstream knowledge system. that's telling us that's why everyone in. lockstep is saying let's go net zero. that's that's there's this global. knowledge system and let's all listen to. the un intergovernmental panel. on climate change and we all agree on.

this so it really shows that there is. this establishment and you look at all. the corporations the financial. institutions uh the governments. they're all these unanimous type. conclusions. and it really shows this this monolithic. thing. and it's why in this book i i spend a. lot of time. showing that the knowledge system and. its designated experts are totally. bankrupt because it's very legitimate. for people to want to rely on these. things because expertise is very.

important. you know. you know. just think about military expertise like. you need real experts there just imagine. it's just like joe blow you consult him. about what to do about weapons it'd be. totally insane right you need expertise. um but there's this whole challenge of. how do you get really good expert. guidance and it's a very hard problem. but but people respect expertise and i. respect expertise but it's always. possible that the system is. malfunctioning. and i spend a lot of time proving and i. think i've proven 100 that the system is.

malfunctioning because above all the. system ignores the benefits of fossil. fuels. and that. and yet the benefits i make the point. the benefits of fossil fuels are. literally a livable planet for humans. because without fossil fuels. not many people can use machines to. uh improve their lives and be productive. and prosperous so without that we have. to live on a natural planet and the. natural planet is not abundant it's very. deficient in terms of resources. including food and water.

and it's not safe it's dangerous so. basically fossil fuels have taken a. naturally deficient and dangerous planet. and made it unnaturally abundant and. safe. and if you if the price of energy goes. up enough then you start to regress. toward a natural way of life where you. lit where most of the work is being done. by manual labor instead of by what i. call machine labor having all these. machines produce all this value for us. which is the only way to live yeah is. having machines do a lot of work for you.

i'd like to. go into nuclear okay uh talk a little. bit about nuclear but let's take a quick. break real quick okay.

thank you. [Music]. [Applause]. [Music]. [Music].

all right alex we're back from the break. and we're gonna go into nuclear but one. thing i did want to ask is when did. global. when did global warming. become climate change when did that. switch this is not as much of a smoking. gun as people think although it's it's. interesting in the popular language. because the in in the academic world.

climate change was around for a long. time so the main group that's supposed. to synthesis that's supposed to. synthesize all the knowledge is called. the intergovernmental and climate change. and it's been called that since the. mid-80s okay uh but but so. but there has been a switch in the. popular terminology right from global. warming to climate change and i think. part of it was there was a period where. warming had slowed down. dramatically and so what they wanted to. focus on was.

the alleged. other negative consequences of of. warming such as you know storms and. floods and all and as i said before it's. very implausible that everything would. get worse. um but nevertheless that that's so. climate change evoked a fuller. a fuller range of negative things versus. global warming it's not even clearly. negative. uh right because it could be it could be. positive depending on how much it is so. i think in general we've seen and here's. where the real i think.

evil is. is that we've gone from climate change. to. climate emergency. climate crisis and that's that's. particularly dangerous because what. they're trying to do. is they're trying to build into the. words that we use a certain evaluation. that is controversial and that is. actually false because if you say like. imagine we're just talking about the. situation we say hey like sean hey what. do you think about the climate emergency. you've already you've already you're. already assuming that there is a climate.

emergency and you don't have to argue. for it. uh but as i've pointed out. we're 50 times safer from. climate-related disaster. deaths you know than we were a hundred. years ago how can that be an emergency. yeah is there any emergency where you're. 50 times better off. no no so it's it's it's actually i use. this term and fossil future it's. actually we're actually in a climate. renaissance. so if you if you want to argue that it's. going to get worse in the future that's. hypothetically plausible right but you.

can't say it's worse in the present and. one thing to think about is anyone who. uses the term climate crisis or. emergency to describe the world now. is ignorant of the present or in denial. of the present. or this is what i really think is. happening they're not looking at the. present from a pro-human perspective. they're looking at it from an anti-human. impact perspective so they think the. climate is terrible today. not because it's deadly because it's. less deadly overall but because we. impacted it so there again the goal is.

not. advancing human flourishing because if. that's your goal then climate is better. than ever today but it's eliminating. human impact in which case your goal. your view is that it's worse. even though we're better off you have a. chart too that. that shows how it's safer 50 years later. than it was yeah yeah over the last 100. years it's just like you start here this. decade of this decade i wanna if you. have that i wanna put it up yeah we have. all of them so i'm gonna send you just. all the charts in the book and you can. use any of them perfect uh that you want.

yeah so it's it's very. so that i would say that the the climate. change thing. the other thing about climate change. that's bad as a term. is it's not. is it's not it's it's a deliberately. ambiguous term so it's not clear about. the cause of it. is it man-made or is it not man-made. it's assuming that it's people are using. it as man-made but it's not clear it's. man-made but the main thing is it's way. too vague about degree. because climate change as such. isn't even necessarily bad we could have.

a good climate change and it could also. just be a modest climate change even if. it was negative that was pretty trivial. to deal with. if we can master climate like let's say. you had. you know ten percent more hurricanes. just like okay that's a change but it's. not that big a deal. but what they want to do is they they. use climate change they want it to be. okay it's definitely man-made but the. worst part is they want us to equate it. with catastrophic climate change but. that wasn't working well enough even. though it was working way too well in my.

view that's why they started with. climate crisis and climate emergency. and you have this these organizations. like i think scientific american was one. of them. and they're like we're just going to use. the term i forget it was them. there's a lot of organizations that do. this and the guardian does this too. we're going to use the term climate. emergency. so it's really devious yeah it is. you had mentioned 80. of. the world's energy comes from fossil. fuels yes the other 20. so.

you've got high so fossil fuels are oil. coal and gas. in that order. so those that's 80 you know among those. and then you have hydro. and you have nuclear those are the big. ones after that and that or the other. one that goes along with that but it's a. little more controversial. is biomass. so biomass is. like from recently living biological is. it matter so you can think of it as wood.

animal dung but also things like ethanol. like any form of recently. usually it's usually it's a plant. although it can also be something like. animal dung. but that is a lot of that is in the. poor world and it's very low quality and. the reason that that's used a lot. is because when you're really poor. and you want energy what you do is you. just take whatever is lying around. and just like primitive people did for. you know forever but the problem with.

those forms of energy is the scale of. them is very very limited. so you think about if you're just. relying on your local forest for heating. let alone electricity like right you're. just going to run out of wood which is. what happened historically which happens. these places or you're relying on the. local animals like their dung is going. to that's not going to power very much. leaving aside the fumes and how. disgusting it is and you know the. one-third of the world is using water. animal dung you know as a major source. of fuel for heating and cooking so this. just shows how much more. modern energy but yeah so hydro.

and then and hydro is great and it's. for electricity in particular that's. what it produces but it's location. limited so you need the right bodies of. the water the right type of land. to have so if you're in washington state. that's great but if you're in nebraska. it's not great it doesn't work so. the thing about nuclear even though i. think right now statistically it's it's. a little bit after hydro in terms of. percentage it has the potential to scale. around the world because the raw. materials involved in nuclear namely is.

usually some form of uranium but it can. also be thorium. those can. there's so much of that stuff and the. way the plants work they can be used. anywhere basically so nuclear is the. real alternative that has the most. ability to scale around the world. that can actually produce reliable slash. on demand electricity solar and wind are. in a different category because they. don't produce reliable electricity they. produce intermittent unreliable. electricity so they given today's. technology are necessarily parasites on.

these reliable so that's i often call. them unreliables which those those. activists hate that term. just like they hate human racism but. they hate it because it's it's it stings. because there's truth in it yeah. should we be looking more at nuclear. yeah so the great thing about nuclear we. know. one so if we think about wirefl there's. this really good question why are fossil. fuels so good. why do we use these things we use 80 of. the world's energy they've had 100 plus.

years of competition. why are we still using these things. and. one of the basic reasons is the nature. of the material is quite distinctive so. fossil fuels they have these attributes. they're naturally stored concentrated. and abundant uh sources of energy so by. stored i mean. like you think about this is true of a. piece of wood as well but of oil it just. sits there and then it's like a natural. battery and you can just deploy it on.

demand whereas with the sun and the wind. you don't control them. you just have to react to whenever they. are available and if you want to control. them you need something like a battery. but then you have to build in that. storage system because solar and wind. don't have natural storage but. fossil fuels have natural storage so. that's really conducive to reliability. and to low cost on top of that they have. natural concentration which means they. take a large amount of energy and they. can put it in a small amount of space or. sometimes in the case of natural gas.

it's not a small amount of space but. it's a small amount of mass. and so oil in particular is what's. called very energy concentrated or. energy dense and that's why it's so good. for things like. cargo ships airplanes like things where. you need a lot of power in a relatively. small amount of space and then also. they're abundant because if they weren't. abundant then doesn't matter how potent. they are you wouldn't have that much of. them so. none of the other materials we think of. for energy the alternatives have this. combination of natural storage.

concentration and abundance except for. nuclear and nuclear actually it has. total storage. and it's much more concentrated than. fossil fuels like on the order of a. million times more even than oil and and. in practice like a thousand times more. in terms of what we can get from it. and then it's extremely abundant so it. has it has all the markers. of being a really scalable source of. low-cost reliable energy. and we have a track record where. it has been used to produce electricity.

relatively cheaply in the past. and we know that it has some versatility. because we use it on things like. aircraft carriers and icebreakers and. submarines so it has quite a bit of. versatility so it's kind of the obvious. thing. to event to supplement and then. eventually replace fossil fuels because. it has fossil fuels core attributes uh. but even more so. but what's happened is we've seen this. in electricity is that the green. movement the same movement that claims. to care about protecting us from co2. emissions.

has. demonized nuclear so they've falsely. portrayed it as safe even though it's. objectively actually the safest form of. energy which i can get into but just. take it as they've made it seem unsafe. and they've tried they've definitely. tried to outlaw it and it's i call it. criminalized right now because it's. there's so much regulation surrounding. it and so much ability of activists to. stop it that it's it's a lot like an. illegal activity so you just get the. sense of where it used to take four. years to get one of these things done.

it'll now take 16 years and maybe it. won't happen at all. wow so you think about would you invest. in like if somebody said hey sean i've. got you know you made this fortune on. gummy bears uh you want to invest in a. nuclear plant like maybe if it's four. years. you would do that but if it's 16 years. and like mario cuomo you know in the. past one of the guys who canceled one of. the things or like anyone can cancel it. i would never invest in that yeah so. they've made it this essentially. criminal enterprise to the point where.

this is a crazy fact but the nuclear. regulatory commission which is the. regulatory agency which came about in. 1975. so that's 47 years old since it came. into existence there's not been not one. nuclear plant that has gone from. beginning to end under the nrc not one. not one not one and the closest ones are. total price disasters they're completely. just off the charts they're not fully in. place yet but the ones that probably. will get approved eventually are like.

just so far. over cost that nobody would would pursue. them. why are they still against why are they. still against nuclear. well the. stated reason is the safety which that i. think anyone with common sense should. think is absurd because we know we have. a lot of nuclear around the u.s. we're not dying from it right there are. clearly ways to do it safely and if. you're if you're being told that co2. emissions. are a threat. you and are so dangerous they're gonna.

destroy the world we've talked about why. that's not true at all but. if you thought that then wouldn't you be. willing to to take some risks to do it. like why aren't you willing to split an. atom or for that matter damn a river. it's a similar thing with hydro. and i think hydro is the easier one to. explain because they'll say well we. can't. do hydro because it interferes with. free-flowing rivers. which basically mean it it impacts the. river it impacts the species in the. river so again it's this idea that our. goal is not to advance human flourishing. on earth it's to eliminate human impact.

on earth and so that gets the priority. so that's why they want to stop the dam. because the dam has impact and the goal. is to eliminate impact not to advance. human flourishing. with the dam and nuclear is the same. thing but in a slightly different way. it's viewed as unnatural to split the. atom like just we shouldn't be playing. with these forces it's like that's it's. wrong of us to do and in particular. people don't like the waste the. activists don't like the waste not. because it's really dangerous. but because it lasts a long time and the.

idea of human beings creating something. that lasts a long time is extremely. offensive if your philosophy is that. human impact is evil. and should be eliminated so it's really. this anti-impact. philosophy. that is leading to this hostility. because in practice nuclear is actually. the safest form of energy and the reason. is very simple. because it cannot explode but that's a. huge reason it's not the only reason but. it's so you look at most of the dangers. from energy.

that can really hurt you if you're. operating it or your neighbor. involves some sort of explosion or fire. some sudden deadly release of forces. that you don't have time to react to so. you know you can have. uh you know natural gas explosion which. this happens unfortunately and it'll. kill a bunch of people right even you. know solar panels can catch fire and. that causes all sorts of things you can. have like solar based fires and or that. they can help cause fires. but nuclear is great because it it's. this one centralized place and it can.

under very adverse unusual circumstances. it can overheat and that causes what's. called a meltdown but that's a very very. slow process. that gives you a lot of time to evacuate. and react to and that's why in the. civilized world we don't have any deaths. from radiation. like you know certainly. among civilians from nuclear and even in. chernobyl which was. a reactor it was basically like a weapon. that they designed which is has nothing. to. they basically just designed something. that we would never allow we never. considered allowing but even then you're.

not talking about even. not even 10 000 deaths by almost any. estimate so it's the consider this is. the by far statistically the safest form. of energy even if you included chernobyl. which you shouldn't because it's a. totally different category so it's all. about this view that human impact is. evil. and nuclear is offensive. because it involves these kinds of. impacts and the other thing in this guy. michael schellenberger again a friend of. mine who's running for governor in. california he makes the point also that.

the greens don't like it because they. don't want abundant energy and they. don't want abundant and clean energy in. the society because they want because. they know that'll mean a world where. humans have a lot of impact because they. don't want us to have all the energy. to impact the earth and so they they. don't solar and wind is more appealing. because that's going to lead to a more. natural and poor and poor life. interesting. so do you think we should be using you. think we should be using the fossil.

fuels to. go more towards nuclear and hydro i. would put it as. chapter 10 in the book i think we should. we should policy wise focus on freedom. like i don't think that i'm not coming. with some i joked before that biden had. some vision for the grid but i don't. believe in politicians or really any. individual having a vision for for like. a whole economy you could have a vision. for a company or product but the key. thing there is it should be voluntary so. you can make suggestions but you.

actually actually have to offer it. freely so my view is not that. oh fossil fuel should be 70 by 2040 and. here's my plan no i think people should. be free to produce and use whatever. forms of energy they want so long as. there are reasonable laws protecting us. against different kinds of real. endangerment from others. so like different kinds of levels of. pollution but also just certain kinds of. accidents and dangers and that like you. need certain laws for that kind of thing. but basically you want free market. competition among all sources of energy.

and i think that that includes. decriminalizing nuclear so nuclear is. the biggest victim right now. of the green anti-impact policies and so. in my own work i do a lot of work with. elected officials. and i'm working on an energy freedom. platform later this year which people um. whenever it's out they can go to the. website. energytalkingpoints.com which has a lot. of other resources so they'll see we've. got this platform and one of the major. planks is decriminalized nuclear so for. me it's all about politically it's about. freedom.

and then energy wise it's about having. uh i call it ultra cost-effective energy. in the book but low-cost reliable. versatile energy for billions of people. in thousands of places. and then in terms of like the morality. it's all about advancing human. flourishing on earth so fossil fuels. it's it's given the realities of energy. we need a fossil future to have global. human flourishing going forward but the. way to achieve that is energy freedom. it's not i'm not somebody who wants to. impose.

fossil fuels on the world i want to. liberate the world to enjoy. all forms of energy and fossil fuels are. crucial and because fossil fuels are. attacked now that's why i was def that's. why i'm defending them if if we had a. free market energy i absolutely would. not write this book. well i i appreciate you coming and. educating us on all this yeah my. pleasure and if you had. three people to recommend to come on. this podcast what who would it be. wait recommend that they come on this. podcast. you mean because your regards to energy.

oh oh oh i thought i thought it meant. just who would be a good guest for you. um. three. on energy on one just one okay only one. you're gonna you're gonna capture my. bias toward myself with this question i. mean honestly my favorite person is um. is uh. i have a researcher in germany who's. like my secret weapon he's not that. secret anymore but his name is stefan. henna.

and i met him i'm a big believer in like. in just getting good at things and not. getting credentials so you know my. official credentials i have a ba in. philosophy from duke university and a. minor in computer science which that. seems to have nothing to do with energy. and even in philosophy like a ba is not. impressive but it's like my goal is i. just believe you should get good at. things. and then the world will recognize that. you shouldn't screw around if you can. get good at something and and you can. get a credential and the credential. you're not going to get as good as fast. you should just get good at it and so.

stefan is the ultimate example of that i. don't even know what degree he has i. don't care i met him in a facebook. comment section in 2011 and i could tell. this guy was smart. and so now i hire him full time and his. job is just to be on top of everything. and so he knows way more than i do wow. about the details and so he's uh and. then there's another guy. i interviewed so basically one of the. things i'm good at i think is just. i had a vision for what. for kind of what what book the world. needed on energy and i was smart enough.

to knew to know that i on my own could. not do it by myself so i needed this. researcher and then there's a really. good philosopher i used to work with his. name is angkor ghate he used to work. with me at the iron rand institute he. still works there i don't work there. anymore um but i got him to help me and. got him and he helped like so many of. these ideas he helped me. refine so those are sort of the two. people i. i pick and then you know another guy i. would recommend as a third person. is just i would recommend uh michael.

schellenberger so he knows a lot about. energy. he focuses on other things he focuses on. homelessness and he's trying to become. governor of california. um but he i think he really. he's a really fascinating example of a. smart person who changes his mind. over time who seeks information and. changes his mind because he started out. as a renewables activist. and then he went to be very pro-nuclear. but still pretty hostile to fossil fuels. and then a couple years ago he came out. and said and really started challenging.

climate catastrophe. and he's been one of certainly the top. five people in the world who have been. really challenging climate catastrophe. and and putting forward this view that. you can believe that we impact climate. cool climate change. but also believe that it's not a. catastrophe and that the benefits we get. from fossil fuels. far outweigh that so it's a guy i really. admire and i think is it a good example. of a thoughtful person in a sense. i i was brought up to think that fossil. fuels were bad.

but i i was never like a greenpeace type. or something like that because. again when i think i said when i was 18. oh i might have said this offline i. learned that the green movement's goal. is to eliminate human impact on earth. and that human beings survive by. impacting earth and therefore i realized. the green movement is an anti-human. movement and i wanted nothing to do with. it so i had that's the huge advantage i. had coming into this stuff i still was. afraid of global warming climate change. and i didn't know about the benefits of. fossil fuels until. until basically 2007 i started learning.

but i at least knew that this green. philosophy was bad and so i think that's. what helped me be skeptical of it and. then see oh my gosh. really. everything they're doing is trying to. eliminate human impact on earth and none. of it is trying to advance human. flourishing on earth and the whole way. they're they're distorting fossil fuels. is really just ending up gonna end up. getting a bunch of us killed and then. make america in particular super. insecure. and really get us overtaken by china i'm. not saying that it will happen but.

that's certainly what they're trying to. do it's definitely a very good. possibility. yeah well i think you know as i'm an. activist so let's let's stop it but uh. it's. but part of stopping it it's like if you. see it. and you take it seriously then you have. a good chance at stopping it it's. certainly not certainly there are. there's a real set of possibilities. where china goes the way it's going we. go the way we're going. yeah we could be overtaken and we don't. want that world for ourselves or our.

kids no not at all. but how do people find you. uh. i'm not much of a guy on instagram yet. unlike you who are legend on instagram. so uh but i'm alex epstein energy on. instagram uh i'm most easily findable on. twitter at alex epstein just my name. of course the book is fossil future you. can get that uh. anywhere and then. oh yeah and then this website. energytalkingpoints.com i highly.

recommend that i created that first for. elected officials but now it's available. for everyone so if you have any question. about energy any energy issue or climate. issue environmental issue just go there. it has a search function you can type in. basically any word and you'll see. really good talking points that you can. use and they're all really well. referenced so. perfect that's like this is sort of like. this this is the synthesis. of everything and it's it's the full. master energy education to really arm. you. but i also like having these bite-sized. things that you can just use on demand.

you know you're at the dinner table. somebody brings up something just go to. energytalkingpoints.com oh perfect all. that stuff will be linked below. and. before i head out everybody pick up a. copy of fossil future that's linked. below and um man i just thank you again. for coming on i really appreciate it. that was super informative my pleasure. thanks for having me and of course. thanks for your service to our country. thank you and best of luck with the book. launch thank you. [Music].