Does The World Need More Fossil Fuels, Not Less? - Alex Epstein

1. 0:00 – 3:25

   Intro

   1. AEAlex Epstein0:00

      If you actually quantify what's been happening as we've been using more fossil fuels, admitting more CO2, we can document how many people are dying from climate-related disasters, such as storms and flood, extreme temperatures. And the rate of climate-related disaster that's, is down 98% over the last century. It's crazy, like we're so much safer from climate than we used to be, and yet nobody talks about this. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Alex Epstein, welcome to the show.

   3. AEAlex Epstein0:23

      Good to see you again.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:24

      Good to see you again. How are you?

   5. AEAlex Epstein0:27

      (smacks lips) I am good. We got to meet in person a couple of months ago, which was, which was fun.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:32

      One hell of an adventure. You took us out on Palmer Luckey's ex-Navy Seals extraction boat that does 60 knots, and we terrified everybody in Lido, Lido Isle.

   7. AEAlex Epstein0:46

      Lido Isle, yeah, in Newport Beach.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:48

      Yeah. That was funny. So Saturday morning, and we're pulling out of this sort of beautiful bay, and there's people on kayaks and paddleboarding and doing little, like, pedalo things, and then there's people on party boats. And then there's this huge, big, gray monster with .50-cal machine guns with no ammunition mounted on the sides of it, and we're just slowly chugging along next to them. That was a sight to behold.

   9. AEAlex Epstein1:17

      Yeah, I don't know if your, your listeners ever heard, but yeah, you were, you were nice enough to come out and, and be the interviewer for this thing I did with Peter Thiel, uh, and Palmer Luckey for the launch of the event. And yeah, since P- Palmer had graciously agreed to host it, and if people don't know who Palmer is, he's a very impressive guy. Uh, he founded Oculus and sold it to Facebook for over two billion dollars when he was 21, and then got fired from Facebook, mostly related to giving less than $10,000 to a pro-Trump, uh, group. And then he started a very successful, really cool defense startup, so he's very int- uh, very into defense, very into technology, very into weapons. And, uh, he, yeah, he, he's a kinda fan of my work and so he agreed to host this event, and Peter was on the stage and you came and he's like, "Oh, I have this MKV Navy Seal boat, so why don't you guys take a ride on that and go visit an off-shor- shore oil platform." So it's nice to have acquaintances who, uh, have cool ideas and the means to execute them.

   10. CWChris Williamson2:19

       And cool toys that you can piss about on.

   11. AEAlex Epstein2:21

       Yes.

   12. CWChris Williamson2:22

       We got to drive it a little bit. We got to steer it with one of the guys as well.

   13. AEAlex Epstein2:25

       Yeah, we got to drive it.

   14. CWChris Williamson2:25

       Which was-

   15. AEAlex Epstein2:25

       Yeah, for sure.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:26

       ... yeah, wild. One of the wildest pieces of kit. And the guys were telling us about how, uh, so you can imagine the back of this boat, uh, opens down kind of like a low loader on a U-Haul or something, but this opens down into the water so the Navy Seals that are being extracted from wherever they've just kicked in some doors and S- got some bad guys or whatever, they get onto the little sort of rubber dinghy crafts and they'll blast along. And they don't even slow down. Apparently they just hit the back of this boat and slide up straight onto it, come to a halt. All the guys get out. Some of them get onto the, um, belt-fed .50-cal machine guns, some of them strap themselves in, some of them go and do other stuff. It's like, it was, it was pretty cool. Pretty, pretty cool.

   17. AEAlex Epstein3:09

       Yeah. That was, uh, it was, uh, fun to have you. And I, I wish that was every weekend. Maybe it's every weekend for Palmer, but...

   18. CWChris Williamson3:15

       Yeah, perhaps if you're-

   19. AEAlex Epstein3:16

       It's a very, very, uh, unusual experience for me.

   20. CWChris Williamson3:18

       ... billionaire, 21-year-old's company sale.

   21. AEAlex Epstein3:22

       Well, now he's 29. Now he's 29.

   22. CWChris Williamson3:24

       Imagine that.

2. 3:25 – 10:31

   Why Are Fuel Prices Rising?

   1. CWChris Williamson3:25

      Uh, all right, so fuel and energy prices, uh-

   2. AEAlex Epstein3:28

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:28

      ... pretty wild at the moment. Can you explain-

   4. AEAlex Epstein3:31

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:31

      ... what's going on, why they're so high?

   6. AEAlex Epstein3:33

      So I, I think of this as a situation that's very simple in its fundamentals, and I think the complexity is mostly that the people who caused the problem are trying to evade responsibility for the problem. So, I mean, just think about in economics, if you just heard, like, prices go up, what do you expect, right? It has to be a change of supply and demand. Supply sets prices, right? So is it, you know, supply goes down, demand goes up or, you know, one of the two, or worse, both, for, for purposes of prices. Then you're gonna get rising prices. And so what, what is the thing we're concerned with the supply and demand of? Well, it's fossil fuels. It's oil prices, which directly affect gasoline prices, but it's also natural gas prices, which have been going up around the world, which has h- which have huge implications, including in fertilizer, and that leads to food shortages and, and threats of starvation. And then coal prices also, um, are at very, you know, recent highs. Coal prices are usually stable, and they have been quite high and that affects many people, it affects industry, including many of the poorest people around the world who use a lot of coal, um, in developing economies. So if you think about it, okay, so s- prices are set by supply and demand, and so we're worried about fossil fuels. Well, what in the world could have happened with fossil fuels that might suppress the supply of fossil fuels? I don't know. Maybe the number one most influential moral movement in the world is focused on eliminating fossil fuels. So the reason my views are controversial is because we have this global movement that says we need to achieve what's called net zero by 2050, which means essentially eliminating fossil fuel use. Now it's the middle of 2022, and for at least the past 15 years, this movement has been quite successful and in- increasingly I should say in recent years, at opposing fossil fuel investment, fossil fuel production, fossil fuel transportation. And we see this in the United States. We have many examples of all of these. You certainly see it even more in Europe. We could go into the examples, but I think people are pretty familiar. And then what we have at the same time... So we have suppressing supply by opposing investment, production, transportation, and then what happens with demand? Well, part of the, the, the premise, or I would argue pretense... of restricting the supply of fossil fuel is, "Oh, well, we can rapidly replace them with solar and wind." And you see a lot of investments and subsidies and mandates going that direction. And what's happened is that has turned out not to be the case, and so once you are out of a pandemic/lockdown where demand is artificially suppressed, demand comes back, it starts increasing, but supply has been suppressed, and there was a kind of record amount of enthusiasm for suppressing supply during the pandemic because there was this lie that, oh, demand has gone down, so it'll always go down. So you had a lot of, like, the ESG movement at its peak saying, "No more investments." You have the International Energy Agency saying, "We shouldn't be developing. If we want to hit these targets, we shouldn't be developing new oil and gas." And what you saw, for example, is a huge suppression of, say, oil investment, which went down 50% from 2011 to 2021, and this is in a world that needs more of it. And I had been arguing for many years that, look, the world is desperately short of energy. Six billion people use a level of energy that you and I would consider unacceptable. Three billion people use less electricity, specifically, than a typical American refrigerator. A third of the world uses wood and animal dung as their dominant source for heating and cooking. We live in an energy-starved world from our perspective and for most people's perspective. Like, as in they want the energy that we have, and so that means massively more energy demand. And I've argued that fossil fuels will, for a long time, be uniquely able to supply low-cost reliable energy for all the different types of machines on a global scale. So if you have a desperate need for something, a unique ability to provide it, you suppress the supply, the demand goes up, you get this price crisis. So I think there, there's a lot of arguments that people make, but I think it's very simple supply and demand.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:38

      What is the reason that's given by people that are not pro-fossil fuels? Presumably... Let's say that this is true. Uh, actually, is there anything else beyond the suppression of investment which has restricted the supply? Is there... Are there any other elements that, uh, have impacted the availability and the prices of fuel and stuff at the moment?

   8. AEAlex Epstein8:00

      Yes. Yes, but I think they're, they're derivative and, and not decisive. But so one... Th- there are a lot I think are totally invalid that are pseudo reasons, but one is if you look at, say, the American industry in particular, there was over-investment in what's called American shale energy. So shale rock, you know, is this, uh, is this rock that was historically useless that in the past two decades American industry in particular ingeniously allowed to become economic in terms of producing oil and gas. You look back in the '50s and '60s and '70s, this was considered, uh, impossible or in the future. For example, my, my favorite book, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, one of the heroes is somebody who figures out how to get shale to work, which is not something that could actually be done. But then we have these real life heroes who actually did it, and part of what happened is... And, and we can talk about the reasons behind this. So much money got put in shale that you oversupplied the market arguably given, given the, um, the actual economics, and so a lot of investors lost money on that. And so what they told the companies is, "Hey, you need more..." what they would call fiscal discipline. "So you need to... You should not over-invest, uh, if there's a chance that you'll lose money." And so the, the level of... So that has driven some of the unwillingness to invest, uh, but at the same time, a lot of it has been what's called this ESG movement, environmental social governance, which is just a, um, quasi-gov- half government/half voluntary, uh, i- in this context, aspect of the anti-fossil fuel movement where they're telling companies, "Hey, commit to net zero. Investors commit to net zero." And you have many, many successful companies that have said, "Hey, I've got this profitable course of action," and, say, university endowments won't touch it or major financial institutions won't touch it. And so that's... The... What happened is the, um, the en- the, the fact that the industry wasn't doing well financially or parts of it weren't doing well financially, that actually gave fuel to the fire of ESG because it, it... The ESG people said, "Hey, look, if you invest in oil, you're gonna lose money." So even more people made these anti-oil commitments, and so then it made things even worse. So versus a small correction where you said, "Oh, we over-invested. Okay, let's pull back a bit," people pulled back massively, uh, with, with the, the faili- the, the, um, the failed investments as a pretext but really being driven by this anti-fossil fuel movement.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:28

      Give me your thoughts on the modern ESG

3. 10:31 – 18:08

   The Modern ESG Movement

   1. CWChris Williamson10:31

      movement.

   2. AEAlex Epstein10:33

      Well, you know, one, one thing that's exciting is there are finally people, uh, against this thing, which I felt pretty alone in, uh, for a couple years. So, so just so people know, ESG stands for environmental, social, uh, and governance. And essentially what it, what it purports to be, which I think everyone should consider absurd on the face of it, is it says these are the universal norms that every company should follow. So here are kind of the environmental norms you should follow, here are the social norms which can include things like skin color, how you deal with that, how you deal with communities, and then governance, um, practices. And one thing is this was... A lot of this was cooked up at the UN, which you wouldn't think of as these are experts in how to have a successful business. And so what it's, what it... A- a- and I guess the broader thing of ESG is it's part of what's called stakeholder capitalism. And so this is the idea that the primary purpose of the company and its management should not be to produce value profitably but to broadly serve stakeholders, and then that will somehow lead to profit. And the, the issue there is stakeholders has no real definition, so when you s-... Whereas profit is clear, right? You, you have a certain input, and then you can sell it, your output, for a certain amount and then the difference is profit. And so it really holds you to you need to create value. You need to, you need to, uh, put out more than you put in. But with stakeholder, it can be anything. And so what this leaves you open to is, uh...... whatever are the popular moral or political views a- at the time, that's what decides the stakeholders and that's what decides what's a good environmental practice, what's good social, what's good governance. So if you take social, for example, I would argue that racism, in the true sense of it, is a major guiding principle of ESG today. That is, they believe that skin color is extremely important and that you should be required to have a certain balance of skin colors, uh, in your company, or that you should have a certain, like gender requirement of this many people on your board. And I think that's ... Well, in the race case, I think that's, that's a racist view that views ideas as determined by skin color. But in any case, that's a particular view that is treated as, "Oh, this is what everyone should do socially." And notice you get these monolithic practices where all the companies are doing the same things and you can't question them. And so that's what ... That's ESG, these u- allegedly universal norms that everyone follows, and then an environment, shouldn't be a surprise to most people given the dominance of the anti-fossil fuel movement, that to be good environmentally overwhelmingly means you commit to rapidly eliminating your fossil fuel use and that in your supply chain. And so the ESG movement, its number one practical consequence economically has been companies around the world committing to net zero, to getting off fossil fuels, to y- sometimes using all solar and wind, and I think that has been a total disaster.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:22

      Why is it that companies would follow this type of advice when it seems to be the sort of thing that's going to cause their profit lines to drop down?

   4. AEAlex Epstein13:33

      It's a really good question. So one thing we see is that it's mostly or it's dominated in parts of company or- or rather, um, among c- it's dominant among companies that are most connected to government. So when you're thinking about let's just say, say the ... ESG is biggest in public companies. So public companies, that's not a totally free thing because you have exchanges that you have to be on, and there's all kinds of government regulation and government pressure, and so there are a lot of financial advantages to being a public company. Namely, it's much easier to raise money, it's easier to incentivize people to be part of it because you become very liquid, right? Like, if I join a private company, it can be hard to sell my shares. That's less of an incentive to join it. If I join a public company, like if I'm part of Nike and I have a big stake of Nike, I can sell that on the public market. So there's a lot of reasons to want to go public, but then what these movements like ESG do is they attach themselves to these, uh, institutions often that have close ... That are proximate to governments, and so they get, they get different kinds of incentives and policies passed that way. So there's, there's one thing of the more the government is involved, the more the companies tend to adopt these kinds of, of practices. Um, another thing is that there's just a lot of status-seeking in the corporate world. And, you know, one thing, one thing, um, in the, in what's called the theory of the corporation that's really important is corporation is this amazing thing, but it always has what's ca- there are different ways of putting this, like the agency problem, but the issue of you have a division between ownership and control. So the people who own the company are different from the people who control the company, and there's this legitimate perennial worry about, how do you get the people who control the company to act in the interests of the owners of the company? And this is a huge challenge throughout corporate history. Like, if you, if you own all the company yourself and you control it, that can be the best for the company, but that often is not the situation. Certainly the founder dies or there are many situations where you don't even have that in the, in the first place. And so what you need to watch out for is what bad incentives do the agents have, namely the managers of the company, that are at odds with the corporation? And one huge one which relates to ESG is that a huge percentage of shareholders today are not owners in the conventional sense of people who choose to own the company because they think it's promising and to believe in its mission. They are what are called passive investors, namely in the form of index funds. So an index fund is something that's a great innovation, and you get it from Vanguard or BlackRock or State Street, and the idea is that instead of picking securities yourself, you know, stocks yourself, you invest in the broader market to, um, so that you, you can take advantage of the fact that over time the market performs well. It's very hard to pick. So I have a lot of index funds. A lot of people have a lot of index funds, but there's a tricky issue of when you're in an index fund ... So if I am ... Let's say my ... I've, I'm in something called Dimensional, but let- let's say I'm in Vanguard, um, which I used to be in. You know, Vanguard, I, I hold hundreds of different companies through Vanguard. So do I vote those shares myself? Well, usually what's happened for various reasons is Vanguard votes those shares on my behalf and on other h- others' behalf. So you look at companies like ExxonMobil, um, Chevron, they have huge shareholder ownership by BlackRock, by Vanguard, by State Street, and therefore those people can exercise enormous ownership issues, but even though they're not traditional owners. And so those people then ... What's ... Then the managers of those companies can sort of be the owners of every company, and their agendas can screw with everyone's. So an example, this guy Larry Fink, whom we talked about, Peter and I talked about at our event, uh, like, he, he has an insane amount of control over the entire corporate world because he runs BlackRock and BlackRock owns so much of every company. So he can write a letter to CEOs and every CEO has to be afraid of him. And he is very, you know, he's kind of a politically left guy. He is very obsessed historically with this net zero movement, with climate catastrophe, and his political ideas, therefore, have an enormous influence on all of corporate, uh, America, even though I'd argue, uh, you, for many reasons you wouldn't want that influence. And, and I would argue he's totally ignorant about energy and, and, uh, also has ideas about energy ... In any case has ideas about energy that are not good for the world.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:07

      Speaking

4. 18:08 – 26:02

   Alex’s Call for More Fossil Fuels

   1. CWChris Williamson18:08

      about fossil fuels and energy and net zero, what's novel about your argument that says that we should embrace more fossil fuels? 'Cause Dr. Patrick Moore was on here a while ago, and he was talking about f- a little bit more of a, um, I guess, a geothermal look at what was happening anthropologically in the data, what we're expecting in terms of global warming. What's unique about or novel about your position?

   2. AEAlex Epstein18:35

      Well, I'm- I'm glad that's a question now because I don't think it would have been a question when I got started 15 years ago 'cause almost nobody was arguing for fossil fuels. So first of all, there are not nearly enough people arguing for fossil fuels. And then I would say the people who are arguing somewhat for fossil fuels are not usually arguing as consistently as I am. So the- the- the views kind of are, we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels or we need to slowly eliminate fossil fuels. But in any case, we should be focused on getting off fossil fuels. And my- my conclusion, I'll talk about the argument in a second, is no, we should be expanding fossil fuel use. So one thing that's just the conclusion, so it's- it's- the book is Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. So it's- it's really saying the world should have more. Um, and then I think the- the key to it is that I have a very explicit framework that I think you need to think about these issues with. And so the first differentiating thing is, not to be too immodest, but I don't think anyone else really has a fully worked out framework, and I think s- the- the better people who are closer than we have somewhat of a framework, like they'll talk about cost-benefit analysis. Um, but I think to think about these issues, like leaving aside the conclusion, to think about these issues, you need to be really clear on three core issues. And the- the kind of things we're talking about, like fossil fuels, are they good for the world? Are they bad for the world? What should we do about them? The- the real key is like what should we do about this source of energy that provides most of the world's energy, but also emits CO2 and so we have concerns? Like what should we do? And I think the- the three things you need to think about are, one, what is your goal when you're talking about this issue? Like when you're talking about the world as a whole, what is your goal? Like what would it mean to- to move forward versus move backward? And I think, and we can, uh, dive into these, but I'll just give the highlight, the high level. It's like there's- I think there's a fundamental question of, is your goal to eliminate human impact on Earth or advance human flourishing on Earth? And I think the dominant way of thinking about it, which you see a lot in climate, is our goal should be to eliminate our impact on Earth as much as possible, and I think of that- I think that's an anti-human, unjustifiable goal. So that's kind of one thing. Um, number two, which is related, is sort of what's your view of the relationship between human beings, uh, and Earth? And I think the- the- the- the alternatives are one, is what I call the delicate nurturer view of Earth, which is the idea that the Earth exists in a delicate nurturing balance that's stable, sufficient, and safe, and that human impact ruins it for humans and for the rest of nature. So it's the idea that Earth is kind of perfect and our impact ruins it, versus... And I- I think that is n- there's no basis of that, for that at all. And I think the actual true is what I call the wild potential view of Earth, so which is that Earth has the potential to be an amazing place, but it's- it's unimpacted state, it's dynamic, deficient, and dangerous, and so human beings need to massively impact it, or I would call it productively impact it, for it to be an abundant and safe place for humans. So there's- there's what's your goal with respect to the Earth, what's your view of the relationship between human beings and- on Earth, and then I think what flows from that is what I call your method of evaluation. And so here, when you look at how people look at fossil fuels, I would argue that they tend to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels and overstate or- or certainly only pay attention to the side effects. So I give the example in my book of one of our leading thinkers on this issue, Michael Mann. He talks about fossil fuels and climate and agriculture, and he talks only about negative impacts on agriculture, but he doesn't mention once in his long book that fossil fuels are crucial for food- for fertilizer and for all the amazing agricultural machines. And it's thinking like that that causes us to have an energy crisis because we ignore the benefits, and so we throw away fossil fuels without realizing what we're using. So that's a very, I argue that's pervasive among our leaders, is ignoring the benefits and then only paying attention to or actually wildly overstating the side effects. And then the proper thing is you need to look- you need to equally weigh the benefits and the side effects, right? You need to weigh them both with precision. Um, and so I think those are- those are the- kind of the three big issues. Do you believe that our goal is to eliminate human impact on Earth or advance human flourishing on Earth? Do you believe that Earth is a delicate nurturer or wild potential? And do you just look at the negative side effects or do you look at both benefits and negative side effects? And in Fossil Future what I do is lay that out really clearly and I show, hey, this is my framework. This is the framework that most of our leading thinkers are using. They can't defend that framework. Nobody can defend this framework. What they're relying on is that it's implicit and that they're never actually stating their framework. And so my goal, what I say is, "Here's my framework, which I call the human flourishing framework. If we apply that framework to fossil fuels, it's obvious that we should use more." So I think 90% of this is- is, uh, is philosophy. That's part of why I think I've been able to make a unique contribution because of a background as a pro-human philosopher, particularly environmental, pro-human environmental philosopher. And I think once you have the f- the right philosophical framework, my- my position is essentially obvious. You- you can- you can argue about degrees, but the idea of net zero is- it- that is like saying, "Let's have 10 holocausts."

   3. CWChris Williamson24:00

      Why?

   4. AEAlex Epstein24:01

      Well, because- because, um, human beings, eight billion people only survive by the grace of having millions of amazing machines...... that make us productive and prosperous and that protect us from the naturally deficient and dangerous earth. And we're seeing this right now with agriculture, right, where we're having literal talk of starvation now around the world. If you take agriculture, like the only way, uh, the earth supports eight billion people with all this food is we have all these amazing machines, often powered by diesel, that can allow one person to do as much work as a thousand really good manual laborers used to be able to do. And we have things like fertilizer that allow us to overcome the pretty naturally meager amount of, say, bat guano that's on the earth. And these are powered by fossil fuels, namely oil for the machines and natural gas for the fertilizer. And so if you reduce, like if you actually eliminate those without a viable replacement on the, on the timetable that we're talking about, that's literally killing people. And, you know, far more than, I mean, far more people die prematurely than from 10 holocausts. Now, like I think that's just, that's just what would happen. Now people can say, "Well, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen that way," which is true, but it's still important to know it, bad stuff will happen as we're seeing now, but it's still important to know that the goal is bad. Like and you really need to i- and, and when you don't identify the goal as bad, by the way, then you get things like holocausts 'cause you get somebody saying, "Yeah, it'd be really good if there weren't all these Jews." And people are like, "Yeah," or like, "Yeah, maybe that's going too far, but I don't really like Jews that much. You know, they have, I don't like the, I don't like these bankers and stuff." I mean, that's a lot of what you had with Hitler is, is a lot of his goals were announced and, um, uh, uh, uh, and particularly the goal of like, let's eliminate the Jews. Like that was considered a reasonable goal, like these people are bad. And let's eliminate fossil fuels as a goal, like that's not something we should, civilized people should be talking about.

5. 26:02 – 36:47

   Bad Energy Policy

   1. CWChris Williamson26:02

      The difference is that the immediate effect of eliminating fossil fuels aren't so present, right? It's not a person. It's not some sentient being that you're hurting. So the most compelling thing, and obviously we did this event and (clears throat) it meant that I went back into your old work and then into your new work as well. I think the most compelling argument that I saw was this sort of bourgeois, very fortunate, very, um, luxurious position that most of the people who are putting forward these policies and these ideas are coming from. So a lot of the time, this is Western, highly developed, um, civilizations, places that have got infrastructure with clean, uh, well, not clean, but cheap and reliable energy, right, that people can get access to at all times. And they're saying, "We need to reduce our fossil fuel use. This is bad. This is going to endanger the environment. We're going to have climate catastrophes." Meanwhile, three billion people on the planet don't have access to regular available energy. Like it-

   2. AEAlex Epstein27:02

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:02

      ... it's policies being put in place by people who are not going to be impacted by those policies. Like yeah, sure, maybe the price is going to go up, but they're not going to lose access to energy overall. And that, um, like the- the distance between the people that are pushing this and implementing this and how it's going to impact them and the people that it's genuinely going to make a ton of an impact on, the ones that desperately need more and more energy, that was the most compelling, uh, part of it for me.

   4. AEAlex Epstein27:35

      So I think I partially agree with you, but- but not fully on the immediacy. So, so for sure to the point, I mean, obviously I make the points, I agree with it, about y- like my view is you need to con- when you're thinking about the world, you need to constantly think about most people are really poor and from your perspective live in an apocalypse. Like and, and Palmer Lucky and I talked about this after the event. We had a little 10-minute, um, uh, discussion, um, that's, by the way, on my Substack, alexepstein.substack.com. And like he and I both resonated with this point that like if you gr- if you lived in a world where you're making less than $10 a day, like if you got transported there and everything that entails, you'd be like, "Oh my gosh, what the hell happened? Like this would be horrific." And so you just need to constantly thinking, be thinking most people are poor and they're poor because nature makes us poor and because they're not productive, and they're not productive because they don't have machines, and without low-cost reliable energy, they can't use machines. So you just, like you think about that all the time and you're right that so many people in the West don't think about this. But it's, what really what's happening I think with the, um, with this issue of it's not immediate, the main thing until recently is we haven't really been following the policies. So we've been talking about... So this is the weird paradox where people say, "Oh my gosh, Alex, you're so crazy. You're for fossil fuels." But the world has been in- world has been agreeing with me in practice. Like I say, "I love fossil fuels." People think that's crazy, but the world has been using more and more fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use has been increasing globally, uh, indefinitely, just with the pandemic being the drop. Uh, but that was, that wasn't lack of fossil fuels. That was just lack of energy and every- everything in society being, being suppressed. And so what we see is even in the wealthy world, when we have any kind of supply issue as we're having now, or certainly any reliability issue as we've had in California and Texas, people experience that as disastrous and they don't want anything to do with it. So what's happened is it's- it's more that like once you have energy problems, it's true that some of them take a while to play out, but a lot of them are immediate 'cause the machines require continuous energy. Like as soon as the energy stops, it's not like it stops and then five years later you notice. No, you notice like five seconds later when it's electricity, and you notice five days later if it's anything else in- in the world of energy. Like imagine you're New York and trucks stop working, you will notice very, very quickly. So i- it just shows how reckless these are. I mean, they're terrible for the poorest people in the world, but even for rich people, once your supply of continuous energy is disrupted, life is terrible. And that's- that's part of what makes me optimistic is now people are actually seeing, "Hey, we have an energy crisis.... and they don't like it. And the Biden administration and everyone else are, are, like, they're really backtracking a lot on their, on their policies.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:29

      But the most common pushback against this surely would be, "We don't need fossil fuels. We can recreate this energy with renewables, which are-"

   6. AEAlex Epstein30:37

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:38

      "... cleaner and not going to impact the environment. We get to have our cake and eat it too. We get to get energy and we get to reduce our impact on the environment."

   8. AEAlex Epstein30:46

      Right. Yeah, and then so this is, this is, um... I think this is now becoming less plausible to people because of the events. So, so it's important that this has been the basis of restricting fossil fuel use for the last, uh, X number of years, has been to say, "Yeah, we can replace it with solar and wind." So for example, why does Europe ban fracking? Which is, you know, the most effective energy technology of the last 20 years. Well, they think, "We don't need fracking," right? I mean, "Well, yeah, we'll get some gas from Russia and hopefully that'll work out well." But they don't feel like they need it, right? There's all- Why are all these companies getting off oil? Because they think, "Look, we don't need it. We're just gonna have so-called renewables," which in practice means mostly solar and wind. And so I think that, that people should... I can give the, the, the logic of why it doesn't work, but it's important that it's not working. I mean, it's hard to say, it's hard to say, "Oh, well, we haven't done anything with these. We haven't subsidized them. We haven't mandated them." There's been an aggressive global push to use as many of these as possible, and yet what's happened is clearly they haven't made up the difference because the s- the shortfall of fossil fuel supply has led to rising prices. Whereas if, if renewables could substitute, then you wouldn't have the rising prices, because they would-

   9. CWChris Williamson31:56

      But what if people said that's just because we don't have enough renewables yet, we haven't implemented sufficient solar and wind stations?

   10. AEAlex Epstein32:02

       Yeah, yeah. So it's that, that, that's... I mean, you could think that, but then it's, it's also interesting just on the surface that... What i- what are, what is everyone doing? Like, Biden is not saying, "Hey..." He's not primarily saying, "Hey, China, give me some more solar panels." He's saying, like, "Venezuela, give me some more oil. Saudi Arabia, give me some more oil." So I'm just giving... These are just indications. I mean, the basic thing is... So fossil fuels provide 80% of the world's energy in a world that's desperately short of energy. Uh, they provide uniquely versatile energy, so they power a much wider variety of machines than anything else powers. Most people think of energy and electricity as the same thing, but electricity is only 20% of the world's energy. Most of the world's energy is dire- is usually directly burning fossil fuels because that's really, really good for, say, heavy-duty transportation like cargo ships and airplanes that are much more efficient to burn fossil fuels directly than versus any kind of electric battery, which is essentially impossible for those. And then a lot, generating huge amounts of heat, uh, for industrial purposes, which is, um, much more efficient using fossil fuels a lot of the time. So the, the, the thing is, it should be pretty crazy to think... Okay, and f- and solar and wind provide 3% of the world's energy, all in the form of electricity, and that 3% is entirely dependent on fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro, namely controllable sources of electricity. So just the macro thing, it should be suspicious to people that the thing that's 3% that totally depends on the other things is gonna replace all of the fossil fuels and plus provide energy to the rest of the world in the next 27 and a half years. And then you look at what actually happens in the places that use these, and you notice that the. when you look at the places that are, like, significant swaths of area that are consistently using more solar and wind, the prices go up. And the basic reason is because they're unreliable. They can go to near zero at any given time. What you have is, is you have to pay for the 100% reliable grid, and then you also have to pay for the solar and wind. So you can think of these as infrastructure duplication costs. And so those mount up, and what happens is either you're willing to pay those costs, like say Germany has been willing to, and you have very expensive electricity. Or you try to cut back on those costs by cutting back on your reliable controllable sources such as nuclear and natural gas, which is what's happened in Texas and what's happened in California. In Texas, in particular, it's been a lack of investment in, let's say, weatherization and other kind of resiliency measures. And so then you have reliability problems. So you could have quite a bit of solar and wind and be totally reliable if you're willing to have the 100% backup but it's very, very costly. So what you see is these things are cost-adding sources of electricity. So th- there's just, there's no basis at all for thinking that, "Oh, these are going to rapidly replace fossil fuels." They don't have any of the trajectory of that. What you would want is, you'd want something that was really replacing fossil fuels, that didn't depend on fossil fuels, that was out-competing them without any government favoritism, including subsidies and mandates, and that was expanding into all the areas that are non-electricity, such as industrial heat, such as heavy-duty transportation. And none of this is happening at all. So I talk about this in a lot of detail in chapter six of Fossil Future, but if you just look at... The, the trajectory of these things doesn't res- doesn't remotely resemble the unprecedented economic breakthrough. And then a final thing that's notable is the people who claim to support solar and wind so enthusiastically, there's something very phony about it, 'cause they're not just hostile to fossil fuels. They're usually hostile to nuclear, they're hostile to hydro, and they're hostile to mining. And f- and solar and wind require more mining than essentially any project ever conceived in the history of humanity, 'cause they're very dilute sources in addition to intermittent, so they take up a lot of space. You need to ru- you need to mine these things called rare earths, that they're not rare in the earth, but they're low, low concentration, so you need to mine a huge amount of material to get small amounts of them. And so what's really going on is, uh, and this is where it's come back, it comes back to philosophy, is really the movement behind this, their goal, I argue, is to eliminate human impact on earth. They think it's evil for us to impact the earth, and they want to reduce or eliminate that impact. And that's why they're hostile not just to fossil fuels, but also to things that you would expect them to love, like nuclear and hydro and the mining necessary for solar and wind. And so I consider the enthusiasm for solar and wind to be a pretext for just hostility toward energy as such.... um, 'cause it does, yeah. 'Cause it, it doesn't present as, "We love energy so much and we're just so enthusiastic about this particular form." It presents as, "We always have a reason to be against every form of energy. And here's the latest thing we're pretending to be for, even th- though we're against all the industrial processes that would make it possible, if it were possible, which it's

6. 36:47 – 44:40

   Will More Carbon Dioxide Destroy Earth?

   1. AEAlex Epstein36:47

      not."

   2. CWChris Williamson36:47

      Well, one of the other big criticisms is that carbon in the atmosphere is going to not only impact the climate moving forward but turn us into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Why?

   3. AEAlex Epstein36:59

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:59

      Why are you so confident that this isn't going to be the case? Why should we... Why does the ledger balance out in favor of fossil fuels when there is so much concern around the parts per million and carbon in the atmosphere?

   5. AEAlex Epstein37:15

      Yes. I think a- th- this is really the thing that, that drives it and that drives good people on it. You know, it's this concern that, well, the side effect of using this is going to be the apocalypse. I mean, the way AOC put it is, you know, scientists have told us we've got 12 years to live and you're... if we don't do something and y- you're worried about the cost. And so, i- I would say it's a l- totally j- legitimate thing to look into because you burn fossil fuels, it, it, it releases energy, but it also releases, um, CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is a warming gas and a fertilizing gas for that matter, and so it's legitimate to look into, hey, what are the consequences of this? But if you look at the way people think about it, um, the, the way you would think about it from a pro-human perspective, so if your goal is to advance human flourishing, you recognize the earth is a delicate nurturer and you look at both the benefits and side effects with precision, it doesn't at all resemble how people think of it. So the w- the way you would think of it is, there are basically th- three principles you should follow when thinking about CO2, and our leaders follow almost n- none of these. If you find somebody who follows even two of these principles, you've found yourself a good thinker. Uh, and what's interesting is nobody has ever disagreed with any of these principles, but almost nobody follows them. So principle one is when you're looking at CO2, you need to look carefully at the positives and negatives of the CO2 itself. So CO2 is a side effect of fossil fuels, but you have to be open to positive and negative impacts. So it's a warming gas and a fertilizing gas, so one thing is you need to look seriously at what are the greening benefits of that, which turn out to be very significant. And then with warming, you need to be open to warming could be good overall. Particularly 'cause if you look at the science, it tends to occur more in the colder parts of the world where people tend to want it to be warm, tends to occur more at night than during the day, tends to occ- occur more during the, you know, winter months than summer months. And then by the way, Patrick Moore, whom I, I know you've had on, one reason I admire him and I've, I've done some things with him is, like he's one of the few people who actually looks at CO2 from this kind of open-minded, pro-human way versus what's the normal thing we look at? We assume that, "Oh my gosh," we... "since we created the CO2, it must be evil and it must be ruining everything." And we don't think at all about the benefits of greening even though it's called the goddamn Green Movement and yet they don't talk about the benefits of turning the planet from brown to green, which has happened magnificently in the last 40 years, i- in most parts of the planet. And then warming is we have way more people who die of cold than of heat. So you should at least be open to-

   6. CWChris Williamson39:50

      Is that true? Wow.

   7. AEAlex Epstein39:51

      Yeah. It's... Oh, it's v- true by a large margin. Yeah. It's... All, all the stuff is in, is in Fossil Future. And also, e- if you want the points for free, a lot of them are at energytalkingpoints.com. I have references there. Yeah, yeah. So the planet is way too cold. Now I know you're in Austin, so you're not experiencing (laughs) this, um, at the moment, but you know, we're a tropical species. We tend to do better in warmer climates. Yeah, even in India more people die of cold, uh, than of heat.

   8. CWChris Williamson40:14

      No way.

   9. AEAlex Epstein40:16

      Yeah. Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson40:16

       Dude, that's wild.

   11. AEAlex Epstein40:18

       Chapter, uh, Ch- I think chapter seven and eight are... One, one of those gives that, that primary source. So, so the, the, the one thing is... A- and then also just with the CO2, I'll get to the other stuff, but like we also know if you know any history of the planet, like CO2 has been way higher than it is now. It's been 10 plus times higher. Temperatures don't correlate at all perfectly with CO2 historically, but we've also had temperatures that are, like, 14 degrees Celsius, 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and life on Earth thrived and we're the most versatile, adaptable species in history. So this idea of the planet is gonna burn and become uninhabitable on its face is insane. What you can say is that more CO2 will make the planet more tropical and you can be worried about whether there will be a disruptive tran- rate of transition from a less tropical planet to a more tropical planet. Like that's a legitimate thing. But this idea of apocalypse, the world is gonna end if it becomes more tropical, this is just total, um, nonsense. And so then, so that's just principle one. You have to look at s- CO2, the positives and negatives with precision, and people don't do that. Um, but then the other two, which I'll go through quickly i- so is one, you need to look at all the benefits of fossil fuels, which I mentioned our leading thinkers don't, including for things like agriculture. But then the third thing that was the most e- had the most effect on me is that you need to look at what I call the climate mastery benefits of fossil fuels. So if you're talking about fossil fuels and climate, yes, the CO2 has impact on climate, but using energy allows you to have a certain level of mastery over climate, and a very significant level of, of mastery. So you take like, take like cold. I think about it, I like snowboarding and I... and snowmobiling. So I go to Utah, the snowboard... Snowbird area, to do tho- those things. And you think about that as those used to be treacherous areas, right? Those were a negative. But now the snow in Utah is a positive because we have such a level of mastery where we can enjoy it for fun, but we're protected from, you know, the, the adverse parts of it. Or you take a thunderstorm, right? A thunderstorm that used to be able to destroy your house can now be the romantic setting for a date.So, like, human beings' mastery of climate is such that we can not only neutralize or reduce negatives, we can actually turn a negative into a positive. What- what is actually positive in negative climate? Well, it depends on your level of mastery. And if you look at fossil fuels, it's unbelievable what we can do. I mean, we can alleviate drought, we can do irrigation, which is a magnificent thing that's underappreciated. We can, of course, but it's underappreciated, we can make it cool when it's hot, we can make it warm when it's freezing cold. We can, uh, have storm warning systems. And so if you, if you just think about it logically, fossil fuels have these amazing benefits of the more energy you use, the more you can use machines to protect yourself from climate. And yet n- how many people talk about this? When they're talking about fossil fuels and climate, they assume that the CO2 is just apocalyptic, which there's no reason to believe that, and then they ignore our ability to master any negatives of it. And- and the- the- the data point that most changed my thinking and many others is that if you look at the, if you actually quantify what's been happening as we've been using more fossil fuels, admitting more CO2, the world is wan- warmed one degree Celsius, two degrees Fahrenheit, we have, we can chronicle or- or, um, we can document how many people are dying from climate-related disasters, such as storms and flood, extreme temperatures. And the rate of climate-related disaster that's- is down 98% over the last century. And it's like, it's crazy. Like, we're so much safer from climate than we used to be, and yet nobody talks about this. So this- this ju- just should, what I'm really trying to impress upon people is that the way that our, not just dumb people, but the smart, allegedly the smartest people on this issue who are specialists in this issue, and those are just who are smart commentators, think about this issue in a way that makes no sense at all, 'cause they ignore the benefits of fossil fuels and they, in climate and elsewhere, and they what I call catastrophize the side effects. So they- they assume that the side effects are gonna be really bad, and they ignore our ability to master them. And- and if you get that there's something very wrong in our leading thinkers, then your- your mind gets open to the possibility, hey, maybe this is one of those times in history when, quote, "The experts are wrong."

   12. CWChris Williamson44:39

       Well-

7. 44:40 – 49:01

   How Leaders Catastrophise Climate Change

   1. CWChris Williamson44:40

   2. AEAlex Epstein44:40

      And- and it is.

   3. CWChris Williamson44:40

      ... the obvious question is why does everyone believe this if it's not true?

   4. AEAlex Epstein44:47

      W- why does everyone believe it if it's not true?

   5. CWChris Williamson44:49

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. AEAlex Epstein44:50

      Okay.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:50

      Why does everyone believe that there's going to be this apocalypse if- if there is strong evidence that seems pretty logical that that's not the case?

   8. AEAlex Epstein44:58

      Well, I think it comes down to the- the framework. So I mentioned, so th- the first thing I try to do in- in my work and in this book in particular is, you know, chapter one is called Ignoring Benefits, chapter two is called Catastrophizing Side Effects. And so what I try to establish first is, look, our leading thinkers, what I call our designated experts, like, these people are clearly ignoring the benefits of fossil fuels. There's no way of getting around this. We can ask why, which I talk about in chapter three, but I, first I need to establish that this is happening. And so we know if you're ignoring the benefits of, say, a prescription drug, you're not gonna make a good decision about the prescription drug. And if for some reason a society as a whole ignores the benefits of some, you know, medical intervention, or exaggerates the side effects, there's gonna be, they're gonna make bad decisions. And then the second thing is called catastrophizing the side effects. Catastrophizing side effects, rather. And that shows that there's a history with the side effects of fossil fuels of- of assuming that there will be a catastrophic consequence, and in fact, life improves. So we have a documented history of our leaders predict catastrophic resource depletion, we have more resources than ever. Catastrophic pollution, we have higher environmental quality. Catastrophic global cooling, catastrophic global warming, we have record safety from climate-related disaster. So the first thing I just try to establish is, look, this is happening. There's something really wrong with the way people are thinking about it, then we can get to why. But I- I like to establish first that there's something wrong going methodologically, and then we can talk about what's- what's driving that. But first, people need to agree, am I thinking about this the right way, and are these people thinking about it the right way? And then- and then sort of chapter three is- is trying to answer that. Why- why is this? And it's those- those issues I mentioned before. So one is this idea of the delicate nurturer. So if you believe Earth is a delicate nurturer and human impact is inevitably self-destructive, the benefits of fossil fuels will always seem ephemeral, and the side effects you will always expect to be catastrophic. So that's why we've had 50 years of leaders telling us we face catastrophe, but we still think it's gonna be catastrophe. It's like if you- if you ar- are in a certain religion and the prophet keeps protec- predicting the end of the world, as long as you're in that religion and you accept this prophet, you are gonna keep expecting the end of the world, because that's your whole view of life. And then the other thing, which this is what is a little harder to swallow, is I think that- that most of our leading thinkers and sort of by accident most of us do not think about this issue in a pro-human way. Namely when we're thinking about fossil fuels and their impact on the world and climate, our goal is not, we're not thinking about it from the perspective of, how do we advance human flourishing on Earth? We're really thinking about it in terms of how do we impa- how do we eliminate human impact? So with climate in particular, we're not thinking about, how do we keep as many people as possible safe from climate? 'Cause if you were thinking about that, you would think a lot about energy and mastering climate. We just think about, how do we stop emitting this evil CO2? And- and we have this assumption, it's just, it's just wrong for us. We shouldn't be impacting the climate. There's just something deeply wrong, and I think we have a huge amount of guilt over that. And- and therefore, you look at our society and we're trying to eliminate this one gas at all costs. And I think the underlying thing there is, yeah, we're not really valuing human flourishing, we're valuing this idea of eliminating our impact. And- and there's a lot of ways that innocent good people end up doing that, but I think in practice, we are not actually looking at fossil fuels from a human flourishing perspective. But the good news is most people think we should. So I think part of the reason I'm able to convert a lot of people is most people do agree with thinking about this issue in a pro-human way, they just haven't been taught to do it, and they haven't seen that the way we're doing it...... makes no sense unless you hate humans. If you hate humans, the way we think about fossil fuels makes total sense, because if you ignore the benefits of a key source of energy and catastrophize the side effects, then you'll use a lot less energy, and then a lot more people will die, and then we'll have much less impact on the planet. But if your goal is not to eliminate impact on the planet but for human life to flourish on the planet, then fossil fuels are great.

8. 49:01 – 53:41

   Common Criticisms of Alex’s Work

   1. AEAlex Epstein49:01

   2. CWChris Williamson49:01

      Obviously, this is a very passionate topic that a lot of people have pinned their colors to the flagpole of.

   3. AEAlex Epstein49:08

      Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson49:08

      What are the-

   5. AEAlex Epstein49:10

      That's another thing.

   6. CWChris Williamson49:10

      ... what are the most common criticisms that you get about your position?

   7. AEAlex Epstein49:16

      (sighs) So it's been interesting seeing reviews and stuff. I mean, I'm still hoping to get more, and people can ... I'm trying to answer this in a way that doesn't sound totally self-serving, 'cause I'm really unimpressed with the criticisms. (laughs) Uh, 'cause, 'cause I think, like, there are three ... uh, let, let me put it this way. Like, I think I can criticize myself better than the existing people can. Uh, they have tried, but so, so the basic things I c- I could be wrong on three things, I think, theoretically. I could ... and you've, you've raised two of them. So I could be wrong on, like, um, thinking about climate wrong somehow. Like I'm wrong ... and particular, like, the climate side effects of fossil fuels will be far worse and they'll overwhelm our ability, uh, to match them. I could be wrong about that. I mean, hypothetically, I could. Uh, I could be wrong about the ability of solar and wind to rapidly replace fossil fuels. And I could be wrong about the importance of energy. Like, those are the three ... because those are my three things, right? I'm saying energy is really ... peop- people say, like, "Yeah, energy is okay, but who really cares about the cost of energy?" And I say, "No, the, the livability of the planet for human beings depends on the cost of energy. The lower cost energy is, the more you use machines to be productive and prosperous, the better life is." So, like, I think it's fundamental, but people could argu- "No, it's not that important. Other things are more important." Um, th- from a human flourishing perspective, I'd say those are the three things I could be wrong about. Or I could be wrong that we should be focused on human flourishing, and that in- somebody could s- ... but, but interestingly, most people won't oppose me on those grounds, which I would like to see that. Or, or they could say, "Yeah, no, the planet is much more of a delicate nurturer than you acknowledge." Nobody has ever said, "Yeah, I agree we should ignore the benefits of fossil fuels and catastrophize the side effects," but they ... some do say, "Well, I don't agree with your definition of benefit, 'cause I think benefits should be how does this benefit eliminating human impact on Earth?" And that would be an honest thing, but most people ... what I would love is if some people said, "Hey, you know what? I think you value human life too much, and I value it less, and that's why you're wrong." Like, I would ac- accept that. The response to most of what I do, I find, is strawmanning my view. So saying things like, "Oh, Alex just ... he just wants fossil fuels, and that's all he cares about," even though I'm, you know, one of the most pro-nuclear people in the world and I'm for energy freedom. So if you cl- look at, um ... say, Slate wrote a quote review and, um, Foreign Policy wrote a review, and it's just like you can't even recognize my arguments in these things. So I don't think most ... uh, for me, a good review is you accurately summarize the person's view, and you say, "Hey, this is what's wrong with it," not you just write random stuff that no one would have any idea what's actually in the book, and then you attack, uh, that.

   8. CWChris Williamson51:59

      What about the people on the internet that say you're a paid lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry and that you're being funded by them so that they don't lose money and they continue to get to pump out CO2 into the atmosphere and no one gets to stop them?

   9. AEAlex Epstein52:14

      Well, so tha- I mean, that as a form of argument is obviously a pretty weak (laughs) form of argument, right? 'Cause I have a book and it has primary sources, so even if that were true, you would still need to answer that, so it's a pretty weak thing. But yeah, so kind of my ... I talk about this in the book, but, like, I have a fairly clear path on this. Like, I didn't know anyone in the industry when I came up with all these conclusions. I had no f- f- ... certainly no funding, so I came up with all of these ideas, and I tested them against people and I debated them against people, and I was quite poor for a long time advocating them. Uh, and then, at some point, more and more people started seeing, uh, the merit of them, first outside industry and then some inside industry. And so yeah, now, for sure, I mean, I, I give talks to companies and I charge money for those talks, and that's great and I'm proud of that, and I sometimes do consulting for companies. And, like ... but yeah, that's, that's ... I'm doing that because I think it's, it's the right thing to do, which is what I've done regardless of my financial relationships. So yeah, no, I ... this idea that the fossil fuel industry, like, funded me to come up with these ideas, I wish they were that clever, uh, to have done that with an- with other, uh, with other people. But I think, I think that that's ... that argument shows, A, there's no interest in actually learning the truth about me; B, it's pretty weak if that's what you have to go after, uh, people for; and then I ... there was a C, but I forgot what it was. It was some other weak aspect.

   10. CWChris Williamson53:37

       Certainly one of the things that I've seen a lot of, um ... I did a clip with Jordan Peterson about

9. 53:41 – 59:07

   Reactions to Jordan Peterson’s Population Collapse Clip

   1. CWChris Williamson53:41

      population collapses coming, and it went-

   2. AEAlex Epstein53:43

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:43

      ... like just super hyper-viral. And-

   4. AEAlex Epstein53:45

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson53:46

      ... I got to see a lot of comments that w- w- we didn't discuss really why it might be happening, but one of the most prominent, uh, sentiments that I saw in the comments of that was this scourge of the Earth, human racism, um, w- w- ... th- the Earth's got way too many people on it, um, it would be better off without us. Like, very, very sort of apocalyptic, self-hating, uh, and I was super surprised. I don't know what corners of the internet that video had expanded itself out into to pick up these sorts of comments, but I was really, really surprised to hear that. I think, based on what I know, the carrying capacity of the Earth is ... when- when ... not really at the limit of that, and that's not really too much of a concern at the moment, but people were so quick-... to say how much they hated the fact that they themselves, and presumably everybody that they love and care about, live at the moment, and that their future generations as well. I was so surprised with that sentiment. That, that really shocked me.

   6. AEAlex Epstein54:54

      So, it relates to this issue I call, you know, delicate nurturer view of the earth. And so an aspect of delicate nurturer, I talk about this a lot in chapter three, is what I call the parasite polluter view of humans, and I think that's really what's captured i- in these kinds of comments. So it's the view that human beings' basic effect on the earth is we parasite it, so we just depend on it and we plunder its resources, and then we pollute it. We make it, uh, ugly, and- and dirty, and unhealthy, and this kind of thing. And, you know, my view is what I call the producer improver view for it. So we actually produce new value, and we tend to improve it fro- from, for our perspective, but from our perspective, and also sometimes from the perspective of many other animals. So, you know, we're- we're humans, it's important, like, as humans, you, um, like any organism, you have both a competitive and cooperative relationship with the rest of nature, and so advancing human flourishing on earth doesn't mean you hate the rest of nature. You- you love the potential of nature, but you want to have a mut- you want to have the most pro-human relationship with the re- uh, with the rest of nature. A- and I think, like, if- if you really recognize, hey, wait, the earth... So you think of just this idea of the producer vers- the parasite versus the producer, like, is it really true that the earth had all these amazing resources and we depleted them? And if so, why was everyone so poor for so long? And you just think about resources and the actual nature of... So a resource is just something that's available to consume, that benefits you. But where do resources come from? The vast majority of resources are produced by human beings, and what they are is they're some form of raw matter, uh, and energy transformed into more valuable forms. So you take aluminum. I'll always ask, "Hey, is aluminum a valuable natural resource?" People say, "Yeah, of course." Like, no, it's not. It's not naturally a resource. Aluminum's naturally useless. It's one of the most abundant, uh, metals there is, but it wasn't useful 300 years ago at all. Same with oil, same with gas, same with coal. Certainly uranium, which has been- become even more recently useful. So if- if you think of the earth as a ball of raw matter and energy, and how much resource, and there's always energy coming in. I mean, there's sun coming in, uh, there's also, you know, all kinds of... There's- there's the rest of space, and, uh, all kinds of other resources. But if you just think of it as it's effectively an unlimited ball of matter and energy, and then how much ha- the level of resource depends on the state of human intelligence, how much we know how to transform that matter- matter and energy into valuable resources, you- you stop becoming a, you stop becoming afraid of running out of resources, and you become worried about running out of freedom. Because you see that when people don't have the freedom to create resources, that's the problem. So that's, you look at the poor parts of the world, you ask, "What's the carrying capacity of the earth?" Well, carrying capacity is a, is not really a scientific concept because it- it th- it thinks of the earth as this, like, petri dish, and we're bacteria, and the petri dish can only h-... But it's really, there's this limitless potential that's only limited by our mental, uh, powers. But if you look at what's the carrying capacity of a poor part of sub-Saharan Africa, well, it's very low, because their transformative abilities are very low, and that's part of the reason why they need better forms of energy and they need free, uh, free societies. And i- once you think of it that way, you become much happier and much more optimistic, and it's- it's one of the gifts I think I can give to the world is just actually having a true philosophy of the earth and humans. Like, you can actually appreciate how far we've come, and how far we can go, and then your fear then becomes relocated and- and will diminish, but also relocated to impositions on freedom. Because then you see, oh, we've got this amazing world, but it depends on freedom, and we see this now with we have a supply chain crisis. Why didn't we have one before? Well, we've, we don't have as much freedom. We have an energy crisis. We don't have as much freedom. But then it's, you- you don't think, oh, the world is mad at us or n- nothing can hap- there's no good in the world. It's just, oh yeah, we restricted our freedom, and that's the root of our ability to create resources, and that's why it- it sucks in this, to this extent. But if we liberate people, then it'll get really good again, and then it'll get better.

   7. CWChris Williamson59:06

      I'm a big

10. 59:07 – 1:06:33

    What Should We Be Worried About?

    1. CWChris Williamson59:07

       existential risk, uh, garage hobbyist in terms of...

    2. AEAlex Epstein59:12

       Yeah, I remember from last time.

    3. CWChris Williamson59:13

       Yeah, in terms of learning about that. Have you had any more ideas about why it is that climate change continues to be... You know, we've just come out the other side of a pandemic.

    4. AEAlex Epstein59:24

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson59:24

       And Toby Ord's book, The Precipice, has this fantastic table where he breaks down all of the different likelihoods of the next 100 years of us going extinct due to every different type, super volcanoes and...

    6. AEAlex Epstein59:35

       Uh-huh.

    7. CWChris Williamson59:36

       ... new- neutron stars and then...

    8. AEAlex Epstein59:37

       Right.

    9. CWChris Williamson59:37

       ... anthropogenic risks as well, so you know, bioweapons leaks and eh- misaligned AI and nanotechnology and unknown unknowns and all this stuff. And climate change is like, I think it's one in 10,000 over the next 100 years, and you've got one in sixes and one in tens, one in ten natural pandemic, one in ten AI over the next 100 years. What is it, what is it that's causing everybody to be so blind to what appear to be, from the researchers, much more severe concerns, especially in the wake of us just having seen one of them up close and personal?

    10. AEAlex Epstein1:00:17

        I- I think it's because it's really become a religion. I mean, you, I- I talk about it as a philosophy, but if you... So I- I think of what I told the anti- th- th- rather the human flourishing framework, but then the- the dominant framework is what I call the anti-impact framework, which is basically, you can think of it as the- the- the one sentence summary is- is human impact on earth is bad, and there are two components. One is it's evil.So it's an evil thing and our goal should be to eliminate it. And the, uh, then the idea is it's inevitably self-destructive because impacting the delicate nurturer ruins everything. So if you think of human impact as intrinsically immoral and inevitably self-destructive, well it ha- that has a very religious quality to it, right? Because it's, the god in this case is the unimpacted Earth. Some, you know, pe- some people call it Gaia, but they usually, well, they'll talk about, like, the climate, but it has this god-like quality to it. And the idea is, the, the commandment is basically thou shalt not impact nature. And then the idea is if you impact nature, then nature punishes you and you go to hell. I mean, that's really, it's got all of these, these things. It's got rituals, like recycling and stuff, that you're not very clear on, like, what the ritual does, but it's like this is what everyone is doing right now. And that's the... So it has... A- and, and you look at people are... Now, now there's this argument, well, there's a lot of arguments around does this, is this replacing religion for people? Do you need religion as the opposite? So I'm a nonreligious person, so I don't think you need religion to, uh, oppose this, but it, it does have the quality of a religion. And for some people it's, it's a substitute in their lives. And so that's a, that's a pretty entrenched thing for people. And, and the, maybe the most important aspect is it has this very strong moral dimension of just we're doing the wrong thing. Whereas with pandemics, people don't think of it as we're doing the wrong thing. They think of it as, okay, this is a, this is mostly... W- there's some exception to that I should say, 'cause, 'cause people did kind of get like that during the pandemic. But in general with pandemics, they think we're doing, like, this is a practical threat. Or if you think about, like, an electromagnetic pulse, this is a practical threat. Or a meteor, this is a practical threat. And then yeah, if, if, if people think, I guess if people think the threat is real and we're ignoring it, then it has, yeah, you're doing the wrong thing. But it's not like your life's mission to do this versus for some people it's like their life's mission to protect the climate or to serve the Earth or to save the Earth or this kind of thing. So I think it's got this, this religious moral dimension that the other things don't have, and that's a big driver.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:02:47

        One of the things that I've come to believe about it is that it's a little bit more obvious of a concern for people to be galvanized around. So AI is being done by some blokes somewhere in some computer lab writing code. No one can see it. The takeoff is incredibly rapid. The same goes with viruses. Even when they're here, you can't actually see the virus. You can see the effects of the virus, but you can't see it. You can't see it mutating in a pangolin or in a lab in Wuhan. You c- you can't see it doing its thing.

    12. AEAlex Epstein1:03:20

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:03:20

        And then (snaps fingers) it happens. One of the reasons I think that it's so galvanizing for people is that you can, the imagery is so obvious, uh, to put in front of them. Here is a power plant and here is some smoke and here is a burning forest. Like, it's, it's just from a marketability standpoint, it's, it's good.

    14. AEAlex Epstein1:03:39

        Maybe the f- maybe the forest, but it's, it's interesting 'cause a lot of it is remote stuff, so that the polar bear stuff is very remote. I mean, you can, that you can show an image of the polar bear, but in a sense an energy crisis is much more immediate. A pandemic is much more immediate in terms of this. So I think it's partially that the religious quality makes people evaluate things as it's not just this is practically scary to me, but this is really, like, this vengeful nature of God punishing us. It's like we did the wrong thing. So you take s- take something like, um, wildfires. When people think about wildfires, and so in California this is an issue with some out of control wildfires, it's like the reaction to it is so much like we did an evil thing and now we're being punished versus, okay, what are the dangers of this and what can we do as modern human beings? If you, if you have that attitude, you think, okay, well, these fires are fueled by a lot of, uh, what's called fuel load, and so we could reduce the fuel load. We could go back to logging, which we stopped for a bunch of bad reasons. You can clear brush. You can do controlled burns. One thing I talk about in chapter seven of Fossil Future that's underrated, you can build barriers, uh, which can stop things from spreading. Like, you have all these options. It's not that complicated to manage fires and to prevent them. But we don't have this, we have this can't do attitude with it versus the can do attitude that we have in other places, because I think there's just a huge amount of guilt. So when we hear about, oh, this storm was bad or this flood was bad or the temperature's too hot, it's this mixture of, oh yeah, it's a problem, but it's really like we did something bad and we should feel guilty. And this expectation that what's gonna come in the future is just this huge retribution to... 'Cause the practicality again, 98% (laughs) decline in climate related disaster deaths. Climate has never been less of an issue in people's day-to-day lives as a practical matter. Think about what climate was like during the Dust Bowl. Think about climate r- a hundred years ago. You know, how terrified you had to be of climate, let alone 200 years ago, 300 years ago. So it's really there is this, uh, w- here's another perspective. Whenever you're evaluating things, there's always the question of what's, what standard are you using to evaluate something as good or bad, and that ultimately depends on your goals. And here, we're evaluating climate not by the standard of human flourishing, but by the standard of eliminating human impact. So we think our impact is bad, and so whenever we hear we've impacted climate, we think that's really bad and we've been bad people and we're gonna get... We should repent. We should be punished. But the, I don't think anything about the perceptibility of things, uh, the actual threat of things, I don't think there's anything special about climate except that it has this religious classification in people's minds.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:06:23

        Speaking about punishing, on a personal level, you are more than just your, uh, collection of ideas and, and books, right? There's a, a, a human behind the words.

11. 1:06:33 – 1:19:00

    Being Against the Mainstream Narrative

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:33

       I'm interested in working out how you deal with being, uh, unpopular to a mainstream.... um, group of powerful people, like The Atlantic tried to write a hit piece on you-

    2. AEAlex Epstein1:06:44

       Washington Post.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:45

       ... Washington Post, sorry, a couple of weeks-

    4. AEAlex Epstein1:06:46

       I don't know about that. Maybe The Atlantic though.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:47

       Th- they're pro- they're probably d- uh, coming down the line. Um-

    6. AEAlex Epstein1:06:50

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:06:50

       ... they tried to do one on you just before the book came out. Like, you're-

    8. AEAlex Epstein1:06:53

       Right.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

       ... swimming against the tide here. Ho- how do you cope with that, like, contrarian space and, and, and pushback, and take-down attempts, and stuff like that?

    10. AEAlex Epstein1:07:05

        So, I have a, like, a mental model in my head that's really simple, but it's, I find it very helpful. And I don't, I don't know if, if other people would find it helpful, 'cause it just seems too simple. But kinda like, I have in my mind, if I were drawing you a picture, there's reality and there's what's in people's heads, and I think of those as very different. Like, the job of our heads is to perceive what's in reality and act accordingly. But like, the fact that something is in someone's head by itself has no guarantee whatsoever that it will be true in reality. So, I just, it doesn't, and I know from history that what's in people's heads can be totally wrong in a way that we think of as wrong. So you could have, you know, the designated experts of 100 years ago believing in forced sterilization and racism and all these things, and now we would say some people still then believed in slavery, you know, we'd say, "Those are evil." I'm like, "Okay, that's just further proof that whatever people happen to think, that doesn't mean it's true at all." So, what's powerful to me is, did you give me evidence that what is in your head corresponds to reality? So if somebody, when somebody says something like, "Alex, you're a climate change denier. You know, you're not a scientist," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, it's exactly the same for me as... 'Cause there's no content to those arguments, or no accuracy in the case of the climate change denier. It's exactly like saying, like if a two-year-old said, "Hey, you idiot, why don't you believe in Santa Claus?" It's like, I get that you believe it, but why should I believe it? And I think there's just, it's very helpful to have a philosophy where you just have a really clear-cut distinction between what's true of reality and what's in people's heads. And then the things to be concerned about are i- in some senses if they're right, like if they're right. And sometimes they'll say something that I'm wrong about, but then, then you shouldn't be concerned about that 'cause you can just change your view. I mean, you, you, but that's another thing is just, you have to know, I think, that... Th- the other thing is I know my, like, I have a very deep commitment to only, to changing my beliefs if somebody can prove me wrong. And I had this with a big issue when I was 18, whereas, like, I- I was making a big decision about what I believed, and I, I, like, made it, I th- I thought to myself very explicitly, like, even if, and it was hard to change my belief at the time, um, but I thought, like, even if I'm 80 and I've dic- dedicated my whole life to something and somebody tells me I'm wrong, I will admit it. And it's like that's, that's just a very core belief that I will change my view if I'm proven wrong, and I know that about myself, so I don't really have anything to fear about being wrong. A- and, and all I care about is what's actually true, and then, and then I know I'm committed to saying it to the best of my ability, so the worst anyone can do is show me that I'm wrong about something. Now, The Washington Post, th- the other thing they can do is they can try to convince other people of something false that makes my life difficult. So in the case of Washington Post, trying to convince people that I'm a racist and therefore you shouldn't listen to my ideas, like, yeah, that's annoying, but it doesn't hurt me personally. It's just like, "Okay, you guys are assholes and I'm gonna torch you in front of the world because you, you did this." And, and I, and I explained, you know, that we could talk about that whole saga. But that's, that's kind of, that didn't hurt me personally. That was just a strategic thing that I needed to deal with. But I, I think if you, if you really have this idea of you really believe in objective reality and you really have a, a commitment to always believe and say what you think is true, then I would just say it's, from my talking to people, the way I experience these things is way different than other people, 'cause I just don't have like... People will say things like, you know, for every positive comment, like, I can get 100 positive comments on Twitter, but then one negative one will, like, ruin my week. I'm like, this is not my experience at all. I get so many negative (laughs) comments on Twitter, and it's just, if there's nothing to it, it's just, it's like n- it's really like the two-year-old. It's like there are people who just write on every post of mine, they're like, "You're not a scientist. You're an idiot." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. "You're just funded." You just, like, that's exactly like the two-year-old with Santa Claus. But if they say, like, for example, a- and sometimes it can be, so th- there's this guy that I think is a, like a pretty bad guy whom I debated named Andrew Dessler who was on Joe Rogan, and, like, he and I debated and he was wrong about so many things and admitted none of them, and I kept making these points, and I think he's just so dishonest. But he cor- he got one error in Fossil Future and, like, I immediately publicly corrected it and thanked him. And this is a guy I think is a bad guy and not an honest actor, but it's like, okay, even in this case, it's like the truth is the truth, and if, even if y- a bad person says it, it's, it's fine, and it's just like... And now the thing I was wrong about, by the way, is there was a prediction in The New York Times by a guy named James Hansen, and it turns out The New York Times had somewhat misrepresented his prediction, and I had not caught them on that. So it didn't change anything about my basic point, uh, but nevertheless, it was an error, so I'm like, "Okay, I'll cor- correct that in the next, um, edition." But even that is like, that's just like, "Oh, fuck. I should have looked into that more carefully." It's not... But I still know that I'm committed to the truth, and if he caught a big error, I would do it. And if somebody proved me wrong, I would change it. It wouldn't be the most fun thing in the world, but I would.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:34

        It seems like there's sort of two elements here. One is, um, feeling confident in your position.

    12. AEAlex Epstein1:12:41

        Uh-huh.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:12:42

        ... uh, because that gives you a firm foundation for, um, self-doubt to not start to creep in. And then the other side of this is truth at all costs, because that kind of makes you invulnerable to whether or not you do need to change your mind. It's just interesting, uh, i- i- it's impressive that you haven't... uh, that the self-doubt doesn't, doesn't creep in in this situation.

    14. AEAlex Epstein1:13:03

        But the second, the second one is really what it is, right? 'Cause it's, it's just the confidence in the, in the position is confidence in my process. 'Cause it's just confidence in how much work I've done to be right, and to prove myself wrong, and to surround myself with people who will challenge me to take criticism. Like, if you have, if you have that level of exposure to all these pressures and you deal with them honestly, then I at least know I- I've done my best to be right. And again, I know I'll change my view. So it's, it's the, it's the confidence that what I'm doing is right. So I never have any doubt about, like, "Am I doing the right thing on a moral level?" And I don't have any specific... but it's... the level at which I have tried to be right I think is very unusual. And I, I think what happens is some people never try to be right. Like, they're just li- they just grow up in a certain political environment and it's just they just kind of try to reinforce what they grew up with. I had the benefit of... My, my parents are kind of in the political world a little bit, but they never forced anything on me, so I kind of got to choose from the beginning what to think, and there was never any pressure to think of something. But even there, I changed my views, uh, a bunch of times. So it's, it's... So, so some people never try. And then other people, I think what happens is you come to a view, and then you get, then you... Like, all of your status and your friends, like, they're all in this view, and you really think about it, you start to think about it in a tribal way and in an identity way. Mm-hmm. And that, that is a real hazard, but I think that's why you really need the commitment that your core identity is saying what you... is believing what you think is true and saying what you think is true. A- and a big part of that, which you can spot in people, is how precise are they? So, like, I'll give an example of, without naming any names. Like, um, there are people I'm allied with... Let's say there's somebody I'm allied with that I like a lot who posted something viral the other day, um, and I thought it was like 80% true and, and 20% not right. And I thought, "Well, okay, I would like t- I'm excited that it's viral, but I can't share it because there's 20% of it that's just misleading, and I don't want to share that." And it's k- kinda like, yes, this person is my ally, but, like, we're only allies in so far as we really align on the truth. It's not like I'm part of this movement and they represent me and I represent them. I think it, it's... You have to be very wary of just all of these movements and things that you align with, because ultimately I think you should align with your own... Like, your job is to pursue truth as you see it, and you really do have to be careful. This is the one legitimate concern about the financial stuff, is more, like, do people get locked into things? Like you say, say like somebody who's a, known as a liberal becomes more conservative, and then a whole bunch of money starts flowing toward them, or vice versa. You know, you just need to be aware of those things in yourself. And I think one thing, if you're, if you're an ideas person, is you really need to think about how do you set up your incentives a- and your, your income such that you have the freedom to change your views quite a bit. And I... That's been a big thing I've thought about in my life, is how, how I can... my views can change and I'll be totally fine.

Episode duration: 1:19:54