EZRA LEVANT ｜ The greatest advocate for fossil fuels in the English language： an interview with Alex Epstein
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Summary
If you're trying to debate public policy, you're always looking for new facts, a new study to prove you're right, or a new breaking news item that accords with your narrative, your story about the way the world works, but just getting another fact or another detail or more proof is not enough. You need a whole new way of thinking about the world, a framework that makes sense, and a way of framing the conversation such that people are actually looking much more at the full picture or the full context, and it makes a huge difference. And yet in practice, people almost never look at the benefits.
Transcript
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tonight the greatest advocate for fossil fuels in the english language a feature-length interview
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with my friend alex epstein it's december 30th and this is the ezra levant show
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if you're trying to debate public policy which is something i do every day
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you're always looking for new facts a new study to prove you're right or a new breaking news item that
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accords with your narrative your story about the way the world works but just getting another fact
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or another detail or more proof well that's part of arguing but i think when you can really make
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progress is if you have a whole new way of thinking about it a new argument that you haven't heard
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before i mean i think that's how you break people out of their rut if you bring something to their
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attention that they never considered before maybe you could actually get them to change their mind
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as opposed to just playing the same old game of ping pong back and forth with your opponents and i say
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that because our special guest today is the man who i regard as thinks as thinking about energy and how
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to provide energy to the world in ways that are unique ways that i just don't see being done by other
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public intellectuals and certainly not being done by the energy lobby you know who i'm talking about
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his name is alex epstein he's the publisher of fossil future a welcome uh sequel to the moral case for
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fossil fuels and he joins us now via zoom alex welcome this is the most important great to see you
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it's so important for professional arguers for people trying to actually persuade minds because
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you have new ideas here that i have not heard before and i pay attention to this file
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oh well i'd love to go into them and especially what you see as new but in general yeah i think that
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one thing i learned from debating people because i've done a lot of debates i'll debate pretty much any
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prominent person i can is that you know when you're on a stage and you're just disputing facts
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with people it's very limited efficacy that you can have in part because people don't necessarily
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trust you particularly if they expect to disagree with you so you often get these conflicting statements
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of fact but what i found is when you go into framework so the basic ideas that influence everything else
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then you can actually move people so an example i use a lot is when i am having a discussion i
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careful i establish at the beginning hey should we carefully weigh both the negative side effects
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and the benefits of fossil fuels versus just looking at the negative side effects and everyone
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says well of course we should look at both and yet in practice people almost never look at the
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benefits that's a way of framing the conversation such that people are actually looking much more at
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the full picture or as i often call it the full context and it makes a huge difference and the more you
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can frame things in a way that makes sense i would put it as common sense but not common practice
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the more you can help people think about the issue rationally and the more they'll be open to maybe you
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are right about the facts if you're giving them a framework that makes sense well and and that's what
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your books are all about i mean your last book the moral case for fossil fuel it takes it head on
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because i think too many people in the industry are self-hating oil and gas people they say yes
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what i'm doing is wrong but it's the lesser evil that was sort of the argument i made in my book
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ethical oil i said you know go around the world compared to oil from iraq or nigeria or saudi arabia
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canadian american oil is better but you came out and said no no no it's not better oil is positively
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good it's positively moral that it is a very brave principled stand but let me just tell you an
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example what i mean about changing the way it's changing an argument changing as you say the
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framework and it's chapter three of your book fossil future the anti-impact framework and i'm going to
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make a confession here alex i bought into that you know the the anti-energy extremists always say well
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we have to get to zero emissions we have to get zero impact we have to we have to erase any impact from
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this energy and for some reason i accepted yes we must do that but but you make an an excellent point
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why don't you make it here instead of me paraphrasing it you challenge the anti-impact framework
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so the best way to sum up the anti-impact framework is you can think of it as a dual idea it's the idea
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that human impact on nature is one intrinsically immoral and two inevitably self-destructive
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so and i think it's helpful to think of it as a religious view because i do think it's a religious
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view it's it poses as a scientific view but you can think of it as there's a commandment and so it's
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kind of an earth or non-human worshiping primitive religion and so the commandment is thou shalt not
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impact nature and then the idea is if you violate the commandment then you're going to go to hell then
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the earth is going to be terrible you need to see like the perspective on co2 emissions is an example
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of this it's just treated as the most important thing in the world is to eliminate our impact on
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climate like that's treated as the number one goal in the world it's not to give everyone available
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energy it's not what i i use the goal often of global human flourishing which makes a lot more sense
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as a goal why the hell is our goal eliminate our impact on climate it's just a bizarre thing to put as
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your primary goal perhaps it could be a derivative goal although i even question that but it goes to show
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that we're just so saturated in this idea that human impact is intrinsically immoral and inevitably
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self-destructive and if you think about it and and this is a i didn't know about energy for a long time
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but when i was 18 i learned the following and it changed my life if you believe that our goal should
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be to eliminate human impact you have to recognize that we survive and flourish by impact so this is a
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fundamentally anti-human idea that our impact is bad it's just as immoral or anti-us idea as to as a lion
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acting on eliminating lion impact or a bear acting on eliminating bear impact it's such a self-effacing
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anti-human thing it's really and then the other element that that people get away with it using is
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this idea that it's inevitably self-destructive so if we impact the earth the earth is portrayed as what i call
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a delicate nurturer so it exists in this delicate nurturing balance it's stable it's sufficient you
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know it gives us what we need as long as we're not too greedy and it's safe and all the danger is about
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us impacting earth we are parasite polluters all we can do is take from the earth and make you know
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make the earth ugly and ruin it this is just a totally false narrative earth is wild potential
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it has huge potential but it's naturally dynamic deficient and dangerous and human beings are producer
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improvers who largely make the earth much better via our impact so we need to embrace our impact
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fundamentally as good for human flourishing we want to avoid anti-human impacts human harming impacts but
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in general we should think of our impact as something that makes the earth you know a much more wonderful
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beautiful place you know and and that thinking that you've just described there and and you you did
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talk about that in the moral case for fossil fuels it is so new to people who are just in the
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conventional wisdom on global warming and fighting climate action and all this these buzzwords i bet they
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have never even heard of those ideas you mentioned that it's a quasi-religion environmentalism and i think
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that's obvious i think as americans and people all around the world have fallen away from religion
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uh both in practice and in belief well other things have filled that void you know people have to
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believe in something they have to go ahead well i would say it's a void of philosophy so like i'm not
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religious and i'm totally happy i don't believe in anti-humanism i think the anti-humanism is kind of a
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bizarre thing and i don't think it's a secular thing i think it's a religious thing i mean the the the view
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of earth as a delicate nurturer this is just a primitive view period you know worshiping the sun god and the rain
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gods and this i mean it's really it's really embarrassing that this poses a science that you
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just think oh that like the climate think you have the climate oh the climate is so wonderful like we
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talk about it as this wonderful thing that we can only ruin and yet it's this incredibly dynamic and
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dangerous phenomenon that's hugely variable uh that's changed a ton over history and that has been
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a menace until we figured out uh how to master it so so i do think what i do think is true about the
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argument you said is people need philosophy so you can think of religion as a category of philosophy
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they need a set among other things of values that tell them hey here's what to do including hey here's
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where you can find purpose in life and that kind of thing so i wouldn't put it as they need a religion
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but yeah they do need philosophy a belief system this this yeah this this religion is like a big
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regression because it's like an anti-human religion so it's not scientific but it poses us it's so it's
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not scientific it's anti-human but it poses as scientific so that's that's why i think it's
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particularly insidious yeah it's an interesting point because there are some people who say i'm not
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religious but i'm a humanist um and but what you're saying is that this religion or even i would call it a
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superstition i i would say environmental extremism is more a superstition than anything but you're right
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it is primitive it's if we sacrifice uh uh a virgin on the on the pyramid and cut out her heart will
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that appease you know the gods and make it rain but it really is that way if you if you uh punish
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yourself if you if you inflict pain on yourself and live a a poor lifestyle will that and by the way
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nature and climate are good but there is an evil force in nature called carbon it's one of the
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it's one of the naturally occurring elements but apparently it's the bad guy i mean it really is a
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a pagan primitive worldview and i can i can see that resonates through history i mean even in religion
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the great flood you know there are there are these natural disasters there and and i think that the
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way climate change is sold and and with prophets like greta tunberg that and a child shall lead them
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and and she doesn't even you know i mean occasionally she throws to the odd fact but it's no i am i mean
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she she's young she's not a child anymore she's an adult now but when she was 16 and 17 she looked like
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she was 12 there's something about her like she just looks about five years younger than she is so
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there was something miraculous about this child who would lead them and and you must obey the child
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because she's pure unlike the the adults who were behind the curtain like the wizard of oz and if you
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dare criticize this wonder this golden child well you just hate kids how do i mean it's but there's so
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many themes that the anti-human environmentalist left plays on they've done a masterful job and let me
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ask you this i mean i your case for for fossil fuels it's intellectual it's our great arguments great
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ways of looking at things how does it fight against pure emotionalism like pictures of the dying
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polar bear or uh or greta saying how dare you do this to me in my generation how do you fight against
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pure raw emotion how do you do that without coming across as a uh out of touch while you're just an
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old man with white man with your old white man arguments where your feelings how do you how do you
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overcome that well i think if you'd notice greta's a perfect example in both the how dare you
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and kind of the polar bear thing are themselves based on the anti-impact framework because it's
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the idea hey it's wrong how dare you impact the climate how yeah that's an evil thing and we
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shouldn't do that and then the idea of the polar bears are often it's partially their sympathy for
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the polar bears but it also conveys hey like we've destroyed the arctic and that's going to destroy the
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earth and the sea levels are going to rise etc etc etc and i think the key is there's nothing
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inherently more emotional about that than what i call the human flourishing framework in fact i would
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argue it is less emotionally resonant to make up these fables and to focus on polar bears like if
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you look right now from a human flourishing perspective positively you can talk about how
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fossil fuels have made the world miraculously good and and preserved billions of lives that would
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otherwise end prematurely and that also give us the opportunity to enjoy and preserve the best parts
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of nature including you know we've drastically increased the polar bear population that has
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some harms to certain populations so we have to be careful about it but in general you can have very
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positive emotions with how energy and human impact can make the world amazing and then you can also
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have negatives in terms of like i would flip it on greta and her handlers and whoever's behind the
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scenes and say hey look you've caused a global energy crisis we're now in europe people are afraid of
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winter like it's game of thrones like this is there's nothing inherently more emotional about
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impact is bad then human flourishing is good and harming human flourishing is bad and in fact the most
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powerful arguments the anti-impact people have are false arguments that following them will benefit
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human flourishing and using energy particularly fossil fuels will harm human flourishing so i think it's a
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matter of making sure that we make emotionally resonant arguments conveying the truth yeah hey let me ask
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you about something because i you know taking on their well-worn i mean they're they have phrases that have
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been repeated so often they don't even sound like they're political anymore it's like you know we just
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know now don't litter like that doesn't even feel ideological it's just a it's politeness it's a manner
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it's a custom it's so commonplace i don't you know and it's sort of hard to believe that maybe 50 years
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ago that that wasn't the way um but exactly because i can think of other things i mean just sorry to
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interrupt but there's so there's the expressions but i think even more insidious are the terms that
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people use and you mentioned industry and like i love the energy industry the fossil fuel industry but
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one vice they have is they just passively accept terms that are generated by their enemies so we
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could go into any number of them or none of them but like sustainability renewable esg like these
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things were just when your enemy puts out new ideas you should be suspicious that those are
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manipulative ideas and all the three i mentioned certainly are oh yeah and and they think that if they
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grant the premise they can just sort of fight a slow retreat but once you've granted the premise
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that for example patrick moore the the co-founder of greenpeace who has um come out as pro-nuclear
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energy for example and he's we've done some events with a very interesting guy he head-on challenges
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this phobia that this naturally occurring element called carbon is evil in fact he he says carbon
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dioxide is good for a greening earth what's your take on like to take on something so bluntly like
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that some people you know the the scales will fall from their eyes and they'll say yes i never thought
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of it that way other people will say you're crazy how do you challenge something like carbon emissions
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are bad carbon dioxide are bad what's your carbon footprint buy a carbon offset it's so ubiquitous it's
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like don't litter of course don't litter how do you a professional a professional persuader
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challenge something that is as crazy as saying to someone oh go ahead and litter like they they're
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probably hearing it in the same way you're mad is this a joke i i'm is this you know are you pulling
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a prank on me how do you say something so contrary to the prevailing winds and move people
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i love this question i think it's it's there's a certain in like interest you can generate by
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saying something that's directly contrary and look at both my book titles the moral case for fossil
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fuels fossil future you know which contradicts the idea that fossil fuels are becoming a thing of the
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past and certainly should be becoming a thing of the past so you can do that to intrigue people as
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long as it doesn't sound insane like you know it doesn't sound like oh you're advocating a
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holocaust or something like that right that would be i wouldn't advocate a holocaust but it's just
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like you need to be um i mean if it's something like i mean generally most things that are true you
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can put over in an intriguing way so i don't want to think about things that are false and talk about
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how to put them over in an intriguing way but the key is if you say something like hey i i think co2
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is good or has a lot of good to it i think the main way to persuade people is actually to step back
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and focus on the methodology of how we think about it and so the example i gave before which i use a
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lot is hey we need to consider the benefits and side effects or another way to think of it as the
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positives and negatives so well if we just take co2 if i'm talking to someone i'll say hey like i
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have a couple of ideas about how to think about co2 would you agree with it and then one is we need
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to look at both positive and negative impacts of co2 with precision would you agree with that so yes we
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can look at how they how it might cause more heat waves and how that's detrimental but we also have
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to look at how warming can save lives from cold related deaths and we also need to look at how
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more co2 can fertilize the earth and what most people say yeah i agreed to do that and so notice
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like once they agree because i've given them a method that's very common sense and really impossible
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to argue with then they'll start thinking about it in the right way and then they'll be open
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to the controversial conclusion but i i start with an uncontroversial method that inevitably leads to
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the controversial conclusion and then the other thing i add to that always is well we also have to
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look at the energy that comes with the co2 right we can't just look at the the negatives and positives
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of the co2 we need to look at the benefits of the energy and also any negatives if there are any which
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fundamentally i don't think there are but the the energy that comes with it and so then when you do that
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it's pretty obvious actually we need more fossil fuels and we need to emit more co2 for the
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foreseeable future but it's it's such an uncontroversial way of thinking so that that's
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really the secret the uncontroversial method like if you have a true controversial conclusion then
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establish an uncontroversial method to get people to think about it in the right way you know i'm
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thinking about your two books titles fossil future again you're implying there is one and the moral case
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for fossil and i mean i suppose that's what i did with ethical oil which is like those two words
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people were shocked by they were angry you know the professional anti they were angry at ethical oil
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they didn't like to hear the word which is why i loved it so much um and it did get people to say
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but then there was an argument there was an argument that you had i mean there was an argument yeah and
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one thing you know sort of you mentioned well you didn't put it this way but i would think of it
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ethical oil is a lot about the process of producing oil and you know this is a process
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yeah and and so my argument is fundamentally about the product but saying this is a good product
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it's not and ultimately you need both but the the thing you run into if you only talk about the process
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is people can say oh well i have the most efficient cigarette factory like none of my employees smoke
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making the cigarettes or like we have the most ethical mafia family like we do hits and
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you know none of us do drugs and this uh they're like we account for all the money and this kind
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of thing but you do you do need both and the way i think of it is you you you need the number one is
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the value of the product but then it is important to look at the process and certainly the kinds of
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issues you're you were raising and an early person to raise are very very morally relevant in terms of
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things like our security and i think they are very very uh you know even more relevant today or just as
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relevant as ever today and i think i think they resonate with a lot of people so i've i've been
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in the last few years particularly in um i have a website energytalkingpoints.com that's very focused
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on the best points for current events i've been focusing on that a lot more myself because it is
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really really crucial and it is resonant with a lot of people you know it's funny um yeah i wrote
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my book about a decade ago and i know you've been plugging away for about the same amount of time
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and here we are in a real energy crisis and it's amazing russia invading ukraine and you can't
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punish russia because to punish russia if you're germany are you going to cut yourself off from a
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third of your energy i mean you you got to be careful russia doesn't put sanctions on you
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and and i think that's a reason why so many opec countries were able to subsidize terrorist groups
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like qatar was a major sponsor of isis and the i think the answer was because what are you going
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to do you need to buy their oil and gas no matter what and in the west you had your greta tunbergs
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you had your al gores you had your in this country david suzuki in the uk they banned fracking you had
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all these dilettantes in the west that shut down fossil fuel energy while the bad guys in russia
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and opec kept going and now we have a we have a real energy crisis and as you said in the uk they're
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they can't afford it they're chopping down trees for firewood now they're like it's it's madness let
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me ask you this other than to remark about how how we've lost 10 or 20 years because the west has
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believed the greta's of the world but has there been an awakening by ordinary people to say what the
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heck were we listening to them for we can't run this i'm in edmonton today it's minus 33 degrees
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there's not a lot of electric cars going around like just to just it's so cold here i don't know
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if electric vehicles do well when it is this cold certainly not on important vehicles like a fire truck
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or or something like that is do just so let me ask you this when it's bloody cold like it is here today
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and when you have energy shortages as you're seeing in western europe and when you have high prices
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because of a war does any of this flip people over on these issues does it allow you to crack
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uh their hard shell and and get them to look at these things again or do they just come up with
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a new rationalization or do they just ignore it and pretend it's not happening i think it's you
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can think of it as it's a big persuasive opportunity but it's not guaranteed because you do see these
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wake-up calls and the way to think of a crisis is it's a it's always in one way or another a failure
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of the establishment do you think of say 9-11 or the financial crisis of 2008 in both cases people
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say hey the establishment clearly did something wrong because we're really really unhappy about this
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thing that happened and it's a crucial thing who is implicated by the crisis and who is vindicated
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by the crisis right and that is i that's why if people go to energy talking points.com i have a lot
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of stuff half a dozen probably more uh pieces on the energy crisis because i think it's crucial
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that the right people are implicated but what you notice is the people who actually caused the crisis
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uh are totally denying responsibility for it so one recent thing is the international energy agency
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which at this point like they should not have energy in their title which would be the international
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anti-energy agency you know they've been publicly advocating for stopping oil new oil and gas development
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in 2021 think about that this is the international energy agency and they publicly advocated for this
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in 2021 when now in 2022 we obviously need more oil and gas and we obviously did back then and they're
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not admitting any responsibility at all they just put out these they just put out a glowing report on like
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renewables are amazing and they're in the future even though they're failing all over the place and even
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though their supply chains are a total disaster because people are trying to have all these crash programs
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that make no sense at all in terms of the how rapidly you're doing them and particularly when you have an
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anti-development environment that they're contributing to where it's super hard to mine
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and manufacture things so there's such and you can take the biden administration saying hey we have
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nothing to do with this i doubt trudeau is taking a lot of responsibility uh the little that i know about
00:25:43.400
him so it's it's very important though to say hey look this is very clear the energy crisis is a lack of
00:25:49.720
fossil fuel crisis and it's fundamentally caused by the anti-fossil fuel movement that has
00:25:55.160
systemically opposed fossil fuel investment fossil fuel production fossil fuel refining fossil fuel
00:26:02.460
transportation it's obvious this is what they said they were doing and they got the result of less
00:26:07.340
fossil fuel but their promise that solar and wind would magically replace fossil fuels came false and
00:26:12.580
that's why they're all begging to dictators now so it was just it's just very important that people get
00:26:17.800
that and then also that we have a positive alternative so this is one reason i'm happy it took me so long to
00:26:23.100
do fossil future because it came out this year and it's really perfect timing for people to be because
00:26:28.940
people are more open to wait maybe we do need a fossil future because the people said we needed to
00:26:33.420
rapidly eliminate fossil fuels they they're clearly somehow involved in this crisis even though they're
00:26:37.940
denying it yeah you know even as i was asking that question i was thinking the answers i've heard the
00:26:43.160
answers they say oh these high prices suddenly make alternative energy more competitive so very high gas
00:26:51.120
places prove solar is the way solar and wind are now cheaper than natural gas and and then you
00:26:57.120
have pure denialism like uh uh various european leaders including the chancellor of germany said to
00:27:03.180
canada which has a huge reserve of shale gas of natural gas um please send us some lng and trudeau
00:27:12.320
literally said i don't think there's a business case for it that's what he said he's a well-known
00:27:17.280
businessman and entrepreneur of course uh so germany signed a massive deal with qatar you know it's uh
00:27:23.360
so i guess the answer is they'll come up with any excuse to stay on their agenda but they're pretty
00:27:28.640
they're they're pretty weak excuses that the one about oh renewables are now competitive i called this
00:27:35.000
the tanya harding case against fossil fuels it's like oh well you know i kneecapped my opponent and so
00:27:40.400
now i'm more competitive like okay but it's your fault that fossil fuels have gone up in price and
00:27:46.040
even then we still need fossil fuels people are still desperate to pay today's prices for fossil
00:27:50.960
fuels so it should make people appreciate the industry more and i do think these anti-fossil
00:27:55.140
fuel arguments are a lot harder to make now but we can't assume that people will just see the truth
00:28:00.020
on their own we need to be very aggressive about saying hey here's what's responsible here's the
00:28:05.540
alternative now in your last chapter you say something which i'm gonna ask you about because
00:28:13.140
i'm not i need help with it you three words why i'm optimistic you know i'm glad you are as i get
00:28:24.000
older and i realize that all my efforts sometimes are are they in vain if we move the needle at all
00:28:30.160
maybe we don't know what would have happened had we not been advocating the way we have maybe
00:28:34.200
maybe we avoided some disaster maybe maybe we had success we didn't know but you know i i think in
00:28:40.900
my country of canada my home province of alberta has driven away so many massive oil sands companies
00:28:47.980
killed mighty projects and those companies just go to the bad actors in the world whether it's a former
00:28:54.120
soviet republic or or the middle east or venezuela so i suppose energy is coming out of the ground and
00:29:01.580
not some positive but you know when i wrote ethical oil versus now the oil patch you know i'm not going
00:29:09.660
to say it's gutted because it's still operating but an enormous no pipelines have been built there were
00:29:15.080
five pipeline proposals all were killed billions of dollars of projects that were on track were
00:29:22.340
canceled and moved elsewhere now you say you're optimistic give me some of that
00:29:28.320
well canada is a particular tragedy so let's just acknowledge how sad that situation is for canada
00:29:37.320
and around the world i mean think about imagine just a totally different set of events where
00:29:43.440
everyone acknowledges hey this this is this oil sands thing is amazing right we have this huge
00:29:48.820
natural like oil seep we know where it is we have great technology for harnessing it the technology is
00:29:55.300
improving and canada can help empower the world with it i mean imagine how much better we'd be off
00:30:00.700
right now as a world in terms of just the availability of oil and then of course if canada
00:30:04.940
had built any or all of these pipeline projects so it is a tragedy there are comp i mean europe is a
00:30:11.180
tragedy in a different way although i tend to be much more i like can hate canada much more than i like
00:30:16.100
europe for various uh reasons but canada it's kind of like the u.s but even more extreme it takes
00:30:21.840
bad european ideas as the vanguard even though why do we take europe's ideas again like what track
00:30:28.200
record of success have they had in the last hundred years that should make us worship europe as the
00:30:33.400
source of great ideas and abandon our own ideas for that okay so why am i optimistic though i think
00:30:38.980
it's it's fundamentally because i have i'm seeing like i'm on the inside of changing people's thinking
00:30:46.540
about energy from this anti-human primitive religious way to a pro-human truly scientific
00:30:53.600
and and you know and proper way and what i'm seeing that with my own work is i'm seeing it the growth
00:31:01.320
really start to happen as i as i get better and the arguments get better so i had moral case for
00:31:07.820
fossil fuels which is a certain level i think fossil future is a much higher level then i also have
00:31:12.120
created energy talking points.com which is really crucial because it helps elected officials
00:31:16.280
influencers and citizens have the best arguments on every issue for free at their disposal and what
00:31:23.800
i'm noticing is you're seeing a spread of new people starting to make these kinds of arguments now
00:31:29.420
it's still like small relatively speaking but like think about the people now making these arguments i'm
00:31:34.400
not taking credit for everybody but there is this kind of movement and i have had significant role in
00:31:38.740
movement so you take like bjorn lomborg michael schellenberger steve kunan uh mark mills and
00:31:45.700
you're starting to see uh there's a new player called doomberg which is really is really really
00:31:49.460
popular on substack now you're seeing the financial world there's a lot of like financial people
00:31:54.600
commenting on it bitcoin people commenting on it uh people in electricity are getting better
00:31:59.200
like more and more people are learning these humanistic arguments and then the other you're
00:32:05.040
starting even some industry people like uh chris wright of liberty oilfield services uh adam anderson
00:32:10.100
of a company called inovex that up to the north face you're seeing these things that weren't happening
00:32:14.980
at all and 10 years ago 15 years ago i was almost a lone voice and you're seeing it grow and then
00:32:21.120
you're seeing the other side has no answer at all their answer is to smear us you know the washington
00:32:26.700
post had this bizarre thing where they tried to cancel me because they claimed that i didn't care
00:32:31.040
about poor people so i made a an argument they couldn't refute about how poor people need fossil
00:32:36.380
fuels and their genius response was to argue alex epstein doesn't really care about poor people
00:32:40.500
well that is not true and it's not a valid counter argument if somebody makes an irrefutable argument
00:32:46.120
so you're seeing like they're using character assassination all these really weak things and they
00:32:51.120
just don't have an answer they're still on such a primitive level they still think it's you know the
00:32:56.120
year 2000 and they can just get rid of you by calling you a climate change denier
00:32:59.880
and not actually have to think about our climate impacts in the context of uh of the benefits as
00:33:06.420
well as think about our climate impacts in an even-handed and precise way so i'm just seeing
00:33:11.880
this energy humanist phenomenon grow and then with the energy crisis we have more openness than ever so
00:33:17.740
i just encourage your viewers and listeners like take advantage of the resources that i and others have
00:33:23.980
created particularly make sure you take advantage of energy talking points.com because
00:33:27.740
it's just it's so much easier for you than it was for me 10 years ago and that was my goal is to make
00:33:35.060
it easier and and the in the openness to this issue is far greater than it has been during my intellectual
00:33:40.820
lifetime because when you have a crisis it's different like in the 70s people were really open
00:33:45.940
to pro-energy policies you know the u.s democrats in the late 70s were obsessed with coal and nuclear
00:33:52.740
and they would have dreamed for today's american energy situation now they hate it unfortunately
00:33:58.280
their heirs hate it but when you have an energy crisis it really does open people's minds and so
00:34:04.400
there's a lot to take advantage of and we have the resources to really persuade a lot of people
00:34:08.860
let me just ask you one last question i really appreciate how much time you're giving us today
00:34:13.340
you say you've debated a lot of people and i know you haven't i know you appear on tv a lot which is
00:34:18.500
a great way to talk to so many people um i think i gave at least a hundred speeches in support of my
00:34:25.820
book ethical oil in canada u.s uh even europe but only three debates and maybe it's me maybe it's a
00:34:35.780
personality thing or maybe i don't know but i i think this applies to others who are skeptics of
00:34:42.740
global warming movement the other side doesn't like to debate and and i i wonder if you can explain
00:34:50.840
how do you get the other side to debate you when they're not used to it when they probably would call
00:35:00.700
you a denier or try and cancel you as you say you know they tried to do um i find this is applies to
00:35:09.320
all political fields these days i find that the left doesn't they believe in de-platforming rather
00:35:14.900
than getting on the platform and sharing it with you maybe i'm just expressing my own personal
00:35:19.780
experience but how do you debate and do you debate people who are on your level or do you have to
00:35:24.640
pick a really lowly person who's looking for some celebrity airtime because because i i don't see the
00:35:31.740
other side in this argument willing to engage they say well you mentioned the holocaust earlier
00:35:36.260
they would think it's tantamount to debating a holocaust denier they use that word denier
00:35:42.180
how do you get the other side to debate you well so one thing is insofar as their argument is i won't
00:35:48.760
debate a climate change denier i mean i have a very clear answer to that which is i believe we impact
00:35:54.040
climate i just do not believe it's a catastrophe that justifies that justifies denying eight billion
00:35:59.440
people fossil the fossil fuels they need to flourish so i have a pretty like that i can get rid of
00:36:04.720
that argument pretty quickly so so it's it's pretty implausible some people have refused to
00:36:09.280
debate me because of that but and more broadly what they try to do is they try to present it as
00:36:13.420
a purely scientific debate so there's one prominent person that i won't name who says i won't debate him
00:36:18.980
because he's not a scientist but fossil fuels that's an interdisciplinary issue and actually the
00:36:25.100
most important aspect of it is definitely not climate science it's energy and energy economics so as an
00:36:30.380
expert on those things i'm certainly qualified to have a debate and i certainly know a lot more
00:36:34.720
about climate science than almost any of these climate scientists knows about uh energy so they
00:36:40.280
have these superficial things yeah they most don't want to do it and it doesn't happen that often
00:36:44.900
but i'm sort of very publicly aggressive about doing it and i have gotten some prominent people so
00:36:51.280
earlier this year i got uh one of the most prominent catastrophists willing to do is this guy
00:36:55.520
andrew dessler out of texas a&m and i have a lot of issues with this guy but he he is willing to get
00:37:02.160
on stage and debate people he debated steve coonan uh i think twice this year and he debated me and then
00:37:10.180
we did a kind of debate show on michaela peterson's show although that was we were at on at different
00:37:14.880
times there's a guy the last one i had at ut austin was a professor named john doggett and he was the
00:37:20.360
only one at the school who was willing to debate me but he didn't really debate me because we were
00:37:24.520
debating on should the world go net zero and he acknowledged at the end alex is right if we did
00:37:30.520
net zero it would be the apocalypse so his view was like hey we should aspire to it somehow we should
00:37:36.180
somehow like slowly move in this direction but nobody here's the thing everyone says net zero by
00:37:41.860
2050 is the goal nobody is willing to debate that that's what i'm arguing i'm arguing let's debate the
00:37:47.680
proposition that every company almost every prominent company all these academics the thing all these
00:37:53.180
governments the thing everyone is committing to will any of you debate it and basically none of them
00:37:57.780
will and when they get on the stage like this happened with general wesley clark whom i admire
00:38:01.860
in a lot of ways but i debated him and he agreed on the call in advance yeah i think we should be net
00:38:06.460
zero in fact i think we should be net carbon negative by 2050 once you get on the stage no it's just like
00:38:11.720
i think hey i think we should explore alternatives that's not what the un said they didn't say explore
00:38:16.680
alternatives they said get rid of net co2 emissions by 2050 so it's not easy but i do i am pretty
00:38:24.040
aggressive about it and i do i do have i this makes people so mad but i published criteria for debating
00:38:30.720
because what will happen is random people some of whom have no basic command of the english language
00:38:36.220
will say hey alex like i'll debate you and if i was just a debater i would enjoy sort of like crushing
00:38:42.220
these people randomly uh but because i'm primarily a writer and a researcher and a thinker uh i don't
00:38:47.780
have unlimited time to debate random people so i just i have a very simple thing i said either
00:38:52.420
somebody can if you can find an audience of a hundred thousand people or more who are willing
00:38:57.320
to see this online i will debate anyone because that's like if you can do that i'm willing to do it
00:39:01.620
i don't care who you are uh or i said if somebody wants to host an event with me and pay me my
00:39:07.160
speaking fee uh sure i'll do it too and then the response was oh alex is demanding that you pay him
00:39:13.480
to debate even though i definitely did not say that i just said that's one thing that i'll do but
00:39:18.500
if anyone can get an audience of a hundred thousand people or more then i will have that and they want
00:39:23.740
to actually have a debate then i'm happy to have a debate but that is a very small universe which is
00:39:28.620
why i only get about two debates a year well uh i'd love to see it and hopefully uh hopefully you'll
00:39:36.620
continue to have those debates and they'll get a lot of viewership great to catch up with you the
00:39:40.540
books are fossil likewise future which of course is um follows in the footsteps of the moral case for
00:39:48.300
fossil fuels i should tell you yep oh yeah and we'll have the link under this video that people
00:39:53.160
it is well i mean even just the summary of the book uh on your substack page is very in-depth um i
00:40:00.900
should tell you that at the office i have an i love fossil people's coffee mug that i drink out of
00:40:05.660
every day alex great to see you i wish i wish you all the best in 2023 i think you were doing
00:40:11.900
good not for the industry but for humanity and for the benefit of all people and i thank you for it
00:40:18.740
and and as always i learn a lot from talking with you thanks my friend thanks ezra i hope to see you
00:40:23.460
soon right on there you have it alex epstein you can get his books at the links below that's our show
00:40:29.360
for today until next time on behalf of all of us at rebel and i'm in our western outpost today
00:40:34.820
to you at home good night and keep fighting for freedom