Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alex Epstein on Biden's conniving 'climate change' lie

00:00:00.000 Shame on you, you sensorious thug! 0.97

00:00:30.000 Well, as you know, more than a decade ago, I wrote a book called Ethical Oil, The Case for Canada's Oil Sands, and the idea of putting the word ethics and oil together was a shock to people who had always demonized oil. 0.86

00:00:44.300 The thesis that I had was that the values that the progressive left claims to hold, environmental responsibility, peace, the treatment of workers, human rights, if we actually value those things, we should prefer ethical oil from democratic countries like Canada and the United States to conflict oil from OPEC nations.

00:01:07.280 Now, that was basically saying if we have to have oil, we should get it from the best places possible.

00:01:13.160 Another way of saying that is every barrel of oil produced, say, in the Alberta oil sands is one fewer barrels of oil bought from a Saudi dictatorship, an Iranian theocracy, or Russia, which uses its oil profits to invade its neighbors.

00:01:30.000 Well, here we are a decade later, and all those things are worse, but the front line of this battle is not really foreign affairs.

00:01:38.560 I think that what's happened over the last decade in particular is the climate alarmism, and I think you see that in the form of climate depression and climate grief amongst young people who have been so terrorized by this climate alarmism,

00:01:55.840 that the front line for that battle is actually domestically, it's not, hey, which country should we buy our oil from, it's, should we even use oil, should we even use energy, and are people actually a problem?

00:02:11.200 You'll remember this clip of Bill Gates saying that we have to get rid of at least a billion people. He said that. Look at the clip.

00:02:19.520 So let's look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero. Probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.

00:02:29.200 That's back from high school algebra, but let's take a look. First, we've got population.

00:02:36.140 The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion.

00:02:40.480 Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.

00:02:50.620 But there we see an increase of about 1.3.

00:02:54.600 That's the logical extension of the idea that people are the problem and the planet is some pristine thing that can't be touched.

00:03:02.860 And I think that the greatest communicator of a pro-human approach that says fossil fuels isn't just the lesser evil, but it's a positive good, the greatest communicator I've ever met for that thesis,

00:03:19.340 in fact, I've often joked that his book is the book I really wish I wrote, is my friend Alex Epstein,

00:03:25.500 who tirelessly says, we don't need to be on the defensive about energy.

00:03:31.560 It's the best thing that ever happened to the world.

00:03:35.020 And so for the rest of the show, I'm delighted to talk with Alex Epstein, who joins us now.

00:03:40.920 Alex, great to see you again.

00:03:43.660 Likewise. Well, that's a super generous introduction, so I hope to live up to it.

00:03:48.460 Well, I know you will. I just, you know, I want to start with your Twitter thread that you made a few weeks ago.

00:03:55.500 And you just have ways of framing things that I haven't heard before.

00:04:00.000 And when you say them, a light switch goes on.

00:04:02.040 I think there's something powerful to vocabulary because we have sort of a gut feeling.

00:04:06.140 But if we don't know how to express it, we're sort of incoherent.

00:04:09.560 Let me read a couple of tweets and then I'd love you just to expand on that for our viewers.

00:04:13.600 You said, question, what should government do to address climate change?

00:04:19.800 That's a pretty neutral question.

00:04:21.060 It seems neutral. It's very non-neutral, but it seems neutral.

00:04:26.820 And let me ask you, read your answer, and then I'd love you just to take it away and I'll be hanging on your every word and show all our viewers.

00:04:33.480 Your answer was, climate change is the wrong target.

00:04:37.880 We want to reduce climate danger.

00:04:41.540 And the proven way to do that is master climate danger by letting us use all forms of cost-effective energy, including fossil fuels.

00:04:52.300 I'm just going to read one more tweet and then I'm going to ask you to take it away.

00:04:55.460 You say, asking how government should, quote, address climate change assumes that us impacting climate must be a bad thing.

00:05:03.520 But it's only bad if it endangers us by creating challenges we can't master.

00:05:09.140 And so far, our climate mastery has far outpaced any new climate challenges.

00:05:14.760 What do you mean by climate mastery?

00:05:16.520 It's one of these things where people don't talk about it, but it's just an incredibly common sense thing.

00:05:24.520 So one question I like to ask people who think, you know, we've ruined the climate is, would you rather live in the climate today or the climate 100 years ago?

00:05:34.960 Like, if you want to be safe from climate, would you rather be in the 1920s or the 2020s?

00:05:41.440 I mean, what's your answer, Ezra?

00:05:42.860 Well, I mean, I know the answer because I studied these things.

00:05:47.120 I know that we've mastered the climate with air conditioning in the summer, with heating in the winter, with, you know, building up protection for floods, dams.

00:05:57.360 So I think I know the answer, but I know it in my own vocabulary.

00:06:01.920 I want to hear it in your vocabulary because you, the way you talk about it, I think it's like a light switch goes on.

00:06:08.820 So, and I think, I mean, I agree with you, obviously, but I think anyone, I want to just bring it back to common sense and then I want to give some language around it.

00:06:17.820 But the common sense is, yeah, obviously I want to live in the climate now versus the climate in the past because our level of mastery now is so much greater than it was back then.

00:06:29.760 And particularly even more so in poorer parts of the world, that whatever has changed in the climate for the negative, it totally outweighs that.

00:06:37.200 And you can see this with the data that I share frequently is we have a 98% decline in the rate of what's called climate related disaster deaths.

00:06:45.580 So these are deaths from storms and floods and temperature extremes and wildfires.

00:06:50.780 If you just think about it, then what does this really show?

00:06:54.120 What it shows is that the livability of the climate and in particular, the safety of the climate is a product of two things.

00:07:02.180 One is what's the actual state of the global climate system and then the local climate you happen to live in.

00:07:08.040 But then the other thing is what's your level of mastery of it?

00:07:12.080 And that's what determines the climate livability.

00:07:15.120 And we have to factor in both.

00:07:16.700 And my point is, well, what we really want is we want a livable and safe climate, right?

00:07:21.660 Nobody should want, hey, I want the climate that existed in 1850 just because that came before the Industrial Revolution.

00:07:29.940 Like why would you deify a climate of 1850 versus any other?

00:07:34.660 What you want is a livable climate.

00:07:36.740 But what we've seen from history is the number one key to a livable climate is mastery.

00:07:41.740 And the United States is a perfect example of this because the United States has an incredibly diverse set of climates.

00:07:48.580 You can take we have an Arctic area with Alaska and we have like humid, swampy Florida and we have scorching Texas.

00:07:56.120 And we have, you know, a lot of Arizona, which is totally unlivable, close to that before air conditioning.

00:08:01.560 And now we can live to 80 in every single state.

00:08:04.300 But just think of that.

00:08:05.780 Whenever the climate conditions, including the weather conditions, we can thrive.

00:08:10.080 We can, as I like to say, we can flourish.

00:08:12.600 And so what that shows is that the real thing that matters to climate livability is climate mastery.

00:08:18.720 Now, what does this have to do with fossil fuels?

00:08:20.460 Well, one thing is if we have a high level of mastery, you just generally shouldn't be afraid of new climate challenges unless they're a total difference of kind.

00:08:28.140 So the fact that we're so obsessed with climate change doesn't really make any sense because it's one of the things we're better at dealing with.

00:08:36.720 I mean, we've supposedly had so much full climate change over the last hundred years, and yet we're safer that we're much safer than ever from climate.

00:08:43.140 So one thing is to just reassure people and stop terrorizing kids.

00:08:46.500 And then the other thing is, if you look at what causes the mastery, it's hugely the fossil fuels we're blaming for causing the climate change.

00:08:56.620 So it's the fossil fuels are powering the irrigation systems that help make drought 1-100 threat it used to be.

00:09:03.100 The fossil fuels are powering all the machines that build the sturdy buildings and power the storm warning systems and the evacuation systems that make us safe from storms.

00:09:12.420 Of course, they're powering the heating and air conditioning.

00:09:14.620 So it's so odd because actually fossil fuels are making climate far more livable when you look at it from a human livability perspective, and yet they're demonized as climate villains.

00:09:26.200 So it's exactly, everyone's wrong, right?

00:09:27.860 Everyone thinks either fossil fuels are terrible for the climate or they're not so bad, but it's actually, they're the best thing that's ever happened to the livability of climate.

00:09:36.880 I think what you're saying, if I, and again, I don't want to nitpick, but it's sort of interesting your phrase, would I rather live in the climate today or 100 years ago or 100 years from now?

00:09:46.420 The answer really isn't based on the climate itself because it can be pretty similar.

00:09:52.080 It's our technology.

00:09:53.740 So there was nothing particularly wrong with the climate 100 years ago or 500 years ago.

00:09:58.280 It's that we didn't have the tools to deal with it.

00:10:01.680 So what you're really saying is human ingenuity is the difference.

00:10:07.300 And although, I mean, let me read another one of your tweets because it's interesting.

00:10:10.500 You said, it's an irrefutable but little known fact that as the world has warmed one degree Celsius, humans have become safer than ever from climate danger.

00:10:21.520 The rate of climate-related disaster deaths, and you mentioned that, has fallen 98%.

00:10:26.160 So you acknowledge that the earth has very slowly, very gradually warmed.

00:10:32.280 But you're saying as it's warmed, our ability to deal with warmth, droughts, whatever, has improved greatly.

00:10:40.480 It's not the climate change is a snail's pace, but our technological change is at a breakneck pace.

00:10:46.340 Right. The way I put it is, right, the climate mastery far outpaces any new climate challenges.

00:10:55.540 And part of the reason I put it as climate challenges, which is a bit of a new phraseology for me, is that actually things in climate aren't really negative unless you can't master them.

00:11:07.880 So you take something like, okay, well, the world gets warmer in certain kinds of ways, but then you can benefit from that.

00:11:14.900 I mean, look at the migration in the United States.

00:11:17.160 I mean, people moving to Texas and Florida, like, they don't mind that in many, many ways.

00:11:22.860 I mean, people are going from New York to Florida.

00:11:24.560 That's a much more dramatic climate change than any catastrophist projects for the earth, right?

00:11:29.140 Right.

00:11:29.280 But they're making it involuntarily.

00:11:32.160 And even you take something like a storm, like the same storm that would have destroyed your home and ruined your life 200 years ago,

00:11:39.280 could be the romantic setting for an evening with one's wife or partner now.

00:11:44.180 So it's like our mastery really determines how livable a climate is.

00:11:48.680 And here's something that will trigger people, including, I think, many conservatives.

00:11:53.040 But in the future, we're going to figure out how to master climate on wider scales.

00:11:58.000 So we're going to figure out how do we neutralize hurricanes.

00:12:01.660 And people are probably going to figure out.

00:12:03.700 I mean, people are already, like, feeding clouds to alleviate drought, which I think is a really good thing.

00:12:08.000 But people are going to – we already have a lot of ways we know of cooling the earth and warming the earth in different kinds of ways.

00:12:14.320 And in general – and that raises some interesting policy questions.

00:12:16.960 But in general, people are going to want a climate that's more livable.

00:12:20.080 I live in Southern California.

00:12:21.960 They make us pay a fortune to live here, and we have to deal with Gavin Newsom.

00:12:25.140 I think in the future, three-year places are going to try to replicate a California-esque climate.

00:12:31.640 And that's part of the project of climate mastery, and it's part of why it's insane for the world to be obsessed with relatively small changes in temperature

00:12:39.080 when we should be obsessed with increasing our mastery over the earth.

00:12:43.940 You know, a fellow McAleer, I think, is the one who – maybe it's you.

00:12:48.000 Maybe I'm confusing my climate contrarians, but he points out that if you look at where life is most abundant on earth,

00:12:57.660 both human life and plant and animal life, it's actually in the warmer parts, in the tropics.

00:13:03.420 There's no 20-million-person cities north of the Arctic Circle.

00:13:08.360 They're all in the tropics.

00:13:10.440 And the burgeoning, you know, fritters and bugs and plants are in the equator, not in Antarctica or the Arctic.

00:13:19.800 So the idea that warmth or heat is sometimes dangerous – I suppose it – you know, you mentioned the Arizona desert.

00:13:27.560 Sure, that could be dangerous, but air conditioning fixed that.

00:13:30.400 I think of Al Gore where the planet is boiling.

00:13:33.860 It's on fire.

00:13:35.040 Like, they – I really think they've resorted to almost like science fiction terminology to scare us.

00:13:41.800 I think they've done a number on it, on us.

00:13:44.380 I think there's a whole generation of kids who are growing up just the way our generation was maybe afraid of nuclear, mutually assured destruction.

00:13:53.960 And I think there was a basis for that fear, think of our own.

00:13:56.980 I think that we've conditioned an entire era of school children to be terrified of the planet warming a fraction of a degree.

00:14:08.740 I mean, boiling, fires.

00:14:11.340 I think we've done a number on our own kids.

00:14:15.640 I agree, and I would think of that as it's sort of the second point.

00:14:18.680 So the first point about climate is mastery is what matters most.

00:14:22.920 And that should make us suspicious of this movement.

00:14:27.400 You know, the people claim to care about the livability of climate, that they ignore mastery.

00:14:31.800 They don't seem to care about mastery when that makes all the difference.

00:14:35.240 They say, oh, I'm so concerned about the poor world.

00:14:37.360 Let's have them use less energy so somehow the climate will be nicer to them versus let's get them energy so they can protect themselves as well as we can.

00:14:44.720 So there's this one element of ignoring mastery.

00:14:47.240 But then the other thing that should be suspicious is what you're raising, which is the demonizing of warmth.

00:14:53.060 I don't know if it's thermophobia or whatever.

00:14:54.800 Maybe there's a term for it.

00:14:56.300 But, yeah, if you just think from a human perspective, and I'm stressing that for a reason because I think it's ultimately an anti-human philosophy that causes people to ignore mastery and to have a fear and hatred of any kind of human change, including warmth.

00:15:11.960 You just look at it common sense.

00:15:13.300 And somebody had told you, somebody had told people in 1920, hey, you know what, in 100 years, the global climate system is going to be about a degree Celsius warmer.

00:15:21.980 It's about two degrees Fahrenheit for Americans.

00:15:24.380 And that one is going to be mostly concentrated in older regions of the earth.

00:15:28.260 And it's going to be more at night and it's going to be more in the winter.

00:15:32.000 What would they say?

00:15:33.800 And you're going to have a lot more CO2 for plants.

00:15:36.360 Like, are they really going to think, oh, my God, how could we live through that?

00:15:40.440 Like, they'd probably think, well, that might actually be good.

00:15:43.640 There's going to be a lot of benefits to that, a lot fewer cold-related deaths.

00:15:47.320 And it turns out many times more people die from cold than from heat now, let alone back to then.

00:15:52.580 So you would just think, like, it's either no big deal or it could even be better.

00:15:58.420 And so what you get is people are acting like mastery doesn't exist and they're acting like warmth is a catastrophe when it's kind of obviously not, particularly with mastery.

00:16:11.100 But even on its own, it's pretty obviously not.

00:16:13.680 And so there's this question of what is behind this.

00:16:16.420 And I talk about this a lot in my book, Fossil Future.

00:16:18.600 And what's behind it is ultimately that people at best are not looking at climate from a pro-human perspective.

00:16:28.360 Because from a pro-human perspective, the project of using fossil fuels to master climate and creating some warming as a side effect isn't an incredibly pro-climate project from a human perspective.

00:16:40.220 And so ultimately it's that they're looking at it from an impact is evil perspective or what I call the anti-impact framework.

00:16:47.880 So it's the view that it's wrong for us to impact nature and our number one goal should be to eliminate our impact on nature.

00:16:55.340 And if you view climate that way, you think our number one goal for climate shouldn't be make it livable.

00:17:00.140 No, no, no.

00:17:00.660 Our number one goal should just be to not impact it.

00:17:02.920 Then from that perspective, who cares if we can master it?

00:17:06.020 That's not the goal.

00:17:06.880 The goal is just to not impact it.

00:17:08.480 And then if you believe the goal is to not impact climate, then everything we've done to climate is evil.

00:17:13.480 And even though we're 50 times safer from death than we were 100 years ago, we made it worse.

00:17:18.260 So it's all about the moral standard.

00:17:20.200 Is your standard advancing human flourishing on Earth, in which case we've made the climate better?

00:17:25.020 Or is it eliminating human impact on Earth, in which case we've made the climate worse?

00:17:30.300 You know, I can't help but think as you're talking that, you know, you and I have grown up in North America.

00:17:36.920 So we probably had air conditioning for decades.

00:17:40.460 I mean, I remember when it was still sort of an option in a car, a basic car, to get air conditioning.

00:17:45.860 Now it's pretty standard.

00:17:46.920 I think air conditioning, just the climate solutions, climate mastery is completely ubiquitous.

00:17:54.660 And it really always has been.

00:17:55.940 I'm not saying there aren't some people who can't afford an air conditioner in hot places, but I guess what I'm saying is I feel like the places that have had the greatest change in their ability to master the climate are not California or Canada, but India, China.

00:18:15.320 Places that have gone from zero to, let's say, people who have come so far compared to us.

00:18:24.940 Yes, we're wealthier than ever, but we had a good starting point, let's say, 50 years ago.

00:18:29.360 I guess what I'm saying is I think that global warming fear mongering is a luxury good primarily in the West that has benefited from climate mastery.

00:18:44.020 I think of Greta Thunberg as the absolute epitome of that, someone who hasn't had a tough day in their entire life, someone who lives in a northern country who benefits from climate mastery every day.

00:18:57.520 She can afford to have a school strike, even though she's in her 20s now. 0.99

00:19:02.180 She can afford to pout about energy because she's not someone in India, China, Indonesia, Africa trying to rise up. 0.99

00:19:11.000 I think the global warming mindset is a luxury good for spoiled Westerners.

00:19:17.200 What do you think?

00:19:19.700 I think it's an element of that.

00:19:21.680 There's an element of that.

00:19:22.540 I mean, if you look at somebody like Greta, I think there has to be some empathy as well because people are so, they're given so much catastrophe in their upbringing.

00:19:32.280 So it's weird because they're taught that the best Earth ever to live on is the worst Earth ever.

00:19:37.680 And they're, you know, Greta becomes less innocent by the day because she's now an adult. 0.96

00:19:42.540 But you just think, yeah, people have this legitimate fear and they have this legit, I mean, it's not actually based on anything, but it's real fear, particularly for the younger people.

00:19:52.420 I think the older people, not nearly as much.

00:19:54.160 It's real fear.

00:19:55.020 And they just think it's a transgression.

00:19:57.020 They really think it's immoral to impact the Earth and in particular impact the climate.

00:20:02.600 But, yeah, it is, in fact, it's true it's a luxury and you can see this with the actual emphasis that people place on climate change.

00:20:12.200 You know, you would think that, hey, in African nations, regular people would be so concerned about climate change that it allegedly hurts them the most.

00:20:19.740 And in a sense, any negative thing, any negative element of climate change will, of course, hurt the poor the most because everything negative hurts the poor the most because to be poor means to have less mastery.

00:20:30.160 That's ultimately what it is to have fewer resources.

00:20:32.740 That means you have fewer capabilities, which means you have less mastery.

00:20:35.580 But in practice, people in those nations, they want things like education, food, shelter, et cetera.

00:20:43.080 A friend of mine that I've had some influence over, a guy named Jasper Machogu, people can find on Twitter, he has a pretty entertaining Twitter account.

00:20:51.640 And what he does is, you know, because he's grown up in a manual labor world in Kenya, like he'll just show videos of like, hey, this is what we do every day.

00:20:59.020 And he has a really good motto, which is just stop toil.

00:21:03.580 So not just stop oil, just stop toil.

00:21:06.640 And the key is you stop toil via fossil fuels, which allow you to use more machines.

00:21:11.720 And he's actually been like bringing electricity and stuff and water to communities.

00:21:15.980 But like he has, I think, the attitude that many do, particularly that many would if they understood the issue better, which is like, why are you talking about small changes in temperature when we're focused on eating and education?

00:21:27.900 And all of these other things and sanitation and health care that require a lot more energy.

00:21:34.020 So it is, in that sense, very much a luxury belief, but it's not simply a luxury.

00:21:39.620 Like if you own a Maybach or something like that, you're not doing that at the expense of other people, right?

00:21:45.700 You're actually, there are probably poorer people who are employed to make the Maybach and maybe you have somebody drive the Maybach for you.

00:21:51.660 But this is a luxury belief that harms the people who are worse off.

00:21:56.380 Right. Especially the idea of buying a carbon offset.

00:22:00.120 We're basically buying an indulgence.

00:22:02.240 You're basically saying, I deeply believe the carbon dioxide is evil, but I'm going to pay to buy my way out of it morally and someone else can pay the price.

00:22:10.920 I think there's some colonialism, some imperialism, some snobbery there.

00:22:16.180 Hey, let me ask you a question about the world's most interesting man.

00:22:20.420 I think, you know, just saying those words, I think we all know it's Elon Musk.

00:22:23.500 He's a scientist. He's a public intellectual of sorts.

00:22:27.800 He's a serial capitalist builder.

00:22:31.580 And I first heard of him in relation to Tesla.

00:22:35.760 And Tesla had big government grants.

00:22:38.360 And the question is, if you're running on electricity in California, does that mean you're actually running on coal?

00:22:44.380 So I was a skeptic and I still am somewhat skeptical of electric cars.

00:22:50.240 But despite that skepticism, I've become enamored with the man.

00:22:55.340 I mean, whatever carbon he saves on Tesla, he more than emits with his rocket ships, which are the most carbon intensive machines ever created in the history.

00:23:04.700 I see in Elon Musk what's sometimes called a techno-optimist, somebody who says there's problems out there for sure, but we can use our brains to overcome them.

00:23:18.020 He wants to do so much as even to settle Mars.

00:23:21.420 I think what you're talking about could be called techno-optimism, am I right?

00:23:28.000 That technology will allow us to master a cold or a hot world.

00:23:33.760 In fact, technology could even master an unlivable place like Mars.

00:23:38.120 Technology would do it.

00:23:39.300 Is that an accurate way to describe your set of beliefs?

00:23:42.700 It's an aspect of it.

00:23:46.960 I mean, describing it as optimism is a little bit – that can make it seem wishful, whereas I think it's just very objective to recognize the power of human mastery.

00:23:57.760 I mean, yeah, of course you can imagine a meteor hits us or something like this that before we're prepared for it or something like that.

00:24:03.960 But in general, just we are very good.

00:24:06.620 I mean, what you think about what a good environment is.

00:24:08.920 It's something with a lot of resources and very true threats.

00:24:12.700 Like at a high level, that's what a good environment is.

00:24:15.480 And we have the ability to create resources, and we have the ability to neutralize threats.

00:24:21.100 Like we've created oil as a resource.

00:24:23.000 Oil was not naturally a resource.

00:24:24.500 It was naturally useless.

00:24:25.800 We made it a resource.

00:24:26.880 Same thing with coal.

00:24:27.920 Same thing with natural gas.

00:24:29.160 Same thing with aluminum.

00:24:30.260 Same thing with uranium.

00:24:31.380 Same thing with thorium.

00:24:32.500 So we can increasingly take the raw material of the universe and make it into usable resource.

00:24:39.200 Including doing things like desalinate water, et cetera.

00:24:43.200 And then we can neutralize more and more kinds of threats, as climate mastery has shown us.

00:24:50.140 So if you understand those dynamics, and you're not afraid of running out of stuff,

00:24:54.780 and you're not afraid of nature punishing us on some scale that we can't deal with,

00:25:00.660 or even just, I don't think of it as punishment, but people, whether they think of punishment or accident or whatever,

00:25:05.780 then why would you not be optimistic?

00:25:07.920 The only thing you need to understand is that the mechanism by which resource creation and threat neutralization function is the human mind being unleashed in a free society,

00:25:17.640 where it's free to think and act to both create resources and neutralize threats.

00:25:21.400 Like, if you get that, your optimism is all around, it's almost determined, not that determinism is right, specifically, not that an exact outcome is determined.

00:25:31.680 But in general, if you have a free society that respects property rights, yeah, then you're going to have more resources, fewer threats, fast innovation.

00:25:40.400 It's going to get better and better. There will be new problems, but you'll solve them.

00:25:44.780 And so I think, yeah, in that sense, I think Elon and I are aligned.

00:25:48.920 I think he used to be much less aligned, if you look at his public posture.

00:25:52.660 His public posture used to be pretty crazy with climate, because he basically would at the same time say,

00:25:58.480 hey, I believe we can master climate enough to terraform Mars.

00:26:02.640 So on the one hand, we can make Mars livable, but then he'd say, you know what, like, a couple degrees of climate change is a catastrophe.

00:26:11.920 Like, if you look at the speech he gave when he introduced the power wall, it was just the earth on fire.

00:26:17.280 It was all of that fire and brimstone imagery.

00:26:20.920 And since then, he's gotten a lot better. He's become more pro-fossil fuel, but he's also with climate stuff.

00:26:26.280 He hasn't quite embraced climate mastery and its implications enough.

00:26:29.760 But he'll say, like, yeah, this is, you know, this is a long-term thing. Don't worry that much.

00:26:34.420 Maybe we'll deal with it by 2060.

00:26:37.360 So that's that he's he's improved a lot. And I'd say he's become more consistent.

00:26:41.800 It's possible that where we diverge the most is where he has a more near term financial interest, to say the other thing.

00:26:50.720 I mean, he's not a perfect man, but he certainly is a conversation starter.

00:26:53.400 And I think recently he really came out strong for nuclear power, if I'm remembering correctly.

00:26:58.600 I mean, he well, I mean, he's been so weak on it for so long.

00:27:02.880 Oh, OK.

00:27:03.400 And I mean, he's been like mildly.

00:27:05.940 So the thing with nuclear is like you can think of it as the nuclear industry has basically been enslaved.

00:27:12.540 Worse than enslaved, actually, because they've just been unallowed to function.

00:27:16.380 Nuclear, we had such a promising industry.

00:27:18.700 Canada is a bit better than the U.S., but in the U.S., you know, we're a really promising industry that was competitive with all the late 60s, early 70s.

00:27:25.980 And we basically just destroyed it.

00:27:27.860 And it should have actually gotten a lot cheaper since then.

00:27:30.420 And it just became unimaginably expensive, unimaginably delayed because of all these irrational regulations by ultimately an anti-technology government, or particularly what's called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

00:27:41.960 So when you have that level of destruction of a profound value, anyone who knows anything should just be like very loudly saying, this is evil, what we're doing to nuclear.

00:27:53.480 We need to unleash it.

00:27:54.840 And Elon has never done anything resembling that.

00:27:57.300 He's gotten a little better, but he's like historical to say, yeah, I think solar has almost all the potential.

00:28:02.620 And like nuclear, he wouldn't even talk about.

00:28:05.080 Now, he talked about it, and I think his, I don't know what their relationship status is, but Grimes has talked about it a bit.

00:28:10.900 But my view is, like, it's not enough to say nuclear is okay.

00:28:13.860 You need to be for the liberation of nuclear.

00:28:17.260 All right.

00:28:17.760 Well, I'll keep my eye on that.

00:28:18.900 I mean, I think he's evolving.

00:28:20.400 We can see that because he shares his thoughts in real time every day.

00:28:24.360 Hey, I've got a question for you.

00:28:25.760 You know, the demonization of carbon, which is one of the most common elements out there, has always been perplexing.

00:28:35.100 I mean, it's on the periodic table of the elements.

00:28:38.680 How can you go to war against one of the most common elements in which really everything we do, carbon dioxide, carbohydrates, we're made of carbon.

00:28:47.440 And I found it bizarre, and I was reminded how bizarre it was when I was interviewing Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, and he talked about the war on nitrogen that's being waged in the Netherlands.

00:29:01.580 And it was shocking to hear that because we never hear that.

00:29:05.540 And it reminded me of how kooky our war on carbon is.

00:29:09.300 But in some ways, they're related.

00:29:11.060 I mean, Netherlands is actually one of the world's most productive food exporters, even though it's a relatively small country.

00:29:18.640 And they're going to war against nitrogen for environmental reasons.

00:29:22.420 And it really is so similar to the war against carbon for energy reasons.

00:29:28.700 And between the war on carbon and the war on nitrogen and how both make the cost of energy higher and the cost of food higher, I thought there's a real similarity there.

00:29:38.840 It's sort of an anti-people agenda in both cases.

00:29:42.740 I mean, if you want to happy people, have cheap, plentiful food and energy.

00:29:48.600 I mean, that's really half the battle.

00:29:51.000 What's going on there?

00:29:52.500 Are those a common front against people?

00:29:56.280 What's motivating what I think is sort of an anti-people agenda there?

00:30:00.200 I do think it's anti-human.

00:30:05.100 And I think how you get there is you look at there are two very conspicuous things about being anti-carbon and anti-nitrogen.

00:30:12.020 One is they're overly focused, to say the least, on negative side effects, whether it's of fossil fuel use or of fertilizer.

00:30:20.660 So they're not looking at the enormous life or death benefits of those things.

00:30:25.680 That's one thing, is they're just focusing and fixating on negative side effects.

00:30:29.420 The other thing is they're using the ultimate non-scientific oversimplification.

00:30:35.040 If you're concerned about certain levels of CO2, then say, okay, I'm concerned about rising CO2 levels.

00:30:41.260 But just to be anti-carbon, a basic element that is the basis of all life, how is that scientific?

00:30:47.620 And the same thing with nitrogen, this incredibly common element in our atmosphere that, again, we need to live.

00:30:53.060 So I think what it captures is that these are two forms of being irrational, of just fixating on negative side effects and of using totally non-scientific terminology.

00:31:03.420 And I think it's ultimately because what they're really against is what they would call the unnatural.

00:31:09.260 But what they call the unnatural is really just the man-made.

00:31:12.880 So what, because that's what they mean.

00:31:15.200 They think of humans as unnatural and what we, everything we do and we make is unnatural and unnatural is bad.

00:31:22.380 And I think we're the best part of nature.

00:31:24.920 That's why we can do things like potentially colonize Mars. 0.65

00:31:28.520 And, you know, this is how, like, the ancient Greeks thought, like, they had the ode to man, how great man is compared to the others.

00:31:34.300 We're certainly the most capable species.

00:31:36.560 But if you have this view that we're unnatural and therefore bad, then you just have this visceral leading opposition to any kind of impact that we have.

00:31:48.000 And you just fixate on that because that's all you care about.

00:31:50.200 And it relates to is your goal to eliminate human impact on Earth or is it to advance human flourishing on Earth?

00:31:57.100 If it's the first, then, yeah, you just hate anything we create.

00:32:00.400 So if we introduce a new form of carbon or additional carbon dioxide, that's bad.

00:32:04.400 If we introduce nitrogen in different forms, that's bad and that's all you can think about.

00:32:08.100 It doesn't matter the benefits.

00:32:09.280 It doesn't matter the effect on human life.

00:32:10.760 It's just wrong.

00:32:11.820 You violated the commandment, thou shalt not impact nature.

00:32:15.120 But if your goal is advancing human flourishing on Earth, the way in which we're introducing carbon and nitrogen, that is part of a huge net benefit.

00:32:22.400 And if you have any concerns about it, you address it in the context of the net benefit.

00:32:26.320 You say, oh, maybe there's a way to do it more efficiently.

00:32:28.380 But you don't want to deprive people of it.

00:32:30.400 And you certainly don't try to ban practical energy or practical fertilizer.

00:32:35.180 We're talking with Alex Epstein.

00:32:36.740 His first book was The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which I really loved.

00:32:41.880 And more recently, he came out with Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas, Not Less.

00:32:51.200 Hey, Alex, let me ask you one last question.

00:32:54.380 And if I think of how environmental politics was first sort of a radical thing and then it was just sort of a partisan thing, and now it's so ubiquitous.

00:33:05.600 I think most of the people pushing the global warming fear mongering, they don't even realize they're doing something political.

00:33:11.540 And they're shocked when they find people who disagree.

00:33:17.820 It's become so normalized and the indoctrination is so total.

00:33:22.240 And I'm thinking in particular of schools. 0.80

00:33:24.980 Give me some reason for hope that we can emerge from this junk science driven anti-human ideology.

00:33:35.920 Is there something out there?

00:33:37.360 Is there some place in the world?

00:33:38.540 Is there some idea?

00:33:40.000 Is there some proof that despite the enormous odds, our side is winning or at least has some hope?

00:33:50.220 Yeah, I have a lot of optimism.

00:33:52.440 And again, I never try to have it as just a whole thing.

00:33:55.840 But just if I look at some dynamics going on.

00:33:58.980 So one dynamic that's not the most important but is important is that as the anti-fossil fuel policies have led to very marked declines in different aspects of life.

00:34:09.020 So in the United States, really wrecking the reliability of our grid, which people are noticing, what people noticed with opposition to oil and gas domestically and trading with allies, they saw the vulnerability that we had with Russia, particularly that Germany had with Russia.

00:34:24.200 So people are starting to see, wow, these anti-fossil fuel policies that we were promised would have no cost to them, only benefit.

00:34:31.760 They really do have cost.

00:34:33.000 And maybe that's because fossil fuels have a lot of benefits that are unique at this point in history and that we're being deprived of.

00:34:39.320 And I've never seen people in the 17 years I've been on this issue more open to positive ideas about fossil fuels because they're seeing what happens when you consistently oppose them.

00:34:50.960 Although I shouldn't even say consistently because we've only gone 1% in the net zero direction.

00:34:57.940 We haven't done anywhere near net zero anywhere.

00:35:00.640 And it's still causing problems.

00:35:02.320 So one is there's the crisis has the only silver lining.

00:35:05.840 It's an educational opportunity that's waking people up.

00:35:08.580 And then the second thing is I would say, and this is something I've been part of, is we now have much better arguments available to us than we did when I started 17 years ago.

00:35:19.040 And I've done this in my books, particularly the recent one, Fossil Future.

00:35:23.220 But in particular, I've created a vehicle, Energy Talking Points, which everyone can access for free at energytalkingpoints.com, that basically gives you all the answers to every single energy, environmental, and climate question that could ever come up.

00:35:34.960 And then we also have an AI now, which people can find on the App Store.

00:35:38.640 If you search like AlexGPT, it's technically called AlexAI.

00:35:42.600 And that now answers every question as me.

00:35:45.580 And it's already really good.

00:35:46.740 It's going to get a lot better.

00:35:48.460 But the goal is, like what I've tried to do is I've tried to pioneer better ways of explaining things and then make them very scalable.

00:35:55.240 So they're universally accessible.

00:35:57.920 And now we've been seeing, you know, dozens and dozens of politicians using these points.

00:36:02.220 And the U.S. presidential candidates talking about 98% decline in climate-related disaster deaths, just like I am.

00:36:08.600 And that's because we've taken the knowledge of how to frame things and how to explain things and made it scalable for the masses.

00:36:15.960 And that means every ally, of course, you included, Ezra, will have an easier time telling the truth and their followers can tell the truth.

00:36:23.260 So I think I've created kind of a scalable solution to going against this behemoth.

00:36:27.600 Because you obviously can't out-advertise them, right?

00:36:30.580 They're just so massive.

00:36:31.840 They've taken over the institutions.

00:36:33.220 But you can empower anyone who's aligned to become much more effective.

00:36:38.040 And that's been my focus.

00:36:39.680 Got it.

00:36:39.920 And that website's energytalkingpoints.com?

00:36:43.660 Yes.

00:36:44.240 And then if people want to subscribe to the newsletter, they can go to alexepstein.substack.com.

00:36:48.380 That's the Energy Talking Points newsletter.

00:36:50.300 Great.

00:36:50.620 Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.

00:36:52.440 I always follow your Twitter account.

00:36:55.300 I mean, I love the places you're getting into these days.

00:36:59.320 And you've been on this issue for longer than most.

00:37:02.440 The latest book by our guest is called Fossil Future.

00:37:07.580 And I've read both Fossil Future and The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

00:37:11.320 And I heartily recommend both of them.

00:37:13.540 Alex, great to see you.

00:37:14.280 Thanks for spending so much time with us.

00:37:16.640 Thank you, Ezra.

00:37:18.000 All right.

00:37:18.480 There you have it.

00:37:19.600 That's it for today's show.

00:37:21.660 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home,

00:37:26.060 good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:37:33.180 Thank you.

00:37:35.620 Thank you.

00:37:37.780 Thank you.

00:37:38.480 Thank you.

00:37:39.160 All right.

00:37:39.340 All right.

00:37:40.020 Thank you.

00:37:41.080 We will be to you next time.

00:37:43.280 Please stay next time.

00:37:45.280 END

Rebel News Podcast - March 26, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alex Epstein on Biden's conniving 'climate change' lie

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