The Charlie Kirk Show - Fossil Future with Alex Epstein

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today Charlie Kirk Show, an entire hour with Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future and the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

00:00:07.000 Very articulate, incredibly knowledgeable on the issue of environmental totalitarianism.

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00:01:21.000 Welcome back, everybody.

00:01:22.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:01:23.000 I'm really excited for a full hour to dive into a topic that we hear almost every single day.

00:01:30.000 It impacts our transportation.

00:01:31.000 It impacts our political dialogue.

00:01:33.000 And very few people think clearly about this topic and or have the courage to say what is necessary, that fossil fuels and the ability to use them is an amazing moral advancement for the human species.

00:01:49.000 I love people.

00:01:50.000 You should love people.

00:01:51.000 I believe people have souls.

00:01:52.000 They are worthy of protection and dignity.

00:01:54.000 They have value.

00:01:55.000 This idea of putting nature above people and or on an equal moral footing of people is preposterous and it is taking over the West.

00:02:04.000 One of the clearest thinkers on this topic is Alex Epstein.

00:02:08.000 I think I said Epstein correctly, or Epstein, I apologize if so.

00:02:12.000 Author of a couple books.

00:02:13.000 I want to talk about his latest book, but his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is fabulous.

00:02:17.000 He also has a new book called Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less.

00:02:26.000 Alex, welcome back to the program.

00:02:29.000 Hey, Charlie.

00:02:30.000 Unfortunately, it's Epstein, but everything else was perfect.

00:02:33.000 All right.

00:02:33.000 I apologize.

00:02:34.000 It's an understandable mistake, as you could probably.

00:02:39.000 With unfortunate implications these days.

00:02:41.000 Yes, unfortunately.

00:02:42.000 Okay, I'm going to let you riff.

00:02:44.000 Tell us about your book, why you believe what you believe, and we'll go from there.

00:02:49.000 So, you know, the most popular moral idea today, in my view, unfortunately, is the idea that we should rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use.

00:02:57.000 This is advocated by most leading corporations, most leading financial institutions.

00:03:02.000 Most governments in the world have commitments to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use.

00:03:06.000 Usually the deadline is 2050.

00:03:09.000 And I think this is totally wrong.

00:03:11.000 And I actually think it's obviously wrong if you think about this issue in a pro-human way.

00:03:16.000 And specifically, if you do something very simple that everyone agrees you should do, but almost no one does when it comes to fossil fuels, which is carefully weigh both benefits and side effects.

00:03:26.000 If you're thinking about taking a prescription drug, nobody says, oh, just ignore the benefits, only look at the side effects.

00:03:32.000 And no one says, just look at the side effects, only the benefits.

00:03:34.000 And no one says exaggerate one or exaggerate the other.

00:03:37.000 Yet when it comes to fossil fuels, we live in a world of fossil fuel benefit denial.

00:03:41.000 Most of our leading thinkers attribute no benefits to fossil fuels, despite the fact that they make it possible for us to eat with natural gas-derived fertilizer, diesel-powered machines.

00:03:52.000 Both uses, by the way, are very, very hard to replace and have no near-term replacement.

00:03:56.000 And so also we use fossil fuels to master climate.

00:03:58.000 We're far safer from climate disaster than we used to be.

00:04:01.000 The rate of climate disaster death has gone down 98%, largely because of things like fossil fuel heating, air conditioning, building sturdy buildings, drought relief by irrigation and crop transport.

00:04:13.000 And so, if you ignore the benefits of a crucial life or death thing and you only pay attention to the side effects, that's wrong.

00:04:20.000 And it also should, it's very deadly, but it also indicates you have a bias.

00:04:24.000 And I believe the same bias that causes our leaders to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels also causes them to what I call catastrophize the side effects, to exaggerate them out of all proportion, particularly our climate impacts, and to ignore our ability to deal with them through our intelligence, including through energy.

00:04:41.000 So, I think it's actually obvious once you look at the facts from a pro-human, like full-context perspective, benefits and side effects, that the world needs more fossil fuels.

00:04:50.000 Certainly, should not be rapidly eliminating them.

00:04:52.000 That would literally be the most deadly thing human beings have ever done if we did that on a 2050 timetable.

00:04:57.000 So, Alex, let me just ask you to take a step back and define what is a fossil fuel.

00:05:01.000 Let's just get to the, let's define our terms here.

00:05:04.000 Some people act as if they know what it is and just walk us through the science of it, the geology of it, if you will.

00:05:10.000 I think it's important.

00:05:12.000 Yeah, I love that question because it's so important, and people don't talk about it.

00:05:18.000 So, on a surface level, you could just the first pass is: just fossil fuels include oil, coal, and natural gas.

00:05:25.000 And I put them in that order because that's the order of their prevalence in terms of economic prevalence.

00:05:30.000 Oil is number one, coal is number two, natural gas is number three.

00:05:34.000 And sort of the essence of it, which sounds a little bit technical, which is important, is that they are high-energy hydrocarbons derived from ancient dead life.

00:05:43.000 So, I'll explain that.

00:05:44.000 So, high-energy hydrocarbons.

00:05:46.000 Hydrocarbon means a molecule that's composed primarily of hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms.

00:05:52.000 Hydrogen is lighter than carbon, so, like, natural gas is CH4, so that means more hydrogen than carbon.

00:05:58.000 And coal has more carbon relative to hydrogen and oil is in the middle, which is part of why they're a gas, liquid, and solid.

00:06:05.000 And what's remarkable about them is they can store a very large amount of energy in a small amount of space.

00:06:12.000 And so, when you burn them, in the case of natural gas, you have to compress it to be small, but it's a small amount of mass.

00:06:17.000 So, when you burn them, you can take a relatively low volume or mass of this material and you can burn it.

00:06:24.000 And then, what happens is a lot of energy emerges from the chemical reaction, along with two major things.

00:06:30.000 One is H2O from the hydrogen, the hydrogen combines with oxygen.

00:06:33.000 The other is carbon dioxide, CO2, which we treat as this satanic gas.

00:06:38.000 But we should just really think of it clinically.

00:06:40.000 Okay, this is a gas.

00:06:41.000 It has certain properties, it fertilizes plants.

00:06:44.000 I also think it has a warming effect.

00:06:46.000 Most scientists think it's a warming gas.

00:06:49.000 But that's the basic thing.

00:06:50.000 So, it's a large amount of energy in a small amount of space or a low amount of mass.

00:06:54.000 That's why we use it.

00:06:55.000 And when we burn it, it releases both energy, but also water and carbon dioxide.

00:07:01.000 And then, the other thing it can release, particularly when we talk about coal and oil, is because it derives from life and particularly plants or microorganisms from the past, that's the other part of it.

00:07:14.000 It sometimes includes elements that are with that.

00:07:17.000 For example, like nitrogen naturally occurs, or sometimes mercury naturally occurs.

00:07:21.000 So, sometimes when you burn these hydrocarbons, they emit those things in the air.

00:07:26.000 So, you can have sulfur dioxide, or you can have mercury emitted.

00:07:29.000 And this is why we have different kinds of pollution control to limit those to safe or manageable levels.

00:07:35.000 So, that's what the fossil fuels are.

00:07:37.000 That's why we use them.

00:07:38.000 And also, the fact they're from ancient dead life, because there's so much life that gave rise to them, there are huge amounts.

00:07:45.000 So, people tend to think, oh, we're running out.

00:07:47.000 We actually have 10 times or more of all of these fossil fuels than we've used in the entire history of civilization.

00:07:53.000 So, the whole key is just: can we keep getting better at cost-effectively getting them out of the earth?

00:07:57.000 There's a virtually limitless amount of them for our purposes.

00:08:01.000 So that's a great explanation.

00:08:02.000 Thank you for that.

00:08:03.000 Why is it then that they've become so incredibly controversial and/or banning them?

00:08:09.000 For example, when I visit college campuses with religious fervor, the environmentalists, as if they are trying to persuade me to some sort of metaphysical view of the world, will tell me that if I do not admit that there is an anthropic, anthropocentric, you know the termic, that is, view of climate warming, then I'm a climate denier, that it is human beings that are increasing the temperature of the earth.

00:08:36.000 I find this to be a very sloppy way to view anything, but what's your take on that?

00:08:42.000 Because they are so insistent on that phrase in particular.

00:08:47.000 Well, I think that the notable thing which relates to the religious aspect is that this is treated as the only issue, and it's treated as the apocalypse.

00:08:57.000 Because as I said, if you look at the nature of fossil fuels, one thing that happens when you burn them is you release CO2.

00:09:01.000 CO2 is a fertilizing gas and a warming gas.

00:09:04.000 And so you would expect some amount of warming impact.

00:09:07.000 Now, you should all, there are also a lot of facts you should know, which I talk a lot about in the book Fossil Future in particular.

00:09:13.000 So one thing is the warming effect impact is a slash impact is a diminishing effect.

00:09:18.000 So it's like it tapers off over time.

00:09:20.000 It doesn't like accelerate forever like people think.

00:09:24.000 It tends to occur more in the coldest parts of the world, not the hottest parts of the world.

00:09:28.000 We've had 10 times more CO2 in the atmosphere in the history of this planet.

00:09:31.000 It definitely didn't burn up.

00:09:33.000 So the way you'd think of it is it's a modest warming impact.

00:09:36.000 And you can think about that.

00:09:38.000 You can think about the other things.

00:09:39.000 But then, of course, you have to think about any benefits of that warming impact and then certainly greening impact, which people don't do.

00:09:46.000 And then you need to think of the benefits that come with the energy, including the benefit of what I call climate mastery, our ability to neutralize climate danger using machines powered by fossil fuels.

00:09:57.000 And as I mentioned, this is so powerful that the rate of climate-related disaster death has gone down 98% in a century.

00:10:06.000 So fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous.

00:10:09.000 They took a dangerous climate and made it safe.

00:10:12.000 And so why are these people treating this as the one issue?

00:10:16.000 And why are they treating it as apocalypse?

00:10:18.000 And I do think you mentioned metaphysical.

00:10:20.000 So one thing is they have a kind of metaphysical view that I call the delicate nurture assumption.

00:10:25.000 And this is the view that unimpacted nature has three attributes.

00:10:29.000 It's stable, so it doesn't change too much.

00:10:32.000 It's sufficient.

00:10:33.000 It gives us what we need as long as we're not too greedy.

00:10:36.000 And it's safe. 0.98

00:10:37.000 And then the view is that human beings are what I call parasite polluters. 0.61

00:10:41.000 So we just take from the earth and then we ruin the earth.

00:10:44.000 That's what our impact means.

00:10:45.000 And if you believe that nature exists in this delicate nurturing balance that's stable, sufficient, and safe, and that we're these parasite polluters who just ruin it, then you're always going to expect our impact to destroy the world.

00:10:57.000 And this is why you have these Paul Ehrlichs who are always wrong.

00:11:03.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:12:09.000 Alex, continue what you were saying.

00:12:12.000 Yeah, sorry, I might have been going a little long.

00:12:15.000 We have breaks.

00:12:16.000 So just continue on those three characteristics of nature and if you agree with them or not.

00:12:21.000 So it's the, yeah, so this idea of the delicate nurture assumption that nature exists in a delicate balance that's stable, sufficient, and safe, and our impact ruins it, and we're just parasite polluters.

00:12:31.000 Insofar as you believe that, you're going to believe that human impact inevitably leads to catastrophe.

00:12:38.000 And this is what you see.

00:12:39.000 We've had, I document in chapter two of Fossil Future, we've had four separate false predictions of fossil fuel catastrophe.

00:12:47.000 And they're not only false, I had to invent a new term for how false they are.

00:12:50.000 It's 180 degrees false because the exact opposite happened.

00:12:53.000 So they said we'd run out of resources, including fossil fuels.

00:12:56.000 If we kept using fossil fuels, we have more resources than ever, including more available fossil fuels.

00:13:01.000 They said catastrophic pollution, the earth would become unlivably dirty.

00:13:04.000 Actually, you know, clean air has increased and water has gotten far better, among other environmental metrics.

00:13:09.000 And they said catastrophic global cooling, catastrophic global warming.

00:13:13.000 And in both cases, we've become far safer from climate disaster.

00:13:17.000 And so you have to think like how can smart people say this?

00:13:20.000 And why do our institutions keep privileging them?

00:13:23.000 This guy, Paul Ehrlich, who's been the most wrong man of the last 55 or 60 years, he was just on 60 Minutes promoting his new book.

00:13:30.000 He's treated as what I call a designated expert.

00:13:32.000 And I think this delicate nurture dogma is at the root of it.

00:13:36.000 And that's really a religious belief.

00:13:37.000 It's the opposite of science.

00:13:39.000 Science really tells us that nature is wild potential.

00:13:42.000 So it's dynamic, not stable.

00:13:44.000 It's deficient, not sufficient, and it's dangerous, not safe.

00:13:48.000 And human beings are producer improvers whose impact generally makes the world a better place. 0.97

00:13:53.000 It's really about the core philosophy and rejecting this religious dog, this religious anti-human dog that we're parasite polluters. 0.98

00:14:00.000 Yeah, that's exactly right. 0.98

00:14:02.000 So, Alex, I want you to expand on something you said earlier.

00:14:05.000 You said thanks to fossil fuels, 98% of climate catastrophe has decreased or been limited.

00:14:11.000 And it's so clear that many of our elites and/or their apparatchic followers are sheltered by a postmodern and modern lens.

00:14:22.000 They think of climate catastrophe simply as the big stuff, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, and they think that warming is contributing to it, of which I don't subscribe to.

00:14:29.000 But they don't realize that man's battle against nature has just recently been conquered.

00:14:35.000 This is a rather recent phenomenon.

00:14:37.000 For example, I live here in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:14:39.000 If it was not for fossil fuels, it was very hard to be able to build a stable civilization here before air conditioning in June, July, August.

00:14:46.000 It gets to be 125, 130 degrees.

00:14:49.000 Another example would be just being able to inhabit most of Alaska, being able to shelter yourself from wind, being able to, you know, as you get older, not have to worry about it becoming negative 10 degrees.

00:15:00.000 Talk about how we have forgotten, we have no memory of man's struggle against the elements.

00:15:08.000 And we act as if now the only struggle we have is against hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, of which is legitimate.

00:15:15.000 I don't think fossil fuels are connected to it.

00:15:16.000 But talk about that 98% figure.

00:15:18.000 I find that fascinating.

00:15:20.000 So I would put all of these in the same category if you're talking about being protected from heat, being protected from cold.

00:15:27.000 But we're far climate-related disaster deaths include things like hurricanes, not really tsunamis, because not really climate-related in the same way.

00:15:34.000 That's correct.

00:15:35.000 But so you take like, you know, storms, floods, all of these things, wildfires, deaths from all of these are way down.

00:15:43.000 I document this really extensively in chapter seven of Fossil Future.

00:15:47.000 And if people just go to energytalkingpoints.com, they can also see all this info for free.

00:15:51.000 And so if you think about it logically, it makes total sense.

00:15:55.000 Like, Charlie, just think about it.

00:15:56.000 Would you rather live in the climate of 100 years ago or today?

00:16:00.000 I mean, isn't it obvious that we'd all rather live today?

00:16:03.000 And yet, we think about today's climate as uniquely dangerous.

00:16:06.000 But what we find when we realize how safe we are from climate is that the real variable that counts in terms of safety from climate is how good are you at mastering climate?

00:16:16.000 Above all, how good are you at neutralizing climate danger?

00:16:19.000 For example, I mentioned earlier drought.

00:16:22.000 How good are you at irrigating to avoid drought?

00:16:25.000 And how good are you at transporting crops from areas that don't have drought to areas that have drought?

00:16:30.000 We've driven drought-related deaths down by over 99%.

00:16:33.000 Droughts routinely killed millions of people a year just 100 years ago, and they don't anymore.

00:16:39.000 And it's fossil fuels that are driving this because they're powering the machines that irrigate the crop transport machines, et cetera.

00:16:45.000 And so, if you realize how good we are at mastering climate with fossil fuels, this is so important because it means that any future changes, we can use the same mastery abilities, which means that for future changes to be a big problem, they would have to be a total difference in kind for anything we've experienced in the last hundred plus years where we've already been emitting CO2.

00:17:05.000 So, if we've already been emitting CO2 and we're safer than ever from climate, why do people think it's going to be the apocalypse emitting more CO2?

00:17:12.000 It has to be, I think, a religious faith thing.

00:17:14.000 It's not a science.

00:17:15.000 Well, and I think, yeah, I mean, I really believe that it is these are disciples and acolytes of Marxism that have then transferred their Marxism into a pagan, earth-worshiping, environmentalist cult that they're then able to better achieve their economic Marxist beliefs in harmony of worshiping the earth, and they remain really powerful.

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00:18:41.000 Alex Epstein continues with us.

00:18:43.000 Alex, I want to play a piece of tape here.

00:18:45.000 It's cut 85.

00:18:47.000 Al Gore at the World Economic Forum warning that we might have 1 billion climate refugees.

00:18:55.000 Play cut 85.

00:18:57.000 We have to have a sense of urgency much greater than we have yet had and we need and we need to make some changes, creating the droughts and melting the ice and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach 1 billion in this century. 0.91

00:19:14.000 Look at the xenophobia and political authoritarian trends that have come from just a few million refugees.

00:19:21.000 What about a billion?

00:19:22.000 We would lose our capacity for self-governance on this world.

00:19:26.000 We have to act.

00:19:28.000 Alex, respond.

00:19:32.000 One thing that indicates that this is a religion is just that every problem is tied to it, right? 0.87

00:19:38.000 So anything that happens negatively in the world is the fault of quote-unquote climate change.

00:19:44.000 And this should be particularly bizarre right now because it's pretty clear that a huge number of problems in the world are due to an energy crisis, high energy prices.

00:19:53.000 And when you have high energy prices, that means high everything prices because energy is an input into every industry because every industry uses machines.

00:20:00.000 So, for example, we're having all sorts of food problems due to high fuel prices for diesel machinery and especially high natural gas prices and modern natural gas is derived from fertilizer.

00:20:10.000 And Al Gore is a chief cause of this.

00:20:13.000 So if he were looking objectively at reality, he'd see, hey, so many of the problems today are due to lack of fossil fuels.

00:20:19.000 I'd say the other big cause is lack of freedom more broadly, including the lockdown approach to COVID, which is a big part of the supply chain crisis.

00:20:27.000 And he would say, you know what?

00:20:28.000 I've been on the wrong side of all of this.

00:20:30.000 I apologize.

00:20:32.000 Maybe I should just sit this one out.

00:20:33.000 I don't know.

00:20:33.000 I haven't made a correct prediction since I've opened my mouth.

00:20:35.000 By the way, Al Gore is super rich because of this.

00:20:37.000 Okay.

00:20:38.000 If you want to just get down, Al Gore was an irrelevant failed presidential candidate who his one thing that he ever did as vice president was like being remotely involved in like a moon landing project.

00:20:49.000 He was an awful vice president.

00:20:51.000 He scooped this up as a pet project, did Inconvenient Truth as a documentary, and is worth, I don't know, estimates say anywhere between $50 to $200 million personally.

00:20:59.000 Is that about right, Alex?

00:21:01.000 I mean, I'm not an expert in his net worth, but I've heard even higher estimates.

00:21:05.000 But I think the thing is, it doesn't really matter exactly what his motives are.

00:21:08.000 I think he's been an incredibly destructive force.

00:21:12.000 And notice what he's done.

00:21:14.000 He's just done exactly what he did here, and it keeps leading to disaster because he keeps saying fossil fuel side effects are ending the world and they have no benefits.

00:21:22.000 So let's get rid of fossil fuels.

00:21:23.000 That's what he means by there's more progress necessary.

00:21:26.000 For him, progress is prevented, forcibly preventing people from using fossil fuels.

00:21:30.000 That's what he thinks of as progress.

00:21:31.000 And so the exact thing he's doing here has caused the problems, but he is then causing more of the problems because he doesn't admit that the anti-freedom, anti-energy part is the problem.

00:21:41.000 It's not that climate is making everything worse.

00:21:44.000 So Alex, I want to play another piece of tape here of Al Gore.

00:21:47.000 You would think the guy who can't predict anything, in fact, you're right, it's worse than being wrong.

00:21:52.000 It's when the 180 actually ends up happening.

00:21:54.000 So Al Gore says in 2009, play cut 77, get it ready, polar ice may be gone in five years.

00:22:02.000 Play cut 77.

00:22:05.000 And some of the models suggest to Dr. Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire North Polar ice cap during summer, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

00:22:30.000 Alex.

00:22:31.000 Yeah, I mean, it definitely hasn't happened.

00:22:34.000 I mean, I think that's one of the more accurate things he said in that it's less inaccurate than the others, because his main narrative has been that fossil fuels are going to like kill or ruin the lives of billions of people.

00:22:47.000 And they've actually made billions of lives, people, billions of people's lives better, including safer from climate.

00:22:53.000 The whole thing about the Arctic, it's a really weird focus because the reason you get more warming in the Arctic is because warming tends to occur in colder places.

00:23:01.000 That's actually really good news because we have far more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths.

00:23:06.000 And we'd rather it get warmer in the places where people are too cold than on the equator.

00:23:10.000 So even that is a total distortion.

00:23:11.000 He's just, people are not acknowledging, yeah, warming is a thing, but it has benefits and it's definitely not a catastrophe.

00:23:18.000 And it's nothing compared to the benefits of fossil fuels.

00:23:21.000 So we have 3 billion people using less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.

00:23:25.000 Why aren't they talking about that?

00:23:28.000 And they're only going to try to get rid of more fossil fuel use, play cut 75.

00:23:33.000 The Scottish government plans to reduce car kilometers and discourage car use altogether.

00:23:39.000 Just take your freedom away under the auspice or the excuse of environmental totalitarianism.

00:23:48.000 Play Cut 75.

00:23:49.000 On transport, second strategic transport project review published just two weeks ago confirms that the era of catering for unconstrained growth in private car use is well and truly over.

00:24:03.000 Furthermore, we have set out how we will reduce car kilometers by 20% by 2030 and prioritizes making best use of enhancing existing infrastructure before investing in new capacity.

00:24:18.000 The Scottish Government have commissioned research exploring demand management options to discourage car use.

00:24:25.000 And using the research findings, we will work with local and regional partners to develop a demand management framework by 2025.

00:24:34.000 Discourage car use.

00:24:36.000 Why are they doing this?

00:24:38.000 I like your term environmental totalitarianism.

00:24:41.000 You can use that.

00:24:42.000 Because that really captures it.

00:24:47.000 I mean, why are they doing this?

00:24:48.000 Is an interesting question, but let's just first say this is really evil.

00:24:52.000 So you think about how important to human life transportation is, and in particular, the automobile and what that makes possible in terms of individual fulfillment.

00:25:03.000 You just even think of transportation.

00:25:05.000 I'm planning a honeymoon right now that involves flying because I want to go see wildlife in Africa.

00:25:10.000 Like they say that's totally unsustainable, which just gives the lie to, oh, they care about enjoying nature.

00:25:16.000 They don't want you to go anywhere.

00:25:17.000 And if you don't go anywhere, you can't really enjoy nature.

00:25:20.000 So it's just this hostility toward using energy to empower human beings to live opportunity-filled, fulfilling lives.

00:25:28.000 Demand management, that is quite a euphemism.

00:25:30.000 That just means force deprivation.

00:25:33.000 That's what they mean, demand management.

00:25:34.000 That means managing your demand so it is less using force.

00:25:38.000 So why are they doing this?

00:25:39.000 Well, I think it's pretty clear it's not out of love for human life and it's not out of love of nature.

00:25:44.000 Because if you love nature and you're a human, you want humans to be able to enjoy nature.

00:25:49.000 So it's really a hostility, I think, toward all human impact, the belief that we're this parasite-polluting species.

00:25:56.000 The world would be better off without us.

00:25:58.000 And we should be eliminating impact as much as possible.

00:26:00.000 And that's why this kind of wonky, nerdy guy, his whole obsession is how do we get rid of as much human impact as possible.

00:26:06.000 And when I hear that, it's the same as if some bear hater said, I want to get rid of bear impact. 0.93

00:26:11.000 That means you want to kill bears.

00:26:13.000 And we should really want to restrict liberty.

00:26:19.000 I truly believe that.

00:26:20.000 Is that liberty?

00:26:21.000 Because liberty leads to impact.

00:26:23.000 That's exactly right.

00:26:24.000 Yes.

00:26:25.000 And in some ways, for some of them, I do believe this environmental totalitarianism, the term that I keep using, is a means to the end.

00:26:33.000 Okay, I want to ask, I'm going to play another piece of tape here.

00:26:36.000 I think it's helpful.

00:26:38.000 And again, this is a less serious person, but she does have some power. 0.98

00:26:41.000 She has influence.

00:26:43.000 And the environmental issue is the number one issue for Generation Z. Let's go to Cut 82.

00:26:51.000 It's interesting when Christians talk, I'm a Christian, I'm proud of it.

00:26:55.000 When we talk about the end of the world, we get mocked all the time.

00:26:57.000 Like, oh, wow, you always talk the apocalypse.

00:26:59.000 When environmentalists talk about the end of the world, they win medals and awards.

00:27:03.000 Play cut 82.

00:27:05.000 I think that the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.

00:27:22.000 And your biggest issue is your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?

00:27:31.000 And like, this is the war.

00:27:33.000 This is our World War II.

00:27:36.000 Alex.

00:27:37.000 So I have a lot to say about this.

00:27:38.000 So, I'm speaking as a non-religious person.

00:27:41.000 And so, I would need evidence of the end of the world.

00:27:44.000 And the evidence that we have is that the world's getting better and better using fossil fuels.

00:27:50.000 So, again, they've driven down climate deaths, they've improved every aspect of life.

00:27:54.000 The most notable thing, and I write about this, this exact exchange in chapter four of Fossil Future, because I think it's revealing of something that's not just the end of the world.

00:28:02.000 Isn't notice the thing at the end that she says about like you're worried about how much you have to pay for it, and that refers to claims that the price of energy will go up.

00:28:10.000 AOC treats this as, oh, who cares about that?

00:28:12.000 Who cares about the price of energy?

00:28:14.000 I'm talking about the livability of the planet.

00:28:16.000 And my point is: no, no, no, you don't understand.

00:28:18.000 The livability of the planet depends on the price of energy because the price of energy determines your ability to use machines to be productive and prosperous on a naturally deficient and dangerous planet.

00:28:30.000 Without energy and machines, this planet is a terrible place that is completely unlivable by our standards and could not even support 2 billion people.

00:28:38.000 So, let alone A.

00:28:39.000 I totally agree.

00:28:40.000 After the break, I want to get to what I think to be the moral core.

00:28:44.000 And because you talk about the moral case of fossil fuels, and I agree with it because you come at it from a pro-human perspective, which I love, even though we have different religious views.

00:28:53.000 I don't think the other side actually values humanity the way you and I do.

00:28:56.000 I think that is also one of the cores here.

00:28:58.000 I think there is a view of humanity as being parasitic and being cancerous, and there's nothing exceptional or special about the species.

00:29:07.000 And so, I want to, I think that at its core is an anti-human component, in fact, a disdain for us.

00:29:12.000 And so, we could talk about that.

00:29:13.000 Alex Epstein is with us.

00:29:14.000 I encourage you to check out both of his books, including his new one, which what's the title again, Alex?

00:29:20.000 Remind me: Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas.

00:29:26.000 Not less.

00:29:26.000 It's great.

00:29:27.000 And, Alex, I give you full permission.

00:29:28.000 You could take the term that I coined, environmental totalitarianism, and run with it if you so choose.

00:29:33.000 Sounds good.

00:29:33.000 I'm half kidding.

00:29:34.000 I'm half kidding.

00:29:35.000 So, Alex, I think at the core, though, is a hatred of human beings.

00:29:38.000 I love humanity.

00:29:39.000 You love humanity.

00:29:40.000 I think there's something special and exceptional for human beings.

00:29:43.000 I have a religious view of that as also an objective one.

00:29:46.000 There's just something that is so people are beautiful for our ability to use reason and rational speech and our contribution to the world.

00:29:54.000 But if you really reduce the environmentalist argument, if you read their literature, it does seem to eventually get towards a negative view of humanity that we, as you say earlier, we're parasitic, that we are leaching on the land, and that the solution, therefore, very well could be depopulation or stunting human growth.

00:30:16.000 At the core of environmentalism in the modern era, is there a hatred of humanity?

00:30:22.000 Yes, I think definitely.

00:30:24.000 So, I think think about it, I think it really comes down to our environmental philosophy.

00:30:29.000 So, what is our view of the relationship between human beings and our environment?

00:30:32.000 And I've talked about one aspect of this already, which is this delicate nurturer dogma that nature exists in a delicate balance that human impact ruins.

00:30:40.000 And that explains partially what's going on.

00:30:42.000 And that's part of this view: oh, human beings are this self-destructive, bad species.

00:30:46.000 But there's also something even more insidious, if that's possible.

00:30:50.000 And I think it's reflected in the fact that most people view our environment today as getting worse.

00:30:56.000 Not that most.

00:30:56.000 Do you think that's a fair claim?

00:30:58.000 I mean, I think most people view our environment.

00:31:00.000 They're inundated with it all the time, that it is more polluted, more toxic, more chaotic, more species going extinct.

00:31:08.000 I mean, it's built into the narrative, into the zeitgeist.

00:31:13.000 But yet, if you look at the statistics about how humans flourish in today's environment, you know, look at most broadly at the Earth, you see it's just an incredible increase in how hospitable the world is to human beings.

00:31:25.000 I mean, life expectancy has never been higher, resources have never been higher as measured by income.

00:31:29.000 There's more people than ever.

00:31:31.000 So, we finally have a planet on which humans can flourish for the first time.

00:31:35.000 And it's viewed as the worst environment ever.

00:31:38.000 And I think this points to we have an anti-human moral concept of our environment.

00:31:42.000 That's correct.

00:31:43.000 We're not measuring our environment by hospitability to human flourishing, which is how I think we should measure it.

00:31:49.000 We're measuring it by lack of human impact.

00:31:51.000 So, the idea is the best environment is the one that would exist if human beings had never existed.

00:31:56.000 That's the end road of eliminating our impact or minimizing our impact.

00:32:00.000 That's exactly right.

00:32:01.000 That's a really, and I've spent a lot of time on this, particularly in chapter three of Fossil Future.

00:32:06.000 This view that human impact is intrinsically immoral.

00:32:10.000 This is a deeply anti-human view, and it has no scientific justification because, hey, you're a human.

00:32:16.000 I mean, imagine a lion believing that lion impact is evil and should be eliminated.

00:32:20.000 It makes no sense.

00:32:21.000 It would require a lion reason and a lion doesn't.

00:32:24.000 Perspective.

00:32:25.000 Well, but no, no, but it's interesting because how can reason? 0.86

00:32:28.000 It's bizarre that reason leads you to want to kill yourself.

00:32:30.000 That's what our reason has been distorted.

00:32:33.000 Welcome to modernity, Alex.

00:32:35.000 That's what we live through.

00:32:36.000 Well, that's that's a little scary, but you look at like take somebody like Sophocles and the ode to man.

00:32:40.000 I mean, it used to be obvious that, hey, human beings, like we're the best part of nature.

00:32:45.000 If the Martians looked at us, they'd say they build the best nests.

00:32:48.000 They're amazing.

00:32:49.000 We're not unnatural.

00:32:50.000 So, what when people say nature, like nature is more important than humans are in the same footing, what they're saying is non-human nature is superior to humans.

00:32:59.000 So, it's really not a love of nature, it's a hatred specifically of the best part of nature.

00:33:03.000 And that's what I find perverse.

00:33:05.000 Yeah, and this is where I think that there is this happy partnership, and sign me up for it between the religious, where we very clearly, I believe nature is there for us.

00:33:15.000 We need to take dominion over nature.

00:33:16.000 There is no moral equivalency between the human being and nature.

00:33:20.000 In fact, it must be subservient.

00:33:22.000 There must be a distinction between man and nature.

00:33:25.000 And I love humanity, and you do too.

00:33:28.000 So much of the modern world, though, we only have a minute remaining, does have a disdain for humanity, that we are inefficient, that we require so much nutrient to keep going.

00:33:39.000 This is taught now in college classes.

00:33:41.000 And then we wonder why people are killing themselves so much.

00:33:43.000 It's like, yeah, you're actually not celebrating the human being of what we're capable of, of our flourishing, of our vitality, our vitality, our ability to take risk, to create.

00:33:53.000 Instead, it's overly negative.

00:33:55.000 30 seconds, Alex, summarize it all.

00:33:57.000 So, I think this points: do we really need a pro-human environmental philosophy?

00:34:01.000 That's what I try to put forward in Fossil Future.

00:34:04.000 If people read Ayn Rand, I think she's one of the leaders there.

00:34:06.000 Also, particularly her book, The New Left, and then Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource.

00:34:11.000 There's a lot of good, not enough, but a lot of good pro-human environmental philosophy.

00:34:14.000 And if you recognize that, that's the key to just seeing through all this bad stuff and advocating the right stuff.

00:34:20.000 So, check me out at energytalkingpoints.com to learn everything for free.

00:34:23.000 And if you were listening closely, a Christian and a Randian agree on an environmental philosophy, that's a beautiful thing.

00:34:23.000 Yes.

00:34:29.000 And I think we need to do more of it.

00:34:30.000 Alex, thank you so much.

00:34:32.000 Great work.

00:34:32.000 Really appreciate it.

00:34:33.000 Thank you.

00:34:33.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:34:35.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:36.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:39.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:34:41.000 God bless.

00:34:46.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 26, 2023

Fossil Future with Alex Epstein

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