514. How to Solve All of America’s Energy Problems | Alex Epstein
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There's much more practical things that we can do to keep people safe from climate change, let's say, than making everybody poor by making fossil fuels impossible to access.
You know, we have this clear demand that fossil fuels are needed for and then we restrict fossil fuels some and we start getting these big problems when we were told we would get big wealth.
Well, why would we take off the table any potential source of innovation that would make energy more plentiful and more reliable.
We haven't even reduced the supply of fossil fuels in the world. We've just slowed the growth and we're having all these problems. There's no single town on the planet that runs entirely on renewables.
Poor ones do, they run on wood and metal.
Even if it creates something like an air pollution challenge, it can also create the technology that can filter the air. And if anyone happens to get sick, it can also create the whole medical industry.
I really like your emphasis on the nexus between energy provision and human flourishing. So I had the good fortune to speak again today with Alex Epstein, who I spoke with two years ago, almost to the day. Alex is the author of two influential books. One, the first one, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and the second one, Fossil Future. And Alex has been beating the pro-human era. energy slash environment drum for some 17 years. And with increasing effectiveness, I would say he's one of the people at the forefront of the dawning realization that impoverishing humanity and destroying the industrial infrastructure of the West while making energy spectacularly expensive and unreliable and simultaneously increasing our dependency on, let's say, dictatorial governments, is not really very wise policy, all things considered. And Alex has been an icebreaker in that regard, pointing out to everyone who will listen and listen carefully that...
fossil fuels all things considered are obviously and overwhelmingly a net good and that if we want to move forward into a future of abundance that it's necessary to get that straight in our minds and stop playing foolish games and we had an opportunity to continue that conversation today and to deepen it because alex has spent the last several years making his knowledge about the energy environment nexus more and more detailed at the practical level in a manner that enables policymakers to move towards an energy-rich, abundant, pro-human future. And so he laid out those ideas today in our podcast in a manner that is at least illustrative of the wealth of knowledge that he has that could be brought to bear for policymakers who are interested in developing exactly that kind of policy framework. And so join us for that. Well, I thought we might as well begin this by briefly evaluating the change in the conceptual landscape since 2022. I mean, I would say two years ago,
the stance that you had been promoting, like a positive stance towards fossil fuel, was not only, what would you say, controversial, but could we say fringe? And I don't think that's the case now. And I think that has a fair bit to do with you, actually, which is quite cool. And so... That's my sense, broadly speaking. It's not like there still isn't all sorts of work to do to make the case for fossil fuels. But how are you feeling about, you know, if you evaluate the landscape over the last two years, how are you feeling about it?
I've been at this 17 years now. And it's definitely at a peak in terms of enthusiasm and opportunity in this sphere. And I think it's interesting to break down. So maybe I'll do my own part last and the part of sort of people who think like me. But there are a few other developments that are... that are notable and they're all sort of intertwined. But one that's, one of the interesting ones that I take no credit for, but is very fortuitous intellectually, is the dramatic increase in electricity demand that is occurring right now.
Right, right, right. In the world of- Because of IT.
Yeah, right, exactly. So specifically data centers and within that, AI. And in particular, where you see it is with the very large digital tech companies and what their role has been in the energy debate so far and then how it has drastically changed in the last year or two. So if you look at even in 2022, what's the posture of the big tech companies for the past years before that?
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