Making ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” By Philip Delves Broughton ****A Review of Alex Epstein’s Book
http://online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-moral-case-for-fossil-fuels-by-alex-epstein-1417477909
Renouncing oil and its byproducts would plunge civilization into a pre-industrial hell—a fact developing countries keenly realize.
Which would be worse: a hostile foreign regime using a sinister magnetic pulse to take down the entire electrical grid—or the chief executives of the world’s major oil companies having a collective personal crisis about carbon emissions, shutting down their operations, and sending their employees to live the rest of their days off the grid in rural Vermont? Either way, the country goes dark. Transportation stops. Schools, hospitals and businesses close down. We are left to grow our own scrawny vegetables and slaughter our own animals for meat. We cannot even text.
If you drive a car, or use modern medicine, or believe in man’s right to economic progress, then according to Alex Epstein you should be grateful—more than grateful. In “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” the author, an energy advocate and founder of a for-profit think tank called the Center for Industrial Progress, suggests that if all you had to rely on were the good intentions of environmentalists, you would be soon plunged back into a pre-industrial hell. Life expectancy would plummet, climate-related deaths would soar, and the only way that Timberland and Whole Foods could ship their environmentally friendly clothing and food would be by mule. “Being forced to rely on solar, wind, and biofuels would be a horror beyond anything we can imagine,” writes Mr. Epstein, “as a civilization that runs on cheap, plentiful, reliable energy would see its machines dead, its productivity destroyed, its resources disappearing.”
When you consider that most of us live what we would consider decent, moral lives, it seems extraordinary that anyone feels it necessary to write a book called “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” We use fossil fuels and their by-products in everything we do and rarely consider it a vice. A pang of conscience may strike us when we read of oil spills or melting icebergs. But not when we are sitting on a plastic chair, visiting a power-guzzling hospital or turning on our computers. To call fossil fuels “immoral” is to tarnish our entire civilization and should plunge us all into a permanent state of guilt, which seems a bit strong.
Yet, as Mr. Epstein notes, this is precisely what so many vocal environmentalists do. James Hansen, one of the most prominent climate scientists, has called for oil-company CEOs to be “tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote in 2012 that “we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization.”
But in demonizing fossil fuels, Mr. Epstein argues, environmentalists elevate the importance of preserving nature over the quality of human life. Our use of fossil fuels, Mr. Epstein says, correlates with dramatic increases in life expectancy and income, especially in the developing world. No other technology available to us today can meet the energy needs of everyone on the planet. The average American uses machine energy of 186,000 calories per day, equal to that produced by 93 physical laborers, and the vast majority of this is produced by fossil fuels. These fuels, Mr. Epstein writes, have turned us into “supermen” compared to our ancestors. “Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
Mr. Epstein argues that our history with fossil fuels has been one of constant innovation and improvements in technology. Not only do we keep finding more sources of energy, nixing the predictions of those who say we are about to run out, but we find ever cleaner, more efficient ways to use it. Keep on this path and outcomes for humans and the environment are likely to be much better than if we veer off into an uncertain wind and solar future. Better for the polar bears, too. Mr. Epstein calls his philosophy “antipollution but pro-development,” which seems positive terrain, though a more extreme ideology does peek out at times. (Quoting Ayn Rand ’s “Atlas Shrugged” is not a good idea if you are trying to pitch yourself as a moderate.)
Mr. Epstein’s book is, among other things, a full-throated defense of what is, after all, the American way of life. At the very least, it provides a useful thought experiment, creating a framework in which it is acceptable to do more than boo-hoo at the latest chunk of ice sliding off the Arctic Circle. The most frequently proposed solution to our melting ice caps, for instance, is to reduce global carbon emissions by heavily taxing carbon and investing more in renewable energy. But what might this mean for the recent boom in domestic energy, the abundant oil and gas now being extracted from shale deposits across America? The “shale gale” is driving domestic growth and transforming America’s role in the Middle East and its balance of power with other energy giants, such as Russia and Iran. Should all this newfound economic and geopolitical muscle be abandoned in favor of solar power?
Falling oil prices may yet temper the shale gale more effectively than any new environmental rules, but Mr. Epstein’s defense of fossil fuels leads us to probe at the trade-offs we are willing to make—and to inquire whether other countries would as well. To argue for lower carbon emissions is usually to walk into a giant hypocrisy trap. How the Indonesians must have laughed when they were told to hold back on their fossil-fueled economic ascent by John “Five Homes” Kerry! By first accepting and then welcoming the role of fossil fuels in our lives, we can move on to a more interesting discussion about the balance between human welfare and our faith in—or distrust of—technology’s evolution.
Until then, Alex Epstein’s moral defense of the means we choose to power our societies forward is a pointed, necessary and surprisingly little-heard one.
Mr. Delves Broughton is the author, most recently, of “The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the Business of Life.”
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