Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels 20150111

To send questions or comments simply emailing speaker heritage. Org. Hosting our guest today is derrick morgan, our Vice President for domestic economic policy. He leads the institute for Economic Freedom and opportunity. He served as come he is a lawyer by training. He served in all three branches of the government including on the senior staff of Vice President Richard Cheney before coming to heritage. Please join me in welcoming derrick morgan. [applause] thank you and thank you for coming or there and whether a site which ensures something to do with fossil fuels. And for our location change. Good to see you all, welcome. We believe in free markets at heritage, not just because it works best over all for human forcing. That would be enough of a reason to support it is also moral. Its the free market system, when the respects private property, world of law and freedom to contract. That encourages each person to find something that they can do or produce that will be beneficial to other people. Every time you make a purchase, both sides profit, both sides are better off. You multiply that by billions every day and you get a sense of the magic of the free market. I mention that because oil coal and natural gas producer of making their customers much better off. If you doubt that, think about the lives of many of our fellow human beings who did do not have access to plentiful inexpensive fossil fuels. The village in africa who burns dried dung to keep his home. The farmer in india who uses an ox to plow his field. And the only woman in the field to yet walks miles each day to fetch her water. Inexpensive energy would help them and it helps us in so many ways that we in the u. S. And the west often take it for granted that well have electricity and gasoline to make our lives comfortable and productive. Thats great you might be thinking. Arent we running out of these resources . Thanks to human innovation, new supplies of coal, oil and natural gas, special natural gas recently have been found. Those who warned about peak oil and diminishing resources were astonishingly wrong. Americas more than 500 years of cold that current user rates and were the worlds biggest producer of oil and natural gas more than saudi arabia or russia. We have plenty of these fuels. Should we transition to new fuels . Maybe if we can find a better source of energy, one that is less expensive and is just as plentiful. Gillett wants to make these oil coal and Natural Gas Resources more expensive so their preferred fuels will be used instead. The problem is the cost of energy is reflected in everything you buy. Everything there is transport are made by machines were used, made by using electricity which is just about everything. And, of course, Higher Energy prices are especially bad for the poor who spend more of their income in energy. Wait, wait wait. Its all find a good you might say but what about the environment . Inexpensive energy and the developer that goes with it leads to cleaner environment. The cleanest countries in the world, those with the best environment are those that have the highest Economic Freedom score in heritage own index of Economic Freedom. As my colleagues jim roberts at rifles and a briton, lets look at the United States briefly. According to the epa since 1980 Carbon Monoxide is down 84 . Ozone is down 33 . Lead is down 92 . Sulfur dioxide is down 81 . Cleaner air its much cleaner now than when i was a boy for example. Okay okay. But theres something geeky about fossil fuels something. It cant be moral to use them can a . Began. To answer that question we have with us today alex epstein, the president and founder of the centercenter for international progress. Alex has to be some the biggest names on departmental left. As i said and published in the wall street journal, forbes, investors business did and it other publication. Is a duke graduate and author of todays book, the moral case the moral case for fossil fuels. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome alex epstein. [applause] hi, ron. I recognize some of you. I had an experience about five years ago that i think really captures the way weve got to think about fossil fuels. And actually whats wrong with in my view not just the way that the left thinks of fossil fuels but often the right thinks of fossil fuels . So im from southern california. I grew up in this area but the climate out there is just amazing. So i moved there about 10 years ago for that i havent been able to lead. About five years ago i was in irvine california Orange County at a Farmers Market for lunch. As sometimes happens theres a Green Peace Movement outside the Farmers Market, and this girl comes up to me. You know im 34 now so must of been 27 at the time. Looked very young and said youre an environmentalist right . Dont you want to help us get off our addiction to fossil fuels and transition to Clean Renewable Energy . And im just thinking she really does not know whats going to happen in terms of what my view is. And i said no actually i really like fossil fuels. I think with the fossil fuel industry does is great over all and i think the world will be better if we just more fossil fuels. Im thinking to a so what is she thinking . What is she going to say, thats what i was wonder. The reason why i raised it that way, it is likely that we should use or fossil fuels, is i wanted to see how i wanted to bring up one of the common objections. So for example catastrophic Climate Change, catastrophic pollution, catastrophic resource depletion. And i wanted to sure that theres actually a giveaway thinking about these things are the fact that something is the challenge doesnt mean its a catastrophe and that if you look at the big picture for the full context these things insofar as there our challenges are far, far outweighed by the benefits human beings get. But, unfortunately, she didnt ask about any of those things. And she didnt even get mad at me but she did something that at the time took me aback your and that was them she looked at me almost in awe and i thought what is going to happen . I realized later as if an alien creature just talking to an alien creature but she looks at me address that i think we should use more than five she said wow you must make a lot of money off mike which is by way deadline not the case. Certainly not. I dont think i even knew anyone in the transport industry. I wasnt making money from anyone. I had the same expense this morning and i. I was on bloomberg and i decided im not going to use my usual costume which is this. [laughter] which by the way i wore to the peoples climate marched recently in new york city commit want to check it out on youtube. At that was actually less dramatic than the threefoot by threefoot i love the fossil fuels sign that i was carrying so those are fun things. But anyway i was just wearing this little in this little pin, the woman host looks at my pen. What does that say . It says i love fossil fuels. Shes taken aback a little bit and she said welcome to you loved fossil fuels argued do you just love the oil industrys money . So again you must be paid off. I said no, i just love fossil fuels. So why why this story is so significant to me . Because it really captures what i think are the three different moral views of fossil fuels. And the one, the one that we should use more which i will talk about last is so out of bounds that you cant honestly hold. My view is if we actually think about the issues logically, its the only one that makes sense. One of the conventional views is what i call the unNecessary Evil. So fossil fuels are an addiction, evil, destroying the planet or fortunately with all of these promising Renewable Technologies through place them with the everyone familiar with this view . The idea is we need to get off the fossil fuels and we can get off and quickly. They said no theyre not an unNecessary Evil. They are a Necessary Evil. Theyre not an unnecessary addiction, they are a necessary protection because enforcement solar and wind are not going to come along quickly enough. Look at shell as recent example, show oil committed to have a policy on the website that their goal is to to reduce co2 emissions to zero. Thats an oil company. They do these little skits online about how theyre going to our things by footsteps and they just built the soccer field that is allegedly power by footsteps. I wrote an article about that and i calculated that its at minimum 147 pounds more expensive than natural gas. They are footstep solution. But this is their view that hey, and then at the same time saying hey, let us drill in the arctic. Where we cant come unfortunately we cant get rid of it all now yet, yes, we want our industry to expire but, unfortunately, we disagree with environmentalist by the expiration date. This is a view, and derrick what was your adjective, gui mucky . E. G. Sorry. Something wrong. UnNecessary Evil, Necessary Evil and if you Necessary Evil, think about a lot of stuff you hear even from the right has at least a tinge of the. Especially time someone says we are going to move, yes of course we want to move to solar and wind as soon as we can et cetera said it. My is different the title believe in a Necessary Evil or Necessary Evil. I believe in the third which is superior good. The superior good. Superior good just means its like anything else you know like this. Its just saying i buy this, i use this because its the best thing available to me. Its going to enhance my life more than any of my other options. And by the way, doesnt mean all, it needs to be renewable. I plan and using them ever and should use an iphone six to the end of time otherwise were not allowed to use. Its not that kind of thing. Its not saying its perfectly clean. Theres no pollution to of course mining and all kinds of other things but what were saying is this is a good thing and the risks and side effects are worth it. And should be minimized. The value that we cant be so large that it is good and were not going to feel guilty. Thats the way i feel about fossil fuels. Again the three moral views are unNecessary Evil, Necessary Evil and superior good. Make sense . Does anyone know what this is made of . Natural gas or oil. Probably natural gas. Then the question is how to get there. I wrote whole thing on have i want to give you an indication of my own journey toward this review. I grew up in this area chevy chase, maryland. As most of you probably know this is not a fossil fuel hotbed. Both ideologically it is not come at and physically its not. Its not like theres a lot of fracking taking place a lot of shale resource that people are making oracle industry with things like that. So i grew up like everybody pretty much i think in the Montgomery County Polk School System learning nothing positive about Energy Conserving not about fossil fuels the learning of course they are destroying the planet the we are running out of them, were running out of all resources they are polluting the thats only going to get worse. And, of course theyre causing catastrophic Climate Change. I went to Montgomery Blair high school which is a very math and science oriented high school and certainly my teachers were quite into that which had an impact on me. Come from in math and science background to particularly when i showed her, then i got into philosophy. If this is my background and the question is what changed for me . Part of a change from is studying philosophy which get back to lead but in turn is just subject matter, what changed for me is i studied something that i think everyone should study animals no one is taught. That is the history of energy. The history of energy. What was life like before we had cheap, plentiful, Reliable Energy couple was life like after . How did we get from one place to another . I never even thought of that. Until is maybe 25 years old i hadnt thought of in any serious way how much better like this and how much of a role that into place in the. Ill tell you the story that really influenced me was studying how we came to use oil. This is what passing because you think we use oil that people think why dont we just choose Something Else . As if we all got together and voted on oil and thats why we use it. Theres no logical reason why but the real question of why do we as this particular substance for so long. I was studying doing some research on rockefeller. To understand rockefeller i need to understand how did the oil industry come to be how did it get what was fascinating to me was the old story i had heard about whale oil, you know the story about we are wailing. This is partially true but most are not true. We were wailing, got all of our oil from whale oil and we start running out of wales and then one day magically to discover whether weve been using ever since and whenever going to find the next oil for our whale oil in fact it but it wasnt true. They were actually at least six major competitors that were longstanding. So, for example, a substance called based on turpentine. That had certain good properties. It was cheap to make but it tended to be quite explosive which is not the greatest thing for an indoor illuminant in your home. There are really interesting things like different kind of animal oil, standard of lard oil and something called fair in which is as highly technological lard oil. Different grades of whale oil but perhaps the most promising thing was cold oil. That was actually the biggest predecessor to what we can call rock oil or petroleum. What struck me was in looking at all of these things, these all could produce energy. You often hear today solar and wind, they can produce energy, or the work we can get some energy. But looking at the history it became clear, it doesnt matter too much if you can produce some energy but it depends on can you produce it cheaply and scalable . That was returned before that nobody could produce it cheaply and scalable. I dont have visuals with me today but has anyone ever seen those overhead masks of north korea and south korea at night . One is a dark, what is life. This is very much what happens to the american countryside with oil. It was very expensive to eliminate your home. People could afford because the countryside with dark at night. If you lose six hours a night let alone with that kind of day of manual labor, your life is shorter. It struck me, its not just use in our lifetime its life in our years. Because just as i was reading maybe 26 and 27, thinking about how my plans ahead i have for my life and how many of those involving able to work at night or do things at night. They didnt have that. Their lives were effectively shorter period the oil industry came along in 1859 and when drake drilled the First Commercial Oil on the u. S. And there was this quote from a new york chemist and agencies for and what he said in effect is in the countryside used to be dark and now its like. That just struck me as oh my gosh thats five years. Here today its going to take solar and wind a long time to mature and how long can people assess how long did it take oil, i think they know must be 80 years or so become how long did it take oil to go from nothing to market . Two years. Two years. And in five years it was so much better. What this impress upon me was to thanks. So one is energy is life and death. Energy is lifeanddeath. And the more i learned about energy the more a. This became. I will read you one quote that i love that i use in the book. The thing to take note of is that this is coming from a time in history, this is about coal, where coal was far, far dirtier than it is even in the worst place in china today, by far. This is how they felt about coal. They had encountered personally the valley of energy. The value of energy. This was the letter to a major newspaper. They were worried about running out of coal. They didnt really understand how much colder was how technology can improve your ability to find it so they were worried but look at what happens when there were. Today talk gleefully about not using fossil fuels. So the guy says coal is everything to us. Without cold our factories will become idle our founders and workshops be still as the great. The locomotive will rust in the shed and the rail be buried in the weeds. Our streets will be dark, houses an apple. Our rivers will forget the battlefield and we shall again be separated by days from france, from months by the United States. This is from britain. Of thousands special arts and manufactures one by one then into gravel fly the empty so as boon companions are set to disappear when the cast is dry. This is the line, the next one is what i never forget. We shall miss are granted and its as a man misses his companion fortune or a limb. Every hour and every turn reminded of the irreparable loss. So lisa my part i felt like id gotten nowhere near the appreciation of how Important Energy is and in the book i elaborate on that but i want to just stress now that it is that important in the core of is that energy is unlike the term machine code. Just like our body needs calories so our machines need calories. But in the u. S. , our machines be 100 times more work than we do. They need 100 times more calories. We need to figure out food is pretty expensive. We need to figure out a way to make calories for machines that are way, way cheaper than food. This is why biofuels dont work. Way, way cheaper than food and that we can produce a lot of. The first point is Energy Second point is affordable come its Affordable Energy because if you cant afford you dont have it. Affordable energy is lifeanddeath. And Affordable Energy is incredibly challenging. Incredible challenging. Thats what original, i caught the original alternative Energy Market with the original market for oil thats what that shows me. That is not easy to produce something thats affordable and scalable project use a lot of ingenuity. Got to find a rabbit who invite a really good process we can produce a lot of. That means as we said hey, i have foods to power isnt that great, its renewable . My first inclination is it seems like it would be really hard to do cheaply and scale. You go forward. Dont take away my energy in the meantime. Feel free to try to out compete with this great white in all history of civilization there are only threes, even scalable sources of energy that we have. Fossil fuels, nuclear and to some extent hydroelectric which is limited by the number of site. Nuclear doesnt really do most of the motive power thanks. Does electricity. So that was released i can. With a three moral views, these were that to insights about energy that i have, Affordable Energy is lifeanddeath, and incredibly challenging. That led me to the last step of the journey that is going to talk about today and i want to make sure we can get questions and go into some of these details. But the last one was then looking at the modern debate them looking at the modern debate. Its important my background was in philosophy. Philosophy is all about how to think logically. How to think logically, particularly the issues of right and wrong. One absolute rule of thinking logically about issues of right and wrong is you have to always look at the full context or the big picture which means if youre considering a choice you have to look at both the risks of it and the benefits, the negative and the positive. If you just look at one side you are going to make really bad decision to if we dont look at them carefully, youre going to make a bad decision. When i started reflecting on our current energy, it just struck me that it is bizarrely biased. My own education i suppose i got one of the best high schools in the country and one of the best colleges in the country, and i have been not, nobody spent five minutes the entire time, those eight years, talking about the valley of fossil fuels. All they talked about were these risks and side effects. In very dire terms no less. So thats just on the face of it my thing was not that i know all this about energy how valuable, even if all those risks and side effects were to which i was suspicious of giving they were biased in the whole presentation in the first place we can have an intelligent discussion if we only look at one side of the issue. And that they may be really interested in what is the evidence of the benefits and what is the evidence of the risk and side effects . One thing in particular at a talk about this in the first chapter which is called the secret history of fossil fuels, one thing that struck in particular about the risk of side effects that nobody talks about them has to be issued a track record. Would ever were doing predict what to realize predictions are very difficult for taking the future difficult to think about Something Like the financial crisis, how few people predicted that, how many people predicted very rosy things. Life is full of these complex systems that either do with something Economic System or society, let alone a climate which is arguably more complicated, more complicated certainly although it does have free will in the same way, you have, its really hard. So somebody claims to be able to predicted. Some racing all these really bad things come you know this dust youre using today, you know the way i flew this one, you know the way your food kits are everything, the finger is everything in your civilization, its all going to destroyed and the world is going to end. The whole world will become unlivable. Youd want to know thats a big claim, how do you really know that . If they say lots of experts agree thats not too much by itself unless you really know. You have evidence that they have an ability to predict. One easy question whats the track record . Like a people are making these predictions of catastrophic resource depletion catastrophic pollution, catastrophic Climate Change, can we look at the track record of the individuals involved . Thats a great tool of knowing how good some is thinking methodology is. So if somebody makes very extravagant confident claims and turns out to be completed wrong his theory may well be wrong and you certainly wrong about his level of confidence to he does have very good judgment. What struck me as the more i read, read this publication called access to energy best Energy Publication ever. Basically inhaled the thing it still around but the main author peter beckman, wrote from 1973 90s 90, even though i was born in 19 aei read the whole history of energy and Department Like month by month by the best guy. From then to the present but maybe it was not 20082000 i took it on to what was crazy was everyone was make all the exact same predictions back in. Like the exact same production. We are running out of resources. Theyre predicting that in the late 60s and early 70s. For example, paul ehrlich, leading a colleges, he was so popular leading a colleges picu is a fight on the tonight show over a dozen times. Imagine an intellectual today being on jimmy fallon a dozen times. He predicted england would basically be destroyed by the year 2000. And that we run out of to americas economic joyride is over. Thats what he said in the early 70s. Times and tons of people say that, the same thing with pollution. Derrick mentioned the actual stats about pollution by but people thought pollution from fossil fuels, instead of saying this is a probably consult . No no solution, a disaster. We should pack it in and stop using fossil fuels. What ive seen and what a show in the book is no can we as 25 more fossil fuels ablution has gone way, way down. In addition to fossil fuels help us with the vibe of the things like clean water which is almost never talked about. With Climate Change, thats often viewed as this is some brandnew theory but it turns out know for example, james hansen the leader in world leading media climate scientist anyway, he predicted in 1986 the temperature between 20002010 would rise between two and four degrees fahrenheit. That did not happen by the way. This is a very small fraction of degree. Its been 1. 3 degrees fahrenheit since the industrial revolution. So much of over and over is that people are completely wrong and thats not discussed. You better have a good reason. So the moral case for fossil fuels, thats basically my conclusion. Once i and i do my best at lets really look at all the evidence, look at all the positives, all the negatives, add them up, and where i get is superior good. But i think the most important thing, even more than the conclusion, is the method. So we have as a society politicians like talking about we have a broken x we have a broken method of thinking about energy and environmental issues. Its incredibly biased, and that serves nobody except for people who really just dont like industrial civilization. So im happy to talk about any of the issues in any kind of detail, but the point i wanted to get across today, again, we have a broken method. We need to really start thinking big picture about these things, and part of that is we always need to recognize that Affordable Energy is life and death and Affordable Energy is incredibly challenging. So at this point id love to take questions. [applause] all right. Im going ask for you to, please, wait for the microphone to get to you. Just raise your hand and then say your name and affiliation. I think ill ask i want to do one plug for one of our papers coming up which is steve moore has gone back and looked at all the things said during the alaskan pipeline debate and hes compared that with the keystone and its all the the same thing. None of them came true with the alaska pipeline. Maybe ill just ask you a question about the Global Warming issue generally. Uhhuh. What is there anything different from the Global Warming agenda and say the environmental agenda from 1960s or 1970s or what are the similarities or differences that you could kind of take out in how the issue is portrayed . Yeah, how the issue is portrayed, the aims, the goals . Sure. Yeah. So that gives me opportunity to talk about one thing that i found super helpful in coming to this issue which goes to having a background in philosophy. I was really interested in the time my mid to late teens in environmental philosophy which is really about how we think about our relationship with the rest of nature, with our environment. And what i found is most people arent aware that there are two different, that there are multiple different environmental philosophies. Sort of think of it as, oh, my philosophy is we all care about the environment. And that way of putting it, the environment, we care about the environment, actually obscures the big difference because theres one viewpoint. Theres really the humanist view of environment and the nonhumanist view of environment. So the humanist view says our goal is to maximize human well being, and we want an environment that will do that. So if were going to preserve a part its for human enjoyment its because of us. Theres another school that says no, the idea is nonhuman impact. And that means we want to impact as little as we can even if that goes against human life. So you take Something Like the anwr in alaska is a pretty good example of this. Its called the wild life refuge but youre drilling these very small holes there. For everyone for all intents and purposes, mostly a wasteland. Nobody wants to go there but people hate the idea of human beings treading there. And so that thats the idea of nonimpact is the ideal. And this goes to in the Environmentalist Movement in the 60s and 70s, they were more vocal about this. So, for example a very bad word in environmentalism until maybe the 80s was technology. Like, its very very explicit that if youre in favor of this nonhumanist view of environment, you have to be antitechnology because technology what is technology . Technologys using human ingenuity to transform our environment for human purposes. But what happened is Digital Technology became so popular that it became unpc to say im against with technology. So theyll say im against development, but those really run together. I mean, theyre kind of, basically, the same thing. So i bring this up because what happens is the viewpoint as we should impact is we should impact as little as possible. And usually thats the ethics of it. And the metaphysics is your world view, how does the world work. The metaitphysics is i call it the fragile nature, nature will give us everything we want and need but only if we dont disrupt it. You know, if we mess with things too much, if we, quoteunquote, play god, you know, things are going to go haywire. And this viewpoint has existed for everything for as these ya an these yahoo computers, people are afraid its going to take over the world. And they always point to some new side effect. So with fossil fuels there is a side effect. When you burn fossil fuels, you can get things like, you know sulfur can be in there nitrogen, but the main things you get are water vapor and carbon dioxide. You get h2 0 and co2. Thats true, that side effect does impact the atmosphere. But what happens is if you have this fragile mother view of the world, youre going to suspect that thats not merely a change or even a challenge but a catastrophe. And so this is the mindset that has always existed in environmentalism. This is why theyre wrong about everything. Because they assume no, all the predictions are wrong. I mean, basically without fail. But like ddt, oh, it must, its mans changing things hes making a chemical, therefore, it must be a catastrophe. It was actually a catastrophe not to use it. Same thing with fossil fuels. But theres this assumption of catastrophe. And to go back to the example so its really this philosophical bias thats driving everything. And thats why people are so out of their mind about 1. 3 degrees fahrenheit in 150 years and theyll say some portion of it is caused by fossil fuels. You know before this period everyone in history always wanted it to be warmer. Always. But if the ideas well if man does it, it must be this really bad thing. Thats why they rename it Climate Change even though its just warming and whatever climate thing comes from warming. And even though the co2 level has been ten times higher in history and lifes thrived, doesnt matter. Its this fear of manmade change. Its this view of the fragile view of nature. I hope that answers derricks question in the sense that the mindset has always been the same and so there was a brief flirtation with Global Cooling you know, based on particulate matter coming out like, you know stuff that blocks in basically, co2 will reflect a surgeon amount of heat back in a certain amount of heat back in and that kind of thing. But in all these cases, again, its always equating change or challenge with catastrophe. The its manmade. And they see no catastrophe in the state of nature. Whereas a humanist i see a catastrophe in the unchanged state of nature. Thats why if and when this, like, even though its been taper thing off all this stuff, it will never change, these catastrophic predictions will never change unless the mindset changes, unless this dogma about the fragile mother, because its an unscientific viewpoint. All right. Time for your questions. Weve got one in the back row. Do we have a microphone . Yep, there you go. Hello. I actually want to ask you when you said about those three resources, you said coal, Nuclear Energy and hydroelectric. I just want to make sure do you consider that as a renewable or nonrenewable . Yeah. You never touched on it. You said solar wind as renewable. You never said hydroelectric, but its the most massive renewable energy. Like the majority is yeah good question. So, first of all just to be clear, it wasnt just coal, nuclear and hydro, it was fossil fuels. So im blending together coal nuclear and gas. You can say coal, nuclear gas hydro or you can say fossil fuels which blends the three. In terms of hydro, why didnt i include that under renewable . Two aspects. One is mainly because the environmentalists do not include them together. So if you look at what is impeding hydroelectric development, lets say the world has im not sure what youre shocking your head at, but if you look at what the world has in terms of hydroelectric capacity and who opposes new dams, its not conservatives its not libertarians, it is environmentalists. So in the go to the Sierra Club Web site, for example. Among their list of achievements are dams theyve shut down. And this is a particularly objectionable view dwiive that they claim theres given they claim theres a co2 related catsfully. Those are what they catastrophe. Those are what they claim as the replacement technologies. Now, im a huge supporter of hydro and discuss it at length in the book as well as a huge supporter of nuclear. Hydros limited though, by the fact that there are only certain water sites that can accommodate it. In terms of is it renewable i consider renewable a useless classification. I dont think we should no other industry, again, i dont do you think of a renewable cell phone, a renewable building . The way life works under capitalism we make progress. Were always finding new ways of doing things. So the question of what should i use for fuel or what material should i use for a book is not what can i do over and over for a billion years or a million years, the question is whats the best way of doing this that mankind knows and then tomorrow we want to figure out an even better way. So when i fill up my car with gas, im not saying, hey, this is a commitment for everyone to do this for the end of time. Im saying this is a really good thing for us and i welcome other people developing other things so that when i buy my next car, it can be purred by something powered by Something Else whether its compressed natural gas or some advanced battery technology. Those are great. We want whatever the best thing is. So to think of it as we want solar and wind we should give some preference because theyre renewable, that means that were settling for something inferior on the grounds that we can have something inferior forever. But why would you want it forever if its inferior . And its a joke anyway, because all the materials, only one of the components is renewable which is the sun or the wind. But all of the others are nonrenewable. So youre mining those. And thats the exact same thing with oil by the way. Oil has the sun in it too. Oil is just compressed stored solar energy. So its what this lets tie it back to the last point. Renewable as an ideal is not a scientific ideal. Its not an economic ideal. Its not a moral ideal. Its an ideal or, rather its an ideal based on the idea that we should minimize our impact on the earth, so that should be our goal. People have very woozy idea that somehow were living in harmony with nature and taking in the sun which is complete nonsense because, of course, we have to mine the hell out of the earth excuse my language to do that just as well as other things. But its this ideal of lets not impact things and also the ideal which is even worse of theres be repetitive. Thats an ideal fit for an animal, not a human being. My personal thing is mr. Fusion for any back to the future fans, you know the coffee maker. Weve got one in the front then well go to this side. Hi drew schafer with the heritage foundation. In terms of regulation as a result of very simple, inherent negative externalities, what do you think of like, as far as cap and trade programs or taxations, or what do you think at all on that topic . Um, so theres two issues there. One is do i think that externality is a good framework for the law to operate under and that would be no. And then two is are there externalities or these negative externalities particularly with climate issues . So the way my framework is property rights. So lets take standard pollution, then we can take something more complex like the alleged danger of co2 aggregate anything the atmosphere. In general, like, you have to decide at a certain point in my view what threshold of emission constitutes pollution and what doesnt. And there will always be a threshold. And its very important not to set it too low which is what the epa is always doing. Ill give you the example before that i gave of the guy in coalbased england in the 1800s. Imagine if they had imposed todays epa rules or even 1970 epa rules. Everyone would die of cold and staffer vegas, right . Starvation right . Thered be something wrong with that. And the issue is pollution we think of it as a rights violation where youre doing physical harm to somebody, but its not pollution if its something thats completely essential and unavoidable in pursuing life. So at any given whats nice is at any given stage of technology you can set higher and higher bars for what or in a sense, lower bars for pollution because you have more technology. Today we can say absolutely, it should be illegal to have the coal plants that they used to have right . Because we have the technology. The point is that the threshold of what is and isnt pollution is an economic and technological phenomenon. The ultimate goal must be what is the full context of what improves human life. And that goes to Something Like fossil fuels. If fossil fuels are the only Energy Technology that could possibly scale in the near future next several decades to provide energy for seven billion people. So whatever you say about them unless you can prove the world is going to, planets going to blow up and everyone will die, you cant say that these shouldnt be allowed because theyre polluting, because energy is a more fundamental need than the lack of pollution or at least in superpristine environments. Superpristine environment is really something only we have in modern times largely because of fossil fuels. Like even the caveman, you know he has to sit next to a fire and breathe in smoke next time. He has no clean air paradise whatsoever. So i think that the law should define, you know, this is a scientific technological issue, what is the proper level of emissions . There can be all sorts of considerations, like how is it affected if youre running a factory and someone moves into your neighborhood versus if you move into someones neighborhood with a factory right . One has a much different threshold. If im running a factory and people start moving in they agree, in a sense, to deal with my factory versus i go into chevy chase, maryland, with a coal plant and plunk it in the middle of my old neighborhood. Its different. Thats the principle. It all has to be based on evidence, and this is where so much of the epa stuff is really bad, because it doesnt recognize it assumes that you should just lower everything infinitely. Its called the no threshold fallacy. I talk about that in chapter seven. They do that with nuclear too. If a lot of radiation is bad no radiation must be the ideal. Well, im getting radiation from to it is a sum and potassium and him right now and myself [inaudible] well you guys are. That goes to the climate thing. You have to be scientific about are people actually being harmed by this . And my favorite statistic for this is lets look at how many people are dying from climate how many people are actually endangered by climate . And what you find, this is really surprising to me, is not only hasnt it increased its decreased precipitously. So in the last 80 years its decreased by 98 . So youre 50 times safer from climate than somebody 80 years ago. Last year, supposedly the worst year ever, less than 30,000 climaterelated deaths in the entire world. Think about that. Whereas in 1931 i believe, it was over three million and thats with less than onethird the population. So thatd be like ten million now. So what does this show us . This shows us that and this goes back to the view of the nurturing mother its not a nurturing mother. Its a pretty tough mother. [laughter] and so what we need to do is master nature. So the climate is naturally variable. It changes all the time. Its volatile, it changes dramatically. And its vicious. It attacks all the time. So what we need to do is master it. Thats the thing. And to master climate you need energy because you need to be able to control the climate in your house with heating and airconditioning, you need to be able to build a sturdy civilization. That this what really matters. Thats what really matters. Were so afraid that we might be upsetting Mother Nature in these tiny little ways, and were missing the big picture that three billion people in the world have almost no energy and thats why theyre vulnerable from climate. You want to guarantee safety from climate . Get people access to more energy. You heard it here one tough mother earth. Right . All right. [laughter] we had a couple of hands over here. Im connor ryan intern with mark kirks office so your thesis, i just want to be clear, is that pollution is bad. Its drastically overestimated in the media. Its bad, but its worth it for all the good it does . So thats just i just wanted to clarify. Well, with anything in life if you do it, youre saying that the risks and side effects are worth it. But its but at the same time the rusks and side effects risks and side effects, you want to minimize them. So the idea that the moral thing to do is to go forward with fossil fuel use full throttle and keep improving the technology and at the same time, in parallel, encouraging other technologies. And by encouraging i mean stop getting in the way of. But this is but, for example i believe if done properly every additional lump of coal in the system is a good thing because its giving someone the ability to use machines to improve his life which is a fundamental form of human opportunity which, you know we need and billions of people basically have no need. All right. I saw two more hands here, and well see if we can get through them quickly maybe we can get to the other two. Its my theory that environmental jay [inaudible] its my theory that environmental zealots so strongly favor wind and solar because they know they can never be widespread, inexpensive and support the population of the world, and they really want do not want development. They do not want the population to grow. How do you feel about my theory . I share it. [laughter] no because its the, its the nonimpact ideal. And ultimately, and, you know jay lehr could probably probably should be up here more than i should. But in terms of let me just see if i can find this quote. Well ill paraphrase it. If you believe in nonimpact, if you believe we should live a lowimpact lifestyle, then you should be against numbering on principle. It doesnt energy on principle. It doesnt matter if its perfectly clean perfectly cheap, etc. This was put to the test because mr. Fusion, more or less, in the late 80s people thought, oh we can do fusion which is this dream form of nuclear power. I wont get into the technical details, but, essentially the unlimited, virtually free incredibly safe and they asked some of the top people who today claim theyre terrified of co2, people like anne marie lovens and paul ehrlich jeremy rivkin, what do you think of this . And youd expect oh, great, right . We can have as much energy as we want with no side effects. No, they said,ed this be the worst thing. I forget who said this i think it was ehrlich. You know, giving society this kind of cheap energy would be like giving an idiot child a machine gun. But thats, thats how your viewed right . Because youre supposed to minimize your impact. Well, if i just make you as a human being 5,000 times more powerful, its like the incredible hulk. Look how much you can change and move around. Ultimately if nonimpact is the ideal, then nonimpact is the ideal. Energy is our means of impacting nature with machines. Thats what it does. So 100 , i agree. Do we have where, where are we next . Okay, over here. Front row. And by the way, windmills have a lot of impacts, particularly on birds. And as soon as theyre practical or if they ever work those will be pointed out much more aggressively. And even environmentalists shut those things down. Randy reynolds epa has come up with social cost of carbon yeah. Okay . But they dont talk about social benefits of carbon. Right. And their costs are mainly offshore happen someplace else, bangladesh, wherever. Uhhuh. L have you looked at that . What are your excellents . Yeah. It your comments . Yeah. It pretty much is bogus in the sense that theyre all based on extrapolations from extrapolations from climate prediction models that cant predict climate. Theres just, i mean, this is just the elephant in the room. This is just a fact. Everything that the u. N. Says is from extraction models that have been completely invalidated by history. These have a horrible track record. And you mentioned they dont look at the benefits, so its the same kind of bias. Its a philosophical bias, not a logical error. So the public is making a logical error, thats why i focus on think big picture and why its good to point out, you know social benefits of carbon. But the people coming up with these social costs are not not innocent. Theyre antiindustrial, and theyre just looking for ways to scare people. All right. We may have time for one more if theres any more questions. Okay, right over here. [inaudible] wait for the microphone please, sir. Im dino [inaudible] im just an interested citizen. But the question i have for you goes to the solution and the role of conservatives that conservatives inadvertently play in the problem. Conservatives generally favor in legal construction deference to the agency because they dont like courts overturning governmental decisions. Uhhuh. But deference to the agency here is Carte Blanche for epa. What is your practical substantive solution to the problems you have outlined . Well, i mean, in terms of the co2 stuff, its easy. I mean stop attacking it, stop regarding that as something thats legally actionable whatsoever. So thats easy. And then theres the question of how you have the right pollution standards, and ultimately, a big issue. Im much more of the view that this should be resolved, you know, much more in counters, actually, than by an agency in courts, actually, than by agencies like the epa. Theres a really good essay in the book climate coupe which gives a critique of the executive estate in this issue and gives a positive alternative. Im in that school, but its definitely not my focus. Part of the reason its a moral case is to evaluate what is the impact on human life and then give certain rough political guidance but thats a guide for policy makesser to say we cannot be trying to outlaw the stuff thats fundamentally good for human life. So thats what im attempting to do with the book, but theres tons more work to do beyond that. All right. Well, good news, we have copies of alexs book outside, and im sure hed be happy to sign them. Yes. Okay, great. Please join me in thanking alex and thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] is there a Nonfiction Author or book youd like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email to booktv cspan. Org, tweet us, booktv, or post on our wall, facebook. Com booktv. April 4, 67, he is in new york city speaking at the Riverside Church in manhattan giving this speech called beyond vietnam. And in that speech king calls america the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. Hed been on record being opposed to the war, but this is the first time hes given peter, a major address to the nation condemning the war. And he lays out in detail our relationship with vietnam our history with vietnam, lays it out. One of the rare times king actually reads the entire text because he was more of a, you know, he was an orator obviously, extraordinaire. His i have a dream speech he read off the script and started freestyling the i have a dream stuff. So he was good off script unlike some people who have to use a teleprompter for everything they say. But dr. King gave the speech beyond vietnam, called america the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today and then talks about what he called the triple threat facing our democracy. That triple threat racism, poverty and militarism. Racism poverty and militarism. Ironically 50 years later racism poverty and militarism. King was rightment but when he made that comment then and called america the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, peter the next day everything and everybody turned on him. The media turned on him and i dont mean fox news, they werent arounden then. Im talking about the liberal media, the new york times, the washington post, time magazine. And then the white house turned on him. He and johnson had worked together to pass the Voting Rights act and Civil Rights Act a lot of debate as we sit here now about this movie selma and how johnsons being portrayed in this movie. But then the white house turns against him for being so aggressive against the president and this war on vietnam. And then the last poll taken in his life, the harris poll found that nearly threequarters of the American People thought he was irrelevant. So White America turns on him. And inside of black america that numbers almost 60, 60 of black folk thought he was irrelevant. And i dont just mean black folk i mean roy wilkens and the naacp come out against him, Whitney Young and the urban league, the leading black journalists of his era, ralph bunch, another Nobel Laureate peace prize laureate comes out against him. I cant even quote on cspan what Thurgood Marshall said about dr. King what he felt about him during that era. So everybody turns on martin, the media, the White House White folk, black folk, and thats the life he has to navigate for the last year of his life. If hes talking about racism and poverty and militarism and nobody wants to hear that they turn their back on him