Shawn Ryan Show - #26 Alex Epstein - The Global Energy War

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

We are currently in the middle of a global energy war. Alex Epstein joins us to discuss what the implications of the current Green Initiative will be, how China ties in and stands to benefit in a world where the US now depends on them for energy, and how the benefits of fossil fuels have been completely ignored for years.  Alex Epstein is a Fossil Fuel Philosopher, author, and industrial and energy policy commentator. He is the founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress, a for-profit organization in San Diego, California. Alex speaks with Shawn about his latest book “Fossil Future” and the negative impacts of the current energy war, our climate, and the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing—including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. Pre-Order Fossil Future NOW from the links provided below: https://amzn.to/3MtCx6h Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Guys, we are in an energy crisis. This is actually a global energy war. This is tying into why inflation is running rampant, tying into a lot of things. And this episode we discuss how China is involved, talk about the Green New Deal, Green Initiative, what that means, how it affects us, all that good stuff. Guys, if you want to pick up Alex's new book,

which is already in Amazon Best Seller, and it hasn't even been released yet. Releases on the 24th of this month, links below. Also, I've talked about it many times, we are having problems reaching the audience. I don't even know how much time I have left on this platform. So, what we're doing, doing an email newsletter,

we don't spam, we only release the letter when there's a new SRS episode I'd appreciate it if you sign up if you want to be notified you don't want to miss an episode sign up Like I said it's only like two emails a month anyways, and if not that's cool, too But hey, this is an important episode. I hope you guys like it. I love you all Thank you for all the support and if you can leave a survey on iTunes. Hope you guys like it. I love you all. Thank you for all the support. And if you can, leave a survey on iTunes. Love you. Right now, the United States is in an energy crisis of bad one. This is a global energy war that's happening right now.

We're losing in the only country that's going to benefit all of this is China. The energy industry is the industry that powers every other industry. To the extent energy is cheap, plentiful, and reliable human beings thrive. To the extent energy is unaffordable, scarce, or unreliable, human beings suffer. It's so bad the United States should learn from the failed experiment. Instead, our president is doubling down on it. And just as ominously, he's calling for even the poorest countries to use unreliables instead of Reliables. This in a world where three billion people have almost no access to energy. But since unreliable energy can't be relied upon, it has to be propped up by

reliable energy. Both the fossil fuels. The solar panels and wind turbines are an unnecessary and enormous cost to the system. Mr. Epstein, are you a scientist? No, philosopher. You're a philosopher? Yes. Okay. Well, this is the environment and public works committee.

I think it's interesting we have a philosopher here talking about an issue. It's to teach you how to think more clearly. Well, you don't have to teach me how to think more clearly. You don't have to try running for the Senate on your platform. I think you should be grateful, and I think it is a crime, a moral crime, that you are damning anyone by association. And I wish Senator White House were here because what he is doing to the free speech

of those companies and anyone associated with it is unconstitutional, and I think he should apologize or resign. is unconstitutional, I think he should apologize or resign. Alex Epstein. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you. So I believe there is somewhat of an energy war going on in between throughout the world and with the rising prices and fuel and electricity

and everything that basically that has to do with fossil fuels, which is also driving inflation. I thought you would be the perfect guest to come on and speak about this. So you are an energy theorist slash philosopher. You're the author of two books, newest one coming out May 24th. You got it. Fossil. Fossil. Fossil.

And so go pick up a copy of this and you're the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. So again, welcome to the show. Thanks. I'm really looking forward to this. I think it's like we're at the perfect moment to discuss this issue. I happen to have a book coming out,

but I think it's really that there's just a pivotal moment in terms of our country's history as it relates to energy. Did you time this perfectly or is this just a one-sided? What I did, which my publisher would be the first to tell you, is I, they would consider me a perfectionist. I would just say I had a certain vision for the book, and I kept thinking it would be three months away for a couple of years.

Oh, man. Well, originally I was going to revise my first book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fields, and then I just thought, well, I've learned ten times as much. I know much more about the issue. Everything has changed in the world, so I'm just going to totally redo it and do something much better. And yeah, so it ended up, it was supposed to take two months at the beginning, and then it took three years. So it happens to be that everything I was predicting when I was writing the book turns out to have come true. So the book has a lot of warnings about, you know, look, if you follow these bad policies, you're going to have an energy crisis. But now it's coming out during the energy crisis that it talks about.

So it's even more, it makes it even more clearly true to the reader. Because there's no speculation what I predicted and what I talk about is already happening in Europe and it can clearly get much worse. How long have you been working on this book? So I've been working on the issue for 15 years. So I really think of it as I mean a book is just that's just a way of communicating. So I've been thinking about this issue of energy and how to think about it in a pro-human way, which I think something that will come up, but like how do you think about it in a way that's really focused on advancing human life around the world, which I think actually most energy thinking is not

focused on, even though it pretends to be. And then also, how do you look at what I call the full context? So looking when you're looking at, say, fossil fuels, and alternatives, you look carefully at the benefits and the negative side effects, whereas I think there's a tendency today to just look at the negative side effects of fossil fuels and nuclear for that matter. And then only look at the benefits of solar and wind. So that's why I think it's relevant that I'm a philosopher by background is,

I'm very obsessed with before I start thinking about something, what's the method and like what I call the framework that I'm gonna use to think about the issue. And I think if you, my basic idea is if you think about it in a pro-human way and you really look at the full context, it's actually obvious that the world needs more. Fossil feels even though that's 180-degree opposite to what we're told. Yeah.

And I can't wait to dive in, but first, every guest gets a gift. I already got some gummy bears. Well, and he guesses? And he guesses to what's in here. Yeah. Is there a different gift for every gift? Tommy Bears. Well, any guesses? Any guesses to what's in here? Yeah. Is there a different gift for every gift? Oh, there's a costume gift.

You never know what it's gonna be. I don't think you knew that I was into Jujitsu when you would have procured a gift for me. No. It doesn't feel like oil. I do know you're in a fossil fuels. You do know I'm in a fossil fuels? Yeah, I figured that out.

Is it a fossil? It's do know I'm into fossil fuels. Yeah, I figured that out. Is it a fossil? Good or fossil? Let's see. Oh my God. More gummy bears. More gummy bears. Those are probably the last ones of the stash. Oh my God. You know, for at least for a while, but... I gotta consume these after the book tour because I'll be dysfunctional, but I like them so much. I'll just eat all of them. But, wow, thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. Of course, the packaging made of fossil fuels. That's right. That's right. And they were delivered. All right, where do I put my box? Just get it right now. Just throw it.

Yeah, just throw it behind you. Wherever you want. Wherever you want to put your gift. All right, thank you. But, um, all right, so once again, fossil future. It's already an Amazon bus seller, and it's good. It's already creating controversy.

Washington Post already personally attacked you. I tried to get you canceled. What was that? You want to go into that at all? Yeah, so just, I think it's useful for people to be able to put themselves in the position of this. So just imagine, I know most people aren't authors, but imagine, you know, you write a book. And it's like, okay, your publicist sends the book to different outlets, right?

And the Washington Post is a major outlet. So of course, it makes sense that they're going to do that. What you don't expect is, I woke up one morning and my publicist says, hey, look at Washington Post just sent us an outline of a piece they're going to release on Wednesday. This is Monday. And they're saying as a courtesy, they'll allow you to comment. And so the piece is an outline with quotes accusing me of being a racist. A racist? Saying that because I am a racist, you shouldn't listen to my views on fossil fuels. So I knew I wasn't a racist.

And also, is that how you argue against a book on fossil fuels? Is like you call someone a racist. So like I knew this was a hit piece, right? And then I look into it and it's what they did is they work with a group called Documented and Documented is not about documenting, it's about destroying. So what they do is they try to look up your whole past, everything you've ever done or created, and then find something controversial. So in my case, when I was a freshman and sophomore at Duke University, I wrote some very individualist

articles. I want to emphasize individualist articles about the issue of culture. And I said specifically that I regarded Western culture as superior because it is the culture that valued individuals regardless of skin color and gave them freedom. And I argued that everyone around the world should emulate this.

But in the Washington Post's warped world view, this is racist, even though it's the opposite of racist, and I was very clear. But what they did is they took various things, and then they got some academics to say, yes, this is racist. And so then the idea is, imagine, you know, it is not good. It's really bad to be called a racist in general. But by the Washington Post, one of the most powerful media institutions in the world. Like, that could easily get pressure put on the publisher to cancel the book.

resellers can say, hey, I don't want to sell this a book by this racist, right? And so once you have a story that the Washington Post is saying you're racist and literally using that language, that is a very dangerous thing to have out there. Yeah. And for an hour or two, I was like, what am I going to do about this? Because I thought, okay, what happens if I comment to the author? And it's like, well, clearly, the story is intended to destroy me. They didn't want to understand me.

And so if I give them a comment, they'll either ignore it or they'll just mangle it and distort it like they distort everything else. So I knew that wouldn't work. And what if I say no comment? Then they say, oh, we reached out to Alex Epstein for comment. And he had nothing to say. And then I'm also endorsing the story. So no matter what I did in the conventional way of responding,

I would be endorsing the story. So I thought, okay, the only thing I can do is I'm going to publicly comment preemptively. So I'm gonna tell the world, hey, there is a hit piece that is falsely going to smear me as racist intending to cancel me, and the Washington Post should fire the author, and they should apologize to me, and they should explain why they're never going to, how they're going to reform so they don't do this again.

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show, so it got a lot of attention there. And Wednesday came when I was there supposed to publish the piece, wasn't published, that was interesting. It's like Thursday wasn't published Friday. So they published a version the next Wednesday, but it was stripped of about 90% of the bad stuff, including there was no references to racism. So I really considered it a victory because I was able to preempt this hit piece that was really going to try to cancel me, and it really took almost all of its power away. And so the lesson I took was, you know, when you get, when somebody's trying to do a hit piece and you get wind of it, don't comment privately and don't fail to comment, comment

publicly and preemptively if you're in the right. So that's what happened. I guess there's the question of why are they doing this and I think because they're afraid. Yeah. That's good knowledge for everybody to have is being conscious, becoming more of a thing. It's part why I spent time on it because I had seen other people with the... So sometimes someone gets canceled and they did a lot of stuff wrong

And that's a different kind of situation, but here like I was a hundred percent clear I did not do what they said and this was totally unjust and I know that happens to a lot of people and they just sort of wait for the Story to come out and they try to fight it or they sue the people once it's out in a huge institution It's out. It's really there where they get a printer retraction on page 30 in a month, or on some obscure portion of their website? Yeah, so I wanted to try this idea, and fortunately it worked. And so yeah, I wanted to provide a model

for other victims of these unjust cancellation attempts. You're the only person I know that's beating that. That's incredible. The other thing I wanted to bring up is I found out that the Chinese have contacted you and they wanted to... Not all of them. They wanted you to be a lot of the stuff in your book, correct? Yeah, yeah, so I got a quote- unquote, generous offer from a state-owned Chinese publisher.

And so the way it works is, well, first of all, I was reluctant to publish in China at all because I was asking like, what can the government, like the government's going to look over this and they can change stuff and what's, but the state on publisher beat me to it because they had several sections of the book. Guess what?

The sections that were critical of China and called it a dictatorship that doesn't respect rights and in some cases called it a threat. And they said, like, basically, we suggest deleting this. And I just said, no. I said, you're not publishing with you and that's it. And you know, you just think about how how the only thing notable about this, because I think it's pretty straightforward, right, that you don't want to participate in a regime that is engaged in the censorship of ideas. What's unusual, what's the only notable is that

it's so rare that people do this, because we have so many businesses that have no, there's no real set of principles to them, I guess. Because if you're in the business of ideas, ideas only work if you're allowed to express them openly and discuss them openly. It can't be that somebody gets to say, no, this aspect I don't want to talk about in the, I could make a lot of money and they won't be getting all the idea.

But just like, no, I want to be clear, this is not an acceptable way to run a government. And this government in particular is, I believe, in many ways hostile. Now, there are, I praise China in certain ways for doing more rational things on energy than we do. So, I think it's very possible the book couldn't become a massive bestseller in China. But I just want to be clear with the people of China, like those of you who want, and there are many good people in China, those of you who care about freedom,

and certainly the people in Taiwan, like I stand with you. I do not stand with this government. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Man, I just can't believe how many waves this is creating already. Well, this is just, it hasn't even come out. Yeah. Right, so the fear, I don't know, there's this kind creating already. Well, it hasn't even come out. Yeah.

So I don't know. There's this kind of interesting issue of why did this happen? Because the Washington Post, they invested a bunch of resources to do this piece on me, right? And so in a lot of people watching this, probably most people watching this have never heard of me. So it's like, why are you going after,

it's not like they're going after Jordan Peterson or something, I mean, I'm sure they have or would in different ways, but it's not, it's not an obvious person to go after or a famous, famous Congress person. But I think what, what they've started to pick up on is I've been having a lot of influence in the world of energy that, that's starting to become known nationally. And, in particular, I work with a lot of elected officials and staff, and there have been a couple of stories about how my messaging has been used by them and how I'm trying to influence their policy

and having some success. And I think that's great. You know, I want those stories out there, I think, because this is part of my life's work, because I'm trying to have better thinking about energy, better ways to talk about it, and better policy. But so that's great, but what worries the existing side is I come at it from a very logical

and pro-science perspective, and part of my perspective is I do believe that fossil fuels CO2 emissions impact climate, and they want to cast everyone who opposes them as a so-called climate change denier, whereas my view is that the benefits of fossil fuels far, far outweigh any negatives of their climate impacts, just like, you know, a good prescription drug, the benefits far outweigh the negatives of any side effects. And they don't have an answer to that.

That's the bottom line. Like, when you actually look at the full context of fossil fuels, they're incredibly positive, and they don't have an answer to this, but their whole identity is around fossil fuels being evil. So what they really hate is somebody who's logical and pro-science and articulate and starting to be influential, like they don't want that, and that's why they pulled the racism card.

Yeah, it's just, that's like the go-to play on everything that they don't agree with. And the other one is science tonight, right? So they they the problem is they couldn't use science tonight are very well because I'm clearly not that. So, but yeah, that the so racism left like, oh, this guy wrote something and it mentioned skin color. So maybe we can twist it somehow to be yeah, but as like once you pointed out, it's absurd. So, but if you don't point it out and you let them do it and you react, then again, it's a problem. Well, moving on, you were talking about, I want to go into the Green New Deal, the Green

Initiative, and help me in my audience understand that a little bit better. And I'm sure you can give a great explanation on that. Then we'll move into the benefits of fossil fuels and all the stuff that that initiative is overlooking. So could you just give us an overview of Green New Deal, Green Initiative, build back better? Yeah, for sure. So I think that like the green new deal is a term that captures the current leading global energy agenda right now. And I think the the the broadest way to put it is it's the rapid elimination of fossil fuels. That's really the goal. And you want to put it a little bit more precisely. It's

it's the rapid elimination of CO2 emissions or greenhouse gas emissions, but I'll just say CO2 emissions because that's the main greenhouse gas. So, involved here. So, the basic view is CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are, quote, destroying the planet through catastrophic climate change, and so we need to rapidly eliminate them. So that's kind of step one. It's then interesting. I want to highlight step two, and this goes to the green in green New Deal. Step two is we need to replace them specifically with solar and wind. Right? It's overwhelmingly solar and wind, specifically with green energy. I just want to highlight that for a second, because you could believe that we faced

catastrophic climate change from CO2 emissions, and you could be open to all alternatives, regardless of whether they were classified as green or not. For example, you'd be open to nuclear and hydro, which nuclear is almost never considered green, and hydro these days is rarely considered green. So, I just want to point out this, this is should strike people as weird that we care so much about CO2 emissions. And yet we insist on just the sun and the wind. Right. We're not willing to split the atom or dam a river. And what I just as a preview, like what I think is going on there is for them, green is a religious idea. It's the idea that our impact on the planet is immoral.

And so we should eliminate all of our impact on the planet. That's really what green means at the core, like minimizer eliminate impact. And I think that's, they think of the sun and the wind as natural. And so what it's really about is a more natural world. It's not about, it's not specifically about eliminate the problems caused by fossil fuels, but still have really good energy. It's really about a more natural way of life. And I think that's the only thing that can explain why they're so hostile to nuclear

and hydro, which don't emit CO2, and are much more practical and successful in practice than solar wind. But the basic, sort of the core of it, so it's like you're eliminating the CO2 emissions and then you're replacing it with overwhelmingly solar wind. But the basic sort of the core of it, so it's like you're eliminating the CO2 emissions and then you're replacing it with overwhelmingly solar wind. And so when you saw the green new deal in the US, this was exactly what they did. It was all about we're going to eliminate our emissions, we're going to limit around the world, and we're going to build up this solar and wind economy, and they particularly like AOC specifically excluded nuclear in their original documents. So there are different diluted versions of that,

but the thing to highlight is, this is the dominant energy agenda in the world right now. I mean, at least the kind of long-term energy agenda, if you look at everyone's plans, at the moment, pursuing this agenda has led to a total disaster. So right now everyone is scrambling for fossil fuels. Like Joe Biden ran on, I guarantee you,

we will end fossil fuel, or there's just a couple of years ago. Now he's begging every dictator in the world for fossil fuels, and he's pretending that he's done nothing against fossil fuels. Because people are upset about gasoline prices. So there's this short term change to focus on fossil fuels, but still every government says by 2050, which

is just 28 years from now, we need to eliminate our emissions and mostly replace it with green energy. So it's important that this is the number one energy idea in the world, and just to take one step further. It's actually the number one moral idea in the world right now. So if you take, say, any big company, like I would challenge you to name a company that does not have a net zero by 2050 goal. Apple, Google, Facebook, car companies, oil companies have net, I mean, you could ask how that is possible.

But I guess what I do want to ask is how is this possible? How do they actually have a realistic plan on how this is going to happen? No, so let me just say one thing about the... So it's universal. Everyone believes this, or not everyone believes this, but the leading institutions, and many of the leading thinkers in the world say that our number one priority of any area in the world is to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use in CO2 emissions and replace it with green energy. And so to answer your question, you might think, oh wow, they must have an amazing plan.

But no, I don't think there's any plan in particular, the oil companies are, it's particularly farcical that they will do that. I mean, one of the ways they do it, the dishonesty of this stuff is really staggering. One way they do it is they only look at the emissions they cause, but not that their consumers cause. And they say we're net zero. So they're like, oh, so producing oil, the energy it takes to produce oil

is a lot less than the energy it takes to consume oil. Like most of the emissions that come from oil are from us using oil, right? Like to drive cars and other vehicles and to make petroleum products and bags for your gummy are from us using oil, right, like to drive cars and other vehicles and to make petroleum products and bags for your gummy bears and stuff like that, right? That's where most of the emissions come from. Drilling for oil has some emissions, but not as many.

So what they'll say is, well, we're going to use somehow, we're not going to admit as much drilling for it, and we're going to plant some trees somewhere, which is called offsetting, which we can talk about that. But they're ignoring the fact that their whole product is emitting a lot of CO2. So there's just one example among many. There are all these different deceptions that companies do to claim that they're close to net zero now. But I would argue the reality is 80% of the world's energy is fossil fuels.

Fact one. It's growing, particularly in the places that care most about low-cost energy, such as China. And then the next fact is, the world is still very poor in terms of energy. So there are 3 billion people in the world who are using less electricity than one of our refrigerators uses.

So again, fossil fuels, 80% growing in an energy starved world. So the idea that we're going to get off that, and by the way, solar and wind, 3% totally dependent on fossil fuels or some other reliable power because they're what's called intermittent. They don't go consistently, so they need 100% backup systems. So the idea that this is going to... So it's what's weird is the number one moral idea in the world on its face should seem completely impractical.

Yeah. And I would argue it is. How can... I don't understand how anybody can think that only solar and only when is going to power the entire everything. I mean, we just saw the catastrophe last one or in Texas. I believe that was last one, right?

Yep, in 2021. And that was, solar wasn't working. Wind, turbines were frozen, and a lot of people died. Well, Sid it's interesting. So let's talk the broader idea they have is there are two broader ideas. And the important thing to say about both of these ideas is these have worked in exactly zero places.

So these are all, I would say, wild speculation about the future, but they're at least speculation about the future. And again, we're 28 years away from what they say is going to, this happening, right? So this is, again, this should be, my view is if you really look at all the facts, this should be viewed as a crackpot idea that you're gonna do this. But their argument is, one is we're gonna build enough batteries

to, so that you can build so many solar panels and wind turbines and then so much battery capacity That when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing a lot You charge up the batteries and then when you go through Lulls when there's not much sunlight or not much wind Then you you know you deploy the energy from the batteries So who's who's making all these batteries? Well, obviously China. But whoever makes them even like the slave labor that's involved in a lot of today.

So I ran the numbers on this, because Elon Musk, who might have a kind of mixed relationship with, because I admire a lot about him. But he also says a lot of false stuff. And he's also, I mean, he blocked me on Twitter for saying something very true, which is that his car is a good fossil fuel car, which is what a battery car is. But yeah, so he said, he said, you know, oh, the whole world could be powered by solar panels and Tesla batteries.

And I'm like, he said, it's easy. He likes to say things that have never been done or easy. And so I just ran the numbers on what would it take for three days of backup for the world, which you would want a lot of backup, because you can have whole seasons where sun and wind are low, relatively speaking, like say winter in Germany will have a lot of those laws. And it's $400 trillion of Tesla megapacts.

So that's many times more, and that's that last 10 years, because the batteries wear out. So that's like $400 trillion as many times the all the income of the entire world. So that's just for batteries that doesn't even get, so it's just a total crazy thing. There's no, and then the other thing that people have is they have this idea of,

we're going to interconnect every region of the world in a giant, the law should call it a smart grid. So the idea is that, oh, they'll say the sun is always shining somewhere, and the wind is always blowing somewhere. So we're just going to massively overbilled solar and wind everywhere in the world, and we're going to link it all up via cables. And so then, you know, there's a lot, when we have a drought of sunlight and wind in the US, some other place halfway around the world's gate. But again, this is just totally made up. This has never worked at all. It's prohibitively expensive, just you need to build so much infrastructure. And by the way, with both of these ideas and all the other green ideas, there's one other

variable, which is that the green movement is anti-development. So they have their whole solution involves a crash program of unprecedented mining and development, and it's part of a movement, an infrastructure, I would say, and it's part of both those involved development. And it's an anti-development movement. So if you look at the US, it'll take, if you're lucky, 10 years to approve a Lithium mine. But we're going to make thousands of times as many better. So it's, it's, what all of this should show is that there's something very unserious

about the claims of replacing fossil fuels. And so what I would argue is this movement is much clear about what it wants to destroy Then what it wants to create. Well, they also The new administration is claiming it we can go energy independent if if we go all green correct but I don't understand how they're claiming that when All our batteries are going to come from China, they're mining lift.

They just took Afghanistan, you know, that's huge lithium deposit, Africa. They're doing it in Mexico. They're producing all our batteries. I believe they're going to produce all our solar panels. And then you just said those batteries are good for 10 years. So to me, that doesn't... it's not energy independence at all. So this is a great example.

It's another case in which this is a totally unserious argument because above all, what China controls the entire... I'm going to stress this. The entire supply chain of solar, wind, and batteries, China can bring... can stop at any time that it wants. And the number one thing it controls, so when you have this supply chain, there's the mining, and China does a lot of mining, and they're increasing their mining interests. But the number one thing they do is controlling the processing of these elements, so these

facilities that can process the min mind materials into useful materials. And they just control basically every element there. So the idea that that's the opposite of independence, right? They can shut it all down. Whenever they want. Whenever they want, and we're talking about becoming, relying on this. The main problem with this is it's not a cost-effective way to power a society. So that's kind of problem number one. But also, yes, it has an unbelievable increase in our dependence on hostile foreign powers.

And whereas take fossil fuels, fossil fuels, we are masters at getting, and we have an unbelievable amount of the raw material on earth. So we have a very obvious way to deal with, say, hostility from Russia or somewhere else with respect to energy, which is we can just double down on our own energy production. So the people who claim to care about energy security, and they claim that the thing that we can double down on our own energy production. So the people who claim to care about energy security, and they claim that the thing that we can double down on is insecure, and the thing that we depend 100% on China for is secure.

Again, all their quote solutions are not thought through at all, but yet they're proceeding full steam ahead with the destruction of fossil fuels. And just to give one final example with Biden, notice what Biden did. It would be one thing to say, hey, I'm Joe Biden. I've got this amazing vision. I mean, I mean, they already have Biden having like a vision as a weird, but like, I've got this amazing vision for a grid.

And it's going to, it's going to work so well. And I have all these solar panels and wind turbines and batteries and let me build it. And then once I validate it, then we'll shut down those fossil fuels. I would listen to that, at least he has an idea. But what's the first thing he did? No Keystone XL pipeline, no drilling on federal land. So his first acts were acts of destruction of America's energy production ability, not acts of replacement.

And so I think one thing I want to keep highlighting is that this green movement is really clear on what it wants to destroy and what it wants to create is a complete fraud that it's not willing to prove before outlaws fossil fuels. I also don't understand. So I like how many of your questions, but I think this is good. It shows that you're thinking about it, which most people aren't, but I like how many of your questions, but I think this is good. It shows that you're thinking about it, which most people aren't.

But I like how many of your questions begin with, I don't understand, because I would say there are so many, everyone should be not understanding. And almost no one does not understand, even though these things make no sense. The minute you said Biden had a vision, I was like, oh boy. Oh, well, anyways. The minute you said Biden had a vision, I was like, oh boy.

Anyways, the other thing that I do not understand is he keeps blaming our gas and oil shortages on the drilling, on the people that drill. On the companies. But he already said that he was going to shut them down. So why would they, how much is it cost to do this? The whole, how much would one of these companies have to invest to start drilling and producing oil in the ass? Well, depending on the scale of a multi-million dollar, many, many millions, tens of millions,

I mean, it's a huge capital intensive industry, which involves, so the way, once you put it, the way you put it, it's sort of obviously wrong, because the way you put it is you're blaming the companies, I mean, I would think of it as you're blaming the companies for not drilling enough. And yet you have threatened them with massive punishment for drilling. That's kind of what I'm saying. that you have threatened them with massive punishment for drilling. That's kind of what I'm saying. It's, you want, you already showed your cards,

your vision is to shut them all down and completely go away from fossil fuels. So why would they continue to invest multi-million dollar deals to extract the fossil fuels when they know as soon as it smooths out with the shortage right now, then he's going to shut them down again immediately. It would just be thrown money in the garbage. So what they want to pretend is that they haven't been waging, that they haven't been giving these threats and basically waging war against the fossil fuel industry.

And Biden had the, you know, the goal to say that he had done nothing to restrict domestic production. It's like, my administration has done nothing. And part of their argument though, is we haven't had enough time to do everything we wanted. But what that's evading is that they're part of a global movement that has been doing this for the last 15 plus years. So in the US and around the world,

the green movement has been pushing three things. The elimination of investment in fossil fuels, production of fossil fuels, and transport of fossil fuels. And the Biden administration has been involved in all of them. It has a lot of threats against companies and financial institutions for investing in fossil fuels. It has a lot of restrictions on production, and it has a lot of restrictions on transportation, like the Keystone XL pipeline stopping that.

But it's important. This is a global movement, and it's been going on for a long time, including in the U.S., including under the Obama-Biden administration. But they want, basically, when you look at it the way you're looking at it, it's obvious that the Biden administration long time, including in the US, including under the Obama Biden administration. But they want, basically, when you look at it the way you're looking at it's obvious, it doesn't make any sense.

But they want to pretend all of that didn't happen. And what they're looking at is they're just looking at the fact that the producers aren't producing as much as people want right now. And they're treating it as, oh, they're just being greedy, right? They just want profits. That's so bad. But that's not true at all.

If you are a company, companies want to invest profits. Like companies want to grow in the future. That's what leads to a higher stock price if people are optimistic about your future. But for the reasons you gave, a lot of these companies are not optimistic about drilling in the future,

because they know that they will be punished soon or later. They can't have long-term confidence. So if you can't have long-term confidence in reinvesting your profits, you are morally and legally obligated to give those profits to your shareholders. But the administration is basically saying, you should violate your fiduciary obligations and your moral obligations to your shareholders

So that we don't look so bad Because people are mad about gasoline prices. That's really what their position amounts to Yeah, one one other thing that I want to hit is back to energy and dependence which they keep planning me We're gonna get if we go green Even though we're not because we're getting all our batteries and solar and all the materials. And is that right? And is that right?

And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right?

And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right?

And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? And is that right? There's no grid that just is nothing that we would recognize, but that's just like solar panels and wind turbines and you just access, I mean, the way it works is it's just physically the way that technology works. It needs to be constantly supported by reliable electricity. So there's no free standing solar wind and battery grid in the world.

So I just wanna make that point. It's not, and even, it's just nothing resembling what we know of as electricity is possible. And again, like the number I give $400 trillion, I mean, that's like, that's just bankrupting everyone in the world. It's a real starve, right? So we can make some better. So I just want to, like economically, it's nowhere in the universe of a viable replacement for fossil fuels. And the thing to, like, economically, it's nowhere in the universe of a viable replacement for fossil fuels. And the thing to stress about energy is the cost of energy is crucial because that determines

the cost of everything that involves machines because energy is just machine food. So if when we increase the price of it, we don't just want energy at any price, we want low cost energy. Because if the price of energy goes up, we're seeing this right now, right? The price of food goes up, the price of clothing goes up, the price of shelter goes up, the price of medical care goes up. So if these things even remotely happened, life would just become catastrophically expensive compared to what it is today. And we're already seeing this with just price inflation, and a lot of that connected energy.

But this is just with, you know, you could say like, 3%, 4% of the green new deal agenda, is like what Europe has done. And what we've done, it's just, it really, I can't stress this enough, like to actually do what they're saying, I believe, would be like just global mass murder and mass starvation.

Well, look what's happening in Europe right now. They're completely dependent on Russian oil. Yeah. And you do want to go under that at all? Well, sure. I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward, right? This isn't what I, what kind of like about where you're coming from is you're, I think you're looking at the essentials of these issues.

And the thing is the essentials of these issues are pretty simple. The problem is the people who cause the problems want to over complicate them because the simple and true explanation indites them as the obvious cause. So you take the situation in Europe. Europe needs huge amounts of natural gas to function because it uses natural gas for heat. It also uses natural gas for electricity. And Europe has had this idea that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels with solar and wind. So that's been their idea. But solar and wind, as I said, cannot exist at all on their own. They need natural gas, in particular, natural gas is basically like an amazing natural battery that's very cheap.

So it can ramp up and down very quickly, like a jet engine, to accommodate the massive fluctuations of sunlight and wind. So actually, when you do a lot of sunlight and wind, you don't become free of the need for fossil fuels. You become particularly dependent on one fossil fuel, which is natural gas, or technically you can substitute oil, but usually gas is a lot cheaper, so they use gas. So in effect, they're hugely dependent on natural gas. But they had this idea that we're going to restrict investment, production, and transport of fossil fuels. So what did they do

when fracking developed? Like fracking is the best broadly-shale energy technology. That's the most revolutionary energy development of the last 20 years. As soon as Europe saw it, they preemptively banned it. So they banned it in France, banned it in the UK, banned it in Ireland, banned it in Spain, right? They banned it all over the place, and they did nothing to secure reliable sources of energy from free allied countries like the US. Because they had this idea, we're going to rapidly replace fossil fuels with solar and wind, but that didn't work. So they reduced domestic production, domestic, so what happens? They depend on foreign production. It's that simple. If you try to rapidly replace fossil fuels with solar and wind, which doesn't work, then you become more dependent on foreign sources, if you don't produce it domestically yourself.

So it's very simple, but everyone wants to pretend it's something else. Because it's, but what's great about this moment is the public is really starting to see, because they know that for decades, people have been saying we shouldn't drill, we shouldn't invest in this stuff. This is bad. And then they see, wow, the prices are going up. And we didn't get this magical replacement. And they're starting to blame the people who were against fossil fuels. It's part of why I'm excited to have, to get attention on this issue now. And I happen to have a book right now that's telling the full story of energy today and in the future because I think people are uniquely open to it because we're witnessing a crisis now.

It's a lot easier for people's minds to open when they see the problem in front of them versus when it's a speculated problem a few years in the future. We're in the middle of an energy war. Yes. I mean, it's green versus fossil fuels and it's also China watching everything that's going on, taking all the lithium deposits in the world, mining them, and they're going to produce it all, which means they control everybody's energy. If we were to go all green. So I think you haven't been using that term, but I think it's a really good term. So I'm

probably going to start using it because it is, you know, the way I've always thought about it is war depends on energy. The World War I, World War II, were both won by the side with the longest term secure sources of oil because oil is historically the fuel of mobility and advances in mobility or how you win often how you win wars. You can get to places more quickly, etc. You know, you can drop large bombs, that kind of thing. I mean, now we have nuclear energy, which is another thing we should be pursuing more of. But so it's crucial in military conflict.

That's one aspect of it. But another point is it's just crucial in any kind of like I was asking a guy mentioned to you before the show. The real guy really admired him, Palmer Lucky, who's basically invented modern VR, a sold his company for a lot of money to Facebook, and then started a modern defense company that's very, very pro-America.

And I asked him, I recently got to talk to him, and I said, like, what's your biggest threat to the US? And he said, like, and he said something that wasn't what I expected, which is, my biggest threat is that we? And he said, like, and he said something that wasn't what I expected, which is my biggest threat is that we stop becoming an economic superpower. Because when you're not an economic superpower, there's so you're so much more vulnerable.

It's harder to wage war. You can't engage in the production. And what scares the hell out of me is that the U.S. China is taking all of its actions to become a dominant economic superpower. And America is either just obsessed with gender pronoun type things that are not nearly as important, or we are actively waging war against ourselves, like this Green New Deal anti-fossil fuel movement.

This is overwhelmingly a domestic movement that in America and in Europe, there are some evidence of, say, Russia sponsoring some of it and maybe China encouraging it, but it's mostly domestic intellectuals. So China is very strategically taking over critical industries and, of course, securing all the fossil fuel that they can. And we are actively making ourselves less secure. So it's really, that really scares me because I just feel like everyone's gonna look back in history if we don't reverse course,

then I just gonna say, what the hell were they doing? China said we wanna be the world's dominant super power by 2049, that was their goal. They secured the entire like modern technology supply chain including the elements of solar wind and batteries, the U.S. was just obsessed with these weird domestic things as the number one issue, and they actively try to destroy their own energy system,

which is the key to being an economic superpower and militarily prepared. Yeah, I think they're seeing the direction and they're jumping on the train, they're gonna control it, and they're smart on the train. They're gonna control it. They're smart. You gotta hand it to them. They are smart.

It's interesting, because the government is strategic and our government, I would say, is anti-strategic. I mean, I don't think we've, it's hard for me to think of a president, Republican or Democrat, who has a real long term foreign policy and really thinking about these things.

I mean, I think some are better and some are worse, but the advantage we have, if we take advantage of it, is we have 330 million people who, if left free, can come up with amazing innovations that make us a superpower, and then that incredible productivity and innovativeness can be leveraged if we have a remotely strategic government. So the Chinese government is more strategic, but their productive ability, all things be equal, is not going to be what ours is because we have far more freedom and far more innovation in many ways. But problem is we're undercutting it with a strategy,

with a lack of strategy, but we're also undercutting it with the green movement being anti-development. So because to innovate and to be productive, you need to develop nature. You need to impact things like a factory has an impact, a farm has an impact, mining has an impact. If you just take mining, which is everyone

now realizes is key to any kind of energy future, but in the US, mining is almost illegal. It can be impossible to get a mine approved. It can easily take 10 years. What that does is that limits, it makes us a not free country and in many ways we're not as free economically as China is. Because while China is a lot of evil anti-freedom stuff, they have much more freedom of development than we do. And without the freedom to develop, most of what most of production cannot occur

because most of production is physical. Interesting. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about, you give a great rundown on how fossil fuels benefit us every day. Nobody talks about that and I'd like to dive into that. Awesome. Cool. I tried the gummy bears. You did. That was really good. I was a little worried because I couldn't lie to you if I didn't like them. If I really wanted to try try so yeah, I knew they would be fine as soon as I've been good even more than fine I felt them because you can I don't like the ones that are overly hard yeah And you don't want them overly soft either but I fell in like oh this is gonna be good

They got a nice texture. I took in like 25 of them. Hey, let me know if you need some more We got I got a. We got plenty of it. Well, we just got back from the break. And so it seems like everybody that's behind the green initiatives, none of them ever talk about any of the benefits from fossil fuels. And you do a great explanation on how they affect and benefit our Everyday lives and you there's some phenomenal charts in your new book that we talk about the um Uping energy production and how that actually saves lives versus We'll get into it, but when we talk about

Individuals that are in there who are saying we should all be dead right now. Yes. So, we got... So, just highlight what I said before. Again, 80% of the world's energy. So, you think of energy as machine calories or machine food. So, what are machines need to operate?

You get 80% of that comes from fossil fuels around the world. And it's growing. And as I also said, billions of people have very little energy, use very little energy right now. So I use the day, the statistic of three billion individuals using less electricity than one of our refrigerators. So you just let that sink in. What would that be like if you had to, you know, decide, like, obviously you can't just use a refrigerator, right? So you have the lights, you have the refrigerator, you have all sorts of different appliances, like do you wanna use a washing machine, do you wanna use a dryer, do you wanna use a computer,

do you wanna charge yourself in like, these are just, and then it's not just you at home doing this, maybe even more significantly, it's industry. Like if industry can't use a large amount of electricity, then you can't have a very productive country. So with that in mind, you would expect that the best thinkers, the leading, let's say, the leading thinkers in our society, when talking about, say, rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel CO2 emissions, you'd expect them to look at not just the negatives of that, but you'd also expect them to look at, well, what are the benefits of the energy

that we get with that? So when we burn fossil fuels that emit CO2, yes, we could talk about what are negatives, also what are positive to that. But the elephant in the room is energy. That's why we're burning them in the first place, is to get a lot of energy. And again, it's the overwhelming source of the world's energy. I would also add there have been competitors to fossil fuels for well over a century. Most of these technologies have been around for well over a century and one form and other. So there's something very special about fossil fuels. And so I think it should seem very odd that we don't talk about the benefits. And what in particular, what I call our designated experts, don't talk about the benefits.

Because have you heard this refrain, listen to the scientists before? It's like a common type of thing. Like listen to the scientists. I remember George Clooney, I mean lots of people say it's better when I'm saying like, if I wanted to know what to do about a medical condition, I would listen to my doctor. And if I want to know what to do about climate

change, I'm going to listen to the scientists, right? Now, one fallacy there is the climate expert isn't an expert on the benefits of fossil fuels. So it would be like a doctor who didn't know about the benefits of an antibiotic, only the negatives, right? So that would be at least only the side effects. There's something, but maybe the climate, you would expect, okay, maybe the climate people, or whoever were designating as the scientists, the experts, I call it designated expert because it's the person we're turning to, we're told to turn to for here is the person who can provide you guidance, informed guidance on what to do. So you take one of the leading designated experts on what to do about energy Which is a guy named Michael Mann who's a professor. He's a climate scientist and activist and I put I document this in fossil future

He has a book on energy and climate called the Mad House effect. And so all about how fossil fuels are allegedly having a harmful impact on climate. That's a fine thing to study. You should study the impacts on climate for sure. But one thing that really struck me is he talks about agriculture. And he says, rising CO2 levels are going to have these causes, these challenges for agriculture.

I say, OK, that's fine. And then I'm looking through the book. And I'm like, OK, but where is he going to talk about the benefits? Because the benefits of fossil fuels for agriculture. I said, okay, that's fine. And then I'm looking through the book and I'm like, okay, but where is he going to talk about the benefits? Because the benefits of fossil fuels for agriculture are literally the ability to feed 8 billion people. Like the fertilizer we have, we're seeing this now with rising fertilizer prices. Fertilizer is derived physically from natural gas and it's produced using natural gas energies, just totally dependent on natural gas and natural gas prices. That's in large part why the prices are going up,

because natural gas prices are going up. So there's that. So the literal fertilizer that makes the earth as fertile as it is so we can grow enough food for 8 billion people, that depends on fossil fuels. And then all the machines that produce the energy, rather all the machines, that use energy to allow us to produce far more food than we otherwise could.

And so one example I like is a modern combine harvester can reap and thresh 1,000 times more wheat than a really good manual labor. So 1,000 times? 1,000 times. So you become like, if I'm not a really good manual laborer for that kind of thing, but I imagine I could be trained to be trained to be fairly good. So, but if you put me on a combine harbester, I can just sit there and produce, you know, 500 a thousand times more. So that's why

we have very small percentage of people in agriculture in the countries that have, you know, using low cost reliable energy and the ones that aren't, you have very high percentages of people in agriculture. So, you know, that's a, it's just, so this is just one example, but it's a huge example of literally, I once in a debate with a guy named Bill McKibbin another designated expert, I said, you know, if Bill McKibbin came here and said we should eliminate,

you know, 95% of the food, you'd think this guy's a maniac. But he said we should eliminate 95% of the food. You'd think this guy's a maniac. But he said we should eliminate 95% of fossil fuels, which are the food of food. And I literally, because they feed the machines, right? And they provide the fertilizer. And yet in this whole best-selling book by Michael Mann, the designated expert we are supposed to listen to, he does not once mention the benefits of fossil fuels to agriculture.

So this is a madman, like in effect, right? Because he's telling us you should be concerned, we should get rid of fossil fuels and it'll help agriculture because it'll get rid, like we won't have to worry about this warming in some region. But he's telling you to get rid of the thing that makes agriculture possible. Is there any validity to that at all? Is there anything that getting rid of false fuels would help with agriculture?

Is there any aspect of it? You mean the climate part of it? Yeah. Well, but the thing is, everything is a package. So we could talk about, so there's two questions. So overall, getting rid of fossil fuels would destroy agriculture and you'd have mass starvation, 100%.

But there's a question of, so I just want to focus on that. That's the number one point here. It's just this is an example of how our leading thinkers, you know, are designated experts. So the people we're told to listen to and stake our lives on and stake our security on are making a very, very basic error of their evaluating something by only looking at its negative side effects and not its benefits. And so by the same method when the polio vaccine came out, you'd say that's evil. We shouldn't use it because they say, oh, it has these side effects. And it's bad.

Let's get rid of it. Wait a second. It stops polio. What about that? Well, fossil fuel stops hunger. It stops startvation around the world. So we can talk about the CO2 part of it. But what is for sure is there is nothing resembling a danger

that's on the level of the danger of getting rid of energy. And I think I would just say as an intro to the issue and how to think about it, it's also revealing that people don't talk about the benefits of CO2 very much. So fossil fuel, we burn fossil fuels, it emits a bunch of things. But it's water vapor, it emits energy, it emits it emits CO2, sometimes there are certain pollutants that are emitted particularly with coal and some extent oil. But OK, it em amid CO2. Sometimes there are certain pollutants that are emitted particularly with coal and some extent oil.

But okay, it amid CO2, so that's a side effect. But the main thing is the energy benefit. But then the CO2, why do we think that the CO2 is so bad? It's so bad and it's all bad. The all bad is particularly revealing. Because if you just, if you had somebody who didn't, who didn't, who didn't have a bias against humans and human impact, they didn't think that we

were unnatural, which I think is a very common view. Like our impact is bad. That's the view why, that's why we're so against mining and development because people view our impact as just, it's a wrong thing. But if you didn't have that bias and you just like, okay, humans are part of nature. Often what we do is really good for us. Sometimes we make mistakes, but there's certainly nothing to be hostile to in our impact. In general, we want to have a lot of impact because that makes the world in a abundant and safe place.

And when we didn't have much impact, the world was pretty terrible for the average person. And the more successful people often got around it by enslaving the less successful people because we didn't have machines to do work for us. So if you didn't have the bias against human impact and you heard CO2 is going up, would you think it was bad? I'm not so sure. I think you would think at least it would have some obvious good things. Number one, plant growth. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more plant growth. That's very, very significant. We're talking about agriculture, crops benefit very significantly, but warmth as well. I mean, five times or more people die in the world from cold right now than heat, right? And so that's a big thing. A lot of people want to live in warmer climates. And the way warming is supposed to work in and practice has mostly worked,

is it tends to be to have more warming in the coldest regions of the world. So it's not evenly distributed, it's not like the same at the equator and the same at the poles, it's more particularly in the northern part of the world. That's why people are so focused on the Arctic, but that's actually a good thing. Like we would prefer to have warming concentrated in colder places than equally spread around the world. We also know that the world has been 25 degrees Fahrenheit,

warmers, what is it, 14 degrees Celsius, I think it does warmer. So we're at a pretty cold point in the planet's history. So there's a lot of good of it, and then you would also say there are some negative things. Particularly in the place, even if the places aren't getting super warm, they're getting warmer, and you'll have increased incidence of heat waves and that kind of thing. But even with the heat waves, you'll have more air conditioning, which can totally more

than offset the heat waves. So, I think there will be some aspects of rising CO2 levels that on their own will be negative for agriculture in some places. I don't think it's plausible that overall they'll be negative for agriculture in particular, because in general a warmer, more CO2 rich and wetter, this is another aspect of warmer world as a wetter world, like that's all good for life. That's why we have these, think about the dinosaurs and the amazing, you know, these huge dinosaurs eating huge amounts of plant food. Like, that's in a natural world that has so much CO2 and more warmth than is a more tropical world.

So, in general, what global warming means, like climate change, you can translate it to a slightly more tropical world. That's its objective meaning. Well, you're talking about the warming and all the benefits. What about the thing you hear all the time is the rising oceans. It's going to be the glaciers, it's all melting, it's raising sea level, everything's going to be underwater. Supposedly. Right, right. So that is, I would say rising sea levels is the most plausible that is I would say rising sea levels is the most plausible danger of rising CO2 levels, because I think there's a lot of reasons to want the world to be quite a bit warmer than it is today, all things be equal. And certainly not any kind of crisis. Again, we have far more cold-related

deaths than heat-related deaths. And then to take some of the other examples, first, you know, with six storms and floods and this kind of thing. It should seem very bizarre that those all are supposed to get worse and like way worse, because if you think of a climate this a very integrated system, so why would it be that us changing something makes everything worse? You never hear about, oh, we avoided this storm today

because of fossil fuels. You only hear, oh, this storm with everything is worse. That it's really a, like, they're really treating the nature as a God. And it's really like we angered the God by impacting it. And so the God is punishing us. Because it's, it's, it's, it can't be a scientific perspective that everything gets worse in a system like that when you, it just does make any sense. And, but the plausible thing that could get worse is sea levels because sea levels are particularly sensitive to our previous investments. So we have civilizations that are built near the sea for very good

reasons, a great place to live, commerce, that kind of thing. And so if sea levels rose quickly enough, that could be a challenge. It could be a disruption. It's not going to be a catastrophe or the end of the world or something like that. But it's worth looking into. But as long as we do what we've been focused on, which is you always have to look at the benefits of fossil fuels that will be lost if you oppose fossil fuels. So if you recognize fossil fuels today and for the foreseeable future, that's literally what's feeding the world. That's what makes it possible for us to have shelter, mobility, things like education, which takes a lot of time, you know, research medical care.

All these things totally depend on low cost reliable energy that only fossil fuels can provide on a global scale for most people for the foreseeable future. Like, if you look at that, you would totally be willing to accept quite a bit of sea level rise along with that versus get rid of the energy and then everything is terrible. So we always have to look at the benefits, but then the sea level rise is kind of crazy, because if you look at what the current, I'm just, I don't want to know your view. I'm wondering what you would guess from the media. How fast do you think the average person would guess the sea level is rising like how many feet per century?

Based on the media. Two feet. Two feet a century? Oh, that's that's I wish they thought that. I mean, Al Gore's movie, he talks about 20 feet. 20 feet. As if it's imminent. It's like, oh, well, this this ice sheet can melt. And if that happens and you get the sense of this is all, if you got the sense of what's happening over thousands of years, it wouldn't be so alarming, right? But he, he talks about 20 feet and he's not very specific. But it seems like this is decades away,

which that would be really scary, right? But no, so actually, right now it's one foot a century. One foot a century. That's the current rate. And then the, here's the crazy thing. The extreme extreme speculation is about three feet a century. And so to put that in context, we have 100 million people around the world who already live below the sea level

at high tide. So think about it. We are very good as a species at dealing with higher sea levels. You have places in the Netherlands where people live well below sea levels. And this is with technology that existed before. And we're talking about this is over a century. And of course, we have no specific confidence that it's even going to happen so we can wait and see what happens.

But this is a very slow moving thing. This is nothing resembling. And this is the official UN projection that, on the extreme end, that's three feet. And so what people are not getting is that if you look at the real benefits of fossil fuels, even the kind of extreme projected negative side effects that are very speculative are nowhere near the benefits of fossil fuels, like not even close. And then the final thing I'll say about that is,

this is particularly true because one of the huge benefits of fossil fuels isn't enables you to master climate danger. So let me just explain that. I've used the example of a prescription drug. You need to look at the benefits and the side effects. So if it saves your life, but it causes a severe rash, you would still want for, you know, a week, you would still do it. The interesting thing about fossil fuels is they can do something a prescription drug can't because a prescription drug, the benefits can outweigh the negative side effects, but they can't cure the negative side effects

on their own. You'll still get the rash, but fossil fuels can cure their own negative side effects. So for example, let's example, let's take something like drought. Let's say fossil fuels caused more drought, which I generally doubt, because it makes a warmer weather world, which makes less drought, but let's say they caused more drought in at least somewhere. Well, okay, but they also give you the ability

to irrigate an area to totally neutralize and overwhelm the drought. They also give you the ability to bring food from a region of the world that isn't having a drought into the region that is, so that the end of the product, you're much better off drought wise. So even if they had a harmful side effect, they would cure that side effect and they would actually overwhelm it. And this is what we see with drought, if fossil fuels are vanity negative, because drought-related deaths are down 99% over the last century, and it's largely all these fossil-fueled machines, irrigation, transport that are

protecting us. So, whenever we think of climate, we need to always remember that whatever negatives fossil fuels are causing, there is a very high likelihood they can also cure and then some. The number one statistic I like to share about this is that we actually have numbers on how many people die from climate related causes like storms and flood and heat and cold extreme heat extreme cold. And before I started researching this, I thought I thought that these were obviously getting worse. We're having more climate related disaster deaths, but that it was being exaggerated

and the benefits of fossil fuels were underestimated. But it turns out these climate-related disasters have gone down by a rate of 98% over the last century. You have some good graphs on your building list. Yeah. And I repeat them because that should just be, I don't want to curse, but mind blank, you know, that should be the experience that people have, right? That's what happened to me because I thought,

the model everyone is operating on is fossil fuels took a safe climate and made it dangerous, right? And the real thing is it, no, it took a dangerous climate and made it safe. And it's like, here's the crazy thing. The thing that fossil fuels are supposed to harm most as in the livability of our climate are one of the things they've most improved.

And so that's really the way. That just really struck me when I realized it. Because that means we're gonna be, not only are we gonna starve if we get rid of fossil fuels, but we'll also be far more in danger from the climate because climate is naturally dangerous. And if we don't have the ability to protect ourselves using all these amazing machines to build shelter and heat and cool and irrigate and transport, then we are totally screwed

by the natural climate. Is this what you meant by avoiding a storm of fossil fuels? We've mentioned that a little bit earlier. Avoid it, what did I say? Could we avoid a storm because of fossil fuels, I mentioned that a little bit earlier. Avoid it, what did I say? Could we avoid a storm because of fossil fuels? Oh, I forget exactly what I said, but you can neutralize a storm with fossil fuels. I mean, you can, so the fact that climate related

disaster deaths in particular are way down, and you can see all the different ways, and I gave a lot of them in which fossil fuels caused that. What that really means is that fossil fuels have a huge climate mastery ability that they facilitate. And what that means is it's very, very hard to think of anything that could happen in the future

as a side-effective fossil fuel use that would actually be a problem climate-wise. And I mentioned I thought the most plausible was rising sea levels, but they're super slow. I mean, way slower I have another graph of this in the book. And this is the graph Wikipedia uses, which is super biased against me for that matter, but everything fossil fuel-related,

they are very biased against. And yet they still admit that, you know, if you look at the history, like our ancestors 10,000 years ago, they have a sea level rise like this, and then it goes like this. And so the question is just, is it slightly less flat? But it's still super slow, and we have a lot of time and it's speculative. So the idea of de-energizing the world and energy poor world to avoid this, is just, it has to be your denying the benefits.

We're going backwards. Yeah. We're going backwards. With many fewer people, if you really did it. So, the thing is, I want to stress, I should say, the green new deal, what's called net zero agenda, fossil fuel elimination agenda, there is no chance it is going to happen in that the whole world is going to totally do

it like lemmings, but the danger is that even if you do it a small fraction, it's deadly, and in particular, it's deadly for our security, which is part of Lewis and wires, particularly excited to talk to you, because what the US is doing is you use the term energy war, which I like. Like, we're leading the energy war against ourselves, so we are disempowering. I call it unilateral disempowerment, because we are destroying our own ability to produce energy while others above all China are increasing their ability to produce energy and making us dependent on them. And that is very, very

scary because it's China. Do you expect China to follow net zero? No. I mean, they're about 85% fossil fuel. So we're told, though, they're eating our lunch. They're also like, this is nonsense. They're producing our solar and wind using cheap coal electricity, low environmental standards, quite a bit of slave labor, it turns out, and then actually a lot of, at least temporary subsidies by the government.

They're making the stuff, but they're making the stuff using fossil fuels, and they're mostly powering, they're world-using fossil fuels, and of course, they're not going to do this. So, but the US, which is a much more honorable country in many ways, and in this case that works against us, because we're much more likely to honor these commitments to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. So, so much of the world is obviously pursuing a fossil future,

but even though they claim that they're all producing, they're all pursuing a fossil fuel elimination future. But what that means is the freest countries and often the most honorable countries are going to disempower and they're going to leave themselves at a totally new level of vulnerability. I just don't understand how, I don't know if they, I don't know how this doesn't compute in people's brains. Well, I think it started, I think, well, I think we're helping it compute, so let's just take the thing about the benefits, right? The thing that strikes a lot of people, or particularly this idea of the climate benefits that fossil fuels actually make us safer from climate, I've talked to tens of thousands of people about this kind of thing, like not even one in a hundred thought of it before they learned

it for me, and I didn't even think of it myself, I learned it from some other people, right? And so we're taught to think about this issue in a really bad way. And in particular, we're taught to only look at negative side effects and not benefits. But we don't realize that we're doing that often. And I talk a lot about in the book about why that is and how that works.

But in any case, that is a fact that we're taught, not to, I mean, we look, I showed you Michael Mann or I explained like leading guy, just totally evades the benefits of false appeals for agriculture, which is its most kind of obvious benefit. So what happens, what's, that's really bad, but I find that when you point that out, when you make it explicit, that hey, we need to look at the full context, the benefits and side effects with precision, people can really start to do it.

That they really see it. It's a thing that's part of what I try to add as a value is I give people like the thinking tools and everyone agrees. I've never had, here's this, I've never had one person disagree with me that we need to look at the benefits of false meals. But it almost no one does. And so the more we just make that principle out there, the more people will do it and the more they'll be aware that the other side isn't doing it. I want to go back to the China stuff. Good.

Because it's so important and they have us in so many different aspects. I'm glad we're bringing this up. You know, and, so, US, we're trying to decrease fossil fuels. Let's think of this as like a triangle, right? So we're decreasing fossil fuels. China is upping fossil fuel usage to produce the solar panels and the batteries that then they in turn are going to export to us, thinking that we're energy independent on solar and wind. Right. And then they can just cut it, just cut production, even though it doesn't work.

Yeah, but that's right. So they control our energy, which means they control us. And we're seeing the exact same thing right now in Europe with Russia in China's plan is occurring in Russia already. With a tiny, Europe has not done a full fledg green to deal by any means. They're still dominantly fossil fuel in Europe. So even when you pursued, this is part of why I'm motivated, if it was just, as if you get rid of fossil fuels, it's bad. And if you fall,

if you go 50%, it's okay. No, it's not okay to go anywhere in this direction because every penny you add to the price of energy leads to higher costs of everything. And all this increased dependence is a total disaster. So I think we should be highlighting it. And I think people are realizing people from both parties happily are starting to see this, this as a real thing. Like, they're a little slower to recognize that solar and wind are not real replacements for fossil fuels. But, no, but even an idiot can see where the stuff comes from.

You can just look on a map and see where this stuff is made. Like, do we have, are we, do we have all these polysilicon facilities, or we processing all of these materials? We send, even if we mind materials, we need to send them to China to be processed. So it's, and the notable thing is, you know, you hear a little bit of acknowledgement of this,

people are saying, oh, we gotta do more on shore, but they're not willing to give up their anti-development policies because there's this very deep opposition to all human impact. And so we have all these talk about, oh, let's reshore American industry and let's tax China in this way. And as long as you're not allowed to develop in your own country, you are not going to have a real and growing industry. And just to get one stat that shocked me, China has five times our industrial electricity

use. Five times. Five times. China. This is basically a third world country 40 years ago. And our electricity use has been flat for a long time in part because we offshore industry. So it's what's really needed, fundamentally what's needed, is we really need to embrace human impact done intelligently

as a good thing. And then in particular, the freedom to use fossil fuels as a big part of that. But as long as we have this idea that it's wrong for us to impact the planet, we're just going to have hostility toward all forms of keep, we're just gonna have hostility toward all forms of energy, which is really what the green movement have

because their against fossil fuels, they're against nuclear, they're against hydro, but they're also against solar wind because they oppose solar and wind mining projects. They oppose massive construction projects, which have a big footprint, right, a big impact. And they oppose the building of these massive transmission lines. So how the hell are we supposed to get our energy? You're not supposed.

Is this a control thing? What is this? But it's, there's a control element, but it's, this is why I think I've such an advantage having a background in philosophy, and I've been interested in environmental philosophy a long time. So that I think of that as a philosophy of how we relate the relationship between us and the rest of nature. Like how are those things? And I think there are two basic views. The dominant view is that our environmental goal, so you can think of it as a goal of our environment, or the world as a whole is to eliminate human

impact on earth. So that's the environmental goal. That's what it means to be environmentally good, is to eliminate our impact on earth. And that is deadly. Unfortunately enough, I learned when I was 18 before I knew anything about energy, like that's deadly, because we survived by impacting the earth. So if you have a, if you have an environmental philosophy, it says it's bad for us to impact the earth, then you are anti-human, whether you know it or not.

Whereas my environmental philosophy is to advance human flourishing on earth, which means I want to me, the earth is a good environment if it is more hospitable to human life. And so that includes clay and air and clean water and natural beauty, but it also includes things like farms and factories. And I don't think of those as unnatural. And I don't think of those as unnatural, because I don't think of humans as unnatural. I think of those as part of our environment in the way a tree is part of our environment. And I judge everything by whether it's good for humans. So like the malaria mosquito is bad, even though it's natural.

And there are many things that are that, like scientific laboratories, that are good, even though they're, quote, unnatural. But again, it's not unnatural. It's just man-made or not man-made. But I think that the deep thing that's going on is we've been taught this philosophy that says our impact is evil, and our goal should be to eliminate it. And I think that's... So there's a question of what's the agenda there, but that is the dominant philosophy, particularly the environmental philosophy,

in the world today, and that's what's driving us. So that's when you say, where are we going to get our energy? We're not thinking... If your goal is to eliminate human impact, you're not thinking about giving humans energy, because actually A, it's not on topic, but B, I make this point in chapter three, energy is impact. Like when you use energy, like think about you have this great studio, like that took a lot of energy to make all the materials and bring them here and build stuff, right? Like that's what energy allows us to do. It's literally like the capacity to do work. To do work means to change physical things in nature. So,

if you hate human impact, you hate energy. And it's not that you hate, it's not just you hate the negative side effects. So people think, oh, they just don't like the smog. They love the car, but they hate the smog. But no, they hate the car, right? Because they hate the road. They hate the fact that you had no, they hate the car, right? Because they hate the road, they hate the fact that you had to pave something, they hated the mining that went into the car, the transportation that went like all of that impacted nature. So the whole modern green movement is an anti-human impact movement, which means it's an anti-human movement. And so our whole obsession is how do we eliminate all of our impact? And that's why we ignore the benefits.

Because they're not, if our goal is to eliminate human impact, fossil fuels have no benefits. Interesting. This is very interesting what you're thinking. I've not heard that before. It's sort of their way of thinking, but just getting it to the essentials of it. Because they say to us, be green, don't have an impact. We're like, oh, yeah, we think that we, we, we trans, we falsely translate it for them. We think, oh, you just want clean,

air and clean water. But that's how what they said. They said minimize all impact. All human impact. So it's, it's an anti-human thing. It's, you have to get, not you, but people have to get out of their head, the idea, the environmental movement is about loving nature because it's not about, like, if you love nature and you want to enjoy nature, like, say, I live near the beach in Luku, in a beach, California, like, that has a hell of a lot of impact involved in living near the beach and enjoying the beach. Including just having enough industrialization where you can live near the beach and you can get resources there, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's really about a hatred of human impact in particular, because do they hate beavers building a dam? No, that's great. A bird building in a nest, that's great. That's natural. A human building a home? No, that's impact, that's natural. A human building a home? No, that's impact, that's bad. So all impact is good, except human impact. So the way I think of it is like every, all impact

is good, except the impact of the human race. And so I call it human racism. That is what it is. It's a deep, and it's, it's very analogous to the racism that we think of. Except in a sense, it's worse. I know, racism is evil, but it's, the regular racism we think of as somebody is saying like, one, you know, people of different kinds of skin color than I am usually, they are not as human and therefore as good as I am. And so that's evil because it's false.

But this is saying that everything human is bad. So you hate the whole human race. But that is a real motive. And you see it with some of these designated experts historically who will say occasionally say things about, you know what, we shouldn't use technology. Or we need a lot, sometimes here we need a lot fewer people. Which that means I want to kill a lot of people,

like there's no where, like Michael Mann, I've been picking on him deservedly, but he'll say stuff casually such as, yeah, you know, the world's, it's carrying capacity, which is a term for like how many people that can or should hold. It's like more like a billion people. It's like, what?

A billion. A billion people. If I was like, that's like me saying that carrying, we have another person's room. The carrying capacity is one person. It's like one of us need to die. But I'm just pointing out there are these glimmers of this anti-humanism when I'm exposing its essence, but you see these examples also when they say humans are a cancer. You'll sometimes hear that where a cancer. Sometimes you'll see these images of its an earth and it's got like a thermometer

on it like it's sick. Like we've made the earth sick. So again, it's the earth is the superior god-like being and we are the evil that impacted it. And what we're supposed to do is leave it the way it is that impacted it. What we're supposed to do is leave it the way it is and not impacted. And that is a, you know, I'd say evil idea, anti-human idea, kind of a primitive religious idea, and it is but it is a dog. It's the dominant way of thinking about our relationship to our environment and in society today. Yeah, it sounds like they wanna eliminate human existence. You know, if somebody came to you and said, like, hey, you know what, I'm part of the green bear movement.

So I wanna eliminate bear impact. Wouldn't you think they just wanna kill all the bears? Yeah. So I think it's the same with the humans. Let's go through some of these designated experts that you speak enough, starting with Paul Ehrlich from Stanford. There you go. There you go.

And think I'll say about designated experts, I think just one thing that's important is, we're told the scientists or the experts say, we need to get off false, we're causing climate catastrophe, we get off false, we need to get off false appeals. It's important to know that we do not have access, certainly the typical person does not have access to the actual experts in the relevant fields.

Like in this case, it's experts on climate, experts on pollution, experts on energy, and in particular what I say experts here, I mean researchers. So the people who are actually looking at the data who are actually studying it, like the decisions we are making have to involve knowledge discovered by thousands and thousands and thousands

of actual expert researchers. And so what we need is we need a system that somehow takes what the best people have found and then helps put it synthesize it so that it's more compact and then disseminate it, you know, synthesize it so that it's more compact and then disseminate it so that we have access to it and then somebody helps to help us evaluate what to do about it. So I, in the book, I have this detailed discussion of what I call the knowledge system and the key thing about it is this is the system that produces these expert, allegedly expert

conclusions. So it starts with the researchers, then there are the synthesizers. So the synthesizers in climate would be something like the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So their job is to take all the climate research and put it together in an accurate way where the most important stuff is revealed. And it's important that even if all the climate researchers

are right, they can do a bad job and give a distortion of that. And that actually happens, which we could go into. And then the disseminators are the people who take kind of those synthesis, those can even be thousands of pages, and it's the New York Times, the Washington Post, they're the ones who tell us what are the major scientific developments in the field. And then the evaluators are the people or institutions who are helping us decide, OK, now that we know this, let's say we knew that fossil CO2 emissions from fossil fuels were increasing drought, which I don't think is true. But let's just say we knew that.

The evaluators tell us, what do we do about that? And a good evaluator would tell you, you need to look at the benefits of fossil fuels along with this, right? You can't just look at this negative on drought. You have to look at the positive on drought and the positive of everything else. So the key thing to realize I'm going in this whole song of dance is the system that tells us the expert evaluation of what to do.

It can be wrong in four ways. So the researchers can be wrong in different ways, but especially the synthesizers can be wrong, the disseminators can be wrong, the evaluators can be wrong. And so what I've argued so far is that the people telling us to evaluate things, like evaluate what to do, they've been ignoring the benefits, and that's a total failure. So even if they're read about everything else, all their conclusions are worthless

because they're ignoring the benefits. And so to go to the designated experts, the designated experts are really the representatives that the knowledge system selects to help us put everything together, to help us evaluate what to do based on the knowledge of the fact. So take Paul Ehrlich that you mentioned, he is the number one designated environmental expert of the last 50 plus years in terms of the society, his status in the society. So from the 60s to the present, he has listened to in terms of, hey, what do we do about these

issues that affect our environment? And so I point out in the book, he's got a 50 plus year tracker, could have been 180 degrees wrong about everything. So he predicted a population bomb in the 60s, as in we had too many people when there were fewer or I think than four billion people. Now we have doubled that, and the world is better fed than ever. But he's predicted a pollution would be so terrible, it just kills so many people. He was involved in predictions of catastrophic global cooling, then mass death from catastrophic global warming. One of his allies, his close allies, you might ask about as a guy named John Holdren,

who was a close collaborator of Erlix, and he became rewarded for his great scientific work by becoming President Obama's chief science advisor. So I'm being a little sarcastic with great scientific work because in the mid-80s, he predicted that a billion, up to a billion people would die from climate-related causes due to fossil fuels by 2020. A billion? Yeah, and we're recording this in 2022. So from famine, but the world is better fed than ever in climate-related disaster deaths

are at an all-time low. So he was 180 degrees wrong. I realized when I was writing this book, we don't even have a term until now for how wrong these people were, because not just completely wrong. I realized when I was writing this book, we don't even have a term until now for how wrong these people were because not just completely wrong. They said the exact opposite of what happened. That's why I call it a 180 degrees wrong because their exact opposite direction was the truth. But yet these people are considered the experts. So the system is telling us, hey, listen to these guys, right? They won't lead you astray and yet among other things. So the system is telling us, hey, listen to these guys, right? They won't lead you astray. And yet among other things, so the two things about them is they deny the benefits of fossil fuels. And they can task what I call catastrophize the side effects. So if you take something like warming, what happened there is we did cause some warming, but in general, they predicted way more warming. And in particular, they predicted way more damage from warming and no ability of us to master warming.

And that was just totally wrong. So these designated experts, this is the point I make in chapters one and two, they ignore the benefits of fossil fuels, and they don't just only focus on the side effects, they catastrophize the side effects. They wildly overstate the side effects, and catastrophize the side effects. They wildly overstate the side effects. And this is why you get these crazy predictions that the fossil fuels are going to ruin the world. You've gotten these predictions 50 years, and they've made the world incredibly better. Yeah.

Who's designating these experts? Well, so it's, I call it the knowledge system, which is that there wasn't a good term for what this is. So it's the, the institutions that are charged with giving us usable expert knowledge as a general public. So for instance, take, take Paul Erlich, like he will be cited in major newspapers, you know, in the popular media, even as an example, I cite of his dominance, he was on, I think over a dozen times, the Johnny Carson show, which just shows how, you know, he's the New York Times will feature him on something. And, you know, it's the people that we hear from a lot, but it's really the system of, and usually that particularly now there's a whole reason why I think it's more uniform than it used to be. And my theory about this is that it's because government controls so much of knowledge today, particularly research, so much research academically

is funded by government. And that tends to lead toward a monopoly type of thing versus competition. So whereas in the past, we might have had more competing knowledge systems, there's really one mainstream knowledge system that's telling us, that's why everyone in lockstep is saying, let's go net zero. That's, that's, there's this global knowledge system and let's all listen to the UN Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change and we all agree on this. So it really shows that there is this establishment and you look at all the corporations, the financial institutions, the governments, they're all these unanimous type conclusions. And it really shows this monolithic thing. And it's why in this book, I spend a lot of time showing that the knowledge system and its designated experts are totally bankrupt because it's very legitimate for people to want to rely on these things

because expertise is very important. You know, you know, just think about military expertise. Like, you need real experts there. Just imagine it's just like Joe Blow, you can sold him about what to do about weapon. It would be totally insane, right? You need expertise. But there's this whole challenge of how do you get really good expert guidance? And it's a very hard problem.

But people respect expertise, and I respect expertise, but it's always possible that the system is malfunctioning. And I spend a lot of time proving, and I think I've proven 100% that the system is malfunctioning, because above all, the system ignores the benefits of fossil fuels. And yet the benefits, I make the point, the benefits of fossil fuels are literally a livable planet for humans. Because without fossil fuels, not many people can use machines to improve their lives and be productive and prosperous.

So without that, we have to live on a natural planet. And the natural planet is not abundant. It's very deficient in terms of resources, including food and water. And it's not safe, it's very deficient in terms of resources, including food and water. And it's not safe, it's dangerous. So basically, fossil fuels have taken a naturally deficient and dangerous planet and made it unnaturally abundant and safe. And if the price of energy goes up enough, then you start to regress toward a natural way of life where most of the work is being done by manual labor instead of by what I call machine labor. Having all these machines produce all this value for us, which is the only way to live.

Yeah. Is having machines do a lot of work for you. Yeah. I'd like to go into nuclear. Okay. Go on, talk a little bit about nuclear, but let's take a quick break real quick. Okay. a little bit about nuclear, but let's take a quick break real quick. Okay. All right, Alex, we're back from the break and we're gonna go into nuclear, but one thing that did wanna ask is,

when did global warming become climate change? When did that switch end? I don't know, this is as much of a smoking-gun as people. I though it's interesting in the popular language because the in the academic world climate change was around for a long time. So the main group that's supposed to synthesize all the knowledge is called the intergovernmental and climate change. And it's been called that since the mid 80s. Okay. But so but there has been a switch in the popular terminology right from global warming to climate change.

And I think part of it was there was a period where warming had slowed down dramatically. And so what they wanted to focus on was the alleged other negative consequences of warming, such as storms and floods and all that. And as I said before, it's very implausible that everything would get worse. But nevertheless, that's so climate change evoked a fuller range of negative things versus global warming.

It's not even clearly negative, right? Because it could be positive, depending on how much it is. So I think in general, we've seen, and here's where the real, I think, evil is, is that we've gone from climate change to climate emergency, climate crisis. And that's particularly dangerous, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to build into the words that we use, a certain evaluation that is controversial and that is actually false. Because if you say, like imagine we're just talking

about the situation, we say, hey, like Sean, hey, what do you think about the climate emergency? You've already, you've already, you're already assuming that there is a climate emergency and you don't have to argue for it. But as I've pointed out, we're 50 times safer from climate-related disaster deaths, you know, then we were 100 years ago. How can that be an emergency? Yeah.

Is there any emergency where your 50 times better off? No. No, so it's actually, I use this term in fossil future, it's actually, we're actually in a climate renaissance. So if you want to argue that it's going to get worse in the future, that's hypothetically plausible, right? argue that it's going to get worse in the future, that's hypothetically plausible, right? But you can't say it's worse in the present. And one thing to think about is anyone who uses the term climate crisis or emergency to describe the world now is ignorant of the present or in denial of the present. Or this is what

I really think is happening. They're not looking at the present from a prohuman perspective. They're looking at it from an anti-human impact perspective. So they think that climate is terrible today, not because it's deadly, because it's less deadly overall, but because we impacted it. So again, the goal is not advancing human flourishing, because if that's your goal, then climate is better than ever today. But it's eliminating human impact, in which case your goal, your view is that it's worse, even though we're better off.

You have a chart too that shows how it's safe for 50 years later than it was. Yeah, over the last 100 years, it's just like, you start here this decade, this decade, this decade. If you have that, I wanna put it up. Yeah, we have all of them, so I'm gonna send you just all the charts in up. Yeah, we have all of them, so I'm going to send you

just all the charts in the book, and you can use any of them. Perfect. Yeah, so it's very... So I would say that the climate change thing, the other thing about climate change that's bad as a term, is it's a deliberately ambiguous term, so it's not clear about the cause of it. Is it man-made, or is it not man-made?

It's assuming that people are using it as man-made, but it's not clear as man-made. But the main thing is it's way too vague about degree. Because climate change, as such, isn't even necessarily bad. We could have a good climate change, and it could also just be a modest climate change, even if it was negative, that was pretty trivial to deal with if we can master climate. Like let's say you had you know 10% more hurricanes, just like, okay, that's a change, but it's not that big a deal. But what they want to do is they use climate change. They want it to be okay. It's definitely man-made

but the worst part is they want us to equate it with catastrophic climate change. But that wasn't working well enough, even though it was working way too well, in my view. That's why they started with climate crisis and climate emergency. And you have these organizations like I think Scientific American was one of them. And they're like, we're just going to use the term, I forget it was them, there's a lot of organizations that do this in the Guardian does this too. We're going to use the term climate emergency. So it's just really devious. Yeah, it is.

You'd mentioned 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. Yes. What is the other 20%? So, you've got... So fossil fuels are oil, coal, and gas in that order. So that's 80% among those. And then you have hydro and you have nuclear. Those are the big ones after that.

And the other one that goes along with that, but it's a little more controversial, is biomass. So biomass is, like from recently living biological, it's a matter, so you can think of it as wood, animal dung, but also things like ethanol, like any form of recently, usually it's usually as a plant, although it can also be something like animal dung.

But that is a lot of that is in the poor world, and it's very low quality. And the reason that that's used a lot is because when you're really poor and you want energy, what you do is you just take whatever is lying around. And just like primitive people did for, you know, forever, but the problem with those forms of energy is the scale of them is very, very limited. So you think about if you're just relying on your local forest for heating, let alone electricity, you're just going to run out of wood, which is what happened historically, which happens

in these places, or you're relying on the local animals, like their dung is going to, that's not going to power very much, leaving aside the fumes and how disgusting it is. And one third of the world is using water animal dung, you know, is a major source of fuel for heating and cooking. So this just shows how much more modern energy. But yeah, so hydro and then hydro is great. And it's for electricity in particular, that's what it produces, but it's location limited. So you need the right bodies of the water, the right type of land to have, so if you're

in Washington state, that's great, but if you're in Nebraska, it's not great. It doesn't work. So the thing about nuclear, even though I think right now statistically it's a little bit after hydro in terms of percentage, it has the potential to scale around the world because the raw materials involved in nuclear, namely, usually some form of uranium, but it can also be thorium. Those can, there's so much of that stuff, and the way the plants work, they can be used anywhere, basically.

So nuclear is the real alternative that has the most ability to scale around the world. That can actually produce reliable slash on-demand electricity. Solar and wind earn a different category, because they don't produce reliable electricity. They produce intermittent and unreliable electricity. So they, given today's technology, are necessarily parasites on these reliable.

So that's, I often call them unreliables, which those, those activists hate that term, just like they hate human racism, but they hate it because it's, it's, it's stings because there's truth in it. Yeah. Should we be looking more at nuclear? Yeah, so the great thing about nuclear, we know...

So if we think about wire... There's this really good question, wire fossil fuels so good. Why do we use these things? So we use 80% of the world's energy. They've had 100 plus years of competition. Why are we still using these things? And one of the basic reasons is the nature

of the material is quite distinctive. So fossil fuels, they have these attributes. They're naturally stored, concentrated and abundant sources of energy. So by stored, I mean, like you think about, this is true of a piece of wood as well, but of oil, it just sits there and then it's like a natural battery. And you can just deploy it on demand.

Whereas with the sun and the wind, you don't control them. You just have to react to whenever they are available. And if you want to control them, you need something like a battery, but then you have to build in that storage system because solar and wind don't have natural storage, but fossil fuels have natural storage, so that's really conducive to reliability and to low cost. On top of that, they have natural concentration, which means they take a large amount of energy and they can put it in a small amount of space, or sometimes in the case of natural

gas, it's not a small amount of space, but it's a small amount of mass. And so oil in particular is what's called very energy concentrated or energy dense, and that's why it's so good for things like cargo ships, airplanes, like things where you need a lot of power in a relatively small amount of space. And then also they're abundant, because if they weren't abundant, then it doesn't matter how potent they are,

you wouldn't have that much of them. So none of the other materials we think of for energy, the alternatives have this combination of natural storage, concentration, and abundance, except for nuclear. And nuclear actually, it has total storage, and it's much more concentrated than fossil fuels, like on the order of a million times more, even than oil. And in practice, like a thousand times more

in terms of what we can get from it. And then it's extremely abundant. So it has all of the markers of being a really scalable source of low cost, reliable energy. And we have a track record where it has been used to produce electricity relatively cheaply on the past. And we know that it has some versatility because we use it on things like aircraft carriers and icebreakers and submarines. So it has quite a bit of versatility. So it's kind of the obvious

thing to event, to supplement and then eventually replace fossil fuels because it has fossil fuels core attributes, but even more so. But what's happened is we've seen this in electricity is that the green movement, the same movement that claims to care about protecting us from CO2 emissions, has demonized nuclear, so they've falsely portrayed it as safe, even though it's objectively actually the safest form of energy, which I can get into, but just take it as they've made, they've definitely tried to outlaw it. And it's, I call it criminalized right now because there's so much regulation surrounding it and so much ability of activists to stop it that it's a lot like an illegal activity. So you just get the sense of where it used to take four years

to get one of these things done. It'll now take 16 years and maybe it won't happen at all. So you think about would you invest in, like if somebody said, hey, Sean, I've got, you know, you made this fortune on gummy bears. You want to invest in a nuclear plant, like maybe if it's four years, you would do that. But if it's 16 years and like Mario Cuomo, you know, in the past, one of the guys who canceled on the things are like, anyone can cancel it.

I would never invest in that. So they've made it this essentially criminal enterprise to the point where, and this like anyone can cancel it. I would never invest in that. Yeah. So they've made it this essentially criminal enterprise to the point where this is a crazy fact, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is the regulatory agency, which came about in 1975. So it's 47 years old.

Since it came into existence, there's not been not one nuclear plant that has gone from beginning to end under the NRC. Not one? Not one. And the closest ones are total price disasters. They're completely just off the charts.

They're not fully in place yet, but the ones that probably will get approved eventually are like just so far over cost that nobody would pursue them. Why are they so against? Why are they so against nuclear? Well, the state of the reason is the safety, which that I think anyone with common sense should think is absurd because we know we have a lot of nuclear on the US. We're not dying from it, right? There are clearly ways to do it safely. And if you're being told that CO2 emissions are a threat, you and are so dangerous, they're going to destroy the world. We've talked about why that's not true at all. But if you thought that, then wouldn't you be willing to, to take

some risks to do it? Like, why aren't you willing to split it at them? Or for that matter, dam a river. It's a similar thing with hydro. And I think hydro is the easier one to explain. Because they'll say, well, we can't do hydro because it interferes with free-flowing rivers, which basically means it impacts the river, it impacts the species and the river. So again, it's this idea that our goal is not to advance human flourishing on Earth. It's to eliminate human impact on Earth, and so that gets the priority. So that's why they want to stop the dam, because the dam has impact, and the goal is to eliminate impact,

not to advance human flourishing with the dam. And nuclear is the same thing, but in a slightly different way. It's viewed as unnatural to split the atom. Like, just we shouldn't be playing with these forces. It's like, that's wrong of us to do. And in particular, people don't like the waste. The activists don't like the waste. Not because it's really dangerous,

but because it lasts a long time. And the idea of human beings creating something that lasts a long time is extremely offensive if your philosophy is that human impact is evil and should be eliminated. So it's really this anti-impact philosophy that is leading to this hostility. Because in practice, nuclear is actually the safest

form of energy. And the reason is very simple because it cannot explode. But that's a huge reason, it's not the other reason, but it's so you look at most of the dangers from energy that can really hurt you if you're operating at earlier a neighbor, involve some sort of explosion or fire, some sudden deadly release of forces that you don't have time to react to. So you know, you can have natural gas explosion, which this happens, unfortunately, and kill a bunch of people, right? Even solar panels can catch fire, and that causes all sorts of things. You can have like solar-based fires, or that they can help cause fires. But nuclear is great because it's this one centralized place, and it can under very adverse unusual circumstances, it can overheat, and that causes what's called a meltdown.

But that's a very, very slow process that gives you a lot of time to evacuate and react to. And that's why in the civilized world, we don't have any deaths from radiation, like, you know, certainly amongst civilians from nuclear and even insurmable, which was a reactor, it was basically like a weapon that they designed, which is as nothing. They basically just designed something that we would never allow, we never considered allowing. talking about even, not even 10,000 deaths by almost any estimate. So consider this is by far statistically the safest form of energy, even if you included Chernobyl, which you shouldn't, because it's a totally different category. So it's all about this view that human impact is evil, and nuclear is offensive because it involves these kinds of impacts. And the other thing, and it's guy Michael Schellenberger,

again, a friend of mine who's running for governor in California, he makes the point also that the Greens don't like it because they don't want abundant energy and they don't want abundant and clean energy in the society because they want, because they know that'll mean a world where humans have a lot of impact, because they don't want us to have all the energy

to impact the Earth. And so they don't solar and wind is more appealing because that's gonna lead to a more natural and poor and poor life. Interesting. So do you think we should be using, you think we should be using the fossil fuels to go more towards nuclear and hydro? I would put it as chapter 10 of the book. I think we should policy wise focus on freedom. Like, I don't think that I'm not coming with some, I joked before that Biden had some vision for the grid,

but I don't believe in politicians or really any individual having a vision for like a whole economy. You can have a vision for a company or product, but the key thing there is it should be voluntary. So you can make suggestions, but you actually have to offer it freely. So my view is not that, oh, fossil fuel should be 70% by 2040, and here's my plan. No, I think people should be free to produce and use whatever forms of energy they want. So long as there are reasonable laws protecting us against different kinds of real endangerment from others.

So like different kinds of levels of pollution, but also just certain kinds of accidents and dangers. And like you need certain laws for that kind of thing. But basically you want free market competition among all sources of energy. And I think that that includes decriminalizing nuclear. So nuclear is the biggest victim right now of the green anti-impact policies. In my own work, I do a lot of work with elected officials. I'm working on an energy freedom platform later this year, which people, whenever it's

out, they can go to the website, energytalkingpoints.com, which has a lot of other resources. They'll see, we've got this platform, and one of the major planks is decriminalize nuclear. For me, it's all about politically, it's about freedom. And then energy wise, it's about having, I call it ultra cost effective energy in the book, but low cost, reliable, versatile energy for billions of people and thousands of places. And then in terms of like the morality, it's all about advancing human flourishing on earth. So fossil fuels, it's given the realities of energy, we need a fossil future to have global human flourishing

going forward, but the way to achieve that is energy freedom. It's not, I'm not somebody who wants to impose fossil fuels on the world, I want to liberate the world to enjoy all forms of energy and fossil fuels are crucial and because fossil fuels are attacked now, that's why I'm defending them. If we had a free market energy, I absolutely would not write this book.

Well, I appreciate you coming in and educating us on all this. Yeah, my pleasure. And if you had three people to recommend to come on this podcast, who would it be? Wait, recommend that they come on this podcast. Yes. You mean because you're a-

Regardless of the energy. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I thought I meant just to be a good guest for you. Three on energy? On one. Just one. OK. Just one.

You're going to capture my bias toward myself with this question. I mean, honestly, my favorite person is I have a researcher in Germany who's like my secret weapon. He's not that secret anymore, but his name is Stefan Hanna. And I met him. I'm a big believer in just getting good at things and not getting credentials. So my official credentials, I have a BA in philosophy from Duke University and a minor in computer science, which seems to have nothing to do with energy.

And even in philosophy, like a BA is not impressive. But it's like, my goal is I just believe you should get good at things. And then the world will recognize that. You shouldn't screw around. If you can get good at something and you can get a credential and the credential you're not going to get as good as fast, you should just get good at it. And so Stefan is the ultimate example of that. I don't even know what degree he has. I don't care. I met him in a Facebook comment section in 2011 and I could tell this guy was smart and so now I hire him full time and his job is just to be on top of everything. And so he knows

way more than I do about the details. And so he's, and then there's another guy I interview. So basically one of the things I'm good at, I think, is just I had a vision for what kind of what book the world needed on energy. And I was smart enough to know that I on my own could not do it by myself. So I needed this researcher. And then there's a really good philosopher I used to work with, his name is Ankar Gautay. He used to work with me at the Iron Man Institute. He still works there, I don't work there anymore. But I got him to help me and he helped like so many of these ideas, he helped me refine. So those are sort of the two people I pick. And then another guy I would recommend as a third person

is just I would recommend Michael Schellenberger. So he knows a lot about energy. He focuses on other things. He focuses on homelessness and he's trying to become governor of California. But I think he really, he's a really fascinating example of a smart person who changes his mind over time, who seeks information and changes his mind, because he started out as a renewables activist.

And then he went to be very pro-newic clear, but still pretty hostile to fossil fuels. And then a couple of years ago, he came out and said and really started challenging climate catastrophe. And he's been one of certainly the top five people in the world who have been really challenging climate catastrophe and putting forward this view that you can believe that we impact climate, quote, climate change, but also believe that it's not a catastrophe and that the benefits we get from fossil fuels far away that. So it's a guy I really admire. And I think it's a good example of a thoughtful person, in a sense. I was brought up to think that fossil fuels were bad, but I was never like a green piece

type or something like that. Because again, I think I said when I was 18, or I might have said this offline, I learned that the green movements goal is to eliminate human impact on earth and that human being survived by impacting earth. And therefore, I realized the green movement is an anti-human movement, and I wanted nothing to do with it. So I had, that's the huge advantage I had coming into this stuff. I still was afraid of global warming slash climate change, and I didn't know about the benefits of fossil fuels

until, until basically 2007 I started learning. But I at least knew that this green philosophy was bad. And so I think that's what helped me be skeptical of it. And then see, oh my gosh, really everything they're doing is trying to eliminate human impact on Earth. And none of it is trying to advance human flourishing on Earth.

And the whole way they're distorting fossil fuels is really just ending up, gonna end up getting a bunch of us killed. And then make America in particular super insecure and really get us overtaken by China. And I think that will happen, but that's certainly what they're trying to do. Definitely a very good possibility. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I'm an activist, so let's stop it, but part of stopping

it, it's like if you see it and you take it seriously, then you have a good chance at stopping it. It's certainly not, certainly there are, there's a real set of possibilities where China goes the way it's going. We go the way we're going. Yeah, we could be overtaken and we don't want that world for ourself or our kids. No, not at all. But how do people find you?

not at all. But how do people find you? I'm not much of a guy on Instagram yet, unlike you who are a legend on Instagram. So, but I'm Alex Epstein, Energy on Instagram. I'm most easily findable on Twitter at Alex Epstein, just my name. Of course, the book is Fossil Future. You can get that anywhere and then, oh yeah, and then this website, energytalkingpoints.com, I highly recommend that. I created that first for elected officials, but now it's available for everyone.

So if you have any question about any energy issue or climate issue or environmental issue, just go there. It has a search function. You can type in basically any word and you'll see really good talking points that you can use and they're all really well referenced. Perfect. So, that's like, this is sort of like this, this is the synthesis of everything and it's the full master energy education to really arm you.

But I also like having these bite-sized things that you can just use on demand. You know, you're at the dinner table, somebody brings up something, just go to energytalkingpointst.com. Oh, perfect. All that stuff will be linked below. And before you head out, everybody pick up a copy of Fossil Future. That's linked below. And, man, I just thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate it.

That was super informative. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Of course, thanks for your service to our country. Thank you. And best of luck with the book launch. Thank you, and best of luck with the book launch. Thank you. you can count on from the awarded new Grand Cherokee to the capable 2022 Jeep Compass that Jeep lineup won't compromise on power, technology or comfort, delivering confidence and convenience

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