Fossil Future

Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

By: Alex Epstein

Narrated by: Alex Epstein

The New York Times bestselling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy

For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by 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.

And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right:

• Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts.
• Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low.
• Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the 1 degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows thanks to fossil-fueled development.
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  What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential.
  
  Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.

Strongly Recommend

If you’re a fan of Mr Epstein’s previous work, “The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels”, the beginning third of this book may feel somewhat repetitive as he recaps the many benefits that fossil fuel use has bestowed on humanity, the prime focus of his first book.

The back two-thirds are where the meat of Fossil Future are truly found. Mr Epstein presents the rosiest and most bulletproof version(often referred to as steel-manning, the rhetorical opposite of straw-manning)of the arguments used by fossil fuel’s opponents and climate catastrophizers to persuade us to limit fossil fuel use and invest in poor intermittent substitutes such as solar and wind. He then methodically peels away the layers of bad assumptions, compromised interpretations of climate data, and in some cases, downright falsehoods told by opponents of fossil fuels.

After finishing the book, I feel better equipped by the tools the author provides to re-frame the value discussion from an anti-human impact framework to a pro human flourishing framework. I hope to have more thoughtful conversations about fossil fuels with the people in my life that may oppose them, but with the goal not to win the argument in a rhetorical sense, but rather to happily welcome them into the tribe that values human flourishing, development and progress in impoverished countries, and ultimately a better, more livable world for our children.

Strongly Recommend.

comprehensive and illuminating

I found this book to be both comprehensive and illuminating. I appreciate the focus on both the costs and benefits of each form of energy and the focus on the broader goal of promoting human flourishing.

Civilization cannot exist without cost-effective energy

Alex provides an important lesson to those who value human life and happiness. Which Cannot be achieved without an abundance of energy. This book is a must read!

Essential reading if you claim an “open mind”

I know most of this but I’m in the energy industry. He did a great job with expanding my knowledge of certain specifics. I would like even more on desalinization and nuclear. I consult on complex drilling challenges all over the world. Demand is going nowhere. I have heard him on podcasts but his reading here has a bit of an annoying choppiness to the cadence. This and…….that. Makes it a bit odd sometimes but don’t let that minor criticism put you off.

Essential reading

Alex Epstein helps shine a light not only on the flawed thinking that underpins our contemporary climate knowledge system, but also on how we should think about the environment, carbon emissions, and more. He also shows the urgency of combating the prevailing knowledge system; it is literally a matter of life and death, particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable. If you are interested in climate / environmental issues, this is a must-read