Dear Friends,
Welcome to the September/October issue of BIC Magazine.
I recently went on a hiking trip to Glacier National Park in Montana. It’s about as pristine a place as you might ever imagine, with beautiful lakes, mountains, streams, rock formations and crystal-clear melting glacier water.
As much as I enjoyed the majestic, quiet scenery we had on the trails, my most grateful, peace-inducing moment of the trip was watching a group of about 75 people swimming near a large waterfall. Children were laughing and frolicking, with many — young and old — taking turns jumping off short cliffs into the deep, chilly water. People from many parts of the world were in one place, at peace with one another, enjoying unblemished nature.
As I soaked in the moment, I thought of the human flourishing I was witnessing. Human flourishing is a concept I was introduced to by Alex Epstein, in his book "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels." He expanded upon this in his most excellent follow-up, Fossil Future.
While I love the outdoors and believe strongly that portions of it, like our national parks, should be left untouched, I don’t see any conflict between the enjoyment and protection of the environment and the development and use of our natural resources, including oil and gas.
I value clean air, a beautiful waterfall, the majesty of the mountains, and I also value plastic, medicine, buildings, roads and technology.
Take the idyllic scene of the swimming hole in Glacier for instance. While this piece of nature was left untouched for people to enjoy, all who visited were able to leave the safety of their shelters, get into their cars and drive on paved roads to this slice of paradise. We all had full bellies and plenty of snacks we carried into the park.
If the entire natural world were left "unspoiled" by man’s developments, instead of frolicking, we would have all been spending our time gathering food, hunting and hauling water to our homes.
I’ve been to Tanzania and have visited the Maasai people where entire families live on little to no electricity. Men hunt all day every day with handmade tools. Young children drive cattle back and forth from home to a water source and work in small gardens. The women labor making clothing and gathering dung to burn for cooking. Billions of people around the world suffer and die early for lack of cost-effective energy.
Just as Glacier is unspoiled, so are power-scarce areas of Tanzania. Living in Glacier year-round without cheap and reliable power would be just as hard. The difference between flourishing and hard life is the widespread use of cheap and reliable energy that comes primarily from fossil fuels.
Take food for example. Unlike the Maasai, we have fossil-fueled machines to cultivate the land, fossil-fueled irrigation machines, fossil-fueled transportation machines to move the food, fossil-fueled refrigeration machines and more. Fossil-fueled machines help create steel and plastic from which this food-related equipment is made, as well as the tools that create the food-related equipment. Our amazing food production also depends on many fossil-fuel materials, including above all, fertilizer.
Fossil Fuel Use and Human Flourishing – the Big Picture
You get the picture. Modern food production uses fossil fuels for enormous human benefit. The same concept applies to the human benefit of our buildings, clothing, sanitation, medical care and so on.
Look at the charts above on global CO2 emissions, world life expectancy, world GDP per capita and world population. (These charts are used in both of Epstein’s books).
You will see that for centuries, these metrics of human flourishing remained flat, until they all began to rise around the same time — coinciding with the onset of fossil fuel use.
Regardless of what you believe about the impacts of rising CO2 levels on the planet, we must acknowledge that more human beings are flourishing in more ways than at any point in history. Fossil fuels are the root cause of this unprecedented level of human flourishing.
These charts demonstrate that at a minimum, whatever negative impacts rising CO2 may have on the livability of our world, those negatives have been completely overwhelmed by other factors.
The environmentalists — deemed "experts" by our media — exaggerate the potential negative side effects of hydrocarbons. They’ve always been wrong and are never apologetic about it. They also never factor in the benefits of hydrocarbons into any cost-benefit analysis.
Epstein doesn’t argue that the earth is experiencing a slight warming. He argues that the earth is safer and more conducive to flourishing because of hydrocarbons. He refers to this phenomenon as climate mastery. I highly recommend you read his work.
The goal should not be saving the planet from human beings but improving our world for human beings. If you want to make the world a better place, one of the best things you can do is advocate for more fossil fuel use.
Best regards,
