Last time we saw how technology allows us to use more fossil fuels and have a cleaner environment. Now let’s turn to the role of laws in protecting and improving environmental quality. The importance of thresholds One of the motivators of the technology improving environmental quality is having laws that protect individuals from having their […]
It is certainly true that fossil fuel use can cause significant harm to environmental quality, but as you can see from this chart, as fossil fuel use has gone up in the US, concentrations of air pollutants have gone down, which contradicts the catastrophic pollution narrative. We can use more fossil fuels and have a […]
Resources are things you can use. But despite the popular expression “natural resources,” nature gives us very little in the way of usable resources. It gives us raw materials but we need to use human ingenuity to transform those raw materials into resources. Human beings are not resource depleters, we are resource creators. That’s the […]
As we learned last time, the three alleged unique risks of fossil fuels are: catastrophic resource depletion catastrophic pollution catastrophic climate change In this column I want to briefly elaborate on each of those potential risks. The catastrophic resource depletion argument This argument claims that because fossil fuels are nonrenewable, because they don’t replenish automatically […]
In the next few columns we will be looking at concerns about the fossil fuel industry and how to discuss those concerns. A quick review So far we’ve discussed the unique benefits of using fossil fuels. The big idea there was that the fossil fuel industry produces cheap, plentiful, reliable energy on a scale that […]
A few years ago tech giant Apple announced that it was using 100% renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind for many of its power needs, including its data centers, and that 87% of its global operations were run on “renewables.” Now Apple says it that it is “globally powered by 100 percent renewable […]
On top of the many benefits that fossils fuels provide, including the ability to use machines to amplify our productivity and improve our lives and the ability to provide cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy on a scale of billions, we have yet another set of benefits. Our hydrocarbon world Using oil and gas, the hydrocarbon […]
Last week I gave a 5-hour workshop on How to Have Constructive Conversations about Energy. Here’s a clip where I discuss the biased thinking behind opposition to fossil fuels–and a simple but deeply powerful technique for framing a conversation to minimize bias. Please share the video. And if you’re interested in having me host a Constructive […]
The hydrocarbon industry has developed a highly resource efficient process to find, extract and harness a naturally concentrated, plentiful and stored source of energy. It’s the only industry that has come up with a process that is cheap, plentiful and reliable. To understand why that is, it’s important to understand what fossil fuels are and […]
Earlier we discussed that for energy to be useful, it must be cheap, plentiful, and reliable, and to be cheap, plentiful, and reliable, every element of the process to create energy must also be cheap, plentiful, and reliable. We saw how this can be difficult to achieve with some alternative energy sources, such as solar. […]
Let’s take a look at this in practice. Germany is considered by some to be the best success story in the world of effective solar and wind use, and you’ll often hear that they get a large percentage of their energy from solar and wind. You can see here on this chart how this claim […]
I am generally very excited about Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Unfortunately, the book’s treatment of climate and energy is deeply problematic. A few nights ago I recorded a 20 minute analysis [BELOW] of the climate section of the book. You don’t need a copy of the book to follow […]
Last October I gave the keynote speech at Energy Day, the most significant annual energy event in Peru. The event was hosted by the firm Laub & Quijandría, led by Anthony Laub, and a video of it is now available online. You can watch it here. During the speech I made an analogy I’ve never […]
I just got back to California last night after a packed week in our nation’s capital. Happily, it was by far the most impactful week I’ve ever spent in DC. The most exciting development during the trip is something I can’t talk about yet, unfortunately–and its outcome is uncertain–but there is a real chance I […]
A few weeks ago I was joined by my favorite energy economist, Michael Lynch, for a fireside chat hosted by Harvard Business School. It was a great discussion and the audience asked a lot of thoughtful questions. You can now view the video of that event: Mr. Epstein Goes to Washington I’ll be in DC […]