[MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] ALEX EPSTEIN: When I woke
up yesterday morning, I thought, hey, tomorrow,
I'm speaking at Google. And this is interesting
to me because it made me think, for some reason,
about what is the first time I heard about Google. And back then, what would I
have imagined speaking about? And it was spring of 2000 and
I was a computer science major at the time at Duke University. And I was in computer
science class, and I remember that
the TA just in passing mentioned this
thing called Google. And of course, at the time,
I was an avid AltaVista user because that was obviously the
best search engine, in terms of algorithm and scope. And I said, well,
what is that, Google? And then I looked it up
and I'm like, oh, wow, this is actually-- even
then, it was pretty amazing. And at the time, I wanted
to be a tech entrepreneur. And slightly after
that, I had decided I wanted to be a
practical philosopher. But under no
circumstances would I have ever thought that 17
years later, I would be this. So this is the
People's Climate March. This took place several
years ago, actually. And it was the largest
protest against fossil fuels, I think, in human history. And 100,000 people
were protesting against fossil fuels,
and I disagree with them very strongly, as
you might tell here. And so I flew over
to the east coast from Orange County, California
where I lived at the time, and I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. figuring out how to
print this giant sign, and I already own the cache of
I love fossil fuels t-shirts, so I was very passionate
about it already. And I went and I stood out
in the middle of Sixth Avenue while tens of thousands
of people walked by. But you can see this on a--
it's on a site called YouTube, actually. You can find if you search Alex
Epstein People's Climate March. So this is the last
thing that I expected. Many other things that I've done
are the last thing I expected. In 2012, there's a guy
named Bill McKibben, who's considered the world's
leading environmentalist by many people, and
he wrote an article saying that the fossil fuel
industry was public enemy number one. And the fossil fuel industry
said nothing in response. And I really like the
fossil fuel industry, even though I wasn't in
it and didn't even know anyone in it, at the time. So I decided as actually a
very poor person of the time, that I would get this
guy to debate me, because I was really upset. And so I offered him
$10,000 and he accepted. So he debated and it got covered
on the "New York Times" web site. Or I didn't really ever think
I'd make a "Rolling Stone" top 10 list, but a couple of years
ago I made the denier elite, so I was there with
the Koch brothers and assorted Republicans. And as you'll, see I disavow
this label of denier. But I had no
expectation whatsoever of becoming even really
pro-fossil fuels, but let alone a passion
that has consumed, so far, 10 years of my life. I didn't really--
I wasn't really that interested in
energy, but if I was, the two forms of energy
that I found interesting were nuclear and solar. Those seemed to be the future. But the idea of getting
excited about energy from three centuries
ago, coal or oil or gas. I mean, come on. There's nothing
great about that. I mean, maybe you tolerate them. But why would you get
excited about them? So what changed? Two realizations. One is that cheap,
plentiful, reliable energy is far more important to human
flourishing than I thought. That's one. The related one that has
to do with fossil fuels is it's also far more difficult
to produce than I thought. So cheap, plentiful,
reliable energy's far more important
to human flourishing than I thought and it's far
more difficult to produce and therefore to
replace than I thought. I mean, I had had a general
idea that energy was important, but until I started studying
the history of energy, which I ran into on a random
project on Rockefeller's antitrust case, until I started
studying the history of energy, I didn't really have a sense
that this is the industry that powers every other industry. So when energy is cheap,
plentiful, and reliable, and to the extent it's cheap,
plentiful, and reliable, everything else is cheaper and
more plentiful and reliable. And the reverse is true. Every penny energy
becomes more expensive, everything else
becomes more expensive. So it's like those
Walmart falling prices you've seen,
those things go down, or the pump at a gas station. It's like when energy goes
down in price, everything else, all things being
equal goes down. When it goes up,
everything goes up. And at the same time, when
I was studying the history, I realized that-- I started asking, well, why
do we use some forms of energy relative to others? Because it was just an axiom
that we use gasoline for cars. That's just there. And we seem to use
fossil fuels a lot. But I realize there
has actually been enormous amounts of competition
in the energy industry throughout its
history, and oil itself was the winner in a
competition of about six different alternatives. And the gasoline
car was the winner in a market that had
ethanol, which was-- Henry Ford's first
cars and ethanol car, and they had a battery
car, as we like to call it, an electric car. And what I saw
throughout history was there were lots of
ways of producing energy, but it was very, very
difficult to make it cheap, plentiful, and reliable on a
scale of billions of people. And so what this made me start
thinking about is when we're talking about replacing
fossil fuels or the problems of fossil fuels, is
it possible that there are some unique benefits
of fossil fuels, in terms of being
cheap, plentiful, and reliable for
billions of people that we're not appreciating or
taking into account, just as we have to take into account any
potential unique negatives of fossil fuels? But those I had heard about. And so I started studying
the energy debate. I got interested in this
question of what form of energy is really best for human
flourishing, or what forms or what policy? And I observed-- I
thought, and this is from a philosophical
perspective, I thought there are three
big problems with the energy debate, as it stands. One is that it's biased. And what I noticed was certain
with certain forms of energy, all I ever heard was
positives, that would mainly be solar and wind,
and then with others, all I ever heard was negatives. But then when I researched the
different production processes, I found that it's actually
far more dangerous to mine for the raw materials
in wind turbines, rare earth metals. So that doesn't mean that
coal is better than wind, but it does mean that we're
not looking at negatives of one and we are looking at
negatives of another. And if we're doing that,
how are we ever going to get to the right decision? So it would be like, for
example, with vaccines. If you just were making
a decision about, do I vaccinate my
child and you only looked at the
negatives of vaccines. You said, hey, vaccines
have side effects. And you didn't look
at the positives. Well, when would you ever
vaccinate your child? Well, never, because all you
could see were negatives. But if you looked
at both sides, you might come to a very
different conclusion. So we can't be biased
in our thinking. Again, this is not about
whether fossil fuels are the right solution
in a given context. It's about what's
the framework we're going to use to make
these decisions based on the current facts and
then as facts change. How can we have a
framework that adapts? The second one is that it's not
only biased but it's sloppy. So let's take the
issue of CO2 levels. There is a concern
that because CO2 as a warming agent of sorts,
it's a greenhouse gas, or technically, it's
an infrared absorber, when we increased the level
of CO2 in the atmosphere, we might expect it to
have a warming impact and that's something that's
important to study and to see how significant is this. But what I found is when people
were talking about CO2 levels, they talked about
it very sloppily. They would just say
things like, do you believe that climate
change is real? But that doesn't really
help me if I know-- I could believe that CO2
has some impact but not a significant impact,
or a significant impact but not a catastrophic impact. And that's going to make all
the difference in the world. We can't be sloppy. So for example, if you say,
oh, there's sea level rise. CO2 levels contribute
to sea level rise. Well, is it a one
foot contribution in the next century, as one of
the major UN organization says? Or is at 20 feet, as Al Gore
says "An Inconvenient Truth"? Those magnitudes make an
enormous, enormous difference. So to use the vaccines
example again, it would be like you're deciding
whether to vaccinate your child and somebody says to you-- and
you say, well, how significant are the side effects? And they just say vaccine
side effects are real. And you say, I know, but I
want to know the magnitude. And they say, what are you,
a vaccine side effect denier? Don't question me. Or maybe they would call
it body change, right? Are you a body change denier? Body change is real. And you think, but this is
not a helpful way of thinking. This is sloppy. What I want is I want
the full context. I want to know the
positives and negatives and I want to know
the magnitudes. So it's biased and it's sloppy. Now the third thing, and this
is the most controversial, and for me, the
most important, is that I think the debate
is extremely anti-human. So one form in
which I observe this is the issue of CO2,
greenhouse gases. You have many people
in our culture saying that this is the biggest
problem of our time, that we're increasing the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by producing the form of energy
that we dominantly produce. So you would think that priority
number one would be, OK, let's find the most efficient,
scalable ways on that premise to produce non-CO2
emitting energy. And then if you look, there
are two overwhelming forms of energy,
historically, that can do this in a relatively cheap,
plentiful, and reliable way, to some extent,
hydroelectric power, which can do it where you can
do it, but you can't you can't do it everywhere
but it's significant, and then nuclear power, which,
at least for electricity, theoretically, you
can do anywhere. And then I observe, OK, who
are the biggest opponents of these forms of power? Who are the people who
most want to stop them? And it's not the
fossil fuel industry. It's not Republicans. It's not even Donald Trump. It's the anti-fossil
fuel movement, the vast, vast majority of people who
are against fossil fuels in the public debate-- I know it's a little different
in the tech community-- are rabidly anti-nuclear. And when I looked at
their arguments, well they say, oh, we
care about safety. And I think, well,
wouldn't you be willing, even if there were
some safety risks, wouldn't you be willing
to accept those, if you could save the
world on your own premise? And then I look at
the safety stats and by far, the safest
form of power ever devised is nuclear power, which you
can ask questions about later, and the same thing with
hydro, and I realized on what's going on here. With hydro, people are using
explanations like, well, they're interfering with
free-flowing rivers, and with nuclear,
well, it's just-- we shouldn't-- it's unnatural. You know, it creates
this radioactivity. And you say, OK,
well, radioactivity exists everywhere. What's wrong that? And it's like, no, but
we shouldn't make it. And what I got is-- and
this is from philosophy-- the goal, then, the goal
that's animating this is not, let's do what's best
for human beings. It's let's be natural. Let's not interrupt nature. Let's be green. And I summarize it this way,
let's minimize human impact. So it seems like many people
when they're discussing this issue, they're not
trying to do what I would say is the goal, is to
maximize human flourishing, to come up with the best
policy for human beings. We're talking about
minimizing impact. And even the way we talk
about climate reveals this, because we don't talk about
climate danger or climate livability, which
are human terms. We talk about climate change,
as if change, as such, is bad. And so this is an
anti-impact idea. It's the idea that we
should not impact nature. We should minimize our impact. Not because it
hurts us, but just because we shouldn't do it. And it's important to make
a decision in our framework, are we prioritizing
human beings or not? And I think it's
important, then, to study. There are basically
two perspectives. So the minimum
impact perspective has a certain view
of the relationship between humans and nature. And I call it the
perfect planet premise. And the perfect planet premise
is that nature is, sorry, stable, safe, and sufficient. So by its nature, nature is
stable, safe, and sufficient, and it will take care of us. Mother nature is
really our mother. It will take care
of us if we just don't rock the boat too much,
if we don't change things, if we don't destabilize it. But we have this capacity
of changing things a lot, and we're generally regarded
as polluter parasites. When you hear people talk about
human environmental impact, they don't say-- they never think of
that as a good thing. It's always a bad thing. But you never hear anyone
talk about bear impact as a bad thing or beaver
impact as a bad thing. So human beings are considered
this uniquely anti-planet creature who just basically
we pollute it, the planet, and we plunder it. And if that's your
view, if you really believe that mother
nature is our mother and that the planet is
perfect the way it is, or the way it was
without us, then yeah, your goal should be let's
just not touch anything and it will be like
the Garden of Eden. But this is really how we
hear people talk about things. We talk about the
climate, as in, the perfect climate as the
one that we grew up in. Now, the perfectible
planet premise-- and this is my premise-- is very different. So this views the planet
as not stable, but dynamic, not safe but dangerous, not
sufficient but deficient. So it says the planet
is an amazing place. Its got amazing
potential, but without us with radically
transforming it, we're going to have life
expectancies of 30. We're going to be at
the mercy of nature. So our attitude needs
to be, let's perfect it. And that's what we do. We are perfecter producers. So we can make things worse. We can also make things
a lot, lot better. And so the goal of
someone on this premise is to maximize human
flourishing through intelligent transformation. So I describe my
framework, if you want two terms would
be full context. You want to look carefully at
the positives and negatives and then human flourishing. We measure goodness
by how much-- by maximizing human flourishing,
not minimizing human impact. And so my goal in
going into this was that I disliked the
whole framework of the debate on both sides, I should say. So conservatives are just
as guilty of this, often. So for example, when they
attack wind turbines, what's the number one
argument they give? Is that it kills birds. OK, but if by putting up
a lot of wind turbines, we could save the earth
from ecological apocalypse, we should be willing to kill
a lot of birds to do that. And cats already
kill a lot of birds, so it's not like killing birds
is the end of the world, right? Now, the American Wind
Association points this out, and they're right to point
that kind of thing out. So you just see that people
aren't on a pro-human premise. Now, my goal was I
want to understand, from a pro-human, full context
perspective, what's actually good for human flourishing. And to do that, we
need to look at both the potential unique benefits of
fossil fuel access, fossil fuel energy, and that includes
access to energy, and it also includes
maybe CO2 could have some benefits, and then
potentially unique risks, the risks of CO2 pollution
and then depletion. So running out of them or
running out of other resources. So I'm spending a lot
of time on the framework because I think that's what's
most distinct in my viewpoint. And I actually think that if
everyone used this framework, my conclusion would be
relatively uncontroversial. So I think actually
what the problem-- my disagreement with
the debate is not that I have different
facts but that I have different framework. And in fact, my book "Moral
Case for Fossil Fuels," is the only book that I'm
aware of in the field that only uses first hand data. It has no quotations
from experts. It has no one else. It relies on nothing but
analysis of the data, all of which can be recreated
at, for anyone who's watching online, moralcaseforfoss
ilfuels.com/data. For So you can see
all the data sources. Now, so let's go through unique
benefits, potentially unique benefits, and then unique risks. Now, one counter
might be, well, there are no potentially unique
benefits to fossil fuels. And this poster nicely
encapsulates that. So the idea is, OK, let's
say there isn't a climate catastrophe. Let's say we pass
mass restrictions on fossil fuel use. Who really cares? Because we'll ultimately
get just super, super cheap energy and
everything will be great. So I think that
this should at least be looked at with
skepticism, particularly with when people talk
about solar energy as free and forever,
which Al Gore does. Or they'll say
enough solar energy hits the surface of the
Earth every minute to power the whole world for a year. There's something
really off with this. Otherwise. This technology has been
around for well over 100 years. Why aren't we doing it? So you might think,
well, we are doing it. And I watched the
other day, I got a preview of Al Gore's movie,
"An Inconvenient Sequel." And from watching
that treatment, I would have guessed that
the world is at something like 50% solar and wind,
because there were just all of these inspiring
anecdotes about this place and this place and this place
and this place uses 100%. And most of the audience had
no idea what the numbers are. But the numbers
are solar and wind are, despite massive investment
and massive subsidy, 2% still, of global
energy production. And we can see as I
take the year 1980, because it's the year I
was born and looking back, my parents were
also told that they needed to get off fossil fuels. And if we look at
to the present, we're using way
more fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are actually
the-- in terms of actual production-- fossil fuels are the
fastest growing source of energy in the world. So there's something going
on there, unless you just believe there's some massive
conspiracy against solar and wind. Now, what you should
be suspicious of is the fact that
when people talk about replacing fossil fuels,
they only talk about solar and wind. They don't talk about
nuclear and hydro. And again, that's because
there's this anti-impact bias and solar and wind
are viewed as natural. So people are focused on, let's
use a natural or renewable source versus a non-carbon
source or a low polluting source. Now they asked me if
I had a video to show, and apparently I lied because
I said no, and then I did. So I will play the
role of Jimmy Fallon. No, I won't. There's a good video
which I cite in the book, and the basic idea
is it was in 2000, and remember, I wasn't
interested in energy. This really struck me that
he was on to something. He said-- there was this
article in "New Scientist" magazine that said, "New
Scientist" magazine just reported that cars can
now run on hazelnuts. And then Jimmy
Fallon said, yeah, that's reassuring,
because humans cost like $8 for a bottle this big. You know, what about
a car that runs on bald eagle heads
or Faberge eggs? [LAUGHTER] And I thought later,
wait a second, but isn't hazelnut
energy renewable energy? Isn't it renewable
energy, right? It comes from the sun. So why is it so expensive. And it illustrates
this profound point that we need to
understand to evaluate different sources
of energy, which is that energy is a process. Energy is not a single
material, it's a process. So when we talk about solar
energy or wind energy or coal, it can be misleading
because the question is, what is the entire process that
includes but is not limited to those elements that produces
the end product that we want, and maybe end products
that we don't. So we have to look
at the whole process, so all of these
different variables, from mining to
transportation to disposal. So when people talk about
things like zero emissions or no pollution,
usually they're only looking at one part
of the process. And when people have wildly
optimistic expectations about some new source of energy,
like, let's say, hydrogen, they have no idea what's going
into manufacturing the hydrogen fuel. They just think, oh,
hydrogen's in the air. It's in reality, so that'll
make it super, super cheap. So we have to recognize,
no, energy is a process. So there are different things
that can make a form of energy expensive. I think the biggest one and
the most problematic part of a process is if the
process is unreliable, if it cannot generate
energy on demand. And this is the problem that
solar and wind run into. Now, solar and wind,
it's very weird this classification
of renewables, because it, in our actual
law, usually excludes hydroelectric power, even
though that's plenty renewable if you think of
things in those terms, if you think of
things as renewable. So again, there's this
green bias that, oh, it has too much impact. It has nothing to do with CO2. But I think solar and
wind are properly-- I do not call them renewables. I call them
unreliables, because I think that is the distinctive
quality, because the energy we get is not on demand. And so what happens
is that, well, let's look at the
case of Germany, which is supposed to
be the model country. It's invested hundreds
of billions of dollars or spent hundreds of
billions of dollars in subsidizing solar and wind. Well, according to
today's rhetoric, that should make it
cheaper, because you will hear all these cost things. But those cost things
never take into account the fact that if you have
unreliables on a system, you need them backed
up almost 100%, and so that's why
Germany keeps building a lot of new coal plants. And so in practice, the
Germans pay three times more for electricity, sometimes
four, depending on conversion, than people in the US do. And that said, only about
10% of their entire energy comes from these unreliables. The more they use,
the more it costs. So there's an immense amount
of dishonesty and bias in the energy discussion,
because the privileged forms of energy, people who
aren't looking carefully at the process. And then the other
forms of energy, people don't appreciate. So I think that if you
look at the entire-- if you actually look
at the data, and again, this is on the website,
moralcaseforfoss ilfuels.com/data, if
you look at the data, you look at the different
forms of energy, I think what you conclude
is that fossil fuel energy, for the next several decades,
is uniquely good at producing energy on a scale of
billions of people. Nuclear power probably
has the most potential to, except for the green
movement is restricting it. And so one of the
huge priorities for all sides of the debate,
unless you're just a total-- unless the green-- unless being
green is really a religion, is to liberate nuclear power
and to allow advancement in that field and to also
allow hydroelectric power where it's possible. So I think those are
still the biggest ones, and of course, we
want innovation in these other areas,
but fossil fuel energy is uniquely good at this point. Now, this is
particularly important because it's not that we
have a world where everyone has plenty of energy and we just
need to substitute something. First of all, we don't
have nearly enough energy. If we had a lot more
energy, we could do things like desalinate sea
water and irrigate deserts and solve all sorts of problems. But there are 1.2 billion
people in the world with no electricity. Think about that. No electricity, no light
bulb, no refrigerator, no modern hospital, none. And then on top of that, there
are 2.7 billion people who have so little energy,
they're in such a state of energy poverty that
they use wood and dung to cook and heat their homes. So we have a world where
basically 3 billion people are wretchedly energy poor. So the energy question is not
just how to keep our energy, but how to produce
more energy, which means that, given fossil
fuels' unique ability to be resource efficient and
produce energy on this scale, it doesn't prove that they
don't have problems, or even big problems, but it does prove
there's a huge burden of proof in restricting the
use of fossil fuels. So if you talk about, hey,
let's tax them or let's-- as many people
advocate-- let's strive to get rid of 80%
of fossil fuel use, current fossil fuel
use by the year 2050, when there will be an
even bigger population. That is a really
serious thing to do. And when you hear those
things, don't think of it as, oh, yeah, it's just
sort of like buying-- I'm going to buy a Tesla. It is not even-- Tesla's a massively impressive
fossil fuel car, at this stage, in terms of the amount of
fossil fuels that go into it. And it's great. It's a great kind
of invention and we want to support those
things, I just-- we shouldn't be giving them
a lot of subsidies, I think. But this is just a-- you're talking about a massive
disruption in people's lives, particularly the poorest people. So at the very least, you cannot
advocate these kinds of things casually. Now, let's talk
about the concerns. So there are three
major concerns about fossil fuels,
catastrophic resource depletion, so running out of fossil fuels
or overall consuming more than we can. There's this idea of
we're at overcapacity, where we're wearing out
our welcome on the planet. Catastrophic pollution,
so by using fossil fuels, leaving aside CO2, there are all
these destructive byproducts. And then of course,
catastrophic climate change, which is that we're elevating
CO2 levels and other greenhouse gas levels to the
point where there's runaway warming and
catastrophic climate change. I want to focus on
the climate issue, because I think it's the
issue of most concern today, and I think it's also
the most plausible. The depletion issue has lost
a lot of steam in recent years because most of the
development people call fracking or shale energy,
which is that the oil and gas industry has been able to take
a useless rock that was known to contain some
amount of oil and gas but we couldn't get it out,
and to economically get it out. And so that, for decades
and decades and decades going forth, has alleviated
fears of running out of oil. And oil is the hardest
to replace fossil fuel. Coal, you have probably
thousands of years left, even of known deposits. But it is important,
I think, to understand the general mechanism. And this chart is
interesting because I think what it shows
is that as we-- it shows the consumption at the
bottom goes up a little bit. So what it shows--
and then proved reserves is basically
in inventory, so it means the more we
use, the more we have. I think this is a really
profound kind of thing, and what it illustrates
in the case of oil is that nature doesn't
just give us a lake of oil and then we're draining
it with a straw and then we're halfway through. Nature is full of
potential oil in all these different rock deposits,
but it takes human ingenuity to make it valuable. It takes human ingenuity
to find it, to get it, and to refine it. Back in the 1850s, before
the oil industry began, oil was a nuisance. It was useless. It was something people
sold as fake medicine or that got in the way when
they were searching for salt. So the principle, which
is really important, to having optimism about
humanity, including about energy, is that human
beings are resource producers or resource creators. A resource is not
something nature gives us. It's some-- nature
gives us a raw material and we make it usable. So aluminum is not
a natural resource because it's not
naturally a resource. It's naturally useless. Oil isn't a natural resource. Coal isn't a natural resource. Gas isn't a natural resource. Uranium isn't a
natural resource. All of these things
are resources only to the extent human
beings can transform them into usable things, and
the whole world is just a pile of potential resources. So we should never be worried
about running out of oil or running out of coal
or running out of gas or running out of resources. We should only be worried
about running out of freedom, because as long as we're free,
we can keep figuring out ways to transform raw
materials into resources, and as we progress with
the kinds of things that Google and lots of
other amazing companies do, our effective intelligence
just multiplies over and over and over so who
knows what we'll be able to turn into a resource? So that's a depletion one. The pollution one is
important because I think it's worth noting
that when people talk about the effects of
energy on environment, they only talk
about negative ones. So there's this idea
of there's clean energy and there's dirty energy. That's a problem, first of
all, because every other form of energy has
byproducts, so it's too binary in classification,
although some are cleaner or dirtier than others. But I think the thing
that's really missing from this narrative is that
energy has an enormous power to clean up nature. The environment we
live in is the cleanest any human being has ever
lived in, in history, on average across the planet. If our ancestors 300 years
ago, before we started using fossil fuels,
before we industrialized could see our environment
and we asked them, who has a better
environment, you or us? They would think it
was a joke, right? They were living in filth,
in human filth and animal filth, surrounded by disease. Nature doesn't give
us a clean environment that we then make dirty. It gives us a dirty
environment that we make clean. So when we're analyzing
the environmental impact of different forms
of energy, we have to look at both how it cleans
and how it makes things dirty, because if you say, oh, I don't
want this energy because it's dirty, but then you
lose the energy. So for example, there's a
reason for this correlation here, which is with
cleanliness of water and use of fossil fuels, which to
date, is most of energy use, because you need
water to purify-- you need energy to purify
naturally dirty water and to transport
it from where it is to where you need it to be. Now it doesn't have to be
fossil fuels, theoretically, but given that fossil fuels
are the most practical form of energy for billions
of people today, it does have to be fossil fuels. So when you deprive
people of fossil fuels, you deprive them of
things like clean water. Now, what about
actual pollution? I think this chart does a good
job of showing what's possible. Using technology, we can
reduce negative byproducts, and that's fantastic and we
should continue to do that. A modern coal plant, a
truly modern coal plant is one of the cleanest
sources of energy in history. What we've been able
to do is amazing, and what we can continue
to do is amazing. So we should absolutely seek
cleaner and cleaner processes. But this idea that pollution
is getting worse and worse, that's simply not true. Now let's talk about the
climate issue in the remainder and then we'll have-- we should have 15 minutes,
solid, for questions. So I think of-- because
I'm thinking of this all from a human flourishing
based framework, I don't think of the issue as climate change. I think of the issue as
climate danger, danger to the livability of climate. What I'm concerned about
is I don't want to-- I don't care how much
CO2 is in the atmosphere or what temperature
is on average, but I care if it's helpful
or harmful to human beings. So I want to be
clinical about that. My question isn't are we
changing anything, but overall, are we changing things
for the better or worse, and then, if so, how much? So I think we need to look at
three dynamics in fossil fuels. One is the greenhouse effect. That's the warming
the impact of CO2 and then its consequent other
impacts on the climate system. Two is the fertilizer effect,
so this is the plant growth promoting aspect of CO2. And then third is the
protection effect. When we choose to use cheaper
energy from fossil fuels, which gives more people
access to energy how does that help them protect
themselves from climate, which is really important, because
nature doesn't give us a safe climate we
make dangerous, it gives us a dangerous climate
that we need to make safe. And I have to admit, when I
started studying this issue, I was still operating with
some of the perfect planet premise in mind, because when
I guessed, if you would ask me, how much more dangerous
are we making climate? I definitely would
not have guessed that it's some catastrophe and
that the world is going to end. But I definitely thought,
yeah, we're probably making it more
dangerous, overall, with our use of fossil fuels. But it's worth it. It's more than worth it. I'm willing, you know,
because of the benefits of that affordable
energy to so many people. But then when I looked at
the data, I was shocked, and I was also shocked
that no one had ever presented this data,
because I think it's the most important data. And the data I'm
going to show you is the data on what are
called climate related deaths. This is a statistic collected
by the International Disaster Database, a nonpartisan
international organization, and they just they just
aggregate the best records they can find of deaths from storms
and floods, extreme heat, extreme cold, wildfires,
drought, everything that we care about from a
climate perspective, everything that in Al Gore's movies seems
to be getting much, much worse. So I was curious, how
much worse has it gotten? Because I would figure a lot. And when I ask people now,
they think in the millions, you know, probably millions
of people in the world are dying from storms
and floods and droughts. And there's truth to that. And the truth is that
that used to be the case. Millions of people a year often
died, particularly adjusted for population, several
decades in the '30s, you have around 10
million people a year die. And that's, I think,
near where we're starting to collect decent records. But I would doubt
anyone in this room can guess how many coin related
deaths were recorded last year. Now, here's the
trend, and then I'll tell you last year, because
my book was written in-- the data was from 2013
because it came out in 2014. And people think, oh, well, I've
heard these bad reports lately. You got lucky cause
it just got really-- it finally caught up with
us right after your book. So when my book came out,
it was around 30,000 climate related deaths. And you see the trend that
it's going down dramatically. We're putting more
CO2 in the atmosphere, but it's going
down dramatically. I'll explain why this is, but
it's important that it is, and it's important that
for several decades, people have been claiming
it's going to get worse. Bill McKibben, the guy
debated in the '80s, said that by now,
it's going to be like hell or a place of
a comparable temperature. John Holdren, Obama's
chief science adviser, predicted in 1986
that a billion people would die from
climate related deaths due to CO2-induced
famine by the year 2020. So three years from now. But look at how
this is plummeting. It's gone down, if you
average it over the decades, by rate of 98%. Now, last year, the
current collection we have is that 6,114 people
died in the entire world from climate-related
causes, 6,114. It's very hard to find any
problem in human and humanity that has that low of
a number of anything. I don't know stapler or
accidents or if they collect those, but it's really hard. So something is off here. So let's examine the effects. And I want to just show you
what the aggregate is, first. So the effects are-- this is the greenhouse effect,
which is supposedly making things really, really warm. The key thing we
have to understand is that the demonstrated thing
about the greenhouse effect is that it's a
logarithmic, which means a decelerating
or diminishing effect. Every new molecule
of CO2, when we isolate the greenhouse
effect in a lab, gets diminishing returns. It warms less than the last. So what you would expect
is that in the atmosphere, as we put more and more CO2
in the atmosphere, it'll warm but it will have
less of an impact. Now, there's a counter to
that by the other side, which I'll talk about in a second. But if we look at the
historical context, one thing that's important
is that we're not at an unprecedented
level of CO2. We're at quite a
low level of CO2, and we're at a low
level of temperature in the history of the planet. So when people talk
about oh, the planet can't handle this
or the planet-- if we had never-- if we were
at the highest point of CO2 and temperature in the
history of the planet, I think that would be
more of cause for concern. It would be unprecedented. But given that
we're at a time when we're at 1/20 the
historical high of CO2 and we're at a low
temperature, that's another reason why it seems odd
to just get completely bent out of shape about this. And you notice, also, there is
not a strong correlation at all between temperature and CO2. And actually, CO2
levels tend to go back. You ask on the question period. That's just some
historical context. And then if we look at,
consistent with this idea of mild warming, this is since
what's called the Little Ice Age, we've had warming
and you usually see the warming as
really big, but if you look at it on a human
scale, it's just minor. So there's such a thing
as having an impact that's not that big an impact. And it's important to
distinguish between that and runaway warming. So when people say, oh, this
is the hottest year in history, sometimes there's a
little fudging there. But if they say, this is the
hottest year in history, well, they don't really
mean history, right? They mean, OK, in the last
100 years that we've recorded. But that's not that surprising. If we were already warming
before we added CO2, and then we added
some CO2, yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, if I'm gaining
1/100 of a pound a year, it could be my fattest
year on record. But it still could be
not that big of a deal. Now, the issue is, are we
having some runaway effect? And this is definitely
predicted by certain models. But it is not the same
as the greenhouse effect. These are people who say the
greenhouse effect is compounded by what are called feedbacks. And my basic response to this
is that I am not a modeler. I have a little bit of
experience modeling, but the one thing I
do know is that models have to be predicted. And so if you cannot predict
the future with your model, then I don't believe the
model or the simulation. And so the basic problem
with modern climate models is they can't predict climate,
and they systematically over-predict it. So I think that we should
encourage people to come up with better models,
but we definitely can't make decisions based on
climate prediction models that can't predict climate. Now the second effect
we have to look at is the fertilizer effect. Now, this is an effect of
CO2 that's considerably more significant than the
greenhouse effect, I think, and it's
really important because what's happened
is, because there's more CO2 in the
atmosphere, there's been global greening around the
world, including crop growth, that there otherwise
would not have been. And so if we're
considering taking away fossil fuels from people,
that's one thing to factor in. But it's also, in terms of
how we think about things, it's very important that
we're never taught about this. The US government, I think,
only about two years ago even acknowledged this, even though
it was known for decades. So it's completely
unfair to not acknowledge important impacts
of fossil fuels because they don't
serve your narrative. And that's what's happened. So if people acknowledged
all the effects and then they had
different measurements or different estimates
than I do, that's good. I mean, we can debate that. But if they won't
even acknowledge the different effects, then I
think we have a big problem. Now, you might think
one of maybe the biggest potential negative if we had
massive warming was sea level rise, but when I look
at sea level rise, if you actually look at
the best measurements, sea level is mostly
a local phenomenon. So sea level rise,
sea level fall's primarily due to local
factors, things like landmasses shrinking or lowering or rising. The overall trends are
just not that interesting, and if we put it in
historical context, our sea level rise is far, far,
far slower than our ancestors just 10,000 years ago, and we
have far, far better technology to deal with. So I think if we say there's a
high threshold for restricting fossil fuels, I don't think
that warming based on CO2 even comes close to
meeting that threshold. I think we should be focused on
energy for billions of people around the world
and a lot more of it by liberating all
forms of energy, including nuclear,
including fossil fuels, including solar,
including hydro. So that's my base conclusion. If our goal is human
flourishing and if we look at the full
context, there's a strong moral case
for fossil fuels. But I do separate,
there's what's the framework we're using,
and then, what are the facts? And I've tried my
best to do both. The first one is the thing I
would most strongly argue for, and I'm interested in
any arguments against, and then the second, all I
can say is I've done my best. But all of those
measurements can be checked. And just one final
note about that, because that's
really my mission, is to get this human
flourishing based framework in the discussion. So far, my focus in
the last 10 years has been getting human
flourishing to be the guiding principle of energy progress,
but I think, and this pertains to whatever [INAUDIBLE]
does, it also needs to be the principle
of technological progress. You have a lot of
people interfacing with digital
technology, I think, who have this false
alternative of either, let's just use whatever
technology comes our way, or, this technophobia
of technology is ruining our lives. It's making us all into lab
rats and this kind of thing. And I think the
solution is we need to think of technology not as
binary good or bad, but as good when used intelligently in
pursuit of human flourishing. And I think there's a
lot of interesting work to be done there. If anyone's interested
in discussing that, feel free to email me. I'll give you my
address in a second. And then, finally, my
broadest project, next project is The Human
Flourishing Project. And the premise there is that
we need this kind of framework, this human flourishing
based framework in every area of life. We need to be really deliberate. What is the best outcome
for human beings, and how can we look
at the full context when we make any given choice? So if you want to learn
more about any of this and get on my weekly list,
you can email Google resources or you can email anything
else to alex@alexepstein.com or you can text
moralcase to 444999. Well, it's not how I expected
to be at Google, but it was fun and we have, I think, 15 minutes
for questions, so let's do it. [APPLAUSE] You have to go to that thing. AUDIENCE: Check,
yeah, is this working? First, thank you so
much for the talk. That was wonderful,
when someone presents in a concise way something
you have been thinking, so thank you so much. The question is, how do you
deal with all your acquaintances and friends who
oftentimes, nowadays, they just believe in something? They don't really want to see
that facts or think and debate. They just want to take
an opinion, take a stand, and that's it. ALEX EPSTEIN: What
would be an issue? Just so we can make it concrete. AUDIENCE: Well, about
the climate change, do you believe in
the climate change? ALEX EPSTEIN: Right. AUDIENCE: How do we
make them understand that this is the wrong question
to ask without offending them? ALEX EPSTEIN: Yes, right, right. So one thing you could do, and
I've tried this many times, so I can tell you how
it's worked for me. It doesn't. Is to say, you're thinking
about this all wrong, right? That doesn't -- especially
on dates, right? It doesn't work so well. I've been-- one of the-- if
you email me for the resources, there, I have some
resources on this. I've been studying this a
lot in the past couple years, and I call it
constructive conversation. So how do you have constructive
conversations with people? And what I found is that it all
comes down to getting people to agree to the framework-- excuse me-- but
in a natural way. So even you can do-- the way even I'll
do it in a talk is I'll just share
my own story and how I came to think about it. But let's say I'm in
Uber and the driver asks me, what do you do? And I say, oh, I
write about energy. And he says, oh, solar energy. This is what always happens. And I go, oh, it's interesting. I was-- my background's
in philosophy and 10 years ago, I got
really interested in energy and I wanted to know what is
really the-- if you look really carefully at the
pros and cons, what are really the best
sources of energy for people going forward. And I actually concluded
that fossil fuels were a lot better than I expected. And I actually think we should
use more of them, not less. That's what I call
an opinion story. Because nobody can disagree
that you believe it, right? They can think you're crazy. They can't disagree
that you believe it, and that's often a good
way of introducing to say, oh, I come to think
of it like this. Steve Jobs is actually
really good about this. In his public interviews,
he'll just often answer things in that-- he would answer things
in that kind of way. But one way or another,
you want to get clear really early in the
discussion, whether you say it as your own story or
whether you ask them, that they're going to
look at the full context and that human beings
are the priority. So often, I'll just
say, OK, would you-- whatever they say, I am
always happy to talk about it. So they're like, I want to
talk about how a human being-- how fossil fuel
executives are murdering little children and Belize
or something like that. So I go, great, let's discuss
the evidence for that. Or let's say, climate
change is doing it. Say, but, just so
we're clear, would you agree that when we're
looking at fossil fuels, we have to look
carefully at both the positives and
negatives and when we look at the alternatives? So we're not just going to
look at the positives of wind and the negatives of
fossil fuels, right? That would be biased. What's fascinating
about doing that, introducing the framework
into the conversation, is that 99% of people will agree
to it, but only 1% of people will practice it left
to their own devices. So almost in no conversation
will anybody really be even handed on their own. It's very, very rare. But if you make that
method explicit, they'll be much
more even handed. And if they're not,
you can play referee. Wait, wait, wait, I thought we
were going to talk about this. You didn't mention that. And the same thing is
true about being careful, you know, the, two feet of
sea level rise versus the 20. So more in my
resources, but the idea is to naturally frame the
discussion very early on. And it's shocking
how well that works. AUDIENCE: I'm from Brazil and
I just recently moved here. And in Brazil, I used to work
with indigenous communities, basically, how we
could work with them so then they can tell exactly
what's going on on the ground. And then working for
Google, I realized that I was working towards
making them doing something that I believe. And I thought that it
was wrong, somehow, because maybe they don't
want to have energy, right? So how do you measure
what are human flourishes? How can you tell someone else
what they need, for example? Because those
ingenious communities, they just want to get
their territory protected. OK, with technology
they might be able to tell the
world that a mining company is putting their garbage
or the waste in the river. But how to work with
those people that doesn't have energy,
to let them know that they need this energy? ALEX EPSTEIN: So then
there's the indigenous people issue is, I think, a more
general issue than energy. There's a question about to
what extent is political freedom a universal value. So let's say you have
a community where there are practices
that we would regard as barbaric, different-- and
this exists in different tribes around the world. I'm not saying this
one was, but things like female genital
mutilation and honor killings and there's all sorts
of practices that occur in different populations. And there is a
real moral question of, to what extent do
we believe that there are universal values,
including freedom, including respecting the rights of both
genders, all genders, right? To what extent is that,
and to what extent do we say, any group
can do whatever it wants to the individual? So I'm definitely on the
side of I'm an individualist. I believe in freedom. I care about the people
in those communities that I think are
being oppressed. That's not my focus here,
but that's my general view on that kind of thing. And the relationship
between this and energy is that, from
everything I've seen, there are billions of
people who want more energy, and we tend to-- I have a friend
who does a lot of-- he has a really cool business
enabling entrepreneurs in Africa, particularly Rwanda. We just talk about
this perception that, oh, people in
Africa, they just want to run around like
stereotypical tribes and they're not interested in a
lot of the stuff that we have. But I think a lot
of stuff we have in terms of freedom and energy,
those are universal values, and people want them. So I think that the global
thing I'm dealing with is not the relatively few
people who don't want energy, but it's the people who,
do and can't afford it. And so the key there is how do
you empower them to create more wealth and how do you empower
energy producers to create as much affordable
energy as possible? Because when you make
energy more expensive, the people who are most affected
are the poorest people, not Leonardo DiCaprio. I think there was one. You wanted to go,
right, in front of him? AUDIENCE: It's all right. I can go after him. ALEX EPSTEIN: No, ladies first. Come on. AUDIENCE: All right. Thank you. ALEX EPSTEIN: At the risk
of being chauvinistic. AUDIENCE: Hi, so
I grew in China, and I really agree
with your points and it's something I've never
heard during my whole time living in China. I'm wondering have you
thought about there's some way for your framework to
impact the thinking of people in China, especially
given the internet control and stuff happening? ALEX EPSTEIN: Well, I would
love to talk to you about it. I haven't had much impact there,
and I'm very interested in it. So if you have any ideas,
even if you don't know people, but of places to try to
impact, I'll definitely do it. But I'm glad you like it. There's lots of
interesting things. There's so many interesting
things being done well and not being done
well, at the same time. So it would be really
interesting to discuss things with people there. AUDIENCE: I see. Yeah, that's good to
know because my dad works in oil in China and
their industries put out high techs and very
restrictive restrictions. Maybe I will try [INAUDIBLE] ALEX EPSTEIN: Awesome. AUDIENCE: Something
can make an impact as [INAUDIBLE] who really
cares about my people in China. ALEX EPSTEIN: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you very much for coming. I appreciated how your
book affected my thinking. One of the things that I
think is very important is to be focused on
human flourishing, and I agree with
that central premise. And I also agree that
historically, fossil fuels have been a great driver
of human flourishing. But it seems like at
this point in time, there is a lot of scientists
that are telling us that in the net, going forward,
there are a lot of harmful side effects that the carbon
emissions are producing, are creating. So how do we know that just
because the historical trend is they've done more
good than harm, is still going to be
true going forward, in the face of all of
these scientists telling us that they're creating a great
deal of harmful side effects that we haven't
really felt much yet, but we will feel in the future? ALEX EPSTEIN: Really
important issue, generally, of how do we-- what is the relationship
between expert claims and our own thinking? And I think the
two prevalent ways of dealing with this are wrong. So one is just defer to
experts or even bow to experts or meet what media tells
us experts, so the people who say, well, if
97% of scientists agree, who am I
to question that? So that's one kind of view. And the other is that
consensus doesn't matter, experts are always wrong. And that sort of-- I think those are
both obviously wrong. So you need experts,
but historically, we know that experts are
extremely, extremely fallible and are often used
in very bad ways. In the field of
nutrition, for example, let's say, the government
sponsored Food Pyramid as a universal guide to food,
almost everyone agrees, OK, that was wrong. But at the time, if you go
back, now, we could say, oh, they were wrong
but we were right. But but we were them once. And in maybe one of
the worst examples is in the field of genetics,
people conflating evolution with eugenics and having
many leading thinkers and scientists in society
being in favor of things like forced sterilization
and different forms of racism and whatnot. And that was put forward
as the experts tell us. It was, I call it not global
warming but global dumbing. That was the theory, that,
oh, if you allow people to procreate without
sterilization, then all the dumb people are
going to sleep with each other and we're going to
have too dumb people. And so we need to clamp
down and the science says this is what we do. What we really need to do is
we need the proper relationship with experts, which, one basic
thing is that I describe it in the book as they should
function as advisers, not authorities. So an authority is
somebody you bow to. It has a religious connotation. An advisor is somebody who has
much more context in a given field but who gives you an
explanation, who gives you a very clear explanation
of what he knows, what he doesn't know,
what he sort of knows, what the strength
of evidence is. And that's what we really
need from the field of climate science. And unfortunately, we have
not gotten that whatsoever for various structural reasons. But whatever the reasons
are, we have not gotten that. And the whole sloppiness
issue is a huge part of it. We just have all these--
the public agencies say 97% of scientists agree that,
then it's not really clear, and then you look into it
and it's, oh, it's actually that of the mild amount
of warming that we've had, we caused over 50%. And then you see, well,
how can you prove that? And they have no
mechanism of proving that. And then you look into
97%, and then it's actually not anywhere near 97%. This is-- there's a
97% section in the book about the actual data here. So this is a field
where the actual state of knowledge in the field is
systematically mis-reported. And that's one thing. And then another thing
is, so how accurately is it reporting things badly? And then the other thing
is, how much do they know? So one question is how
much-- every field has a different degree of maturity. So physicists applying
laws of mechanics, or, let's say, applying
quantum electrodynamics have huge amounts of
precision at making lots and lots of predictions. Climate modelers have
no success whatsoever. That's not to demean
them as human beings. It's just they're not there,
just like economic modelers, generally, have
very poor records. So we need this
objectivity from fields to know how developed
a field is this, and what is the best of
what they can tell us? And so when you hear
when they don't do that, it's very, very hard
to operate, which is why I spent a lot of time-- so you're basically saying,
well, all these scientists say this. How can you say differently? And I'm saying, well,
I looked into it, and I don't think that they
say that, and to the extent they say that, they
can't prove that. So I think people need to
look into it for themselves. But one giveaway
in your question is that these scientists
say that it's harmful. So harmful is an-- harmful of any
environmental factor is always going to be a
combination of environment and technology, right? So a harmful storm
200 years ago could be a romantic setting
today, because of the state of technology. Right? A harmful storm then can be
just a nice rainfall now. There's just no-- so as soon as
they start talking about harm, and then they start
talking about policy, that shows that they are out
there overstepping their field and they don't even know nearly
enough about their field. So experts as advisors,
not authorities, and I know you said you
read the book, so I-- but I guess I can
say, read it again. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, there copies there. Are you giving those out
or are you selling them? AUDIENCE: Giving them out. ALEX EPSTEIN: Wow,
look at this guy. AUDIENCE: Thank you
for your work, Alex. I'm an energy engineer. I work in energy innovation. I want to build a little bit on
your last answer, in that we're in a place of great innovation. And I want to put a
little context to you and pose a problem that I
was recently introduced to. So our lieutenant
governor recently posed a problem, a
challenge, actually, to the power industry. So we have a problem
in California that renewable power is
around $0.15 a kilowatt hour. Fossil power is around
$0.02 a kilowatt hour. The problem we posed was, we
have a poverty rate of about high 30% in California. Lieutenant governor
placed some blame on that on the energy industry. Obviously, that poverty
rate with cost of living is, or, at least,
many people fall into that category in
this room, with the cost of living in Mountain View. But the challenge would
be how many people out of 30 plus percent
of Californians, maybe 10 million plus Californians,
by changing energy policies and adjusting
policies, et cetera, and getting rates down, how
many of those 10 million could you lift out of, would
you say, poverty? ALEX EPSTEIN: I think it'd
be hard to say, exactly, even for somebody whose
focus was being a number cruncher in that way, which
mine isn't, although I'm pretty good at telling
whether they're BS-ing or not, which is a lot of the time. But the mechanism of energy
being the industry that powers every other industry and
energy being a cost that exists and gets passed on
through everything else, that's just a fact. I mean, there's nothing
really to say about that except that's a fact. So if you can dramatically
decrease that, then it has all sorts
of positive impacts for local industry, which
will mean a lot more, all things being equal, a lot
more jobs for people and power costs. So the idea of energy poverty,
I don't know the energy poverty numbers for California, but I'm
sure they're high for the US. Usually people and
people in poverty are spending 10 plus
percent of their income on energy, which is a
very significant thing. One of my-- my main
researcher lives in Germany and he just tells me that they
have this term, energy poverty, that's come into common use
since solar and wind started becoming massively subsidized. And people have a lot more
trouble paying their bills, fewer people are
paying their bills. So it makes this difference. It will make a
direct difference, but the longer term
difference is even harder because of all the productivity
and job opportunity it creates. But I'll also say that many
of the same anti-freedom ideas that are infecting
energy in California are infecting the
rest of our policy. So I think we just have this
incredible thing in California where we've got this
amazing innovation and we have software,
digital technology industry that, because it's not
super, super physical, in so many ways, is not subject
to modern environmentalism and anti-development policies. And so it's been able to
proliferate and be amazing. But then we inflict-- many of the people
in this industry inflict anti-development
policies on poor people in this
country and around the world. And I think a lot of
people in California have contempt for
that and I think they have contempt
for the water policies and for us dumping
water into the ocean because a form of fish that came
into existence 30 years ago. And I think, in
general, we should think a lot more about that
30% of people, particularly if we're victimizing them,
which I think we are. All right. It's a wrap. I'll be here if anyone wants to
chat, but thank you very much. It was fun. [APPLAUSE]
