Alex Epstein | Why Fossil Fuels Are Good For Humanity & Green Energy Advocates Are Wrong
Alex Epstein is an American author and energy policy analyst. He is known for his controversial views on the use of fossil fuels and their role in promoting global human flourishing.
Epstein has written several books and articles on the topic, including "Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas."
He is also the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, a think tank that promotes the use of fossil fuels.
Visit AlexEpstein.com
Alex Epstein, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on One American Podcast.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So I've been looking forward to this conversation.
I heard of you from a very close friend who said that I should talk to you when I um started this podcast like a year and a half ago.
You read your first book.
And this friend of mine, Andrew, is probably in terms of IQ, the smartest person that I have ever met personally.
He's up there.
And so when he says I need to talk to somebody, I really take it to the case.
Tell him to email me.
I want to meet the smartest person.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I'll put you guys in touch.
Um, and so reached out to you, read through your book, watched a bunch of your interviews, and I know that you're just the man that I could talk to for hours and hours and hours, but I'll try to um make the best use of of this time.
The first question I want to ask you is how did you come across Ayn Rand?
Um so there are a couple of kind of preliminary comings across, like in high school, I sort of encountered the idea of hers, the the basic idea of like an objectivist philosophy and uh, but I didn't pursue it is the short version.
And then in college, so I went to Duke when I was a freshman.
There were some self-identified objectivists that I met, and sort of like your friend, they were very, very smart.
Like they had arguments that I hadn't heard before.
And I I was kind of more of like a conservative slash libertarian, and and like they had some of the straw stronger arguments for positions I believed in, and then challenges to my position.
So um, and at the same time, one of my best friends was reading Atlas Shrugged.
So I was kind of like, okay, I'll try this.
And then one day I was bored or not bored, but uh struggling in the library because I didn't want to study for my physics test.
And they had this book called Letters of Ayn Rand.
And that's of all things what I began with.
And I read her letters, and I just quickly had the idea, wow, this person is really smart.
Like she she thinks of things in a different way, and that always intrigued me.
And so then I just sort of took it all in and you know, read Atlas Shrugged, read read almost everything pretty quickly.
Yeah, I um I came across Ayn Rand in high school.
I was reading a book called Emergency by Neil Strauss.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Neil Strauss's work at all.
The game guy?
Yeah, that guy.
But he wrote other books too that were pretty good.
And uh Emergency was like a survivalist book that he wrote after the game.
And he mentioned just in passing in the book, you know, I tried to pick up the fountainhead, but I couldn't focus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, sort of a narrative.
And I thought, oh, the Fountainhead, I think I might have heard of that.
So I bought it and it totally changed my life.
I'm actually very glad that I read it before I read Atlas Shrugged because I always say that the Fountainhead is the individual version and then Atlas Shrugged is like the macro sort of societal version.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
I read Atlas first.
I read Atlas first.
So I for a while I didn't value the Fountainhead enough because I was just like, oh, I I learned like all the philosophy in Atlas, but now I like them just as much as the other because Fountainhead, I just think of as such a good individual guide with a lot more detail about like the individual's life.
Uh so I love both.
Yeah, I love both too.
I I think part of the reason that it was such a pivotal book for me was I was 17 when I read it.
I actually finished it, and I know you mentioned Frank Lloyd Wright um on another interview that I watched of yours.
I finished it on the bus on the way back from a field trip to a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Illinois where I grew up.
And so it was like just this weird moment of like for the Howard Rourke story coming back from you know an architect who he arguably to some extent may have been based off of.
And um it for as a 17-year-old, when your self-esteem is so sort of malleable, it's that the Rourke figure came in and um really set me on a trajectory to live my own life in a way that I don't know that I would have if I hadn't encountered that character.
Yeah, it's great.
It's uh I I think of it as the ultimate self-help book, or maybe even more controversial, I think of it as the ultimate uh ethics book.
Because I just think I think it's it's really the character of Rourke, I think really captures what like a good and happy life is like.
And I think very few people appreciate just the the role of work, but in a certain way, like in a way that's very like based on your own love of creating things, not your quote, love of status or approval or even the effects that it has, but like this real love of creation And having a life based on that.
And I think that's something that gets very underrated, because even people focused on creation, again, there's a lot of focus on status, and there's a lot of just focus on what impact do I have.
And certainly the impact is important, but there's just something about if if you love the way you're creating things and you love that work, that's really the best part of it.
And I think some people understand that, but not enough.
It's interesting how Rourke may tie into the fossil fuels and climate conversation, because many critics of Ayn Rand categorize Rourke as sort of this sociopathic anti-human figure who cares about no one but himself.
But the fact of the matter is by refusing to sacrifice himself, he's the ultimate humanist, right?
Man is not an animal to be sacrificed.
And it's, I don't know.
I just I just think that's so important.
And I think that we've culturally we're we're sort of at this impasse where the anti-humanists think they're pro-humanists because it's all about sacrifice for whatever this greater good may be and these cultural issues and and there's always a sacrifice of self and this the shaming of self for the sake of everyone else who may be less privileged or going through something.
And I just think that it's sort of the inverse of what the actual moral approach may be if you rationally think through it.
What do you think?
I think there's a lot to that, and I don't think it's any accident that Ayn Rand is a very is the most powerful in my view critic of collectivism and also of the modern environmental movement, and that at the core she's identifying both of them as sacrificing the individual and thus ultimately anti-human in that way.
And I think the modern environmental movement is more obviously anti-human, because if you think of it its goal is really about eliminating human impact on nature.
I mean, that's really what it green means.
And it's pretty clear for I mean, they try to disguise it, but it's pretty clear.
Like you hear about like the you know, human impact treated as a bad thing.
I mean, that's pretty if you think about that, like if you treat bear impact as a bad thing, you probably don't like bears, right?
You gotta want to get rid of, or if you treat human population as a bad thing, probably means you don't like humans.
So there's this element of you're sacrificing, but what are you sacrificing to?
You're sacrificing not even to supposedly benefit other humans, but to make Earth as non-human as possible.
It's not even about benefiting some other species, it's about like ridding the planet as much as possible of our evil presence.
It's it's really focused on it's not about any, this is my conversation with Jordan Peterson delved into this.
It's not about like, oh, you want to see like some utilitarian proliferation of biology.
I wouldn't advocate that anyway, uh, if it came at human expense, but it's it's really singling out human impact and saying that's bad, and our goal should be to eliminate.
And that's I think it's really nihilistic and anti-human.
Whereas collectivism poses as, no, no, I love, right?
I love everybody.
Like I just love everybody so much.
But if you really just think about like what is it, like what does it mean to quote love everybody?
I mean, like ultimately everyone is an individual.
And if you actually care about human life, you have to really care about people as individuals, much the way you know, if you have a child or you you're close to children, you're like you really care about the child, like you want them to be happy.
You don't see it as, oh, well, if some group people wants to kill them and they say makes them happy, that's okay.
It's like, no, that's not being pro-human.
But what happens is people they like it's it's easy to say, oh, well, I care about other humans, so I want to sacrifice this human.
I don't think it's pro-human, and particularly as Ayn Rand identified, it's particularly anti-human because it's totally unnecessary.
Human be, I mean, her view was her philosophy had to come after the industrial revolution, because that's really what showed fully that humans are productive beings who can pursue their self-interest in harmony.
And once you get this idea that we're all producers and we can benefit from one another, why would you focus on sacrifice that that ultimately has a bad motive to it, if you think about it?
Because it's like we can like we can all live really well.
Like it's possible for everybody to win.
Once once capitalism and an industry prove that, then why would your focus be on sacrifice versus on just individuals benefiting?
Because that benefits all other individuals, but rationally, yeah, individuals should be focused on their own lives.
I totally did and families and stuff.
I totally disagree with this Peter Singer effective altruist perspective that like if you're Sam Bankman freed, like you should choose the career that allows you to pay for as much stuff for other people as possible versus choosing a career that you find fulfilling.
And if if everyone you look at if a world where everyone is optimizing for everyone else, that's a world of misery.
And again, it's totally unnecessary because everyone being self-interested rationally can mean everyone is happy.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's it's interesting because it reminds me of uh a Milton Friedman video that I I watched where he was doing a QA lecture at some university.
And one of the students brought up a question that was just sort of critical of capitalism because it's based on greed.
And I thought his response was so brilliant.
It was something to the effect of you think the Soviets aren't greedy, you think the Chinese communists aren't greedy.
We're all greedy, we're all self-interested inherently.
It's sort of our natural part of the human condition to be self-interested and care for the self.
But in a capitalist system, that self-interest can actually turn into good for others.
And it reminds me of a conversation I had earlier today when I was talking to um uh another entrepreneur on a different podcast uh about Bill Gates.
And we brought up the question that Bill Gates do more good for the world by putting Microsoft in the hands of developing countries, or with all the charity that he did with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, right?
Which one actually impacted the world in a in a greater way for for people in in the most need, and I think probably Microsoft, but I don't know.
What are your thoughts?
I mean, Microsoft is an interesting example because I'm much more of an Apple person.
So there's an element, I mean, I'm so in general, I mean, I'm very, I mean, I totally disagree with say the antitrust prosecution of Microsoft.
And I think, you know, most or all of what they did was, I mean, proper.
But there is an element, you know, I very I'm a big Steve Jobs fan, not that that makes me unique, but just I mean, his his incorporation of what he would call like humanism or the humanities in technology and really believing that this is my own wording, but that like technology needs to serve human flourishing and really needs to think about that.
And and so much of Microsoft seems kind of missing that element.
And so there's an element, there's a lot of stuff about, I mean, in general, the modern world of computing is just unbelievable and should be celebrated.
But there are certain like elements of it that aren't really oriented around human flourishing, and Microsoft in some ways embodies that.
And so that's why I have only some hesitation.
But like for sure, Apple has done way more good in the world than the Gates Foundation.
Now, Gates Foundation, I don't want to minimize the good stuff there, but unfortunately, what what you see with a lot of these philanthropists is they become they they are very non-focused on freedom.
And I gave a speech which I think people can find on YouTube called the F-word, must have been eight years ago or so.
I gave this.
And the idea is like freedom is a word that people won't say because it's like when you're talking about developing countries and improving people's livelihood, even though it's completely obvious from history that freedom is what's needed.
So, you know, this this comes up with the issue of fossil fuels, because one of the points I make is it's immoral to restrict the availability of fossil fuels, particularly to poor people who need them to bring themselves out of poverty.
That's very true.
But it's also true that countries that are poor need to themselves embrace better politics, uh, above all, have political, including economic freedom.
And without that, energy is only going to do so much.
You'll you'll benefit in certain ways from the world getting better.
But uh we we need so much freedom.
And yet, how much does Bill Gates talk about that?
How much does even Mark Zuckerberg talk about that when they're giving away billions?
And what they're often doing is just reinforcing this status quo, including this idea that basically you can't criticize cultures and you can't criticize governments because people associate that with the skin color of the residents, which is insane, because obviously cultures change over time and people the same skin color have different ideas, skin color doesn't determine ideas.
So these anti-unfortunately, these guys are just sort of reinforcing or at best not challenging the anti-freedom status quo.
And that is the thing that matters most.
So it's it's very frustrating uh to see that.
Absolutely.
So one of the things that I'm perplexed by is going back to the conversation, the beginning of our conversation, and in the context of climate and fossil fuels versus renewables.
I am perplexed as to where this cultural zeitgeist came from that humans were the problem on the planet.
Because if you look at like you know, traditional Judeo-Christian values, I mean, it's like right in Genesis, right?
You're man and you're the master of all the other creations.
You're you're you're the top of the food chain.
You can name the animals, you can tend the garden.
You this is for you, you're not for it, right?
That's sort of like the theme right off the bat.
And do you think this is like is this like some sort of uh I don't know, a subconscious cultural pushback against traditional Christian values?
Like that's a stretch for me to even say, but what where does this hate for humanity come from?
Well, I think the the main thing I think about there, and I I could try to relate it to Judeo-Christian religion, but I think the main thing is that this idea.
So I think of the anti-humanism as having two core elements, and they're very related.
But one is that human impact on nature is immoral, and two is that it's inevitably self-destructive.
And the second part I call the delicate nurturer assumption.
It's basically that Earth is exists in a delicate nurturing balance that's stable, sufficient, as in it gives us enough resources as long as we're not too greedy and it's safe.
And then our impact ruins it.
So again, human impact is uh immoral and it's inevitably self-destructive.
Just to give a quick parallel to Judeo-Christian values, though, like that has the form of like a hell narrative.
It's like it's immoral to impact nature.
And then if you impact nature, nature is gonna punish you.
And I think one thing that's gone on is that secular people have adopted like a religious way of thinking.
But in this case, it's it's a way of thinking that has a very negative view of humans and its relationship to the rest of nature, which, as you said, is different from like the the genesis, uh, the genesis view.
So think this this idea, like this these anti-human impact, anti-human perspective has existed.
I mean, it existed, at least the delicate nurture part has existed for a long time, but it was pretty marginalized because as human humanity was progressing, particularly during enlightenment times, you know, we realize nature is not this delicate nurturer.
It's it's not, it's a very inhospitable place, it's deficient, it's dangerous, it's dynamic.
Like our impact, we need to impact it.
And that's you see that a lot in the 1900s and the 1800s.
Like, that's the view.
Anyone who lives in nature kind of recognizes this.
And then capitalism and freedom show that we can make the earth a much better place uh for us.
And also, I'd argue that property rights actually lead to better environmental quality, and you see, you know, more clean air, certainly more clean water, better sanitation, all these things.
But I think what happened was there was a deliberate uh kind of the, if you want to call it the left, but the I'll call it the anti-capitalist movement in the 60s.
They were really reeling from the practical failure of communism, which they had previously claimed would outproduce capitalism and would be this industrial success.
And you started to see the Soviet Union was just totally failing.
And you know, people were starving.
You have, of course, what's happening in China, what was happening in China as well.
And so Ayn Rand had this point in her book, The New Left.
I think it's really, really accurate.
And she was documenting it at the it at the time that basically the left could choose, they had to choose between anti-capitalism or industrial production, right?
They have to choose.
Like if you want industrial production, if you want, you know, this worker's paradise, or if you want wealth, like you need capitalism.
It can't be socialism, including communism.
Uh, and her view is no, instead, they chose anti-capitalism, but they needed a new objection to capitalism because it couldn't be, well, it's not productive, because clearly it's productive and communism isn't.
So it was, oh, it's it's environmentally bad.
They sort of took up that argument.
And there's a whole bunch around this, but but basically they took this anti-human philosophy and they just totally spread it throughout the schools, particularly this delicate nurture idea to the point where just the media, scientists, everyone just treats the earth as this perfect place that our impact ruins.
And And it's and then that the more you believe that, the more it's plausible that, oh, well, we shouldn't impact it for our own good, right?
If we we shouldn't impact the climate, because if we impact the climate, the climate is going to punish us.
And it's it's that view is so, so so pervasive.
And it's it's it was really a genius move to just put that in the schools.
Because once you put it in this educational system, then it overtakes, you know, the media system, government system, what I call overall the knowledge system in fossil future.
So do you think a lot of this environmentalism was a cope with the fact that they were proven that capitalism was superior to communism as an economic system?
Yeah, oh, yeah, definitely.
Just it's like a psychological cope.
They just couldn't bear to admit they were wrong, and so they just well, I don't know if it's I mean, that there's psychological, but it's there's a there's a strategic element too.
And this actually well, it's clearly intentional.
So there's the this documented.
If you read the new left, Ayn Rand has some quotes about this from people saying, like, we need a new issue.
You know, for a little while they had the Vietnam War.
So it could be there's kind of this focus on oh, like I just want to I want to fight injustice.
So I want to fight the injustice of where America's being unjust abroad.
But you'd see that that's not the real concern because there's no concern about what the Soviets were doing abroad.
So it's not to say there's no legit, I mean, there's a lot to oppose with what went on in the Vietnam War, but her point, and I agree, Ayn Rand's point, and I agree, is like this was the people focused on that and not focused at all on the evils of communism, were not humanitarian.
They were just looking for another way to attack capitalism, but then that sort of goes by the wayside uh because it ends.
And then there's this question of what are you gonna do?
So I I do think it was a very strategic thing.
I also think the decision to continue to oppose capitalism reveals a lot of the anti-humanism of collectivism.
That like the idea you just look at what what communism did and what capitalism did to human life, and yet a huge swath of intellectuals, arguably, inarguably the majority of them still stuck with some form of socialism.
Not all intellectuals, but at least like let's say university intellectuals.
Like socialism was still and is still like popular and considered idealistic.
It's fascinating, you know, this isn't a perfect parallel, but it sort of seems like this this issue manifests in other ways.
And what I mean to say is if you were to ask a hundred Americans who the most evil person of the 20th century was the vast majority of them, I would assume would say Hitler.
And he was an evil, he was an evil bastard.
But if you actually look at the numbers of you know, deaths during the Great Leap Forward between 58 and 62 versus deaths during World War II, just as a whole war.
Now, I'm not even talking about the genocide, just everybody.
It's very obvious that the communist policies and and governments that that the philosophy seems to catalyze uh are uh much more anti-human, violent, lethal, murderous than anything that perhaps we've seen before in the history of of mankind, other than maybe Genghis Khan or someone like that.
And yet people aren't offended when they see a picture of Stalin as they are when they see a picture of Hitler or when they see a picture of Mao, uh you don't think that's an understanding of TikTok, right?
Right.
That's an unit.
I mean, though they're still glorified, and I think it has to do with like the way that that um Nazism, you know, national socialism is remembered is as racism, and so it's it's well known that racism, which is just racial collectivism, let's let's be clear.
It's just collectivizing people based on skin color.
Uh like it's it's recognized that that's bad, although I do think I mean I think there's tons of racism, including racism that calls itself anti-racism, but in any case, it's it's viewed as as uh oh, this is bad, right?
This is so not we we label it racist, whereas communism and socialism are essentially viewed as collectivist, and that's still viewed as a moral ideal.
And so, insofar as you hold it as a moral ideal, then you it still has to hold on to Basically, some version of they did it the wrong way, my gang would have done it better.
But there's nothing, there's nothing to question about the core idea.
And this is unfortunately, I think, a conservative view that's often happened, which is just the idea, you know, communism is good in theory, but not in practice.
I really hate that kind of argument because like bad theories are bad in practice, good theory, like a theory is supposed to be accurate in terms of how it's accounting for it doesn't look good on paper.
Like you haven't read the communist manifesto if you think it looks good on paper.
Well, we have it.
But even just the idea that like productive individuals should sacrifice to unproductive individuals.
Like I think that's monstrous, or everyone who's successful should sacrifice to people uh in proportion to level of failure.
And yet this is such a dominant thing.
If you look at just modern moral thinking, it's certainly you know, from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
Like that is, I think that's a very that's a deeply immoral idea, particularly you recognize human beings have choice, and some people choose to work really hard and be productive.
And the idea is they get punished.
Uh they they get limitless theoretical punishment to the extent that somebody else deliberately or not doesn't succeed.
So it's just the sacrifice of the productive and successful to failure, unlimited.
Like, I don't see that as I don't see that as uh good for my own life.
I don't think most people do, like the idea of like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna work really hard and I get nothing, or I get exactly the same as everyone else, which my my success gets distributed among eight billion people, which means you get nothing.
Right.
Well, and and there's just this perpetual sort of misconception that if someone else is successful, it's because they've exploited or taken taken unjustly uh from someone else.
Like I tweeted, I I think I've tweeted this several times over the past couple of years.
You're not poor because Elon Musk is a billionaire.
Like it, you know what I mean?
It's it uh and and we've seen we've seen this with capitalism, and I know you mentioned this in in your book too.
How over the since since you were born in 1980, the number went from what was it, four uh 60% to 10% of people live for 40% living on less than $2 a day, you know, 10%, which is just you know, billions, billions of people.
You know, it this goes back to my point that like once you learn from the industrial revolution that human beings are productive and our interests are really in harmony because we're we're productive, but we're really productive in groups, because you know, no, we needed we need the division of labor and we benefit from it.
Like once you you realize that, like you should just you need to totally rethink your morality.
And I this is one point I ran made that I think was a really good point.
Like, people didn't rethink their moral ideas, even though they had this totally new or complete unre understanding of human nature.
Like you discover, wait a second, sacrifice, like before that you can think plausibly.
Yeah, sacrifice is necessary because none of us is very productive.
We're sort of all just manual laborers, and so if you want to rise, you have to sacrifice others to you.
And then you want morality to protect people against that.
But once we're creators and somebody and Jeff Bezos becoming a you know, hexa billionaire, uh, I think that's the right term, benefits all of us tremendously.
Then it's just it's so perverse to say, oh, I hate Jeff Bezos.
Like, I'd be so much better off if he were homeless and had no money.
Right.
Well, and I think Ayn Rand said something to the effect of uh how an American English, it's it's one of the only languages or dialects that refers to making money as making money.
A lot of other languages, you know, you get it or you acquire it or you obtain it.
But we actually have this sort of underlying philosophy in the way that we talk about it that you make it, you create it, you manifest it.
It's not just this, you know, limited pie that everybody pulls from uh in some unjust or or disproportionate way.
There's no limit to the amount of prosperity and productivity we can have.
Yeah, and that's from um, you know, famous speech in Atlas Shrugged.
And I hope people, I'm really glad we're talking about Ayn Rand.
I don't get to talk about her as much as I want to.
I think she's just totally underrated and not understood.
And it's one of these things.
I I get I get angry when this happens to me, but much more angry when it happens to her.
You get what I the kind of review or so-called review of my stuff that I hate, and actually there were two two versions of this in the last week from prominent people, is like a nothing to see here review, which is just like they don't actually summarize the argument.
And usually what they do is they distort it and straw man it and the kind of essential, and then they say, Oh, look, Alex says this thing, which he definitely didn't say.
It's usually some version of like Alex says we should use more fossil fuels forever, and he hates alternatives, and he doesn't like see any value in them.
It's like this is not remotely what I say at all.
But they'll they'll do that, and it's just like, oh, but that's not true.
And then it's like basically, oh, there's nothing to see here, right?
There's no no reason to read this book.
I smart person X am telling you.
And this unfortunately happens to such an extent with Ayn Rand, we're just like, oh, she's uh she's a cultist, or um, like you know, any any number of things are like there's some bizarre one about social security, like she took social security, right?
So she's a hypocrite, right?
Right, she's a hypocrite, even though she has an essay explaining why you have a right to government uh to take back money that was taken from you, and also she was a millionaire best-selling author, like her entire sales or document.
I mean, it's just like the but that this it's I find it annoying because most people are so prone, because we have to optimize our time.
We're so prone to accepting dismissals from people we have some trust in.
So it's like you want the book review, is kind of saving you the time, or the dismissal is saving you the time.
And I just think it'd be such a different world if people said, like, hey, I don't agree with everything Ayn Rand said if if they don't, but like, like this is a really smart person with a lot of insights that you should read.
And I'd like to communicate that to people.
Just like if you haven't read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, like I promise you, for whatever that's worth, there are ideas that you at least need to think about that you have never heard before.
Yeah, even Anthem.
I mean, if you don't want to read 800 pages in 10-point font, you can read Anthem and get a pretty basic, it's like her version of the giver, I think.
I think I don't know.
I I never I I have weird relationship with Anthem.
I never like I I like parts of it, but I just it's just nowhere for me in the universe.
I'd never recommend Anthem, just because it's like just start reading the fountainhead.
Like, if you don't like it, that's good point.
Why don't you just read an essay?
Just read an essay of hers, but just like get an idea of this is someone really smart.
And I really I really hate when people act like, oh, she's not smart.
Like, that's you can argue, you could disagree with a lot, but to say this is not a smart person when you read her, is just uh it's hard for me to imagine that being honest by by any person who's coming from any person who's smart themselves.
It's funny because now that you mention it, I'm not sure that I've ever been in a debate with someone about Ayn Rand where that person actually had ever read any Ayn Rand, you know, there and there are good critics of Ayn Rand, I'm sure, that that have actually read through and can write rebuttals to the arguments, and that's fine.
But like when you when you're talking about like internet trolls or people that you bump into between classes in college that hate Ayn Rand, almost I don't think any of them have ever actually read anything she'd ever written.
It's it's yeah, I mean, you see that, or or you see that they have, but they straw man it and and one thing to think about is just whenever you're dealing just just so people know, I mean that that just means like creating a version, like a distorted version of the argument that's not the argument that's really easy to attack.
Um it's just I think one thing to think about just as consumers of knowledge and and potential ideas is that establishments are threatened by really smart and powerful arguments that challenge them at the root, like and you just have to keep that in mind, and so there's one impulse that says, Yeah, I'm not just gonna believe, like in a sense, maybe most challenges to the establishment are wrong.
Perhaps that's true.
And and you have to be aware that people can be cranks, and that's a very common thing, but it's also true we we know just from our view that his that that certain things have improved over history and certain false ideas have been displaced by true or at least truer ideas.
Like we we know that sometimes the establishment is wrong, and it would be absurd to think that we are just the First generation where the establishment is just right about everything and history will just view everything we do as great.
So you have to be open to if you hear from people that you respect that some really controversial idea has a lot to it, I think it's worth investigating.
And even if smart people, particularly from the establishment say it's not worth looking into, hey, there's nothing to see here.
Like I would generally look into it, and I would say read the primary thing.
Of course, I'm I'm including my own work here because I just think I never see these criticisms.
I have not seen one critical review of my book, and there have been many amazing reviews, by the way, but I've not seen one critical view that remotely accurately summarized my argument, which I think is the precondition for any decent review.
that's similarly with Ayn Rand.
Whether people have read her or not when they criticize her, you just get these bizarre mischaracterizations.
And uh, and even once it look, even when something is good, here's here's the other aspect.
Even when you hear somebody's ideas are good and you hear summaries of them, if if they're if you hear they're good, like just read them because the original person, it's just never what you think it's going to be.
I had an experience with this recently, and I cannot remember who it was, but it was just some author, and I just I thought I knew their ideas and was sympathetic, but then I read the real thing, and I was like, oh wow, I need you you always need to read the real like if they're good, everyone's talking about them for a reason, and you cannot, even the people who like them are not accurately summarizing them or or summarizing them when that captures the full power of the argument.
So speaking of diving in and exploring controversial issues in depth.
Climate change has been something that's been on my mind for probably the last two years, and it's been something I kind of put on the back burner, because I have no idea who to believe, what to believe, where to begin in terms of actually getting to the bottom of what the hell is going on.
I I read on unsettled, and I've I've tried to explore these texts and these ideas to figure out what my position is on climate change.
And I know it's like an obscenely broad term that's so used so colloquially, but I my question for you is how did you even get to the point where this was of interest to you?
And what advice do you give to someone who's trying to get to the truth of something that seems to be so ensnared in uh deception or misleading uh texts, books, documentaries from both sides?
How do you actually unravel this not?
Well, that to tackle the second part of it, at least initially first, I think you need what's what's always really really powerful and within our grasp, you at least usually within our grasp, is to look at the method of thinking about the issue and try to differentiate among people's methods of thinking.
Now, this is made more difficult by the fact that most people are not explicit about their method of thinking.
Um, I think mostly because it's bad, or you couldn't even dignify it by calling it a method of thinking, or it has bad tendencies.
Right.
And so, with the issue of climate change, you mentioned the vagueness.
So, one uh one giveaway is that if somebody's using the term climate change a lot, that's not that precise.
Now, you could say, well, Alex, that's an indictment of every thinker besides you on this issue because everyone else uses that.
But I think that's fair.
And even I think everyone's been wrong before.
Well, but but it's it's everyone is being sloppy, I would say, because you think like you want to use terms that are that are clear.
And so, what do you mean by so this is this isn't even the most important thing, but it is important that like when people are using equivocal terminology, so terminology that can have the same terminology can mean multiple different things, and it's really easy to switch among those things.
That that's very dangerous.
So with climate change, there's there's a bunch of equivocations going on.
So, one is do you mean man-made or not?
Like climate change itself just says change, it doesn't say anything about the cause, and yet the cause is very important, particularly because we're talking about like fossil fuels and what should we do about fossil fuels.
And so there's just it's very important, like what the cause is, and yet it's it's equating those, and yet it's in practice, it always seems to mean man-made climate change, and always seems to mean man-made, but it's not explicit about that.
Maybe the most important equivocation has to do with like how extreme it is.
So is it you know moderate?
Is it extreme?
And then even related to that is positive negative.
So is it you could think of is it apocalyptic, is an apocalyptic man-made change in climate, or is it a uh modest part man-made, part not man-made with pros and cons?
Like the term climate change doesn't tell you that.
But then imagine you just have this very weird, you have this very equivocal term, and then you hear, oh, 97% of scientists agree with climate change, or 97% of climate scientists.
Like, what the hell do they agree to?
And so when people are using equivocal terminology, particularly if they're using poles and stuff, like that's an obvious just fraud, where they're trying to get use something super vague that's sort of inarguable because what's there's no climate non-change, right?
That's not a thing.
So they're actually using like a self-evident vague term to put over the view that it's apocalyptic, and also the political view that we should rapidly eliminate fossil fuels.
And often that political view doesn't even allow nuclear energy or hydro.
So it's just they're really equating their political views with the view that human and humans have some impact on climate.
And that's that.
So that's that's the vagueness.
Um, the other thing.
So that's that's one just in, I'm trying to give just general guidance.
This is great.
Like whenever you use equivocal terminology, and this is one reason I love Ayn Rand, because so much of what she does is point out equivocal terminology.
I mean, you look, one of her her great essays in this regard, maybe the best in this regard, is called extremism or the art of smearing.
And she takes on the term of extremism, moder, you know, versus moderate, which she says those are both bogus.
And then she takes on the term isolationism versus interventionism, which is both of those are uh bogus.
And then she takes on the term McCarthyism, uh, which she says is bogus as well.
So, and like I think the really good Ayn Rand disciples, and I'll put myself in that category.
I'm not the best at this, but I'm good at this, is recognizing this equivocal terminology and really, really trying to think about clear terminology.
So with the climate issue, like I'll talk about climate impact, but not climate change, because then climate impact that is focusing on okay, what humans are doing.
Right.
I think that's very important to do.
And then I'll talk about different degrees and like, hey, do you mean like a manageable climate impact?
Do you mean a catastrophic?
Do you mean an apocalyptic?
Those are those have a lot of different implications.
So one is the equivocal terminology and and wanting and looking for those who use very clear terminology.
Another thing which applies most obviously in the context of um fossil fuels, is are they even-handed in looking at the positives and negatives of things?
Because you're dealing with products and technologies, you're always dealing, even often people, you're often dealing with different degrees of positives and negatives.
And when you're thinking about a technology, the way I think of it is you want to carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects of the thing.
And people think, oh, that's of course I do, right?
Cars, for example, people die in car wrecks all the time, but the benefits of being able to commute, right, outweigh the risks that are associated with the harms, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's you know, assuming well, at least pursued a certain way.
Like you can imagine somebody who drives recklessly and then then the negatives outweigh that.
But you know, like just thinking about I'm taking a prescription drug for something, like you want to carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects.
And if you didn't do that, uh, everyone would say that's irresponsible.
And yet I think with fossil fuels, if you think about it, how much do people talk about the benefits, the fossil fuels?
And when I this, this really was the key to me getting into it, is I grew up in a liberal environment.
Uh, I had you know, a decent amount of fear about climate, quote, climate change, climate catastrophe, climate apocalypse.
That was sort of a background issue for me.
And but I'm not a layer.
Yeah, yeah.
But I had no, but I had no real positive understanding of energy in general and fossil fuels in particular.
But then I learned wait a second, no, fossil fuels, like they're really uniquely valuable today.
For instance, they're oil is incredibly dense, energy dense.
And so a lot of energy in a small space with small mass, and that makes it really good for mobility, particularly like powering agricultural equipment, like a harvester that allows one person to reap and thresh a thousand times more wheat than a good manual laborer, like stuff like that.
So the whole world depends on fossil fuels to eat.
And uh, or you know, natural gas for fertilizer also depends on that, or we depend on that to eat.
And yet people are talking about eliminating fossil fuels, and they're not talking about those benefits.
I think this is a huge thing where the leading experts, what I call designated experts, are not being even-handed with regard to fossil fuels.
And so that's that's a lot of my um the beginning of the book of fossil futures, really calling the establishment into question, which I I think you can do, but you really need to have a good case.
So I really show, hey, the establishment, what I call our knowledge system, like they're clearly ignoring these huge benefits of fossil fuels.
Like that's irresponsible.
Then chapter two, I show they also have this habit of catastrophizing side effects.
So taking some effect that is modest or manageable and treating it as the end of the world.
Uh, even though when you factor in the benefits of fossil fuels, fossil fuels have made things better.
So, for example, with climate, we're far safer than ever from climate disasters.
This is very well documented, uh, but not publicized.
Because we use fossil fuels to do things like heat homes and air conditioned homes and build sturdy buildings and irrigate to alleviate drought and move crop crops around to alleviate the consequences of drought.
And yet we don't talk about this.
So it's very invalidating of so much of the establishment that it's not just they talk about climate change in this vague way, but they talk about climate impact, which is a side effect of fossil fuels outside the context of the benefits.
And this happens constantly.
Even the way you were were approaching the issue when you started, like you're thinking of it as climate change, but you're thinking of it as its own issue.
But that's like saying prescription drug side effects is its own issue.
It's not that you can evaluate on its own.
And hey, what do I think about it?
And the first thing to think is I'm not going to trust anybody who ignores the benefits of all prescription drugs.
Like those, like I'm gonna because if somebody is ignoring the benefits of something, you can be pretty sure that they are going to be in some way exaggerating the negative side effects.
Like it's because you it proves a bias.
And an example I use, and this is not personal, but uh, you know, just think somebody whose mother-in-law um, you know, just supports their family and like gives them a million dollars and buys them a house, and but you don't know this, all you ever hear is complaints about the mother-in-law, but they never say about the benefits of the mother-in-law.
Well, you can be sure that those complaints are exaggerated, because clearly they have some bias that's causing them to ignore the benefits, and then also uh ignore the negative.
So to put it at a high level, you want to look for people who are even-handed when it comes to products and technologies, carefully weighing positives and negatives, benefits and side effects.
And you can see that with the fossil fuel issue, a huge proportion of the so-called experts ignore benefits, and at minimum, they are sloppy about the side effects.
And this is where the climate change equivocation comes in, is they're using this very broad term because they want you to, they want to put over this idea of climate apocalypse, but the science doesn't justify it.
So what they they call it climate change, so they can scientifically be safe because we're having some impact on climate, and there's some change, but then they can be rhetorically effective by in your mind you interpreting that as climate apocalypse.
Right.
So I've got two questions because there's sort of two stages, especially early in the book.
There's the first stage, which is sort of what you just said, where there's just relentless antagonism toward fossil fuels and disregard for the benefits of fossil fuels.
And then there's the second stage where even if the fossil fuels were as dangerous or apocalyptic as depicted in the media or by the experts, what the there's there seems to be this disregard for these alternatives that this total dismissal of these alternatives like nuclear, right?
So why is it first of all that these people are just militant, almost like religious zealots about antagonism toward fossil fuels?
And then secondly, why is it that they're militant about their disregard of the hydro or the nuclear solutions that would basically you know be the best alternative to to a fossil fuel?
And then this is, I think it's a good question.
I mean, this is really the kind of the mystery of chapter one of the book, you know, which is called ignoring benefits, and then it it's it's really resolved in chapter three.
And then it it is it's very, very notable because the the way the movement presents itself is oh well, we love energy, but we just don't like CO2.
Right?
And like, okay, we just want we want a lot of energy, but we don't want we don't want the CO2 because we're so concerned about the negative effects of CO2 on human life.
But then you see, wait a second, why aren't they so enthusiastic about nuclear, which had a really good track record of being cost effective and providing electricity and it can do it anywhere in the world?
And yet they're militant the the green movement has been militantly opposed to nuclear.
Fortunately, I think thanks to me and many others, they're now being called out on this, and more reasonable people are now being pro-nuclear, not enough, but it's it's still improved.
But nevertheless, the leadership has just been hugely anti-nuclear.
There was this incident years ago where maybe five years ago or so where James Hansen, who's a who's a climate catastrophist, but pro-nuclear, like would write something.
He and I think it was three other climate scientists wrote something.
And the about, hey, we need to embrace nuclear.
And there were like 300 signees, prominent people and institutions in the green movement that just excoriated them, like absolutely not.
We don't need nuclear, like, well, and you just think, wow, that's really strong, given that if you if you really cared about more energy with less CO2 and you know fossil fuels provide 80% of the world's energy in a world that needs far more energy, you'd want everything you can possibly get.
And why are you sort of writing off all potential nuclear, even if you had some issue with current nuclear?
Like, why are you so hostile to that?
And then the only thing you're enthusiastic about is solar and wind, which kind of have the obvious limitation of you can't control them.
And if you know anything about the specifics, there's no grid in the world that operates on them and without totally depending on fossil fuels or nuclear hydro.
Then you also see hydro, there's very a lot of hostility toward that and these groups shutting down dams.
And you see, well, that ultimately their argument is, well, it disrupts free-flowing rivers.
And then you get, wait a second, you so you value free-flowing rivers, which just means humans don't impact anything.
You value that more than avoiding this alleged climate apocalypse by having energy from hydro that doesn't emit CO2.
And so my conclusion is ultimately it's it's really this core idea of being green, that human impact is bad and we should eliminate it.
And really the hostility toward energy toward fossil fuels, but also other forms of cost effective energy, is that impact is bad and we shouldn't impact nature.
You could see this in the hostility toward mining for solar and wind, like saying, Oh, I love solar and wind, but then you hate the unbelievable amount of mining that's necessary for it, or the building of transmission lines.
And you say it had it's always it has too much impact.
And that's that's really it's really an anti-human impact movement.
And and if you realize there's a hostility toward impact, you have to realize if you hate impact, the number one thing you should hate is energy.
Because the benefits of energy, what we do with energy is we do physical work, which means we impact nature.
And so if if you recognize, well, the more energy we use, the more we're gonna impact nature.
You can see why a movement whose goal is to eliminate our impact on nature, is gonna hate energy at the core, but they don't want to say, hey, we hate energy because that doesn't go over very well.
They tried it in the 70s with basically we hate technology, it didn't go over very well.
So instead they say, no, no, we hate the negative side effects of energy, or we hate the pro the impacts of the process of producing it.
And ultimately, they only support imaginary energy.
So it's always something that doesn't work now, but oh, it'll work in the future.
But if worked in the future, you would just point out how much impact it had.
So it's really an anti-energy movement masquerading as an anti-negative side effects of energy movement.
That's fascinating.
Then what I what I'm still puzzled by there seems to be this emotional or psychological, or you know, perhaps it was intentionally strategic as a result of communism proving to be a failure economically.
Why, why, why is there this insistence that human impact is like the inherently evil?
It's like it's like it's it's a given.
They don't have to prove it.
That's the premise, right?
They don't have to prove that.
And like it's almost like they still and maybe I'm just stretching here again.
But is it like connected somehow to the anti-colonialism?
Is it like an idea that you know this is not your planet, this is our planet, or you know, that tree is its own thing, and you don't have a right to to come over to it and cut it down.
Does it come from like some of these anti-sort of colonialism places?
Like I don't know, intellectually, or or I'm just I just can't even fathom it.
Well, I guess I mean, in practice, it's because people have this delicate nurturer view that you know we're gonna destroy the delicate balance.
And so that's kind of the practical element.
Then the people people should really know better because historically the earth was what I call wild potential, so it's dynamic, deficient, dangerous, and we needed to impact it a lot to make it hospitable.
And so there's this question of why like why there's this hostility toward us doing things, like this it's a deep hatred at of us, really.
And and uh one point that I another point I got from Ayn Rand in this connection is just she, you know, a lot of her analysis of collectivism and and modern philosophy is a hostility toward the human mind and a real hatred of man's capacity to reason, you know, humans' capacity to reason.
Right.
And you definitely see this with the environmental movement because you think like they're hostile to human impact, that means hostile to the man-made or the human made, right?
What's the essence of the man-made?
It's that it's something that was determined by a mind that right, that's that's the essence of it, like versus being determined you know, by evolutionary forces or whatever, like it's determined deliberately by a mind, and they think that's ugly.
Is it because it's someone else's mind?
So they feel like that they lost jurisdiction.
Well, I think I think there's a big there's a lot of envy motive type motivations for anti-human ideas, like this definitely applies to collectivism, maybe even more obviously to collectivism, because you see, like, why does somebody want to condemn the Steve Jobs or the Jeff Bezos or the Elon Musk?
Like, is it really that they think they got screwed by this individual?
Or is it that they they like an idea that allows that individual to not be superior to them?
Like all these sacrifice ideas, insofar as you worship failure and you punish productivity, like it makes the failures morally superior to the successes, like the industrialist change from kind of superior, at least in the material realm, to like, no, those are the bad people, and the environmental movement is totally like this because it's impact, right?
Like, oh, well, if if you know, and you even see this among conservatives, just totally like too much on like, oh, you're driving a yacht or private jet, and it's just like that's sort of bad.
Like that's sort of a bad thing, and we should versus well, that's cool.
That's cool that somebody figured out a way to just fly themselves wherever they want, like most of us can drive ourselves, and hopefully we can have a world where many more of us can do that.
So I think there is a lot of envy, um, there.
Do you think that just comes from a like a lack of self-esteem?
I I when I when I try to go down this rabbit hole, this just this thought exercise, it seems to me that those who hate the success of others the most envy others the most.
It's like a cope for their own sort of sense of inferiority, and it's it's a shortcut to feeling better, right?
Because the correct way to feel better about yourself is is to sort of rise to the occasion, right?
Accomplish something that you're proud of or do what you love and disregard, you know, whether or not someone else is more successful than you.
So it do you think this ultimately stems from like a self-hatred?
And then I'm not trying to like I don't know, uh, I'm not trying to dogmatize the conversation.
Yeah, and I have tendency to do that just because the nature of this podcast and my politics, but is self-esteem the crux of a lot of our problems, the lack of it.
Well, I think it's definitely related to all.
I mean, I think self-esteem has got to be related to to everything.
And I do think in this in this case, yeah.
I mean, if you if you really I mean, like if you don't feel good about yourself, I mean, there's there's at least two things that can change.
One is like you might change your standards of evaluation.
So maybe you're being unfair to yourself.
Maybe maybe you have an impossible standard, even if you take this anti-impact view.
Like maybe people have now people have low self-esteem because they're impacting things.
And like that, I would talk to that person and say, no, no, wait, it's good.
Like it's good that you impact the earth.
You have every right to do that.
That's part of being a good human being.
So in that case, it wouldn't be their actions that need to change, but their standards that need to change.
But then often it's people are kind of confident in their standards, or they can't refute the standards in their mind, but they're not living up to them.
And then and and there can be a resentment among people, I think, where there's really a hatred sometimes of the nature of life, like hating the fact that life requires choice, life requires productivity, you don't get things automatically.
And you think there is some human tendency or at least people have some people have to just resent the nature of existence.
And like to really want, say a Garden of Eden where just everything is given to you and you don't need to do anything.
Like you see that sometimes when people just say, like, I hate how many choices I have.
They're just there are too many choices.
That's how I feel the cheesecake factory.
Well, right, but you can view it as oh, well, this is okay.
Yeah, I understand by the nature of reality, I cannot have all of them now, but it's exciting that I have them, and I'm happy to choose them versus, and and if somebody says, like, yeah, it can be their difficulties in having more choices, fine.
But when there's just this view of, oh, like I want, let's go back to a primitive life where you just you have no choices and there's no, like, there's you know, you know, your place in the world.
I mean, that is really corrupt.
If you just really think about what it's the discovery channel person to yeah, yeah, what it's like to just be in a primitive place in primitive culture, primitive political system or lack thereof, and and no opportunity.
So there's a lot of interesting psychology here.
And again, I would recommend Atlas Shrugged it.
It it it's focused on collectivism, but you'll see like Ayn Rand has a very strong analysis of some of the the um the psychology there.
And also she has two essays in this book, Philosophy Who Needs It.
One is called Philosophy Who Needs It, which is about the value of philosophy, and then another, which I need to reread now that I'm thinking about, is called philosophical detection.
And she talks a lot about how bad philosophical ideas are often rationalizations for psychological problems, and like, and it's it's this is why she has such an a negative view of certain intellectuals, because she views like certain intellectuals basically take their psychological problems out on the world and like have so much of a ruinous effect.
Like somebody feels inferior to others, maybe they were picked on in school, or maybe you know that.
They didn't get into art school, they they applied twice and they get into art school.
But whatever happened, and then it's like then they have this kind of seething resentment, and then that manifests in ideas that deprive billions of people of energy.
Okay, so how are we supposed to snap people out of this?
Because if history is any sort of profit, it doesn't seem very the mob is like a locomotive.
Once it's gone, you can't turn it back until it just crashes, right?
And we see this with civilizations, they they rise, they peak, and they collapse, and then something else comes along.
So is this reversible or is it gonna just play out?
I don't think things I don't think I think things don't play out in the way that sometimes people hope they will, like, oh, it's just gonna be a catastrophe, and then everyone will learn.
Like, first of all, that's really bad for it to be a catastrophe.
I mean, any increment of badness is worse.
And then also people don't learn from catastrophes, usually.
I mean, they they learn something, but they don't learn a huge uh amount from them.
I mean, you look at right now what's happening with global energy crisis, where I think it's pretty straightforward that what happened is the establishment was advocating for restrictions on fossil fuels across the board in terms of you can't invest in them, you know, we want to restrict your ability to invest in them, to produce them, to refine them, to transport them.
And this put us in a position where prices were going up, but you're also much more vulnerable to any kind of dislocation of supply, like say, you know, Russia Ukraine situation.
And like instead of saying, hey, wait a second, we shouldn't have handicapped our ability to produce fossil fuels.
There's just all sorts of excuses, like it's it has nothing to do with our policies.
Biden says, like, I've done everything I can to promote fossil fuels, which is just he ran on I guarantee you we're gonna end fossil fuels.
So they say, like, we just need it to be more like Germany.
And you look at Germany, and it's just a total failure, uh, because they they still need reliable electricity and they're they're reverted and they shut down nuclear and they're reverting to coal to keep their lights on, and they're still having skyrocketing prices.
And but you just see the establishment doesn't usually say, Oh, I'm sorry, I was wrong.
I'm totally changing my view.
It's usually you what you need is the if if the establishment is wrong, which it's not always wrong, but it is here, you need the anti-establishment people to really clearly a show a true view and B really prove that the establishment has been wrong.
And I'll I I've focused a decent amount.
I have this website, energy talking points.com that I highly encourage people to check out because that has my like way of explaining just about any issue, and it's for free and it has really good references and you can share it.
And a lot of my pieces are on the cause of the energy crisis and fighting this denial of the cause, because I think who's implicated in the crisis will have implications.
But that stuff can be done now and needs to be done now.
And if things get a lot worse, it's not going to help us that much in terms of understanding.
So what you really need is you want to seed the best possible understanding, and then every negative event will then at least be an educational value.
But if you don't seed the right understanding, then the establishment will usually just come up with some crackpot but popular popularized version of why it was still right.
You know, you mentioned earlier in our conversation about how the establishment hates those who speak the truth or make a really good argument for why the establishment is wrong in a in a particular instance.
And it sort of made me think of the story of, and I don't know why I'm bringing up the Bible so much.
Uh, it made me think of the story of Noah's Ark, right?
You got this guy who knows that the flood's coming.
He's the only one who knows, no one else believes him, and he's running around screaming at everybody thinks he's crazy.
So is that is speaking the truth with this this the solid argument, just this unpenetrable logic is speaking the truth and making the most logical argument enough?
Or are there other tactics and strategies and approaches you have to take?
Like, why is it that I chase geyser know who you are and what your thoughts are on this?
Because you could have written this book and never published it.
And you still would have had had the thoughts, but how do what did you do so that you're actually making it an impact on this conversation?
I I'm in the minority here in terms of persuasion, but I'm a big believer in intellectual persuasion.
So I I think that most I I don't think most people who think of themselves as having written something persuasive have written something that persuasive.
So I do think fossil future is a different level of persuasive if you really read it than just about anything else.
I think it's certainly more than anything else in the field.
But in general, it's just if people read it, uh, of course, judge for yourself, but it's just like a very high degree of rigor in terms of here's the thinking method of the establishment, proving that here's why it's wrong.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's there's good good reason uh for that.
And it's it could be ghostwriter.
Yeah, if only that'd be great.
Um the uh yeah, it's really like has a kind of systematically says, okay, here's the conclusion of the establishment, here's the methodology, here's why that methodology is totally wrong.
Here's the assumptions and values behind that methodology.
This is obviously wrong.
Here's my methodology, here are my assumptions and values.
I'm gonna use those.
And then here's like every single fact that I think is relevant, and here's how you can validate that for yourself.
So it's very, very systematic, I would argue, scientific um kind of argument.
And I think that has huge benefits.
Like it you should always try to, if you have correct arguments, really push the state of the art in terms of how do you explain this to somebody who expects to disagree.
And like that, that's my thing is just uh and I do this also with energy talking points.com.
It's just every issue you can imagine.
We have talking points, it's very, very logical.
I put out a new thread just about every week on Twitter, and I also put it on energy talking points.com, and you can subscribe at that website to our Substack, which puts out the talking points.
Like my number one thing is just incredibly logical and persuasive to people who expect to disagree.
And that's the number one frontier I push on.
But then on top of that, I do a lot of other things.
And that's when I say logical, it doesn't mean it's anti-emotional because anything logical can be emotional.
You just have to tell stories and just make it concrete to people's lives.
And I do that well, but there's a lot more that can be done by me and others there.
So there's a lot I think about a lot in terms of format.
Like all my talking points, I've created talking points so that everyone else can share them, just with fossil future, although I think that's the best thing.
Like you can't, it's not easy to just synthesize somebody else's book that's 420 pages or whatever it is.
So that's why energy talking points.com has whatever, probably a thousand plus points that are all tweet length.
Every single one fits as a tweet, and people can just copy and paste and use it.
They're originally designed for politicians, and this has helped me have an increasing influence in politics.
I've created this format that anyone can use.
So that's that's an example of, yeah, the ideas are logical, but but what format to use?
And then even just one more is my a huge strategy of mine is I just try to send as many influential people as possible signed copies of my book.
Uh I think you're one of them, right?
I mean, didn't yes, I I sent you one.
Yeah, yeah.
So and notice we did this thing.
And what did I tell you before the interview?
I said, like, I'll do the interview, but only if you read the book, which most people don't do, and that's considered like you're making me you didn't have this at all.
And most people don't, but some people say, like, how dare you ask this host who's so busy to read a 420-page book?
I'm like, I'm not asking him to, you're asking me, but I'm saying I want you to read this.
And why do I want you to read this?
Well, a the interview is going to be a lot better.
But the main thing is I want smart influential people to read my book, and because I believe so much in it, and I want I want there to be so many people who have really thoroughly been exposed to my arguments, which is totally different than being than having a one-hour interview with me where I'm just filling a slot on a calendar.
So that's been enormously effective.
There's so many people who've actually read my book, not just interviewed me.
Um, so I'm very strategic about things, but the core of it is just getting totally dialed into the core argument to somebody who expects to disagree.
And then once you have that, there's all kinds of strategic stuff you can do.
How do we overcome this overwhelming inclination of people to just go straight to ad hominems?
One of my favorite moments in the book, just a brief moment.
I think you were uh speaking in front of a congressional committee and you were at the you were asking.
Yeah, Senate committee.
A Senate committee, and uh what was it that you were asked if you were uh if you were uh Mr. Mr. Epstein, or you're uh mispronounced my name, of course, but Mr. Epstein, are you a scientist?
And I said, No, I'm a philosopher, right?
She said it's interesting.
We have a philosopher, and the idea was like these Republicans, why they bring in a philosopher, and I said it's to teach you how to think more clearly.
Right.
She didn't like that, but well, she's not a practice either, right?
That's right.
But then see, that's that's that's an interesting thing of how I approach things is my number one thing is offering a positive, not just hitting negative.
So there's one thing of saying, Oh, you're not a scientist either.
But no, I'm right.
I I think being a philosopher is crucial.
I think it's the most important subject because it studies our thinking methods and our underlying assumptions and values.
And I think that's really what's going wrong with this issue.
I don't think I think it's that it causes people to not look at the benefits of fossil fuels to distort climate science in a way that makes climate impact seem apocalyptic when they're not.
So yeah, that that was the uh so that was sort of an ad hominem.
I mean, it's basically saying uh it's sort of plausible.
It's an appeal to authority, right?
Like only if you're a scientist can you have a valid argument about this subject.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, there there is an element to that.
I mean, there's I've gotten a lot worse um ad hominems, but uh my number one thing is just what I care about is I just I don't like it when people ignore the arguments, and then I especially, as I indicated earlier, I don't like when my arguments are misrepresented because both of those lead to people not seeing what I have to say.
I mean, the the When it's ignored, and when I mean no one has to pay attention to anything, but like if you're uh, you know, say I had this experience with the Washington Post, which people can look up where they tried to cancel me before the book came out, this insane thing, unfortunately, I turned the tables really well against them.
So if you search like Alex Epstein, Washington Post, you can find these videos that I did and this this kind of thing.
But the main thing was like we sent them a book and they try to run a hit piece on me.
Like they should review this book.
This is uh this is an important book, and I'm an influential person.
I advise a lot of elected officials, I reach a lot of people.
I already had one huge best-selling book, uh Moral Case for Fossil Fields, and this one's selling way better than that one.
And and not that they knew that at the time, but like they're not New York Times, uh, Washington Post, like these guys, they're either ignoring it or they're trying to say, or other people are trying to say nothing to see here.
Well, they they know their audience doesn't want you to be right.
Yeah, and that's that's sad.
You should never be in that psychological position where you need something not to be right, and it's it's part of the challenge when you're when you're in a field, like if it's a peer of mine or someone, like I think people just need to be very self-aware when they're reviewing other stuff that's that's competitive with them.
You really want to give things the benefit of the doubt.
You really want to in particular, you really want to summarize arguments super super accurately, because anyone thoughtful is gonna say, like, like if I'm reviewing somebody that I disagree with 50%, people are gonna say, well, yeah, there's uh there's a temptation for Alex to be unfair to this person because this person is challenging his status in the field.
Now I would like to think, well, if they're right, then I'll change my view because I want to be right.
I I don't want to, I don't want to just think I'm right, I want to actually be right.
But I think there's just there's a big tendency when people are in the same field, either to do what they call PAL review, which is just you know, you just affirm what your allies say, or to just straw man your opponents.
So where can people find you and follow you as well as um get your book?
So two websites, uh, energy talking points.com is where they can follow all my latest uh material, and that that there's a subscribe thing that I hope people take advantage of, and that just links to a free sub stack, so energy talking points.com and then fossil future you can get anywhere, but I would say just go to fossil future.com and you can see options, including uh if you have any students or educators listening, you can actually get a totally free copy, like even free shipping.
You'll just go to fossil future.com and there's a link to Young America's Foundation, and they have this thing where they give away uh free copies.
So and then um I'm on all the social media, uh, but mostly I'm on Twitter at Alex.
What do you like about Twitter versus the others?
I don't think it's anything remotely close to Twitter in terms of like influencing the intellectual universe.
I think we connected on Twitter.
Um I I I mean, I although I'm not part of the intellectual universe, well, well, just saying like and I connect uh I think Twitter, of course, it it has a lot of it's very hazardous, so I can't unequivocally recommend it to people.
But I think you have to have the constitution and the self-esteem, really, where like you can take people saying false things about you or certainly negative things about you, of course, you have to be open if they're to the possibility they're right, but even just like a lot of people just can't take it and they'll say, Oh, for every if I get one positive one negative comment and 99 positive comments, I think about the negative comment all day.
It's like, don't go on Twitter if that's the way you feel.
Read the fountainhead.
Yeah, read the fountainhead, you're gonna get so many.
But it's it's the thing is just the number of influential people who are there and the ease with which you can reach them, particularly with a kind of viral post, is just staggering.
And so I think if if you can do it without ruining yourself psychologically and without spending all your time there, like the best Twitter users are spending hours and hours a day there, the most effective, they're spending hours and hours a day, and and it it really impacts them because they're just constantly thinking about that, and they can make that trade.
It's not a trade I'm willing to make.
So I kind of I create a lot of stuff and post it to Twitter, but I don't I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter.
Like I'm usually on Twitter once a day for 15 minutes, and then my other stuff I just compose outside Twitter and uh And then I and then I do that, and then so I just post stuff, and then I just anyone who's interesting, I reach out to and try to connect to.
And I found there's there's nothing resembling Twitter, and there's nothing close in terms of the number of interesting people I can reach and how quickly I can reach them.
And I'm I think I have the best thing in the world on this topic.
So it's very effective just to meet other interesting, interested people uh and share it with them.
So for anyone who's thinking about writing a book, do you recommend self-publishing or finding a partner publicist?
Uh yeah, so usually you get an agent.
I I was lucky with my first book.
I wasn't even thinking about writing a book, and an agent discovered me.
So I can't really say that's a good strategy to follow because it's a passive, passive strategy.
I mean, I would say that the you know, the more the publishers are very into social media to my knowledge, which is some but not not at all comprehensive, but they're very big on like following engagement.
So, for example, if you're if you can write viral threads on Twitter, you can probably that that's gonna make it easier to find an agent and find a publisher.
In terms of the economics, you know, a really smart guy I haven't worked with, but I I know him a little bit, and and he gets a lot of rave of reviews from people is Tucker Max.
Um, who I love from a lot of Ryan Holliday wrote the book about a lot about him.
Yeah, yeah.
So, but but this is more like the later Tucker Max, who runs I used to be called Book in a Box.
I think it's called Scribe.
I'm pretty sure it's now called Scribe.
And they they help all so they have this service where they help all authors, which again, I'm not affiliated with this, I don't know anything about it, but I've heard people positively review it.
But also, I think he has a book or two, maybe even look at their website on when to self-publish and when not to, because I think it it I think his view is if you think you know you can get something like a six figure advance, you should um you you know, you should, you know, you can go with a mainstream publisher, but otherwise self-publishing is good.
It's it's very hard though.
The one thing I can say pretty much unequivocally, which was some advice I got that was really good for my first book, is just you are the CEO of your own book launch.
So you should basically never expect that external marketers are going to do your whole job for you.
They can certainly help, uh, but my experience has been like, yeah, other people can help and do help, but the main thing has been me deciding sometimes with advice from others.
Like, here's here's gonna be my strategy.
So one thing is I just anyone who expresses interest in my work, uh, who's influential, like I'll offer them a signed copy of the book.
Like that's just one thing that I do.
So maybe not for everyone, maybe everyone doesn't have the budget to do that very easily, but for me, it works super, super well.
And ideas like that, that's like unless there's somebody I don't know, there's nobody who's just gonna do an unlimited, who's just gonna be like a marketing genius who will just devote their life to marketing you.
And no one understands you as well as you.
So it's a general business thing where people like people who like creating stuff often think, oh, like I just need to hire a marketer and they're gonna figure out all the marketing.
And the the core marketing is really your understanding of your market and the value that you offer.
And any really good marketer is gonna need to tap into that from you.
And it's it's similar with the book.
Like nobody knows the book like you do, nobody knows the audience, nobody cares as much.
And so if you're publishing a book, like think really strategically and and experimentally about what who the audience is, how you want to reach people, be clever, and then anything else uh is a bonus.
Well, thank you so much for um spending the evening with me.
It was really an honor and a pleasure to have you on it.
I really enjoyed your thoughts and uh I'll I'll definitely enjoy going through and editing and and listening back to this.
So uh I encourage all my listeners obviously to uh check out Alex if you don't already know who he is.
And thank you again for for giving me the time to speak with you.
Well, and thank you.
And I'm glad we we covered a lot of uh stuff I don't usually get to cover.
So those are those are my favorite interviews.
Absolutely.
And if you want to get into the weeds on some of the climate stuff, I highly recommend the interview that Alex did with Jordan Peterson.
