Shaun Newman Podcast - #421 - Alex Epstein

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

He is the founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress who has authored two books The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels & Fossil Future. SNP Presents: Luongo & Krainer https://www.showpass.com/snp-presents-luongo-krainer/ Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Let me know what you thinkText me 587-217-8500

This is Tamara Leach. This is Tom Corsky. This is Dr. Robert Malone. This is Wayne Peters. This is Kaler Betts. What's up, guys? It's Kid Carson. And you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

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They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, chemicals, delivering to your farm, commercial or oil fuel location. For more information, visit them at Hancock, Petroleum.com. He's an American author and commentator who advocates for the expansion of fossil fuels. He's also the founder and president of the Center for Industrial

Progress. He wrote, in 2014 the moral case for fossil fuels and in 2022 fossil future. I'm talking about Alex Epstein. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Alex Epstein. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Today I'm joined by Alex Epstein. Thank you, sir, for hopping on. Thanks for having me. Now, I've certainly read your latest book, Fossil Future. You have the moral case for fossil fuels, which I actually, as soon as I mentioned, you were coming on, a whole bunch of people here have read that, obviously sitting in oil, oil country, you know, you start writing about it in a positive light. People are going to share that around quite a bit.

Either way, for a person who's never bumped into Alex doesn't know what you're about, maybe we could just start with a little bit of your background in your words, and we'll hop in from there. Sure, any particular aspect of my background, do you're interested in? No, well, I guess how on earth do you get from, you know, a guy who's probably, probably pretty skeptical of the oil industry, fossil fuels in general, to where you're now an advocate for, you know, fossil, we need fossil fuels, sorry, in the future, and, you know, kind of that journey, I guess. Yes, I don't know if I was exactly skeptical, but I grew up in a pretty politically liberal

environment in a place called Chevy Chase's Maryland, so that's, that's in the D.C. area for people who don't know that specific place. So that's in general, a liberal place politically, at least in the United States. And I had a math science background. And so typically what I was taught, I'm born in 1980, and I think this is even more of the case for people born subsequently is basically what you're taught about fossil fuels is you're only taught negatives. So you're taught in particular they're really adversely affecting climate.

And so I had a certain amount of fear of that. But then you're not taught about any benefits. Either you're not taught about benefits of energy in general, which is pretty much the case with me, and or you're taught, well, any benefits we get from fossil fuels can easily be replaced by alternatives. And so in effect, there are no benefits to using fossil fuels versus not using them. You can get anything valuable about energy you can get for fossil fuels. And you laugh about that, but that's kind of the received wisdom.

And so it's really only when I started learning about some of the unique benefits of fossil fuels. fuels that really my mind got changed. And in particular, we'll see because I had a philosophy background. So the, you know, in philosophy, one of the big things is with when you're dealing with any product or technology, you want to carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects. And so, as I mentioned, the tendency with fossil fuels is to only look at negative side effects. But then for various reasons, I was researching the history of energy. And I really started learning about way oil in particular has some unique benefits that are really, really hard to replace, including it has benefits as a material in terms of like oil and gas being the basis of petroleum products,

but also things like agriculture, you know, modern fertilizers derived from natural gas and modern agricultural equipment, which allows us to be 100 or 1,000 times more productive and feed the whole world. That depends hugely on diesel fuel. And neither of these have near-term replacements. And yet I noticed it's just commonplace to talk about getting rid of fossil fuels without talking about these benefits. And that really alarmed me because it violates this basic rule if you need to carefully weigh the benefits

and the side effects. And if somebody is really ignoring huge benefits of something, you can be pretty confident. They're also exaggerating the side effects. So I concluded that was true, particularly with climate stuff. And particularly because with climate,

when you think of climate, we use fossil fuels to neutralize climate danger. That's one of our huge uses of them for heating and cooling, for building sturdy infrastructure, for weather warning systems, for irrigation, for crop transport to alleviate problems with drought. So it's like fossil fuels, unlike a medicine, they can actually cure their own side effects in climate and actually elsewhere. And so it's really bad to ignore the benefits of something that can cure its own side effects. And so then I got really interested

in just, okay, what's actually the truth? If you actually look at it properly from a philosophical perspective and you learn all the facts, which I didn't know at the beginning, but then I decided to become an expert on the fact. So that's sort of how I became somebody who was educated conventionally, but with a philosophical way of thinking, and then it just moved to, well, it's obvious we need more fossil fuels if you think about this issue correctly. So then when you, you know, you finally, I don't know, finally, that's probably not the right word, but you get to this point where you're staring at this problem and you're going, hmm, this is, you can see it for what it is, right? Like,

the indoctrination of people in general on just the negative side effects of something that's so vital to life on this planet. You start breaking it down, you start seeing the different structures. You know, I think you put it in a nice thing. You know, it comes to media, education, and then the corporate push is three of the big prongs that keep this going. Because when you stare at one, it's, you know, it's kind of like one of the things. things I sit here and go, like, well, how do you, how do you change the, what's going on here?

Because, I mean, like, when you get talking to regular folk, I mean, most of them are like, yeah, I get it. Like, there's a lot of, a lot more to the discussion than just some of the problems that have come or arisen from exploring fossil fuel use and different things like that. And you've hammered on, like, in the book, I mean, honestly, at first I would say, if you haven't read Alex's book, picking up a copy, it would be, yeah, would be, a, very smart a move because it honestly it's a pretty I don't want to say easy read because it's a thick book but I mean if you're a reader it's an easy read but it lays it out quite well one of the

things that's just I've struggled with is you you know it's I mean I only got to do is turn on the TV and you can see it you can turn on a whole bunch of different podcasts and shows it's not like it's just strictly to one source of media that we need to get off fossil fields I was just I'm a huge hockey fan and last night I was watching Seattle Cracken play the Colorado Avalanche and they were talking about their green push in the NHL and I was like like it's just it's so ingrained in North America and honestly if you look at the Paris Agreement right like I mean it's close to 200 nations I think that have signed on to that which is basically trying to you know move us away from Anyways I can go on and on and on when you look at the the scope of the problem and what you're talking about how do you address that and how do you like where do you start i think there's two elements to it so

this probably applies to a lot of things a lot of issues where if you think the world is going in the wrong direction i think one thing is to figure out how to just how do you change individual minds in the situation because if you just look at well how do i change everyone's mind well everyone is an individual so kind of what goes into changing individuals minds and i have a lot of ideas on on that. And kind of one thing that I've indicated so far is I think it's really important that people have this framing idea of carefully weighing benefits and side effects. I think in general, we don't think enough about how conversations are framed and how communications are framed. But it's the framing you could think of as the starting structure of something. So before you,

before somebody starts thinking about, hey, what do I think about fossil fuels? What should we do? That you have to step back and say, how am I thinking about this issue? And this idea of carefully weighing the benefits and side effects is a very powerful one because it's very common sense. Everyone agrees with it once it's raised explicitly, but it's not common practice. It's almost never done. So that's one example of how to communicate effectively individually. I think also there are certain facts that are the most powerful facts and we'll probably go through a lot of those today. And then related is, okay, well, how do you scale it? And I think kind of the traditional way of scaling or the traditional idea is that you as an individual become just incredibly

incredibly prominent, which if you want to do that, I mean, maybe Greta Thunberg is an exception here, but like it's sort of a full-time job to do that. And then even then, it's incredibly difficult to succeed at that job. My own approach is a little bit different. I mean, I've become somewhat prominent. But the main thing I try to do is I try to create resources that make it much, much easier for anyone else to become more effective. So one example of this, and maybe the most important example, is a website, energy talking points.com, which you can also subscribe to on Substack at Alexepstein. Substack.com.

And what I do there is basically every week, there's a new set of what I call talking points on some important issue. So it could be, you know, carbon taxes, or it could be the Paris Climate Accords, or it could be an electric vehicle mandate or something. And if you go to EnergyTalkingpoints.com, you can search just about any issue. And at this point, we have, I don't know, how many thousands of these points available.

And it's really, really effective. Like, you can learn very quickly, hey, what's a really effective answer on this? And then we have references. The next thing that we're actually bringing out for people who subscribe to our substack is called Alex GPT. So it's actually me. but you can ask it questions like you can chat GPT,

but it's programmed with all of my stuff. It's really good. It's really good already. Yes, we're going to make it available the next month. But that's going to be, even already people beta testing it say, hey, I'm in a conversation. I just ask Alex GPT, what should I ask this person? What should I do?

And because we've modeled it, we've modeled me really well into it, taking so much input from me, from my interviews, from my book, from the talking points. It's good. So kind of that's, that's, and I'm bringing this up because I think many of the, the viewers and listeners, they can benefit from these resources because these resources are going to allow you to become much more effective without putting in the 16 years of full-time work that has basically been my life to get good at this stuff. I wonder, you know, when you talk about different facts and different things like that, when a person is like, I don't know if adamantly or just. against fossil fuels or against anything in general.

Let's just, it can be for this topic, certainly fossil fuels, but whenever it comes into, it doesn't matter if we're talking just like heated subjects where they believe something to be true. Have facts worked for you or is it, you know, one of the things that I, when you talk about reframing the conversation, it's almost getting them to agree to something before you even walk into the conversation, which I think is actually quite brilliant. I'm just curious, when you hammer somebody with facts, here's the percentages, bo, blah, blah, blah, here's, you know, how many people are living in poverty anymore because of this. And does that seem to work in your mind? Or are you like, no, you're right. You have to reframe it before you can introduce different things like that.

There's not always a hard sequential rule about it. But I would think of it. I think that the most valuable thing is just to have an idea of what what does it look like to understand this issue. And then in my view, like, where do I want this person to get? And very related, where are they now? So you can think of it as point A is where they are now and point B is where you want them to be. Or sometimes I call it context A and context speak, because context is basically everything you know and think you know about something. And you're trying to get them from one place to another. And I think framing is usually the most efficient way to make a dramatic shift in something. Because, for example, if they have to go to this idea of carefully weighing benefits and side effects,

if they internalize that idea, that's going to affect how they process every single fact. Because one, they'll be open to a whole suite of facts, namely positive facts. They wouldn't be benefits in particular that they wouldn't be open to. And then with negatives, they're going to be on the premise of, hey, I need to actually quantify this. I can't just say, hey, climate change is real. That must mean the end of the world. It's like, okay, well, how much change? And of what kind?

You start weighing it in a scientific way instead of just saying, oh, it's evil in a kind of religious way. Like, oh, it's bad. We shouldn't do it. And let's stop doing it and not thinking about the cost and about the benefit of stopping doing it. So I think, like, the framing thing determines how they process facts. One needs to be aware of that. And then, but at the same time, there are facts that them. are just very powerful.

They encompass a lot of the issues. So one example is, you know, what I call climate-related disaster deaths or what's, what's called that. Sorry about that. I did not. I failed to turn off my phone for once. And I got, I got burned. Hold on a second. All these devices.

Well, while you're sitting, the climate, I had written it down, the climate disaster death rate fell by an incredible 98%. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. So in the last, you know, in the last 100 years, we've had this decline as emissions, right, have gone up. So we've, so supposedly the one degree warming we've experienced has been this absolute disaster. And yet, in fact, it's been, it hasn't, we haven't experienced disaster. Whatever harms there have been from the warming have clearly been outweighed by something else.

And I argue, well, this is very related to fossil fuels. As I mentioned, we use fossil fuels to neutralize climate danger. So that's one of the things that we actually do with it. And so you have to factor that in. And so the reason I bring up that fact is, you know, one way I put it is fossil fuels haven't taken a safe climate and made a dangerous. They've taken a dangerous climate and made it safe. Like that fact alone is pretty mind-blowing, if you think about it, because it really hits

at the narrative. So one thing I do a lot is I try to think about you how to frame it, but then also what are the power facts? For example, if people go to energy talking points.com, if you search fossil future, which is my book title, I have a summary of that, and I kind of take all the power facts from the book. So I think it's this combination of knowing how to frame it, including what we've discussed, but there's a lot more I talk about in Chapter 11 of how to frame it, but then also knowing the most significant facts. And that really means what are the most significant facts for somebody to get and weigh the benefits and side effects of fossil fuels compared to alternatives? Yeah, it's, you know, it's funny when I was reading your book, and I forget, you'll have to correct me on what part it is, but it's talking about how just everyday regular folk who are pro fossil fuel kind of admit to climate emergency by saying, oh, yeah, we got a lesson or impact and sure things like that. And somehow we get to where we're at, where you're like, what are we doing?

You know, I think of Canada right now and the just transition here in Alberta, what they're trying to, you know, bring across. where we're phasing out the coal and we're going to phase out to oil and gas and we're going to move into windmills and solar and then people are like but we live in a place where eight months of the year there's no sun i mean like i'm being a little bit facetious but not that much you know i live in a place i live in a place that wants to pretty much kill you uh six months of the year if you don't have heat in your house right like i mean and you go like how do we get to this insanity that we're sitting at and yet here it is and it's not just canada I mean, Germany, is it this past week?

Alex, they just removed their last nuclear power plants, right? Like that, and you're like, well, isn't, you know, like, now I've had enough conversation to change my mind and even nuclear where I'm like, oh, yeah. You know, like, there's a whole bunch of statistics in with nuclear that is just like, wow, I didn't really think of that before, you know? And yet, here we are. We're all moving towards this world where we're going green, we're saving the plant, We're doing all these things and the inevitable of it is like kind of apocalyptic, right?

Just in the sense of not like hail fire from the sky, but more of like, do you understand that by removing these things, you've already mentioned a few of them when it comes to food supply when it comes to heating your houses and different things like that This will have a big effect on the population of the world I think Canada and Germany the examples are really good in the sense of they show that there's not a it's very suspicious, it should make one very suspicious that the real motivation here is anything resembling I want to protect human life from a threat. So you take the issue of Canada, it's really like, okay, if you're talking about, say, somewhere in the middle of the equator, it's plausible that, okay, I don't want it to get hotter, right? Although if you look at how warming occurs, it occurs much more in colder places than in hotter places. So it actually occur more in

Canada. But then you think about, well, okay, what problems does Canada have with heat-related death versus cold-related death? Right? There's not even, there's no comparison, there's no comparison whatsoever. And yet, so is it really an existential threat like Canada? Like, what's going to happen to Canada in this? And you think, well, there's nothing, there's actually much more to gain from warming in Canada, at least, than not. And it's one thing to say, oh, well, we just care so much about the rest of the world. But they're portraying it as existential threat to Canada, but it's obviously not in human terms. And so it raises the question, what, what's your real goal here? Is it really? You're just trying to keep Canadians prosperous and

safe because it doesn't seem like getting rid of your energy industry and making yourself poor in the name of avoiding warming in a super cold place that people flee from and avoid all the time because it's too cold. It doesn't seem like that's really that human life. And my argument, in particular in chapter three of fossil features, yeah, really the goal of this movement, particularly the leadership, is not like what I call advancing human flourishing on Earth,

so not having the, you know, human beings have the best, longest, healthiest, most opportunity-filled lives, including safest lives possible. It's really this view that our impact on the planet is evil, and we should just eliminate it as much as possible, like eliminating human impact on our thing. That's clearly what's going on with Canada.

It's just being treated as intrinsically bad, for anyone to change Canada and the climate versus it's actually going to be harmful. Because again, the climate change you would expect to be beneficial. And certainly the energy that comes with the climate change is all that's net enormously beneficial in particular to Canada. And then Germany is a different example. But you notice they're claiming, well, we care so much about CO2. And then you're shutting down nuclear, which is the most scalable way we have of producing

reliable energy, particularly electricity without CO2. So it kind of goes to, wait, why are you against nuclear? And then why are these people also usually against hydro? And it's what they'll always say is some form of, well, we don't like the impact. Like we think it's just wrong. In nuclear, okay, it's actually the safest form, but it's wrong to create the waste. And it's wrong to split the atom. It's wrong to use radiation.

It's really this view that human impact is wrong, and we should just stop it at all costs. And it's really not concern about human life. Yeah, but if you boil that thought process down to its simplest form, it's basically get rid of human beings. Yeah. because the perfect way to leave the earth is with us not there. Essentially. The perfect earth is the earth that... If you think about the green movement, it's really undeniable.

Their view is the ideal earth is the earth that would exist had human beings never existed. Which that should really make people pause of why am I listening to somebody whose ideal is my extinction and in fact never existence? And there's going to be people that, well, I don't think that far extreme. but like you think about where we're heading. And the fact that it's, you know, like you talk about human flourishing, I think that's a nice way, like, or maybe not a nice way, a good way of putting it, right? I just, when you boil it down to these like simple things,

you're like, that should open, I think, everyone's eyes. Because I mean, the moral high ground they always pull is like, oh, but you're doing impacts. Like, well, yeah, okay, well, I don't, you know, we want clean drink water, we want all these different things, you know, like these things that kind of pull on your heartstrings. but then they I keep coming back to this

but then all of a sudden you look and they've like instead of taking an inch they've taken an absolute mile and you're like what is going on you know what you well with the impact thing is important so what they've really done is you could think of it as an inch and a mile but really what they've done is they've combined things that don't belong together so when they say our goal is to minimize or eliminate impact

the plausibility of that is well there are certain kinds of impacts that we want to minimize or if we could eliminate They want to eliminate or minimize water pollution if we can do it in a reasonable way or air pollution and stuff. But we definitely don't want to minimize building roads and building factories and farms. And most of the impact that we do on Earth makes the Earth a better place for us to live. And so by putting it as impact, what they're doing is they're packaging, they're creating this false package of minimizing human harming impacts and then minimizing human helping impacts. And they're just putting it all together.

so you think when you're minimizing all impact, oh, I'm actually helping humans. They'll use the examples of air pollution and water pollution. But in fact, the vast majority of it is stopping human industry and human energy use. And so it's really a clever technique. And this is used in a lot of other contexts too, of packaging together two different things. And it's often that you want to get away with promoting something that you couldn't promote on its own. So you package it together. The philosopher I ran called this intellectual package dealing.

and one major manifestation is you want to get, you want to put over something nobody would accept on its own, so you package it with something good. Well, I'm going to have to listen to that again, because that's, well, that's giving me pause, you know? Well, there's a lot of examples of this.

I mean, people do it all the time with everything. So it's like extremism, right? That's another one. Or it's like, sometimes if you want to attack somebody who's principled, in a good way, you'll call them an extremist. And they say, oh, well, the communists and Nazis, they were extremists. And then being a freedom fighter is an extremist. It's like, oh, nobody should be an extremist. So this is a way of people, people who only just want to do the average of whatever else believes, like what they call moderation or centrism. Like, it's a way of smearing people.

So Einrand had this essay, which I highly recommend called Extremism or the Art of Smearing. So in that example, in that essay, she used the example of extremism as one of these package deals. But one of the ways it's done is, so in that case, it's just, you know, you're either smearing somebody. So you want to falsely associate something good with something bad or something, or you want to put over something bad, and you want to package it with something good. Like, it goes either way. But it's just this is why philosophy is so useful if you do it properly, because it helps you formulate clear concepts. And you notice all the time, wait a second. People are constantly packaging together things that don't go together in order to manipulate you one way or the other.

Hmm. You know, you, um, I can't remember when I watched it. And geez, that's a long time. I feel like it's a long time ago. Maybe it's not. You went to New York, I think it's New York City, uh, protest, right? And you walked around the big sign. Like, am I remember in this correct? Yeah, I said I love fossil fuels. This is in 2014. It was the biggest, I believe still the biggest anti-fossil fuel march in history. How, how did that go for you? I'm just kind of curious with, you know, you had like hundreds of thousands of people walking around basically saying, no more fossil fuels, which, you know, it's always kind of funny, I don't know, because if you just think of all the products, fossil fuels, anyways, I can, I just, I just chuckle about it. But at the end of the day, you're walking around with a giant group of people was something that contradicts what they're thinking. Did you at least have some interesting dialogue there, or was it, it was not that? It was interesting. So people can, if they just go to YouTube and it was called People's Climate March, so if you just search my name, Alex.

Epstein people's climate march there's a playlist that I think has 10 or probably 12 videos and you can see different things that happen so some people try to ignore me a couple people try to do like minor physical things like grab my sign out of my hand or that kind of thing or like touch me but now there's no fights fortunately or anything like that now I think it would be a bigger risk I'd be less inclined to do it now because I think unfortunately violence has been more normalized as oh if you're really mad, then it's okay to attack somebody. Like, if you're really offended, then yeah, why not hit somebody? So I'd be a little bit less confident in the protection of the police and in the protection of just people's decency. But back then, but think about that. Nine years ago,

roughly then, you were like, you didn't think this was a poor idea. You're like, no, this should be interesting. I mean, I thought there was some chance. I'm pretty good at, I mean, it's also like, is every, I mean, if everyone attacks me, sure, but I know, like, I've done Brazilian jiu-jitsu for 20 years. Like I know if it's just one person or something, I'd be fine. And but it's, it's just kind of, yeah, no, it has really degenerated. At least this is my, this is my view. Maybe it's just because I'm older and more aware of the risks now. But really then it was, there was the mentality, I think of, yeah, the protesters were

really trying to, you could tell they're trying to make themselves look good. And they kind of know that they don't. In fact, these guys just left New York a dump. So of course, these environmentalists so called just polluted the hell out of the streets afterward. But anyway, so there were some interesting discussions. So some of them took the, there were a couple of one-on-one discussions, which I have on tape.

A lot of them were kind of more people insulting me and then me firing back with just some interesting points. But I think the number one reason I do this kind of thing is because I want people to see that you can do it. And I don't want everyone to see that it's, that there is a confident view in the other direction. that's very substantiated by like logic and facts. And because usually what happens at these things,

and this happened in this case too, is that insofar as anyone goes who's against, anyone goes and they're against it, what they'll do is they'll make fun of it. So they'll say like, oh, Leonardo DiCaprio is here. He's an idiot. They'll point out to the craziest protesters.

And that's not my focus at all, because my focus is not, hey, because that's really, hey, this is a good thing, but there are some crazies. And my view is no, no, hey, this is wrong. You guys are wrong to be marching against fossil fuels.

So to me, that's not a funny thing. That's a serious thing. I think that was the effect of it. And it affected a lot of people. I mean, people just tell me all the time. Oh, I saw that and it really made an impression and inspired me in a certain way. So I'm glad I did it. You're the one swimming up river against, like, you know, a massive protest, right?

And to me, sitting from a. podcast standpoint that's the people you look for you look for the like what is he doing what is he talking about why is everybody for one thing and he's standing there or she because there's been plenty of women over the course of the last five years who've said things in the podcast history where you're like what is that about because you know like the world continues to march forward and they're marching to their narrative to their ideas to follow the science to blah blah blah and you're like there's you know there's the odd person who

And more and more, I might say, in my view, that are standing up or starting to speak intelligently and articulate to things that really matter not only for my life. One of the things I liked, and I forget how you framed it or posed it, but we've got to look at this not from just tomorrow or maybe the days coming in the next couple of years, but from like the future, like generations. And certainly when you're talking about something as necessary to life where I get. live anyways as fossil fuels to just remove them in you know a short order 2030 2035 2050 you know that's my kids life and uh i it's one of the things that i think is very lacking um whether it's in politicians or just maybe in the the discussion in general is like the vision of like where we're going and what we're actually trying to accomplish everything seems to be like doom and gloom like the world is ending in well i forget what greta said it was

like four years and we pass that anyways and you kind of carry on right like doom and if you rewind the clock they've been saying that now for how many years Alex and uh you know it'd just be nice to be like well we got to get to here and over time maybe we want to do a couple things differently um but we got to make sure we're you know leaving this place uh better and pulling more people out of uh poverty and a whole bunch of different things you know that uh sounds a little um you know grandos uh somewhat but at the same time you you kind of get what i'm throwing your way It's interesting because I'd say the antifal fuel view poses as a long-term view involving long-term thinking.

And to your point, I think it's the opposite of it. Because if you think about what does long-term thinking mean, it's really hard to engage in long-term thinking. And one thing is you have to start by understanding the present and what's good about it and what's bad about it. And the antifossal field movement doesn't understand the present at all. because they treat the present as uniquely bad, including uniquely endangered by climate, and then fossil fuels are the villain.

So this is just empirically false. The world is better than ever to live in, and fossil fuels have a huge positive role in it. They provide 80% of the energy that powers all the machines that make us productive and prosperous, and without which this planet would be completely inhospitable, just as it was for most of humankind's history. And in climate, I mentioned, we're far safer than ever from climate. So if you can't predict the present, how can I trust you to predict the future? So part of it is they have a totally wrong evaluation of today. And I think it's because the leaders are not evaluating the world today by a human flourishing

standard. They're evaluating it by an anti-human standard of we should be minimizing our impact. So they think we've impacted the Earth so it's bad, even though it's actually good for us. I think a lot of it is just a measurement or values disconnect. But then you also look at how they think about the future. Like, there's no, they'd say, oh, we're so concerned about climate change in the future. But you just look, well, we're incredibly good at dealing with climate danger. We've taken nature's climate danger and we've massively reduced it.

So it doesn't stand to reason that we could deal, if we added any climate danger, we could deal with it as well. In the U.S., we have every type of climate imaginable. We can thrive in any climate. What is going to happen that we're so afraid of? Nobody can really specify what's going to happen that's going to be so bad. So they just catastrophize, they have this catastrophizing view of any climate kind of impact, but they have no fear whatsoever about plans to outlaw 80% of our energy in a world, by the way, that needs far more energy in the next 27 years.

So that they consider long-term thinking to say, hey, let's commit to getting rid of fossil fuels essentially by 2050. And they have no fear about it. It's not even they say, yeah, I think there's a 15% chance we can do that, whereas I would say there's zero percent chance. They didn't even say, yeah. But if we don't, here's the backup plan. There's no backup plan.

It's just let's cut off everything that works. And literally every form of energy today depends on fossil fuels in one way or another. So it's really underlying 100% of our energy. They're saying, let's destroy that in the next 27 years because fill in the blank, because I believe that we can, because some academic claim that we can. So it's just the opposite of anything resembling long-term thinking, but it poses, oh, yeah, we really care about the long-term. Do you think that there's, I don't know, I don't know, if it's five individuals,

100,000, doesn't matter, that actually have a really long-term thought process in mind. But instead of it being under our, where we want to go, you know, and like putting in play like, this is where we need to go. They are doing the same thing. Because, I mean, if you look at media, you look at how it's, you know, into schools, it's into, you know, you mentioned E. ESG, I think I'm saying that right, ESG, incorporations, all these different things.

It's already infiltrated all these different things. Do you think somebody's mastermining this, or is this just a couple of things twisted and turned that are leading us astray? I think it's maybe somewhere in between, but maybe more in the second category. I definitely don't think it's one diabolical person who's leading the conspiracy.

Bill Gates ain't sitting there going. No, definitely not. him. He's more of a pawn. So I think it as I believe a lot on the power of philosophy. So I tend to think that the people who set the basic philosophical ideas, they tend to be the leaders of it, but doesn't mean they're actively leading it. It means that they sort of led it by inserting certain philosophies. So to make it more concrete, I think one philosophical idea that's very prevalent today is what I call the delicate nurturer assumption. And this is this is the view that earth absent our impact exists in this delicate nurturing balance that has

three attributes. So it's stable. It doesn't change too much. It's sufficient. It gives us what we need as long as we're not too greedy. And then it's safe. It doesn't endanger us too much. And then the view of human beings is we are parasite, what I call parasite polluters. So we just take from the earth and then we ruin the earth. And so our impact is bad. And our impact ruins the delicate nurture. And you see this all the time. This is people's view of climate, right? we're going to increase the amount of CO2 from 0.03% of the atmosphere to 0.04%. And then we're going to have this devil climate that punishes us and we can't live with it. Or we're going to use resources and the planet will have no more resources and then we'll just all starve and suffer.

Or we're going to pollute. And our emissions, it's not going to be a manageable thing. The Earth is going to block out sunlight and we're just going to all choke to death. And it's always this view that human impact is destroying some delicate nurturing balance that. that, and thus it's inevitably self-destructive. And this view is held everywhere. And in large part, it's because it was put into our educational system. We just constantly taught, hey, the planet is this nice thing. You think of it as this nice, healthy thing with a smiley face on it. And then we've ruined it. We've given it a fever. We've made it unhappy, et cetera. It's really the mother nature is your mother.

It's really like the planet is this perfect God and we've ruined the God by impacting it. And this, has been so pervasive. This is just one kind of philosophical idea about nature and its relationship to human beings. And it just totally ruined the thinking. But you think, like, who did that? Was it that Paul Ehrlich, who's one of the villains? Like, did he do it? Well, sort of. But there's a bunch of people who did it into the system. And why did the people put it into the system? Well, some people were just kind of leftist anti-capitalist types who just wanted some way to attack capitalism. And this was convenient. So I don't think it was, but what happened is, Now these ideas have a mind of their own, right?

Because they're the framework that everyone is operating under. And it's similar for other ideas as well. But I think what happens is just these philosophical ideas get inserted and spread. And then they have kind of a life of their own, which manifests through people like Al Gore, Paul Ehrlich. I mean, Paul Ehrlich is more of a kind of leader, but like an Al Gore or Joe Biden. I mean, that guy is just a total cipher, right? But he's just, but these ideas are totally manifesting through. him and he's being quite an effective vehicle for these ideas, even though obviously he doesn't have

any ideas of his own. And I hate to bring politics into it, but is Biden going to, is Biden running again? I mean, I have no expertise on this. I just, I heard that he is, but, I mean, in general, in general, I find that people, people run for things when it makes no sense at all because of what their circles are telling them and because of what their own, I don't know what it is, insecurities or whatever telling them. So there's all sorts of ill-advised decisions in this realm. So it wouldn't surprise me if Biden made that kind of decision. You know, as an American, you know, sitting up here as a Canadian, I watch it. And I'm like, man, that guy is, every time I watch him, I'm like, is he going to make it up the stairs?

Like, and that's no, I'm not crapping on old people. I'm just saying, like, he's, an old guy. And to lead a nation, man, you wonder if the Americans got it, I mean, we got our own problems here. Don't, yeah, I mean, Trudeau. But it's interesting, right, because it's kind of like both he and Trudeau are just sort of ciphers or vessels. Oh, yeah. For just popular ideas. And so doesn't matter whether he's like younger or better looking or older and less appealing. I mean, it's, it's really notable that, it's just what I'm emphasizing here is just how, there are certain ideas that are dominant and those tend to manifest in the leaders. This is why I think there's a lot of leverage in challenging the basic framework,

which that's a lot of what Falswell Future does, and then also just challenging all the specific factual claims, which EnergyTalkingPoint.com, I think, is the best thing for, part because it's free so you can just search for anything anytime. And again, I'm hoping that people get the idea, hey, with these resources, I individually can become a lot more effective as a spokesperson, as a speaker on these issues. But then also you can just share the stuff.

So I try to create stuff that's particularly free stuff online that's really, really easy to share because we are in an era where you have an unlimited printing press in the internet. Oh, 100%. Your ability to access information is unlimited. Your ability to become your own, you know, I don't know, broadcast station. I mean, obviously. Yeah, there you go.

Right? Like it's like what you're doing. Yeah. And I mean, even to write a book, Alex, if you want to write them and publish a book, today it's never been easier. Like, I mean, not to say that Sean will be writing a book, folks. Like I'm, when it comes to writing, pooh. Anyways, you know, but I did read a thing. Somebody sent me a, and I'm curious, you've written two books.

Is it, I got sent this thing. And it said, writing is like going to the gym. If you never work out, you're not going to walk in and bench press, you know, 300 pounds or squat, you know, 400 or whatever. And writing is the same way. It's not easy. You have to work at it daily and everything else. Would you subscribe to that thought? Or is it something you think that's more of a natural skill?

I mean, obviously, no matter what you do, whether it's podcast and writing, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you never enact it and actually do it and use it, you're not going to get better at it, no matter how talented you are. But do you think it's talent or do you think it's talent or do you think that? it's a little bit of just like working the muscle, so to speak. I have too much to say about writing. I think one thing that's notable is that it is, I think, really good writing is first and foremost good thinking. So writing is a little bit of a weird category to think about it, because it's just a means

of communication. It's probably the most precise means of communication because it's so deliberate, right? Right now I'm communicating based on what my subcontradity. conscious feeds me. And then I try to edit it. If I say something that's a little bit incorrect, I'll try to modify it, and I'll try to speak at a pace where I can, I can sort of fix things as they come out. But it's a lot different from writing. Writing, I can, I can exact much more control over it. But, and I find that even my ability to speak about it at a certain level is related to the writing, but the writing, a huge amount of it is just thinking about it.

So I think about fossil features, is it well written? Well, in a certain sense, but I think the main thing is it's well thought out. And I think some people are pretty good technical writers and better than I am in certain respects, but the thinking of this stuff isn't very good. So it'll kind of flow, but doesn't have a logic. So my own personal obsession in writing is having a very, very explicit logic to the work. There's, I think on my substack, Alexepstein.com. This is one of the, we have only a few paid things, but one of the things if people pay like

nine bucks a month for a subscription is I have what's called the Alex notes of fossil future. So it's like the Cliffs Notes written by me. And I've only put out 104 so far, but I'll do the rest in the not too distant future. And if people look at that, and I think there's actually, you could just look at there's a preview for free on that. So just go to the substack and look at that. You'll see like the level of detail, which I outline is crazy. I mean, it's just, but because I want to understand the logical structure of everything.

And it's always about what's the law. structure to explain this given the audience. So for me, writing is just this incredibly precise act of architecting things. And I find that that's the hard part. And it's like, how do you get good at that? Well, in part, it's getting good at thinking. I think with the writing itself, it really, really helps if you read a lot as a kid and were exposed to people who are good at writing. I feel like this is true, my family, because I have three sisters. I think they're all, they're not really professional writers, any of them, but all of them are very good writers. And they can just write better than a lot of people who might even write

professionally or who might write a lot more. And I think it's because of the background that the environment they grew up in and because they read a lot. And so you just get that. So I, I don't myself know, I can teach a lot of things. I actually don't know how to teach writing kind of from scratch if somebody can't do it. If somebody can do it, I can teach them a lot. I can improve them. But I don't know how like if you suck at writing, like how to get good. There might be a way, but I don't know it. Well, I mean, starting would be, I would think. Yeah, yeah. You need somebody telling you, you need somebody giving you feedback on does this actually work? And what it really is, I think, is it's does this really build a context for the

reader? Like, are you starting out at a certain point? And are you developing it in a way that that makes sense. And what I found with bad writers is that just they write something and they don't get that it doesn't make any sense at all. Like that's the hard thing. Just not this doesn't follow at all. You just wrote some random sentences that don't fit together at all. I find that one thing that's helpful a bit is speaking because people tend to be a little bit better at speaking in a context-building way than writing. But so this is the challenge. Now, you just need somebody who can who can give you feedback. Now, if you yourself have read a lot, you can be decent at giving yourself feedback, although there are challenges with that. But it's, it's even if somebody really good,

like if you have five people giving you feedback, how long does it take you to just understand what the hell's going on? Like, this doesn't make any sense is a hard piece of feedback to get. I don't just mean emotionally. It's like if you don't get why it does. doesn't make sense, there's a certain chasm. So I've experienced this before with some people where, and I don't mean to discourage anyone, but where like they just don't get it, they just don't get that it doesn't work. And so it's very hard to explain. Like, you know, if I'm teaching somebody to jiu-jitsu and I'm teaching them like an arm lock, like it's pretty simple little universe of, okay, you're doing this and here's where you made the mistake and this is the purpose of it.

It's like this pretty limited universe that anyone can learn decently. But the whole thing is harder. And I'm not an expert. The whole thing of jiu-jitsu at all. But it's still like writing is so open-ended because you're just, it's always something new. You're always explaining something. And this is why I think reading a lot and even having had the experience of writing papers and stuff, you get a feel for what it's like to build a context for an audience.

And I think that's, if you can do that, then. Yes, go to the gym all the time. If you could do that at all, yes, go to the gym and get good feedback and have a vision for what you want to do. And then I think you can become really, really. I've seen vast improvements, but there are some people who just don't seem to get it. It's interesting because, you know, I come from obviously the podcast set of things. And, you know, if you go back and listen to Sean in episode one, I, I mean, there's a list of things that I've done wrong over the course of, I mean, you're going to be like episode 400 and change. and I would say that I've gradually improved and etc.

One of the things that I've found very interesting is I've had different guests on who've had their own podcast and who do it regularly. And I can notice it from them, which is if they're hosting or doing, I have two different guys I'm thinking of who do it like solo. They'll interview people from time and time, but they'll also do solo or they just explore their thoughts. And I don't know, you know, I'm not, I've never been big on that. I'm trying to pull in smart minds to pull tons of information out of them. Anyways, the reason I bring them up is when they come back on, which is usually every 50 to 100 episodes on my side, so I don't know how many that equates for them, you can notice a vast, vast improvement in the way their brain thinks. Just in how they conversate, how they like the thoughts they have, how they can articulate it, it's just like, wow, that's like, that's noticeable. And that's in less than five years, you know?

I mean, I'm just going into the fifth year. And writing, I just feel like you've mentioned it multiple times. It's a more deliberate, there's something that for me, and this is just for me, folks, is it feels like work. And I assume a writer that is not the case. They're just like, boom, and away they go. No, no, it feels like work for a lot of people. I mean, I probably less for me. For me, I really, it's a comfort zone.

There's a way that I get locked into writing or thinking about. writing or outlining that's it's a very special experience. I feel like, oh, this is, this is really what I'm supposed to do, not in some cosmic sense, but just, it was doing it yesterday. And lately, I've been doing a bunch of financial stuff and a bunch of hiring, which was necessary for my goals, but it's not my number one thing that I like to do. And yesterday, I just sat down for two and a half hours and I just got locked into something. It's like, oh, this is so easy for me to get. Now, sometimes it's really hard. I mean, if it particularly, I think one thing, writers, this might be helpful, is,

it's a lot easier and probably better to try to write to 80% of your ability than 100% of your ability. So I mentioned that writing is thinking, really. And so one challenge of writing, which I certainly had with fossil futures, the more ambitious you are about the novelty to you, of the thoughts in something you're writing, the more you have this dual job of you have to figure out what you're trying to communicate, and you have to communicate it. versus the clearer you are on the thing that you have to communicate, then it's a lot more straightforward to just use the skills of explaining it. So for me, I find 90 plus percent of the difficulty is thinking of the new things versus writing something that I already understand. If I already understand it, I understand where the audience is, I feel like I can get it.

And so Fossil Future, I made this choice of, I had a vision for what I wanted the book to be that was beyond my capabilities. So when I started it, so in a sense, it was beyond 100%. and I enlisted some people to help me with it, which made it at all possible. But it was still fiendishly difficult at points. Like there were some chapters. I have no idea where they belong. And I think in the end, it seems all smooth.

And I've read it out loud for the audiobook. And it's like, oh, it all makes sense. But it was so difficult to do and sometimes painful, just the feeling of like, I cannot figure out what the hell this is. And that was just a decision I made because I had a really clear idea of where I wanted my understanding to be and I was willing to pay the price. But I think in general, what I usually do now is I usually write to 80% of my ability, which means I'm constantly thinking of new ideas, but I don't try to absolutely get my latest idea perfect in my latest piece of writing. There's

more of a lag between my ideas are developing. It's kind of an R&D portion and then there's a creation portion. And I find that is a lot faster because every time you write something, then you'll learn from that and you'll get feedback on that and you'll know a little bit more and then you can kind of iterate and do the next one. So I think of it as writing to 80% of your ability takes one fifth the time of writing to 100% of your ability. And so that might be something that helps people.

At least when you're starting writing, make sure to write about something that you know really well. Don't combine. I'm going to learn about this and I'm going to figure out how to communicate. I tell you what. if you're a writer out there, I think Alex just laid out a nice little plan there for people to get, going on, I haven't just encouraged, I think, you know, even if it's difficult, even if it's easy 80% of the time, you're going to have 20% or maybe less more where, you know,

you're just like, God, I don't know if I want to do this. Podcasting is no different. Some days you wake up and you're in the saddle and you're like, here we go. And the other days, it's a slug. It's a slug to get through. and I mean, I don't know, I don't think it matters, you know. Once again, I bring it back to the NHL or hockey. And when I was playing, nine out of ten times I was happy to be in the rank.

But every once in a while, you're just like, I don't want to go through the motions. I don't want to do it. And I think people need to realize that no matter what you pick, no matter what hobby or passion you have for doing anything, you're going to have days like that. Now, before I got two minutes with you before I let you out of here, I got to do the final question, which is nice and quick. If you're going to stand behind a cause, then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing Alex stands behind?

I would say stand behind intellectual honesty. So I had, when I was 18, I had a sort of coming to some controversial conclusions. There's like difficult conclusions in changing my beliefs. And I basically made a commitment to myself that I thought, well, it's hard now. But imagine I'm 80 and somebody reviews me. that'll be right. And I just made a commitment that no matter how old I am and no matter how much I've invested in something, I will admit if I'm wrong and I'll change my view. I tell you what, we're going to have you back on and we're going to talk about that because that's a

fantastic, that is an interesting, interesting answer, Alex. And I would love to discuss that more, but I told you I'd have you out of here on time. I appreciate you coming and doing this and giving me some time this morning. My pleasure, John. Thanks a lot. Hey, thanks for tuning in today, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got some good plans going on for this weekend. This episode, of course, is brought to you by Cal Rock Industries. So if you're looking for use surplus, use surplus frack sales and production tanks, they also got new, used and refurbished oil and gas equipment, all in stock here at Cal Rock Industries in Lloydminster. Just go to calrock.ca for more information. I also want to let you know that tickets now on

sale. I got it in the show notes for the upcoming SMP presents June 10th here in Lloydminster, Gold Horse Casino, Tom Luongo, and Alex Craneer. Yeah, you heard it here. That's right. Tom and Alex making their way. Tom coming up from Florida and Alex all the way across the pond. He's flying in from Nice, France. So it's going to be an interesting night with those two, June 10th, at the Gold Horse Casino.

You can get tickets. Now they're available. And if you look in the show notes, the link is there. Otherwise, if you're having trouble, just shoot me a text. We can get you hooked up. either way it's going to be a fun night and look forward to having both of those guys together I want to say for the first time

ever in person I could be wrong on that I'm going to find out more of that as we move a little closer to it either way it's going to be an electric night and I hope to see you all there either way have a great weekend and we will catch up to you Monday until then