The Pomp Podcast - #977 Alex Epstein On Why We Need More Fossil Fuels Not Less

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Alex Epstein is the author of the new book "Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less" In this conversation, we discuss the ESG narrative and why it may not be as accurate as you may think, energy poverty around the world, why fossil fuels demand continues to grow, and what Alex thinks we should do to solve our energy problems. We also go through all of the crackpot narratives that are rewarded in the mainstream discourse, but don't offer any realistic solutions and only serve as a form of virtue signaling. ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more.    Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the world's largest sports betting, casino, poker and horse racing website that accepts cryptocurrency for wagering.   BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure.   Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit.   BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Alex Epstein is the author of a brand new book, Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. In this conversation, we talk about the ESG narrative and why it may not be as accurate as you previously thought, why fossil fuels have been growing so aggressively, and why there's so many crackpot narratives that are out there that probably are just simply rewarded for virtue signaling and morality, but don't actually have as many real world use cases as previously thought. I really enjoyed this conversation with

Alex, and it definitely makes you think more critically about some of these issues and what potential solutions could be. Hope that you enjoy this episode. Before we get started, I first want talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.US is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. You can trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors. There are no fixed minimum fees, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees either. FTX.US is also the only leading exchange that supports both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. Download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP to earn these free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app

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or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, everyone. Bang, bang. I've got Alex here with me. Alex, I thought a great place for us to start this conversation was there's an ESG argument that has been circulating. It's become very popular. And one of the key tenets of being able to have a debate or conversation around a topic is that if you take one side of that debate, you should be able to argue the other side better than them. And so maybe you could explain to us, what is the ESG argument? And how does that pertain to energy production and consumption? So I think the ESG movement is really employing

a broader argument that is held by many of the world's thought leaders. And I call this the moral case for eliminating fossil fuels. And the basic idea is that the fossil fuels that we're using a lot for energy today are creating a climate catastrophe, but they are rapidly replaceable by renewable solar and wind, and therefore we should rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. So it's got the element of they're causing climate catastrophe, they're rapidly replaceable, and therefore they should be eliminated as quickly as possible. And then what you see with ESG is ESG is basically saying, hey, we all know this is true, right? We know we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. For some reason, the voters aren't doing it too quickly. So let's, Larry Fink and

other people, let's impose this because we know this is the right thing. So I'll write a CEO letter and I'll tell everyone, hey, you've got to get to what's called net zero as quickly as possible. Net zero means net zero CO2 emissions, which is the main emission of fossil fuels that impact climate. When you think about their argument, what would you say is the most accurate part of the argument? Or what would you say is the thing that you're like, yep, that makes sense, or that's a fair thing to argue? The only thing that makes sense about the argument is that if the premises were true, the conclusion would be true. So if it were true, no, but that's important. But I should say, I'm giving a much better version of the argument than I think is

usually made. But if it were true, that we're causing a climate catastrophe, let's say climate apocalypse, and the source of that, all of its benefits were rapidly replaceable, then you should rapidly eliminate it. Now, you might think, well, why isn't the market doing that? There's a lot of questions that arise, and it's ultimately because I think both premises are false. But yeah, I think it makes a certain kind of sense if its premises are true, but I don't think they're true. So let's start with maybe the first premise of the climate apocalypse or the climate change is being driven by fossil fuels and kind of the whole anti-ESG argument. What is not true about that or how do you evaluate the accuracy of that premise? Well, so with climate, there's a good question of how do you measure this?

So you're saying the basic narrative is we are in the midst of a climate catastrophe slash climate crisis. And this is why you have organizations like the Scientific American, outlets like the Guardian, they're using the terms climate crisis, climate emergency as mandatory terms, right? So this means we're in the middle of a catastrophe. And then the idea is it is going to become an apocalypse if we continue using fossil fuels, emitting CO2, and then that leads to rising CO2 in the atmosphere.

So that's the view. And there's a question of, well, how do you measure this? And I think the most obvious way to measure this is what's happening to the death rate from these climate related disasters that are getting worse. I should say, if your primary focus is on human life, and this is going to be a sticking point, we'll see for ESG, but this is my view. If your primary focus is on human life, then climate related disaster deaths are really interesting to study. And before I studied this issue, I was suspicious of some of the catastrophe claims. But for sure, I thought, obviously, these deaths are going up, right? I mean, how could they not be going up, given how much we hear about this deadly climate

crisis? And yet what's fascinating, I learned this first in 2007, and it's even more true today, is that this is very well documented that the climate disaster death rate, get this, has gone down, down by 98% in the last 100 years. So this means that we are one-fiftieth as likely to die from a climate-related disaster. And what's further fascinating about this is it's never reported in the media. OK, you might say the media are biased. But then even if you look at, say, the UN, what's called the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change, their summary reports don't mention this. And isn't that crazy? Reports on climate not mentioning the death rate from climate. Isn't that a kind of important thing if you care about human life? But even beyond that, I show in the book, even their multi-thousand-page synthesis reports that are supposed to synthesize all the best research in the world don't mention the climate-related death rate. So there's this question of, like, what the hell is going on? There's some sort of bias here, and it becomes particularly relevant to fossil fuels because if you ask, well, what drove this death rate down, it's pretty clear that fossil fuels have a lot to do with it. Things like warming us up when it's cold, cooling us when it's hot, building sturdy

infrastructure. The most important one is actually irrigation and other forms of drought relief, like irrigation is powered by energy, drought relief, convoys, you know, alleviating some famine in some foreign country that saves millions of lives. So we have this fascinating phenomenon where fossil fuels have actually made our climate safer and nobody is talking about this. And if people are not talking about the fact that we're making our climate safer, which I call fossil-fueled climate mastery, how can you trust anyone about the future if they're denying or distorting the present? When you think about something like the climate-related deaths going down so drastically, that's an eye-catching statistic and goes very counter to the public narrative.

How much of that is a misunderstanding, a mathematical kind of manipulation, and it used to be manipulated very high and now it looks more like reality, versus there's technology, there is better weather spotting, there's all these other things that go into helping humans avoid these climate disasters. What do you attribute the driver of such a drastic decrease in climate-related death? Oh, I think it's all about our mastery of climate. And so part of the crucial context that's missing from this is climate is naturally extremely dynamic and extremely dangerous. And I'll emphasize the dangerous part. So if you just look at, so you can wonder, oh, well, were we somehow getting numbers wrong in the past? But actually, you'd expect the opposite to be true, I think, because you'd expect underreporting of certain things. But there are many news stories you have, say, in the 30s when we're not exactly that primitive, and you have millions of people dying from these climate-related famines. I mean, China in particular, I have a lot of quotes about in Fossil Future. It is really just tragic to see these talks about, oh, this flood happened or this drought happened.

It just wipes out millions of people. And their lives are just over forever because they cannot cope with the naturally dangerous climate. Whereas if you think about the amount of development that has happened, our mastery, things like flood control in that case, as I mentioned before, drought relief, that's really what's taken the naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe. But part of the reason we can't see this is we're taught this false view that nature, including climate, is what I call a delicate nurturer that's kind of this stable, sufficient, safe place and that our impact ruins

it. And this is really a myth, but it's really widely believed, including, I think, implicitly by many scientists. And so we just think of climate as perfect, and then we ruined it. So it's not even on our radar that we have actually made climate much better by mastering it. I mean, it's a fascinating thought process of literally the antithetical view of our relationship with climate. Do you have like a really good example that people could wrap their heads around in terms of a place where humans have actually made it drastically better from a climate perspective compared to maybe the overarching thought process around making it worse? I mean, I can't think of any place where we haven't made it much better because we've made

it much better in what I call the empowered world, the places with low cost, reliable energy that you can use to develop, but also the unempowered world. And so, I mean, you could take either one, but just consider the United States. I mean, we have every form of climate imaginable here, which is part of why I don't worry about the kinds of changes people are even speculating, let alone what I think is realistic in the global climate system. So you have something like polar Alaska, and then you have swampy Florida. And where I live in California is not perfect climate politically, but I think it's a perfect climate in terms of just that really nice kind of dry climate near the ocean. So we have every climate imaginable and we all live really long lives and

we don't have that much trouble with climate. Climate is a rhetorical thing in our lives, like it's a rhetorical negative, but life used to be an emergency in general because people were poor. And in particular, it was a climate emergency because of even something like a harvest. So maybe a harvest is a great example. Just we don't think now of something like the dust bowl being possible. And it really isn't possible to us now because of modern irrigation and other modern technology. But all of this depends on machines and the ability to use machines at a very large scale depends on low cost, reliable energy. And that's part of why I think fossil fuels are so crucial because I'm going to argue this goes to the second point, but they're

a uniquely cost-effective form of energy. They're not at all rapidly replaceable by solar and wind. So I was going to ask, the second premise is that they are replaceable, and not just replaceable, but rapidly replaceable. And I think built into this premise is not only rapidly replaceable, but also remaining as low cost or lower cost as what is available via fossil fuels. So unpack for me this premise and what you agree or disagree with. Well, to unpack this premise, I actually have to introduce a missing premise. And this is actually one of the problems with the argument. You can think of it as one or two missing premises. I'll break it down into two quickly. One is the fact that the world has woefully little energy. There is far more energy needed in the world. So one statistic that I think drives this home is that there are 3 billion people, so 3 billion individuals, who in their lives are using less electricity than one of our refrigerators. So you just think about that. Like somebody, all the electricity in their life, right? So washers, dryers, I mean, these aren't happening. But you think about like incubators, refrigeration for vaccines, lights, all of these things have to somehow take up the same amount of electricity as a refrigerator.

And what do you think happens? People have incredibly impoverished lives, but there are 3 billion people right now around the world. This is their life. You would consider this, I'm not saying you, but just the audience, we would consider this a catastrophe, right? If we woke up one day and we used less electricity than a refrigerator and that was our life, we would consider that a crisis.

And so this is the way I think of the world. I think the world is in a perpetual state of crisis for most people because of poverty, which is very, very related to what's called energy poverty, lack of energy. And the reason I'm bringing this in is that the ESG movement doesn't really think about this. So what they do is they say, yeah, oh yeah, we can rapidly replace fossil fuels, sure. But they don't acknowledge the fact that the world needs something like four times more energy if everyone is to be even remotely close to us. And why should we think that what we should have the opportunity to flourish and others should. And that makes no sense at all. So everyone in the world should rightly want to

use a lot of energy. And the fact that that is not coming up front and center and all we're talking about is how do we get rid of the fossil fuel we use now, but which is 80% of the world's energy and actually growing. And we're not talking about like how to provide energy on a much larger scale that points to there's not much valuing of energy. And this, this is the second premise, which is just energy is incredibly valuable because energy gives us the ability to use machines to become far more productive and prosperous. And so the real thing with the ESG is not just those two premises that are wrong, but it's leaving out the massive need for more energy and the massive value of energy. And then that leads to, is its claim of rapid replaceability

valid? But once you look at it from the perspective I just gave, it's pretty obvious it's not, right? Fossil fuels provide 80% of the world's energy. They're growing fast, particularly growing fast in the parts of the world that care the most about cost-effective energy, namely China. So there's clearly something special about them that isn't disappearing anytime soon. By the way, we're in an energy crisis for lack of fossil fuels, which have been heavily restricted by the ESG movement. So that's another blow against it. And they're saying that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels, mostly with solar and wind, that are currently 3% of the world's energy and that exist as parasites on the reliable electricity provided mostly by fossil fuels, but also by

nuclear and hydro. And that do not exist at all in standalone form for electricity, let alone the 80% of the world's energy that is not electricity. So I submit this is a total crackpot idea that this is all going to happen in 27 and a half years. And in particular, this idea has been around for over a decade. And fossil fuel use has grown dramatically. So what I consider this whole ESG argument of replaceability, it's not a real argument by people who understand or care about energy. It's a fake argument designed to reassure us that it's okay to get rid of fossil fuels and we won't suffer any consequences. Well, it feels like, to your point, kind of market participants, people who are used to dealing with energy, who understand the value

of energy, who understand why you want energy versus energy poverty, those people, this isn't even a debate. It is more of a moral argument or a virtue signaling argument that goes on at the Davos's of the world, et cetera, where people say these things and it makes them feel good. It sounds amazing, right? Of we're going to replace all the fossil fuels with, you know, wind and solar, but it just, there's no path to it. And you've written a book called Fossil Future, why global human flourishing requires more oil, coal, and natural gas, not less. And so when we think about this, I thought that maybe we could go through some of the energy sources and you could kind of talk about what we're seeing. And let's go right to what the ESG kind of proponents,

I think, believe is the replacement, which is solar and wind. And they position this as a low cost, reliable, renewable energy source. Why are they wrong? Whatever possible, I always like to look at, this came up with climate, what is people's account of the present? So if you view the climate as in a state of crisis, if you think we're experiencing a climate crisis, then you're either ignorant or you're not looking at the world from a pro-human perspective which i which we could talk about but i basically i think that with climate people are looking at it as the goal is not advancing human flourishing through a more livable climate because by that standard climate is far more livable we're far safer but their goal is to eliminate human impact

on earth including eliminating our impact on climate and it's really this kind of primitive religious asceticism and fear that just says, let's eliminate what we're doing. Let's just stop. Let's go net zero. It's not make the climate livable. It's just stop our evil impact. So I think it's very, very much a primitive anti-human religion that believes that our impact is evil and that nature is like a vengeful God that's going to punish us with this kind of hellish warming and climate change. So I just think it's based on a total distortion. And so the point here is if somebody doesn't acknowledge the present or they deny or distort it, I don't trust them to predict the future. And the same thing is true. I make a big point of this in

Fossil Future about the renewables thing. Look, if people said what I just said, so if they said, hey, look, I have to admit so far solar and wind are a disaster because what they have done is they have not replaced reliable electricity because we don't have anywhere resembling the batteries for that. As I calculated in the book, Elon Musk's batteries had cost us about $400 trillion to back up the world for three days. That is a fantasy or worse. Basically, they're a failure because they've added a lot of cost to the grid because we have to pay for the solar panels and the infrastructure, but we haven't really been able to replace any of the reliable fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro, because the unreliable solar and wind can go near zero at

any given time. Then when we do try to get rid of the fossil fuels or nuclear or hydro, such as happened in Texas and California, we have blackouts. And so we're having problems with cost and problems with reliability. And in any case, these things are nowhere near replacing fossil fuels, even in electricity, let alone things like heavy duty transportation, such as flying or cargo ships. And so right now they're a failure, but I have an amazing explanation of how they're going to be a wild success. Like if they said that, I would listen to that explanation. But instead, what we get is denial and distortion about how they're working, and a total evasion of the fact that they're making the world worse. Now, I should say, this is getting a

lot better intellectually, because we have an energy crisis. And it's pretty clear that we've artificially restricted the supply of fossil fuels through ESG and political opposition to investment, production and transportation. And unreliable solar and wind, as I think we should have expected, cannot at all replace fossil fuels, which is why I was talking to Michael Schellenberger, who's running for governor in California, a good friend of mine. He was pointing out yesterday, why is nobody running for more solar panels right now? Why is Biden not begging China for more solar panels? He's begging Venezuela for more oil. And it's because the solar and wind, this unreliable energy, cannot replace fossil fuels. And nobody expects it to

be able to do so in the near future. And that's just the reality. And all of these arguments are just total crackpot fantasy. So we can get into the crackpot fantasies, but the fact that they totally deny the terrible present of solar and wind is very revealing. Talk to me about the crackpot fantasies. That sounds like exactly what I want to talk about. Okay. Well, this has become one of my favorite topics because this is the only thing in Fossil Future that I can explain better now than I could when it was written. I've thought a lot about this because, I don't know, Do you happen to see those Joe Rogan episodes with Steve Koonin or Andrew Dessler? I have not, no.

Okay. Those are interesting. Just many, many people watching this, I'm guessing, saw some of them. So Steve Koonin is a guy who's kind of known as allied with me. He's one of these people who says, yes, we impact climate, but the benefits, the negatives of that are far outweighed by the benefits of fossil fuels. So I don't mean to attribute everything he believes to me and vice versa. We have differences, but we're generally aligned in that way. And then the person who came on to kind of be equal time was a guy named Andrew Dessler, who's a climate scientist from Texas A&M. And interestingly, Andrew basically made no arguments about climate catastrophe, but his almost sole focus are very few, let's say. His

almost sole focus was, oh, renewables can rapidly replace fossil fuels. And he and I, he fortunately had agreed to debate me before he did that Rogan show. And so we debated in Colorado and people can look it up if they search our names. And I was just kind of astonished like how in denial he was of the actual reality of solar and wind. But I noticed he's relying on this one argument that came up on that show, which is basically, hey, there are academic studies that show that we can wrap it, we can do this. So leave aside like Destler because he wasn't representing the studies effectively and that's accurate in this kind of thing, but here's what's going on. All of these studies are claiming that in one way or another, again, we can rapidly replace fossil fuels with

solar wind. They all have three things in common. One is that they, and all of these, all of these we know are things that lead to indeterminate and high prices. So one is they involve things that have never been done before on a large scale. I mean, they've never been done before and they involve doing them on a large scale. For example, one of the mainstream ones by a guy named Jacobson out of Stanford involves hydrogen planes. We don't have commercial hydrogen planes. This is just a total fantasy of this even existing, how it would work, what the costs would be. If you claim to know that that will work and what the costs will be, you're a charlatan. There are all sorts of things like this in these schemes that are just things that aren't working on any scale, and

they're claiming they'll work on every scale. That's number one. You know it's just a crackpot. Number two is that they involve a crash program of unprecedented mining and infrastructure building. So you take like what's happening with lithium prices right now, they're skyrocketing. This was obvious that this would happen because we had this crash program of even on a small scale, but we're talking about, I think Elon was talking recently about a thousand times more lithium, at least they're talking hundreds of times more lithium. How is that going to be cheap to do that in the next 27 and a half years?

How is it going to be cheap to build unprecedented infrastructure in 27 and a half years? Whenever you do a large-scale thing on a crash program, your costs go up. And then the third thing that makes it just totally disingenuous is that all of this is supposed to happen. All of this unprecedented, never-done, unprecedented development is supposed to happen in today's environment, which is very hostile to development. So this is all in an anti-development environment, which the green movement has created. The people claiming these schemes have created this anti-development environment where none

of this can happen. You know, if you're lucky, it takes 10 years to approve a lithium mine in the U.S. and it may not get approved. Solar and wind are radically slowed already by green activists who are against mining, who are against transmission lines, who are against construction. So this is another example that these three crackpot elements are just another nail in the coffin of this being a movement that cares about energy. They don't care about energy. They care about getting rid of fossil fuels. They're also hostile

to nuclear and hydro, which is also revealing. So their whole focus is just how do we get human beings to stop impacting the planet? And let's make up a fantasy so that we're not worried, so that people don't worry about giving up fossil fuels. But we have an energy crisis that shows we should have been worried. And I just, by the way, I posted the other day some testimony I had in 2016 in front of the Senate. And I told Boxer and others, hey, like this is going to cause a crisis it's obvious. And they're like, and they ridiculed me because like, oh, you're a philosopher. You don't know anything. And I'm like, no, I'm a philosopher. So I know you need to look at the big picture and you're not looking at the benefits of fossil fuels. And that's why it's going to be

a disaster. So in the book, along these lines, you have a section that has a number of quotes from various people. And of course, as books go, the bigger the name, the more experience they have in a field, the more that I think people kind of pay attention to what's inside the book. And one of the folks that you have a quote from is Scott Pruitt, who's the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was an environmental agency. And again, the book's name is Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. And so immediately already the ESG people's heads are in a blunder because they don't understand what is the former EPA head doing, you know, providing quote for his book. But what he says

is, quote, stepping in once again, to the oftentimes divisive, but very consequential energy and climate conversation is Alex Epstein's fossil future, arguing that fossil futures, fossil fuels not only have a place in our global tomorrows, but are a necessity to human flourishing. We need more not less voices in the climate marketplace capable of thoughtful engagement and critical analysis. Alex proffers both in Fossil Future, and it is my hope that the amalgamation of his research, data analysis, and rhetoric will yield a more constructive conversation about our energy and climate choices. Now, end quote. When I read that, it tells me that the former EPA head says, hey, maybe there's way more weight in the fossil fuels

and the importance of it for human flourishing, which he explicitly states there, but he's not approaching it in a binary sense, all fossil fuels, all renewable. He's saying that there's probably a room for both. Is that a fair position for somebody like that to take? Or do you think that's kind of where the world will end up where it's like 98% fossil fuels and 2% renewable type stuff? Or do you think it ends up being more binary where it's either everyone moves to renewables and like the ESG argument wins or everything stays fossil fuels? I wouldn't think of it as binary. Now, one thing to say about Pruitt, because some people are going to be thinking this, is he was a very controversial head of the EPA. I mean, first of all, he was

under Donald Trump, so that's going to have controversy to it no matter what. And I've gotten a lot of flack for praising him before I knew him and certainly before he wrote this, but I think he was very good compared to the others because I do think he really looked at energy and negative environmental impacts in a very holistic way. He really understands energy much better than almost anyone I can think of from the EPA that I've ever seen. I think it leads him to make much better decisions. Also, he was very focused on, and I think this is right, he was focused on real pollution issues, like toxic waste sites and having good air quality and good water quality. He's very focused on that versus other people who tend to ignore that and

are just focused on CO2 emissions, which I don't think should be the primary focus at all. In terms of the balance of this kind of thing, the way I think of it is we shouldn't really care about what form of energy we use. What we want is the most cost-effective source of energy at a given time in a given place. And so in Fossil Future in Chapter 1, I lay out what I think are the four aspects of being cost-effective. So there's just affordability. So how much does it cost. There's reliability. To what extent can you get it on demand when you need it and crucially in the quantity that you need it? Versatility. So how many different types of machines can it power? Can it just power like electricity that's fixed or can it power planes and cargo ships and that

kind of thing? And then scalability. To what extent can it produce energy for billions of people in thousands of places? And the fact is right now, fossil fuels, so that's oil, coal, natural gas, that's an order of use. Oil is the biggest, gas is the smallest right now, although it'll probably expand in the future. Those combined, that is the only source of energy that hits all four aspects of cost effectiveness. But we should want other things, but we want other things to be as good or better than fossil fuels in a given situation. So let's say, for example, in Washington state, you have hydroelectric power, and that is probably better than fossil fuels in Washington state, because it has great resources for that. And that's, quote, renewable.

But it doesn't really matter if it's renewable. Nothing is really renewable because all the materials are non-renewable. But the issue is, is it the most cost-effective solution? Nuclear, I'm a huge proponent of. It's unfortunately been made unbelievably expensive by very irrational government regulations that I think should be changed. But I think that would be great. I think ultimately, if we play our cards right, we'll have a nuclear future. So I'm all about, I just want the most cost-effective energy for the most people. And right now, I think you have to recognize that means a lot of fossil fuels, but I avidly want other things to happen that are good. So the people have this idea, like you should be partisan. You shouldn't be partisan,

but you need to be objective. And you can't claim that solar and wind are really good right now when they're not. I think that in the future, they might have some potential, particularly solar, but they have to compete on a level playing field. Whereas right now they get unbelievable government preferences, including they get to sell unreliable electricity for the same price as others get to sell reliable electricity. And then in fact, they get a subsidy, so they get paid more. So that's a total racket that needs to be changed, but I'm totally open to them participating in the future if they actually do so reliably. Talk to me about nuclear in the sense of, obviously there's a ton of regulation. We've seen people shutting down nuclear power plants.

We've seen the prevention of building of new nuclear power plants. There's just an immense red tape. It seems like people who are interested in this technology and doing this, they run into what I'll call kind of the public narrative or the fear that is uneducated about nuclear, but also there's very real obstacles to making this a reliable kind of popular energy source, both the United States and globally. What's your read on this and kind of what is the path forward to make nuclear energy a core component of the energy mix that humans use? I think we need to say at the beginning, there's a lot of evidence that nuclear has amazing potential. So one piece of evidence that I put a lot of stock in for anything economic is there's market evidence

when people make things up about the future that haven't been tested on the market, I'm very suspicious of them. And my first thing is, why don't you do this? And then I'll believe it versus you tell me you're going to force it on me and then you're promising it'll work. So with nuclear, we had it quite cheap and very reliable in the 70s before the onset of a massive amount of government control and regulation that I consider to be criminalizing it. But we have a track record, it's very important, where this is producing low cost, reliable, very clean, very safe energy. And what happened is, even though nuclear is, this might surprise people, but it's factually, and if you understand the physics, kind of obviously the safest form of

energy, basically it can't explode. So it can melt down, but that's a very slow process that the damage can be contained versus exploding, which you're going to kill people. So nuclear the safest for a whole bunch of reasons, and its track record is the safest. We could go into some of the alleged disasters that disprove this, but I think it's pretty conclusive, or I think it's totally conclusive that it's the safest. But it was portrayed as uniquely dangerous in part with this idea that somehow a nuclear power plant resembles a nuclear bomb, even though it's literally impossible for a nuclear power plant to explode given the way that uranium and chain reactions work. But unfortunately, by making something a public menace and by treating it that

way, what it justified was an unlimited amount of control and delay for every aspect of the process. And one fact that illustrates this is since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which I think should basically be called the Nuclear Criminalization Commission, since that was established in 1975, not one nuclear plant has gone from conception to completion. And the ones that have come closest have just had catastrophic cost overruns on the order of 10 times more expensive than nuclear plants used to be. So nuclear plants, you could build them in four years total. Now it's 16 or they could be destroyed. It should have been that we got them down to two years. In general, we have evolution in terms of economic evolution.

So nuclear has proven very safe. So it's a total catastrophe that we've stopped nuclear and criminalized it. But it is nevertheless part of the world that we live in. And thus, we have to, you know, it could be if things had gone differently, we could be half nuclear by now, but we're not. And so the idea that we're going to rapidly replace fossil fuels with nuclear is, it's unfortunately not even remotely possible. Although we should certainly liberate it as soon as possible.

And I'm probably the world's biggest advocate who's actually working on this in practice with elected officials right now on how do we decriminalize nuclear. So you mentioned decriminalize. I'll use the word deregulate. Maybe they're interchangeable in many people's eyes. There is a very strong argument. Some people have been making this for decades. some people, these are new arguments of deregulating a lot of these energy markets of deregulating a lot of fossil fuel industry, etc. What are the implications of doing that, both pros and cons in your mind? And is that something that we should pursue from a public policy standpoint, and people should be calling up their elected officials and really pushing that forward? Or is it something that maybe we don't understand as well? What are your thoughts

on deregulation? So yeah, there's a reason I use decriminalize versus deregulate. And if people want more of a resource, I'd highly recommend chapter 10 of the book, which is about energy freedom. So the issue with deregulate is it's broad and regulation has this very woozy meaning. And so it can often conflate two things. One is where the government, more than two things probably, but I'll give two. So one is where the government is treating us as guilty until proven innocent. And so basically we have an unlimited obligation to prove that we're not going to do something bad. And that leads to potentially unlimited costs versus the government is protecting people's rights from violation. So an example would be, okay, in the first category,

you have a farm, like you're a hog farmer. And every day there's an inspector who goes to your farm and checks every little thing to make sure that you don't contaminate your neighbor with too much smell versus a law that says, hey, there's a threshold at which you can emit things that go to your neighbors. And if you violate that, then you get prosecuted. And I'm a very big believer in innocent until proven guilty, and that that should be the principle for our law. And if you do that, you just have to have clear standards of what constitutes endangerment. So what level of pollution constitutes endangerment. That's basically the idea. What point are you doing something that is legitimately considered a threat to others? And I talk about this in some detail

in chapter 10 of the book. But so I think of it as we should have freedom, and then we should protect people's rights and freedom from endangerment. And we need to define endangerment more rationally. So with nuclear, it's not just about vague deregulation. I say decriminalization because we're treating it as a criminal enterprise by treating everything as guilty and having unlimited danger until proven innocent. But it's mainly about how do we define what is allowed to do in nuclear and what is not in a way that actually represents how dangerous it is compared to other technologies. I think if you did that, then it would be free, but it's a lot more precise than just saying, hey, let's deregulate.

And then, because maybe you would take away a crucial protection in that process. Is there a country or a region in the world that you think is doing this well? Like if you had to say, hey, here's the example of who the United States should follow or other countries should follow, can you point to one?

Or do you think actually, no, this is a global problem and we've got to improve everywhere? I think the best example would be the United States 50 years ago. I think that's a much better example. I mean, today you would say South Korea is arguably the best. You know, France is, but here's the issue with nuclear. So it's so much, it's been so demonized as dangerous that it is just, it is a government controlled thing. Like you think of the nuclear industry, but someone once pointed out to me, there is no nuclear industry, at least in

the United States. There's a lot of utilities that own natural gas, coal, hydro, and then like nuclear is one of their assets, in part because the grid is so government controlled, which is another kind of an issue maybe for another day. But there's not a real nuclear industry in the US. And what we want is a dynamic nuclear industry where you have people starting different kinds of nuclear reactors in their garages. And I think if you define the endangerment standards properly, you could totally have that. And you would have a proliferation in the good sense of nuclear innovation. But as long as it's, hey, you're only allowed to do this If the government says this and you can only do this design, you're not going to make any progress. And I think there's a lot of wishful thinking by people who are pro-nuclear that, hey, this is going to rapidly replace fossil fuels. As long as it's this total non-market, it's just going to be a cost disaster and it'll be stopped and we'll just keep using fossil fuels plus a bunch of unreliable solar and wind.

One of the other quotes that's in the book that lends support is from Peter Thiel, obviously one of the world's most well-respected, well-known entrepreneurs and investors. He says, quote, the climate debate ignores the reasons we burn fossil fuels in the first place. Alex Epstein reminds us that rich countries may be able to treat green lifestyles as luxury fashion, but for much of the world, reliable energy is a matter of life and death, end quote. Talk to me about that this idea of luxury fashion. You mentioned a little bit earlier about energy poverty but Is it just that people in the western world? We're super privileged to be able to even talk about getting rid of fossil fuels and like we've literally lost our minds Uh, if people that were saying that went and spent time around the world

They would come running back and immediately abandon the esg narrative There's definitely something to that. Maybe I forget exactly what he said in the first part of that quote But I think it's it's really crucial about ignoring the reasons why we burn fossil fuels in the first place. And so this is my version of we're not seriously considering the benefits of fossil fuels. We're just focused on the side effects. Now I'm arguing also we're, we're what I call catastrophizing the side effects or making them far worse than they are. That's why people think that's one reason why people think, oh, it's a climate catastrophe when in fact, yes, we've had some warming impact, but overall we're

far safer, far better in terms of climate, let alone everything else. I think part of what he's pointing out is, yeah, you're ignoring the benefits. And then he says, well, the benefits of fossil fuels are most obvious for the people who want to use them, but aren't using them. So you think of the people, again, who are using less electricity in their lives than one of our refrigerators. To them, it's obvious. And I'm actually really happy that I'm getting more and more people from the impoverished, what I call unempowered world, speaking up about this. Because since my first book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, I've been very encouraging of that. And it's really cool to see that. Now, this other thing about like luxury things, I would agree that partial use of solar and wind is a luxury in the sense of it makes our electricity more expensive. And if you try to cut costs at all, less reliable. So that's what we've had in California. I would argue that's also what's going on in Texas. Clearly, it's what's going on in California.

me. So in that sense, yes, but I wouldn't jump to, and I don't think Peter would either. I know I've talked to him about this quite a bit. This idea of 100% replacement, that is not a luxury lifestyle for anybody because it cannot be done in a remotely cost-effective way. And then what that basically means is you cannot use much energy and you revert to a manual labor life. So it's not true. There's this narrative of, oh, well, the poor places need fossil fuels, but we can afford all solar and wind. Nobody can afford all solar and wind. This doesn't work anywhere, even in the richest places. The closest you get are places like Denmark, to some extent Germany. But what you notice, so that's in the realm of like 35 Germany,

about 50% Denmark, just for electricity, mind you. But what they're doing is they have to import huge amounts of electricity from their more reliable neighbors. And they also have to have the ability to export it when they have too much. And what we're noticing in the United States, I don't know if you've heard about these claims about these predictions of blackouts and all these risks around the country. What's happened is there are more and more states that are trying to use more and more unreliable electricity and saying, we'll import it from others. But what's happening is not everyone can do that, right?

Not everyone can say, we're going to import it from our more reliable neighbors. California tried to get away with that two years ago. There was not enough, as much wind as we expected during heat wave. And so we got screwed, but now it's happening to everyone because everyone is saying, hey, let's cut back on fossil fuels. And use unreliable solar and wind, but don't worry, when they're not working, we'll import it from somewhere else. But that doesn't work if everyone is trying this scheme. And so there's just no real reality at all in the world of relying on unreliable solar. But again, this is a crackpot fantasy slash distortion that is perpetrated by people who don't really care about energy. My last question for you is obviously Peter Thiel probably is the best example, very well known for having a contrarian thought process and thinking from first principles, maybe an Elon Musk also known for being a first principles thinker. Those individuals you would expect to be able to critically think about a problem like this and come to their own conclusions and have independent thought.

how do we take the ideas that are in your book and other folks who have thought critically about this from a first principle standpoint and mainstream those ideas like it's one thing to arrive at these conclusions how do you think is best suited to take those ideas and then get them into uh the mainstream narrative to uh at least at a minimum give people two different ways to think about it which is one the esg narrative one kind of this fossil future uh narrative but even to potentially be able to change their mind and have them see what some of the errors are in that ESG narrative. How do you think about the distribution of the idea or the adoption of the ideas? For me, the most important thing is to, when I'm making a case like this,

explain from the outset what's my method of approaching the issue. And so I haven't stressed it that much today, but it's a really crucial thing that I think everyone can agree to, but few people practice, is that we need to, what I call, look at the full context. And in particular, we need to look carefully and weigh carefully the benefits and side effects of fossil fuels. And what I submit we tend to do is we only look at the negative side effects, but not the benefits. In chapter one, I point out that one of the world's leading thinkers on this stuff, Michael Mann, has a whole book, and he only talks about the agricultural negative side effects of fossil fuels, but not the agricultural benefits, even though fossil-fueled machinery and fossil

fuel-derived fertilizers, specifically natural gas, are totally crucial to 8 billion people being able to eat. And the lack of fossil fuels in the world because of ideas like Michael Mann's is leading to a food crisis right now. So I think everyone can agree that we need to carefully weigh benefits and side effects. And it becomes pretty clear that most of our leading thinkers aren't doing this. But I think that if we're talking about spreading the idea, it's really about spreading, hey, what's a method we can all agree on? And then let's look at the facts. And I think Elon is an interesting example because I think he's a very good thinker with certain engineering kinds of things, but I don't think he thinks about this very carefully.

Although I should say he has, well, he and I have a bit of a history. He blocked me on Twitter for writing a popular article about how the Tesla was a really good fossil fuel car, which I guess he didn't like that, although it was factually true. But he has been moving a bit in my direction, not saying because of me, but he's become much more pro-oil production, which he has been very hostile to for years. He's become more pro-nuclear, which he was sort of subtly hostile to for years. And he's become, this is the most important, he's become anti-climate catastrophe. So at a recent TED, if you look at his Powerwall presentation several years ago, it's like climate apocalypse. The world is terrible because of

fossil fuels. It's like shows the earth is like an inferno. And now he's telling TED, hey, look, there's not a catastrophe. It's going to be great. We can just sort of slowly transition. So I don't, I can't speak about where he will be, but I think it's very important if you want to call it first principles to have these first principles for how do you think about the issue? And I found that's made me effective because I'll just say, Hey, look, can we all agree to think about the issue that way? And everyone says yes, but they wouldn't do it on their own. So it's like, it's common sense, but not common practice. And by making the common sense explicit, you can make it more common practice. It's a fascinating way to kind of think about distributing ideas

and getting them actually adopted and shared. I lied. I have actually two more questions. The first- Okay. Can I say something about Peter Thiel, though? Absolutely. In particular, and this is my necessary hard sell type thing for Fossil Future, but it's somewhat time sensitive. So Peter, I've gotten to know pretty well over the years, and I'm grateful he's endorsed both my books. And one thing we did recently was we did a 90-minute conversation at a guy I also really admire named Palmer Luckey's house. He created Oculus and sold it to Facebook, and he now runs an amazing defense company called Ondaril. Anyway, he hosted this event, and we recorded it. And I asked these guys to do it because I wanted

something to incentivize people to order Fossil Future on launch week. So if you order Fossil Future on launch week, and you just send an email to fossilfutureatalexepstein.com, so fossilfutureatalexepstein.com, then you'll get this whole 90-minute discussion with me and Peter, my follow-up discussion with Palmer, and a whole bunch of other cool resources. And if you want to know more, you can go to fossilfuture.com. But I know people here are really interested in Peter in particular, so I'm very deliberately offering this to you as a carrot so that you buy the book this week and that it gets more well-known this week because the more well known it gets, the more these ideas have a chance of penetrating the mainstream even more

than they already have. Okay. That's fantastic way to drive some book sales. It's nice that they agreed to that. You know, that was getting two guys like that to agree to help my pre-order campaign. And we had an amazing live event, but there were only like 70 people there. So it's amazing that they allowed that and we can hopefully get a lot more book sales out of it. I love it. The next question that I have, I guess, is what can people at home do? Obviously, they can read the book, they can get the ideas. How can they help push these ideas forward? I love questions like that. One thing I created, I have a Substack page, alexepstein.substack.com, and probably by the time people are hearing this, the second or third article will be called something like Easy and Effective Ways to Promote Fossil Future, to promote these ideas.

One thing I talk about in Chapter 11 is that people have not yet caught up to the reality that sharing effective resources is incredibly effective. And it's kind of a weird thing because it sounds so cliche to say share things. And of course, people will always say, buy my book and stuff, but it's not really about books. And in some way, books are inferior for sharing because you have to buy them. But there are a lot of really good resources on any given topic that if you share them with people, that's going to be much more effective. So I don't know what those are in Bitcoin, but I'm sure that they, I mean, I know of some of them, but I don't know the most sort of absolutely effective ones. But for example, on energy, one thing I've created

is called energytalkingpoints.com. Energytalkingpoints.com is a totally free thing. Initially, I created it for clients and elected officials I work with, but it's available to everyone. And if you go on that site, you can search any topic. And it's very likely you're going to get a Twitter-length talking point with a really good reference. And the idea was to just make a comprehensive thing where you could just have the right answer on any kind of issue. and it's persuasive, it's concise, and it's accurate. So that's one thing. And then the other thing, so I think already I've created all of these free shareable resources and you can really change the world by influencing the right people. Like even something like

asking the right host to have me on or someone else you have on. Do you know who Dave Rubin is? I do. I'm guessing you've heard of him. He's been on the podcast before, yeah. yeah yeah so dave so he's an interesting example where he had listeners harassing him for a year to have me on and then uh and so he finally had me on i guess he gave in and it was i think it was really popular and like i get recognized on the street for that and i was talking like i won't name names because i don't want to out anyone but like one of the really really successful person in hollywood is a huge fan of my work and like he learned about me from the dave rubin show and is spreading the truth about fossil fuels in Hollywood. Think about that. That was just

some annoying fan was bothering Dave Rubin, and it led to a big Hollywood person learning about it. You cannot underestimate the power of you sharing. I would just say the thing that you want to focus on is how good is the resource? Because if you share something that is really going to be persuasive and powerful to someone who disagrees with it or will empower someone who agrees with to become more effective, either of those two, then it's going to be effective. If you just send them something that's just some partisan nonsense that only appeals to you and to no one else, then they're just going to consider you their annoying friend or relative. So like my whole focus is creating these resources that are designed to persuade people who expect to disagree

and that empower people who already agree. So Fossil Future, that's the best one if you can pay 27 bucks on Amazon, but energytalkingpoints.com is awesome and it is totally free. My last question. One of our sponsors is Eight Sleep. They're a thermoregulated mattress and they make it super cool or you can make it super hot and they help you get better, deeper sleep. What's your sleep schedule? And you're running around, you've got a bunch of stuff going on, you got the book release, et cetera. What does that sleep schedule look like right now? I think I generally do well in most aspects of human flourishing. You'll probably see the sign besides my book. I'm very into human flourishing. I'd say sleep is a little bit of a weakness of mine, relatively speaking, but I have a strength that somewhat offsets it, in my view, actually significantly, which is that I'm an amazing napper. In particular, I live 150 feet away from my favorite beach in Laguna Beach. I take naps two or three times a day, and I feel

amazing. Like I have really, really good energy. And I have that like, and the weird thing about it is I take 22 minute naps. And what I do is I listen to old episodes of, and they're all old. I listened to Seinfeld episodes and I've memorized them all to such a degree that it's like meditation and I just fall asleep and I wake up at the credits. It's, it's bizarre, but it's unbelievably effective. So that is my sleep method. I love that. That's amazing. Where can we send people to find you on the internet? Oh, so I am really big on Twitter. So Twitter at Alex Epstein. Actually, I just finally have my personal website up, alexepstein.com. And then that website I mentioned before, energytalkingpoints.com. And yeah, if you want to get in touch with me,

you can message me on Twitter. I have open DMs, not always the best of them. And my email address is alex at alexepstein.com. I read everything, don't necessarily respond, but I like to be accessible in case anyone wants to send me something amazing that i'll learn from this is uh uh this amazing man i appreciate you uh one doing the work two writing the book um and uh and then taking the time to uh to come on here and talk i learned a bunch oh yeah well you were one of the ones i wanted to go on you were like on my top 10 list uh from the beginning so it's it's very and then we took fucking forever to get you a book because we put the wrong address on but I'm glad we got it. I'm glad we got it to you. And sorry, I only gave you like a day to read some of

it. I was reading my ass off, man. I'll try to read as much as I could. The book's name is Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. Alex Epstein, thank you so much for doing this. And we will definitely have to bring you back as all this continues to progress. Thanks, man. And hopefully sometime in person. I'm in Miami quite to bet. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams

across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.