WBD493 Audio Transcription

Is There a Moral Case for Fossil Fuels? with Alex Epstein

Release date: Monday 25th April

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Alex Epstein. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Alex Epstein is a philosopher and author of ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ and ‘Fossil Future’. In this interview, we discuss how energy abundance has enabled humans to flourish, whether climate mastery has made us unnaturally safe, and the need for more low-cost reliable energy.

“If you have any influence on a situation, and you’re using that influence to prevent or discourage low cost, reliable energy, I think you’re contributing to the life catastrophe that is widespread poverty.”

— Alex Epstein

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Alex, hi, how are you?

Alex Epstein: It's great to be here.

Peter McCormack: You're a very largely requested guest on this show.  We've been tackling energy and climate for the last couple of months, we've been covering it.  I used to have another podcast, called Defiance, and I covered it there, and I would be considered by the people who listen to my show to be somebody who is concerned about the climate, but it's an evolving position; evolving in part because of you, I'll give you that credit.

Alex Epstein: All right!

Peter McCormack: But what I'm going to say today, I'm not going to debate you, because I think you're a seasoned debater, but I will interview you, I've got a lot I want to ask you.  Just to set the context of the audience for this, I think there's going to be three groups of people listening to this.  There's going to be a group of people who are big fans of you, who think the climate alarmists are totally wrong and nothing I would ever say will change their mind, and they're going to fundamentally agree with everything you say and probably buy your book, and repeat a lot of the things you say in their debates. 

I think there'll be a second audience of people who are nervous about you, fundamentally disagree with you and anything you say, they're going to be disagreeing with.  And then in the middle, I think there'll be a group of people who will be interested in knowing what we agree on, what we disagree on and where we get to.  How does that sound?

Alex Epstein: It sounds good.  I'm always trying to see if I can reach the people who expect to disagree with me, so that's who I always write to.  I always think about an honest person in Hollywood, so they have all the incentive and background to disagree; but if they're open, can I take them from where they are to where I am, because I began in a liberal environment being concerned about climate catastrophe, I didn't begin in fossil fuels, so I'm very interested in how can you take someone else through that journey.  I find that if you do that, you then help the people who support you be better, because what I never want to do is just give red meat to people who already agree with me, because you see that in politics.  If you don't give people really good arguments, then they're repeating bad arguments.

So, I think the model is to try and make arguments that will clarify the issue to somebody who expects to disagree, and then your champions will be better champions, instead of just sloppy followers.  And I think an advantage I've had throughout my life is I've always disagreed, since I was a teenager, well I was kind of a liberal teenager; but after that, when I developed my views, I've always had views that are quite different from everyone. 

Like, I'm really into Ayn Rand, for example, which is a very unusual thing, so I never had a huge native audience, and that's actually a gift, because it teaches you to actually try to persuade people versus if you're Rush Limbaugh, you have 20 million people who will love you, no matter what; or if you're Paul Krugman, you're have 20 million people.  So, they end up making very sloppy arguments.  Whereas, I had nobody, so it taught me to, I think, make good arguments.

Peter McCormack: And I think you can add to that, because I have to do the same with Bitcoin.  I have to be very careful and ground myself, because it's very easy just to be pro-Bitcoin on every single point and not think about the consequences, but we have to ground ourselves in case we're wrong.  And having sloppy followers who start to follow you, almost cultish-like, means they will repeat your arguments, but they themselves aren't open to other critical ideas, or evolution of ideas.

My assumption is your ideas evolve over time; sometimes you're right, sometimes you maybe have been wrong about something, and you're able to see that.  And, I always think you want your followers to be able to do the same.  You want your followers, people who listen to your show or read your books, to be able to challenge you, because they themselves can be challenged.  I think one of the biggest risks is people who can't be challenged.

The reason I say that and the reason you're on the show is, three years ago, I would have considered you a complete nutter and said, "I'm not going to talk to this guy [or] I fundamentally disagree with him".  I'm sure there are things we're going to disagree on, but what I've realised is that you create stronger arguments by speaking to a range of people, and you start to realise what you're right about or what you're wrong about.  And in preparation for this interview, my position has evolved, because of yours.

If we would have gone back two or three years, I would have been very much in the position, "Climate change is happening, it's caused by humans, we need to do something about it fast", and that would have been the basis of my position, and then assuming we have to do something with reducing fossil fuels and moving towards considering more renewables.  By preparing for this interview, I now consider the risk of not having enough energy and of curtailing fossil fuels, and I also now understand more about how energy grids work, I understand about load balancing, I understand about nuclear.

So, because of doing this interview, I've been forced to consider other things, which has evolved my position, and that has made me realise that on any subject, we all need more information.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting things in what you said.  I mean, I think we have something in common where Bitcoin is this interesting phenomenon where it's an extreme view, yet people who believe in it believe there's a lot of truth to it.  I believe there's a lot of truth to it.  I've been infatuated by the idea since 2011, I just had no money back then, because I started my own company, so I decided to invest my tiny amount of money in my business. 

But I love the fundamentals of Bitcoin.  It is extreme, and that's good; some extreme things end up being true, but often people are attracted to extreme things for unhealthy reasons.  They want to be different and superior, because if you feel like, "The world hasn't treated me properly [or] I'm not cool", it's a fast way of being superior to say, "The world is wrong about everything".  So, a lot of controversial, extreme people, that drives them and then they don't follow the facts and they don't follow the arguments.

The other thing I would say, with this issue in particular, energy, you've got two variables where you're going to have a change in the understanding.  So, one is the state of energy.  The state of energy economics, like any economic issue, is going to evolve.  So, I have views about the cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels now and for the next several decades, things can change in that that I can't anticipate.  And, with climate it's a bit different, but I would say the understanding of the issue is sufficiently imprecise where we could have significantly greater understanding in 10 or 20 years.

So, it's deadly to be locked into one's evaluation of the current facts; but at the same time, you can have more timeless views on methodology and framework.  And what you said about your change is not so much about facts, but I think you're considering more the costs of not using fossil fuels, so I would regard that as a methodological improvement.  And I think no matter what you conclude about the facts, that methodological improvement will stay with you.

Peter McCormack: Well, it is considering the costs of not using fossil fuels.  At the same time, I'm trying to balance that with consideration of the implications of increasing carbon in the atmosphere.

Alex Epstein: Right, you're already doing that one.

Peter McCormack: But what I'm trying to do is come to a balanced understanding of how the two play together.  That point of extremes is really interesting, because there are two extremes with Bitcoin, or the similarities in that it's an extreme idea, because we both are therefore facing external pressures.  One is always going to be government and regulation and what government thinks about the ideas or the things we're talking about; and the other one is the mainstream media.

I've traditionally been a fan of journalism, a huge fan.  One of the things that's happened in doing Bitcoin is I've come to distrust the mainstream media, because of their inability to write anything accurate about Bitcoin; it's almost universally bad, their understanding of how Bitcoin uses energy, how it uses it per transaction, who is using Bitcoin, what the benefits are.  It's so far removed from reality, it makes me think, "Well, if I can't trust you on this, what can I trust you on?"  I don't know if you want to talk about it.

Alex Epstein: That's an interesting thing, and I can just plug, we might mention --

Peter McCormack: Plug it!

Alex Epstein: The new book, Fossil Future, coming out 24 May.  One of the things I've thought a lot about is, one of the basic challenges in life is we need expert knowledge in life absolutely, but then how do we make sure we're not at one of the times when "the experts are wrong".  Historically, what we're told 100, 200 years about, you could be told the experts support slavery, the experts support eugenics, even Germany, the most intellectually prestigious country in the world, you had the rise of Nazism with a plurality vote getting them in; but you also need expertise.

So, I've thought a lot about, how do I get expert knowledge, but actually reliably?  What I find really helpful is a concept I call The Knowledge System, which is to recognise that there is a process and a system by which experts reach us.  So, you have researchers who are the people, so take climate science; they're the actual people studying the issue in-depth.  But we don't communicate directly with them most of the time, because that's a vast amount of knowledge, that needs to be synthesised, and then that needs to be disseminated to us by The New York Times or The Washington Post, then we need to evaluate that.  So, there are these four stages of research, synthesis, dissemination, evaluation.

What we need to realise is, even if the researchers are totally right, which that's often not the case, but even if they're totally right, we can get a dissemination or an evaluation that's totally wrong.  And what you're describing, Michael Crichton actually used this term called the Gell-Mann effect, because there's a physicist called Murray Gell-Mann who observed that when, and he used the example of the media's talking about Palestine, "I assume they know what they know what they're doing.  But when they talk about physics, they don't know anything, they're totally wrong".

So, what happens almost to a person, when you get some mastery of a field, you just see the journalists are totally wrong, but you still think, "Oh yeah, well they're probably right about everything else".  But if you master two fields, it's like, "Oh, they don't know anything about that either".  So, I happen to know a lot about energy, quite a bit about climate, Brazilian jujitsu, objectivism/Ayn Rand, so I assume all of those people don't know anything about what they're talking about.  It doesn't mean that experts are bad, but it means that the system is broken, and you have to be very wary of the people who are charged with telling you what experts think.

Peter McCormack: So, are you an expert?

Alex Epstein: Yes.  Well, in some things!  But not in Brazilian jujitsu.

Peter McCormack: It's an interest thing you say.  I had a conversation with a friend here on the podcast the other day and I said in relation to, for example, what's happening in Ukraine and Russia, we have a war where people are taking different opinions and analysing it, and there is this muddying between facts, interpretations and opinions, a complete muddying of this situation.  That seems to be happening across the board with any subject.

I'm trying to move myself more to a place of fact, so understanding what is the closest we can get to objective facts.  And then, I'm trying to consider how different people interpret facts and how their opinions are formed, because two different people can take a set of objective facts, but based on their own bias or their own interpretation, can come to different conclusions.

Alex Epstein: Or different values.

Peter McCormack: Or different values, and that's super-risky.  I watched the debate you had recently with, I forget the guy's name.

Alex Epstein: Andrew Dessler, he's a climate scientist.

Peter McCormack: He was the guy on Rogan, yeah?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, he was on Rogan as well.

Peter McCormack: We'll put that in the show notes.  The interesting thing about that is, when I was watching it, it's like a game, it's a debate.  It's like a game and two people are trying -- I actually think the format sometimes is broken.  I think it's useful, but ultimately in some ways it's broken, because it's like a game where you're both trying to defend your position, and defend your arguments.  What actually happens in a situation like that is, there's a possibility that you make mistakes, either party, you interpret things wrong, and you leave the audience with wrong ideas either side.

I was looking at it and watching it and trying to think, "What would be a better scenario?"  How about a scenario where the two of you were just in a room together on your own without an audience, working through all the points you discussed, with the researchers helping you try and understand; and how about if you two produced a paper together?  Would that serve the world better?  Would you come to some conclusions, or would you still disagree? 

I think that's a big problem with a lot of these situations, is that two people from different positions are trying to prove their thesis, rather than working together.  Kind of the problem with politics is it's become so partisan that people are just kind of fighting a corner, and that's what I'm trying to do with this.  I'm trying to get to a point where it's like, I think there's going to be a lot we disagree on today, but I think at the end of it, I hope the audience, as many of them as possible, go away with better formed ideas and better ways to research and understand the range of things we discuss.

Alex Epstein: I mean, with the debate thing, I think a key goal is you want people to have access to the most thoughtful version of different competing opinions.  So, it's unusual that if you have two people who are professional activists, and that's true of both me and Andrew; our lives are devoted to certain political views ultimately, political positions.  That doesn't mean we're locked in them, but just in general, when people are activists in a certain way, it's hard to break them of that, it's hard to change that.  I've seen it happen, I've influenced some people changing and I would like to think I would change myself if somebody like Andrew proved me wrong in a fundamental way.

 But usually, I think the goal would be there, if he's considered the best exponent of the climate catastrophe, rapid elimination of fossil fuels view, is to come up with a format where you get the full argument as much as possible.  So, a one-hour debate is not the best, but it is good, because almost nobody will actually engage me at all, so I'll take what I can get.  I mentioned that I was really glad that you have some disagreements that we can talk about, because that's the hardest thing for me to find.

Peter McCormack: I'm not going to debate you though.

Alex Epstein: No, I'm not even saying debate.  I'm just saying, expressing disagreements and challenging, because it's really the challenge.  I think my view is really right in a fundamental way.  I want that to be challenged as much as possible, because that benefits the truth, and debate is one way -- we have a very imperfect way, so for me that's a mediocre way that's better than nothing, but not ideal.

Peter McCormack: I know why people won't debate you, because I have friends and contacts who are climate scientists that I asked, and there's a general consensus now about climate scientists that debating the likes of yourself or a Shellenberger or a Koonin is a waste of time, and it gives validity to ideas which are fundamentally wrong, and they've got much better things to spend their time on; that's why they won't debate people like you, and bear with me, I understand that.

There is a part of me in prepping for this, or considering this, was do I risk platforming bad ideas, because you could be wrong.  You don't think you are, but other people do and navigating that for myself is really hard.  Do I platform bad ideas?  I came to the conclusion that even in the debate you did the other day, there were things that you agreed upon, so there is room for discussion here, but that's why they won't debate you.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so let's start with that, because I think you've praised certain people, so I'm guessing these are some of your contacts.  I know you've praised publicly Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe.

Peter McCormack: I'm a big fan of Katharine Hayhoe, I've interviewed her.  Michael Mann, I only mentioned him in that he discredited his own work on cooling.

Alex Epstein: I'm not sure about his work on cooling.  There's a guy named Schneider who did that.  But the issue is, I think Dessler actually articulated this fairly well on Rogan, which is he acknowledged, and I think this is why he debated me, there's large room for debate on policy.  So, Fossil Future in my work is primarily about trying to guide policy, how do we think about what to do about fossil fuels. 

Anyone needs to acknowledge fossil fuels produce 80% of the world's energy, we have a world that is drastically deprived of energy, most people are very poor, including short of energy, and fossil fuels also have the side effect of greenhouse gas emissions that have a warming impact.  And so you have this phenomenon where the energy that most of the world depends on, and the kind of low-cost reliable, at least the calibre of energy that many more people need, has this side effect.  So, you've got something with a benefit and a side effect, and so you need debate over the relative benefits and side effects.

This is where I would say Andrew Dessler deserves credit, because he's saying yes.  Now, he's trying to get into the energy side, I don't think he really knows anything about that, but he's at least acknowledging this.  I would regret Michael Mann and Hayhoe as cowards, because of how they've acted on this issue towards me in particular.  I mean, Mann has publicly attacked me as "puppet of the Koch brothers", which was false, he never substantiated it; I asked him.  This is all documented on Twitter, and then he just blocked me.  Hayhoe has called me a liar.

So, it's a disingenuous thing to say the issue is not debatable.  You can say, "I think the science -- I don't want to debate somebody outside the field on the science", I think that is a legitimate position.  But to say the policy is not debatable, that is disingenuous, because you're taking your expertise on one piece of the puzzle, and you're trying to silence debate on how the puzzle fits together.  My expertise is primarily methodological; I'm a philosopher first and foremast, it's how do we put together all of these pieces.  And there is ample debate on that.

Peter McCormack: I agree.  I agree there's debate on the policy, because policy will drive this.  And the energy sector is already dictated by policy, so I agree with that.

Alex Epstein: Yes, we face these huge decisions.  So, for anybody to say there's no debate, I consider that because you don't think there's a debate on an aspect of the question, that's disingenuous.

Peter McCormack: I think just perhaps they don't want to debate you.  Look, I'm a huge fan of Katharine Hayhoe, and I would happily have her on the other side here; I'd happily have her alongside you if she wanted to.  I understand, getting to know her, what her focus is on and her choice not to do it.  But that's her choice.  I mean, look, that's fine.  She doesn't feel the need to debate.

Alex Epstein: I'm just saying, leaving aside me, I mean personal accusations and not substantiating them, which both of them have done, that's I think unacceptable.  But I agree, not debating me is fine, but challenging the need for debate on the policy, that is totally wrong, so that is where I disagree with them.  And I think, people can guess about the motives, but I just want to make that intellectual point that we absolutely need to debate the policy, and that's what I'm here to do.

Peter McCormack: What do you think the motives are?

Alex Epstein: I don't want to talk too much about the motives, because I don't like talking about motives until people agree on the question that's leading to the question of motives.  If people don't know the whole thing of me and Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe, I want to make the point about, "We need this debate, they're wrong about that".  That itself is a big point to convince people of.  In general, here's a narrative that I have, and this relates to, not that we'll get into it, but this thing where The Washington Post has been trying to cancel me, and as of this recording --

Peter McCormack: Has the article gone out?

Alex Epstein: No, it's been delayed indefinitely.

Peter McCormack: You see, this is an interesting thing.  I think you can fundamentally disagree with you and at the same time, fundamentally disagree with what The Washington Post are doing; it's a very weak attack.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so just the very quick version, because this is hopefully going to be outdated by the time…  But basically, The Washington Post was sent a copy of Fossil Future, and their climate reporter was sent it, which we sent it to a lot of people.  And then the response was not to respond to that, but to come up with a story claiming that I'm racist, based on a crazy misinterpretation of things I wrote as an 18- and 19-year-old at Duke University.  And again, there was nothing racist there, but they took things that were controversial, and then totally mangled them to be racist, and they were going to go with this.

To be accused of racism is a life-destroying thing, and I knew this was coming out, and so I didn't wait for it to come out, I made a story about, "These guys are trying to cancel me on these totally false grounds, instead of engaging with my views", and I think that was wrong, and I think most people would agree that's wrong, even if they think that I'm wrong.  But I think you can see the motive there.

You mentioned your own changes on this issue.  The view of fossil fuel elimination as a policy has been given a free ride for a long time.  And the reason it's been given a free ride is, we've had this conflation of you believe we impact climate, and you believe in fossil fuel elimination.  And I think those two, one does not follow from the other.

Peter McCormack: You agree with the first point?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I definitely agree with, "We impact climate", and I definitely think fossil fuel elimination is a mass-murder policy.  We'll get into the details of that.

Peter McCormack: I don't think a point like that can ever be made without nuance, because that's one of my -- me and Danny were talking beforehand.  One of my criticisms of your debates is the use of very extreme language; because equally, Katharine Hayhoe could make a claim that burning fossil fuels and destroying the environment is a mass-murder policy.

Alex Epstein: Well, she should if she thinks it's right and she can justify it.  I don't think she can come remotely close.  But just to finish the thread of, you've got this issue of fossil fuels have a side effect of warming the climate.  You can believe that and you can still think fossil fuels are good, because you can think, among other things, fossil fuels have huge benefits.  So, you can think the polio vaccine had significant side effects; you can also think it had amazing benefits.  And so overall, it's good.

But what's happened is, believing in climate impact equals fossil fuel elimination; in the last ten years, there's a bunch of us who've challenged that and we've said, "No, you have to look at our climate impact in its full context, including the benefits of fossil fuels", and I call us the Energy Humanists, so that would include me, Shellenberger now, he's converted in the past few years.

Peter McCormack: I don't think his arguments are as good as yours, I don't.

Alex Epstein: Okay, well I'm interested to hear that.

Peter McCormack: Let him answer his own on his own terms.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, but I stand by my arguments, I'm not endorsing the arguments.  I'm just saying, this is a trend where there's Koonin, there's Lomborg, and again they have different arguments from me, but there's a challenge to this narrative that if you believe in climate impact, then you're for eliminating fossil fuels.

The establishment has not reacted to this really by engaging us.  There's been a lot of smearing of us.  And so my view, you asked about the motive, I think the establishment has been getting a free ride, but having a bad methodology of only looking at the negative side effects of fossil fuels and not looking at the benefits.  And then, here's a bunch of us saying, "No, you need to look at the full context", and I don't think they're reacting very admirably to that.

Peter McCormack: Climate scientists have also been smeared, and accusations made about their funding, their intentions.  So, as somebody who tries to walk a fine middle line, I see both sides.

Alex Epstein: But not by me, they haven't been smeared by me.

Peter McCormack: Maybe not.  I would have to go back and see everything you've read and say, "Actually, Alex, I think this here --"

Alex Epstein: Okay, fair enough.

Peter McCormack: I don't have that, but what I'm saying is they do get smeared as well, this does happen both ways.

Alex Epstein: Okay, but at the same time, their deified as heroes in the culture.  There's no Don't Look Up movie about the people challenging -- there's no Don't Look Up movie about the Energy Humanists like me.  The Don't Look Up movie is saying, there are these amazing heroes, they're telling us the world is ending, nobody's listening.  There's no Academy Award for Energy Humanism.  There is for Al Gore, even though it's a wild distortion.

Peter McCormack: But the world is a battle of ideas, and their ideas perhaps are winning larger than your ideas right now.

Alex Epstein: But what I'm saying is, they're starting to lose and they're very, very upset about that.  And their reaction has been ignoring our ideas or smearing us, and that's what I've been documenting.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I don't think their ideas are starting to lose; what I'm saying is that I think the debate's evolving and I think there are better arguments coming from people like yourself that make this a discussion worth having.

Alex Epstein: Okay.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I interviewed, do you know Nathaniel Rich?

Alex Epstein: I don't.

Peter McCormack: He wrote a book called The Decade we Could Have Saved the Planet, or something or other, and it was a whole research piece into when the Exxon scientists, you'll know all this, in the 1970s agreed that putting carbon in the atmosphere would heat the planet.  And then the lobbyists followed the big tobacco --

Alex Epstein: There was a huge New York Times piece years ago.

Peter McCormack: It might be based on that.

Alex Epstein: That was as long as a book, so it could have been that.

Peter McCormack: Well, so he's a great writer, and how the big energy companies followed the big tobacco playbook.  I think some of that lobbying is undeniable, and I think that's perhaps maybe why some of the climate scientists became concerned about anybody who maybe had what are similar arguments.  At the same time, I am sat here with you, because I think you do have things that are worth discussing.  I think there's a lot of context --

Alex Epstein: I want to agree with you on some of that, in particular that people might not expect.  I do agree there has been some -- so, just as I think that often people on the climate catastrophe side ignore the benefits of fossil fuels, there has been, by some advocates of fossil fuels, way too quick dismissal of any negatives on climate.  And one of the ways this manifests is just sloppily picking up things that are not actually facts. 

So, you'll just here all these things like, "Volcanoes have more of an impact than humans" or, "We are only a small percentage".  If you look at this, okay, we started burning fossil fuels and the CO­2 is basically flat, and then it goes up.  It's pretty obvious it was us.  So, whenever people are voicing scientific things without examining them, and you see this a lot on all sides, but on my side I'm really sensitive to it, because it really discredits the view.  And if you look at my book and my work, my work is saying, "We should be using more fossil fuels across a variety of scenarios.  Even if there is significant warming in the next 50 years, we should be using fossil fuels, and we should be liberating nuclear if you want to get off fossil fuels".

But it's very damaging, I think, when people just ignore any potential negative side effects, and often you'll hear one version, a religious version, which is to say, "God wouldn't have given us fossil fuels if they were to have these side effects".

Peter McCormack: I've never heard that argument.

Alex Epstein: Oh, it's an argument I've heard many times.  People don't usually make it publicly, but obviously that's not a scientific argument.

Peter McCormack: I don't even think it's a basis for anything for us to talk about.

Alex Epstein: No, I'm just saying that there are always rigor challenges whenever people get entrenched.  I do my best and I have an amazing researcher, and part of his job is to always challenge me and always point out the merit on the other side.

Peter McCormack: One of the things I think there is sometimes is an economic disconnect between people whose policies of view seem to come from the left and the cost.  My expectation, correct me if I'm wrong, but your ideas are probably being accepted a little bit more from the right than the left.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, that's for sure!

Peter McCormack: And, as a bitcoiner, I empathise with that.  Bitcoin has been traditionally more accepted by people from the right than the left, and the reason I think this is, is I think the right are traditionally better at economic reality.  Whereas, from the left, there seems to be -- I think the left seem to be better at empathy and more progressive ideas, and that's fine.  Jonathan Haidt documented all of that in The Righteous Mind, we can understand why that is.  But I empathise with that.

I tend to find the people I speak to, who are concerned about the climate, there is a left bent to this, and therefore there is an economic disconnect.  And when you want to discuss policy, that is a connection to the economic reality of this situation.

Alex Epstein: I don't know, because I think of all these things in terms of what I would call human flourishing, so human life, our ability to really live to our highest potential.

Peter McCormack: But isn't that an economic connection?

Alex Epstein: But economics is just a perspective on that, so economics is capturing the element of production and trade, including of course the element of money, which you're super-focused on.  But I don't think of economics and environment, I think they're just different perspectives on the same thing, which is our lives and the world that we live in.

Peter McCormack: But you've talked about that a lot of the work with regards to modelling and climate scientists misses that economic angle.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, definitely, but it's like --

Peter McCormack: I'm agreeing with you here.

Alex Epstein: No, I understand that, but I'm not interested in agreeing or disagreeing, just clarifying the view; because, let's say you're modelling what happens with fossil fuels, the goal is to model what are the good things and what are the bad things.  And part of it is economically; there's environmental economics.  When you're talking about economics, you need to look at the negative side effects.

So, if you're just looking at, "What's the cost of energy?" but you don't look at the impacts of warming, that would be bad.  So, I just think you need to look at these holistically.  And in terms of the human connection, economic issues are issues of human life.  So for example, one of my most powerful arguments has been just that billions of people lack low-cost reliable energy. 

I often use the statistic, which I first heard from Robert Bryce, who's a good energy writer, which is, "Three billion people use less electricity than one of our refrigerators".  That really connects with people, which actually is one of the reasons The Washington Post went after me as racist, because their argument explicitly in what they sent me was, "This is going to show that you don't really care about poor people in Africa, because you're actually a racist".

Peter McCormack: It shows the opposite though.

Alex Epstein: No, but they're saying --

Peter McCormack: I know.

Alex Epstein: -- my alleged racism discredits this argument.  They're like, "That's not a real argument, you don't care about them".

Peter McCormack: We should forget The Washington Post.  The good thing The Washington Post could have done is engage in your arguments, and I would have read it.  I have no interest, even with your videos, I just switched off, I was like, "This is just more bullshit".

Alex Epstein: I just want to make -- the energy poverty point is an economic point, but it is a very resonant point, which I think the left will become interested in soon, and I hope they do; because, if you care about oppressed people and disenfranchised people, there are billions of people who cannot use machines in a significant way in their lives.

Peter McCormack: I mean, if they can't anyway, why does this policy matter, because they don't have access?

Alex Epstein: What do you mean they don't have access?

Peter McCormack: So, we're talking about there's people who want to curtail fossil fuel use and this discriminates against the poorest people in the world who need it.  But if they need it, why don't they already have it?

Alex Epstein: That's a really interesting question, which is one almost nobody ever asks.  So, I love that you asked it; it comes up in chapter 10.  We know that it's possible to go very rapidly from not having it to having it, because we've seen China and India over the last 40 years.  So, we've gone from a percentage of people on $2 a day used to be 40% when I was born in 1980; now, you're about 10%, so it's gone down by a factor of four, it's unbelievable.

So, what we know is that you can have development and use a lot more fossil fuels and benefit enormously.  But what you need is you need political freedom, you need at least some sort of political freedom, in particular trade.  So, what's really missing in much of Africa, certain parts of Asia, is you don't have the political infrastructure, so nobody will invest.  But if people can invest in manufacturing, then you've got it made, because you'll have this huge labour pool that people invest in, and they'll give them power to power the machines, and then that will build up the infrastructure, and then it will become wealthy, just like China's starting to and just like India's starting to.

Peter McCormack: Before we get into this, just as a starting point and a question, because one of the things we were trying to find out was, how much fossil fuels do we have left?  And we consistently found the statistic was 53 years of oil, 50-odd years of gas and 115 years of coal.  Do we actually know how much we have left?

Alex Epstein: Well, we know we have a lot more than that.

Peter McCormack: Okay, but some of it's hard to get?

Alex Epstein: Yeah.  So, the term that is always confusing to people is "reserves".  So, to simplify it, you can think of reserves and deposits.  So, reserves is what given current knowledge, you expect to be able to produce; and deposits is what's actually in the Earth.  What you find is, reserves don't go down over time, they go up over time, because deposits are ten-plus times what reserves are; but at a given time, we have no idea of what's really possible, because we're not motivated to, like you don't need to figure out where you're going to get your oil in 75 years, there's no reason to invest in that knowledge, that exploration; but also, the technology changes.

So, what we know is that there's ten times more oil, gas and coal in the ground than have existed in the entire history of civilisation, and they're getting better.  And in particular, coal.  Coal is the easiest one.  So, if you could convert coal to the others, which some people are claiming to be able to do really efficiently now, then you have it effectively forever.

Peter McCormack: Not effectively forever.

Alex Epstein: Effectively forever from our perspective, like hundreds of years.

Peter McCormack: From our perspective, but human civilisation is, what 10,000 years; there'll be future generations.

Alex Epstein: But here's the thing.  We know that, if you look at why fossil fuels are special, one of the main reasons is physically, they have three attributes: so, they're naturally stored; they're naturally concentrated; they're naturally abundant.  Well, we already know of something, only one thing, that has those three attributes, but even better, which is nuclear.  It's naturally stored, it's much more concentrate and considerably more abundant.

So, we're pretty clear on what the next logical thing is, not to say it couldn't be anything else, but we have this next logical thing.  We know it worked really well in the 1970s; most people don't know, but it's a fact, it got criminalised, so the price went up by almost a factor of ten; we know that it can do a lot of mobility applications, already powers really big ships, aircraft carriers, that kind of thing.  So, the next thing, it's not like we have no idea what could replace fossil fuels on some timescale; we have a good idea it's nuclear, so that's why I say effectively forever, because at one point, we're going to get out of our way, and we're going to develop nuclear.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, nuclear's one area I won't disagree with.  What I was really getting at is, on a long enough timescale, we eventually have no fossil fuels left.

Alex Epstein: Well, on a long enough timescale, we have nothing.

Peter McCormack: No, sorry, that's not a valid argument.  When I say a long enough timescale, I'm saying civilisation has existed for 10,000 years of advanced civilisation as we are.  In 10,000 years, we may have run out of fossil fuels.  Yes, in infinity, we might run out of everything.

Alex Epstein: But there's no viability we'll even be using them in 10,000 years, you wouldn't even need them.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, you're missing the point I'm trying to get to.  So, in Africa, they skipped the wired internet; they went straight to mobile.  Is there a scenario whereby, in parts of Africa, they could essentially skip the fossil fuel stage and move to that kind of nuclear and renewable mix?

Alex Epstein: I mean, in a different world.  So, nuclear has been so stunted.  So again, nuclear, the price in the US has gone up by about a factor of ten since the 1960s.  So, nuclear's a whole tragedy; it's this unbelievable potential, but it's a trivial source of energy around the world, it's like 5%, 6% of the world's energy.  And the world's energy needs are growing, and we're starting to get some sympathy.

Peter McCormack: Elon Musk has helped.

Alex Epstein: No, he's hurt, on nuclear.

Peter McCormack: Has he?  I thought he came out recently and said, "I'll go and sit outside any nuclear reactor and eat a sandwich".

Alex Epstein: Yeah, but he's also been boosting solar above nuclear.  He's been overall really bad on nuclear.  So, yeah, recently he also said, "Let's expand oil and gas production" after opposing it publicly for decades.

Peter McCormack: So he basically supports everything!  He's got no clear position.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, but he supports subsidies and mandates for solar, which hurts fossil fuels, but it above all hurts nuclear for various reasons.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Do you know what, we're jumping around, I did have a structure.  I wanted to work out what we agree on, but I think we've covered that.  I have it here that energy's important; curtailing energy use comes with significant risk, so energy's important to civilisation; but we agree climate change is real.  That was my basis of what I think we agree on.

Alex Epstein: Okay, but there was a lot of detail to each of those, which there may be disagreements on.

Peter McCormack: Of course, but that's where we get into the key points.

Alex Epstein: Okay, let's do it.

Peter McCormack: So really, I wanted to start with an important question to you: what is on the line here?  We have essentially two potential scenarios.  We have a scenario whereby you are entirely right, we can continue to burn fossil fuels.  Yes, temperatures will rise, but as humans we will continue to flourish and we will adapt.  And there's a side where the climate scientists are right, and if we do that, there's catastrophic consequences that perhaps we will get into.

Alex Epstein: I don't agree with that attribution to climate scientists.  That's a view, but I would not describe it as the climate scientists.

Peter McCormack: Who would you describe it as?

Alex Epstein: I would describe that as what I would call the Knowledge Systems' view, or the designated experts' view, but I wouldn't regard that -- and the two reasons are, what we hear climate scientists think is a very skewed version of what they think; but also, climate scientists are in no position to state something is a catastrophe, they can only state the climate aspect.

Peter McCormack: Okay, that's fair.  There is a side whereby the Knowledge, what do you call it?

Alex Epstein: Knowledge System.

Peter McCormack: The Knowledge System says there's potential catastrophe from climate change, and there's also potential catastrophe from curtailing fossil fuels and not having enough energy production.  You consider it mass murder.

Alex Epstein: Well, I also think there's a current catastrophe from curtailing it already, but it could get far, far worse.

Peter McCormack: What, like what's happening in Germany?

Alex Epstein: Well no, so this is the thing.  I think the thing we always miss is that most of the people I'm talking to, including us, we're very rich and most people are very poor.  So, 5 billion people live on less than $10 a day; I mentioned 3 billion people are using less electricity than a refrigerator.  So in my view, life is catastrophically bad for most of the world right now.  So, anything that has been done to preserve that state of affairs, I regard as catastrophic.

The Green movement has, for the last 40-plus years, been suppressing the use of fossil fuels and nuclear to the point where you could make the case that billions more people would have a wealthy modern life, were it not for the environmental movement.  So, that's an unseen destruction.

Peter McCormack: Give me an example.

Alex Epstein: Of which one?

Peter McCormack: Of where the expansion of use of fossil fuels or nuclear has been curtailed for disastrous effects.

Alex Epstein: Well, let's say if you just take the -- well, I mean it's been curtailed all over the place.  So, if you just take the action of international organisations towards Africa, for example, so that has explicitly in the last four years become generally anti-development, so it's partially just anti-impacting the earth, and then anti-fossil fuels and nuclear in particular. 

So, you could imagine that without that movement, you would have more of a pro-freedom, pro-business, pro-industry movement, and Africa would have significantly industrialised, instead of being incentivised to not build dams, not use coal, not use gas and actually currently, we pay off dictators not to do these things.  So, I would regard that as suppressing the livelihood of people on that continent.

Peter McCormack: But did you not say, okay, because you refer to not having the political infrastructure to allow that kind of investment?

Alex Epstein: But we in part, the way we deal with those nations, there's other things connected, including we don't promote freedom anywhere.  So, the way we deal with nations is often, we pay off dictators, including to do these environmental things, instead of advocating freedom around the world.  So, I don't think we've done much at all, and we've done a lot bad, in terms of advocating better governments.

Peter McCormack: But promoting freedom around the world has also been kind of catastrophic for the US.

Alex Epstein: But if you think you need to impose it, that's one thing.  But if you think that you want to spread this as an idea, that's another thing.  Like, for example, the idea that all cultures are of equal value, that is an idea that has a regressive impact on the places that haven't developed, because it basically says, "Your primitive governments and your primitive way of life, those are good enough for you".  Often, it's in a racist way equated with having a skin colour, which is absurd.  So, we encourage these places to stay backward and to not reform.

Peter McCormack: But where and how, because you say "we", where and how are we encouraging these countries not to advance; where is this happening?  You say Africa, but that's quite broad, that's a whole continent.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so there's a number of things that are all interesting that are coming together, but they're sort of, what are we doing in terms of broad government policy; what are we doing toward development in general; and then, what are we doing toward energy in particular?  I would say all of these are very, very bad in different ways.  So, I'd say the United Nations in general is an anti-freedom organisation.  It does nothing to promote freedom, and it does a lot to preserve places in a state of anti-freedom, and we could go into --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I know a lot about the work that the UN have done, so I'd love to know that, because I've seen the work that the UN has done with regards to female health; I've seen the work they've done with regard to war zones; I've seen the projects they've done with regards to supporting the availability of water.  So, I'm aware of a lot of the work that the UN has done.  But when you say they've done "anti", I want to know more.

Alex Epstein: Right, so I regard this whole sustainable development thing is, I regard, as anti-freedom, anti-development and anti-energy.  I mean, there's a whole history here, some of which is in Fossil Future, Michael Shellenberger has it in Apocalypse Never, but there's a dramatic shift, for example, in lending incentives and policy towards significant industrialisation, projects like that, and saying, "No, we don't want to do those" and, "Yeah, we want you to use more solar and wind", and that kind of thing. 

So, there's been more opposition to dams, certainly more opposition to fossil fuels, aversion to nuclear, in favour of these renewables.  The idea you mentioned before about, "Why can't we do like cell phones and what's called leapfrogging?" that's part of the sustainable development movement.  The fundamental thing going on is sustainable development, there is a contradiction in terms, based on what sustainable means to that movement, because sustainable means really minimise your impact on the earth; but development means significantly impacting the earth.

What they're saying is, "You poor nations, you need to develop in a way that meets this idea of sustainable development".  Now, if we had been forced to do that ourselves, in the US and Europe, we wouldn't have developed at all.  So, my view of sustainable development means no development.  The UN promoting that is promoting backwardness and stagnation.  The countries that have advanced the most are those who have steadfastly refused to participate in sustainable development, namely China and India.

Peter McCormack: Where is an example of this in Africa?  I just don't know of any of this.  Educate me.

Alex Epstein: Okay, so it's in this book.  So, you take like building dams in the Congo and that being opposed by the sustainable development movement.

Peter McCormack: But who would pay for that dam?

Alex Epstein: Well, it depends.  I mean, you could have international lenders.  So in some cases, it's saying they're changing the lending practices saying, "We refuse to lend to this".  But are you not familiar with just this international movement to restrict fossil fuel projects, including the ESG movement.?

Peter McCormack: No, I'm very aware of the ESG movement.  Okay, sorry, for anyone listening, Danny's just brought something up, "Fears of fossil fuel boom in low-income but fast-growing regions, such as Africa, are cited as the rationale for imposing new bans on financing for such investments.  At this year's UN Climate Change Conference, or COP26, the United States, Britain and other countries pledged to end international financing of fossil fuel projects.  The key word here is 'international'. 

"While barring public finance for oil and gas projects in other countries, Britain continues to subsidise its own fossil fuel, while the United States, already the world's biggest oil producer, plans to increase its domestic production.  But even if we ignore western hypocrisy and take the promises of rapid carbon reduction at face value, is there any reason to worry about African nations blowing up the carbon budget?  It suggests no".

Danny Knowles: I don't know much about this source, energyforgrowth.org, but…

Peter McCormack: I mean, I would have thought it would be, if it's called Energy for Growth -- can you scroll up, so we can just have a look at the source?  But I mean, I'm going to take that at face value.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so just to go to the point that I think is important, the point I was really stressing is that for most people when we talk about catastrophe, today is catastrophe.  So, anything that is being done and has been done to prevent those people from living a modern life, I regard as catastrophe, and I think that's almost never in the thinking.  It's usually from a rich person's perspective, "Yeah, we could keep using this and it could be good, or it could be bad".

I'm saying, right now the world is at -- so, people think of a climate emergency; I think of a life emergency right now for every poor person in the world.  So, that's the perspective I'm bringing.

Peter McCormack: I think that's fair. 

Alex Epstein: Okay, that's all I wanted to --

Peter McCormack: But also, there's hypocrisy in there.  That's kind of western developed nation bullying.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, for sure.  When you say, "No coal in Africa, but we're going to use coal in Europe to bail ourselves out when our wind turbines don't work very well, when there's not much wind".

Peter McCormack: It's kind of coercive also, because they're just saying, "We won't finance your projects", that's what they're saying, "You can't have access to our capital for that".

Alex Epstein: Well, yeah, there are different versions of that, but sometimes it's the governments pressuring the banks to do it, which we do in the US and you do around the world; and there's the whole issue of this whole system of foreign aid, which is sort of a sideline.  But the point is, if you have any influence on a situation and you're using that influence to prevent or discourage low-cost reliable energy, I think you're contributing to the life catastrophe that is widespread poverty.

Peter McCormack: That's interesting, I need to dig a bit deeper on that one.  Okay, so back to what's on the line here.

Alex Epstein: Okay, so that's on the line though --

Peter McCormack: It is.

Alex Epstein: -- not alleviating the life emergency for billions of poor people as quickly as possible, and every day is ticking by, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm with you on that.  But what's on the line here is that, but also the other side; what's on the line is, what is the impact on the environment?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so I'd love to talk about that more.

Peter McCormack: So, how much time do you spend thinking about the impact on the environment; how much of that is part of your research?

Alex Epstein: I'll try to make this quick, but I don't think in those terms.  So, the environment implies that it's something separate from us, often above us.  I don't think of the environment, the climate; I think of it as our environment, our climate.  And so, I think, and the reason this is important, I think for example, if you like producing food, which is often considered economic, and polluting a lake, I think of those as all our environment.

One of the focuses in Fossil Future, one of the chapters is titled, Our Unnaturally Liveable Fossil-Fuelled World, and that's about how the modern world has an amazing human environment; but part of my point is, you look at everything in economics and environmental issues, and you integrate them together.  So, how this applies to climate, I think of climate liveability, what affects the liveability of the climate, including our safety from climate?  So, something like more frequent heatwaves would have, all things being equal, an adverse effect.  But the increased ability to use air conditioning would have a positive effect.

Fossil fuels are unique in that they have benefits that can neutralise and overwhelm their side effects.  You take the earlier polio vaccines, it has benefits that outweigh its side effects, but the benefits can't stop the side effects, like if you get a rash or something like that, something bad; you still get it, but you get this benefit.  But with fossil fuels, if you make it warmer, you can also make it even cooler in practice by air conditioning.  Or, if you cause more drought, you can have drought relief through irrigation, through a drought-relief convoy.

That's why, when you say, "Do you think about the environment?" I think about its overall impact on our world, every aspect I try to do equally; so, the climate system, but also our ability to deal with the climate.  So, I think of those in an integrated way.  So, I think of both all the time.

Peter McCormack: But then, net calculation.  So for example, you talk about increase in heatwaves, but an increased ability to produce air conditioning units.  But an increase in heatwaves would lead to potentially more deaths, and the mitigation is the availability of air conditioning units.

Alex Epstein: But you could have less -- so, what we actually have is, in the wealthier parts, we have fewer deaths, because the air conditioning is more -- so, why do so few people die of heat in Florida, Miami, where we are in Texas; why do people move here?  Because, our ability to master the heat is so much greater than any change in the heat.

Peter McCormack: But you still have deaths attributed to that.

Alex Epstein: But they're declining.  Nature is always killing us in the first place.

Peter McCormack: You're missing my point.  It's a net calculation, but it will impact the most vulnerable: those with the highest health risks, or age, or poverty.  If there is a net change, there are still going to be some people who are affected by that, who maybe can't get access to an air conditioning unit.

Alex Epstein: I want to put those together though.  So, we could talk about the poverty aspect, but if you talk about older people, vulnerable people, if we are net safer from temperature danger, those people will benefit the most; it's their lives who are being saved in the statistics.

Peter McCormack: If we are net safer.  There is a micro and a macro issue here.  When you talk about your example there in Florida, great, but what about in Central Pakistan?  If we have an increase in heatwaves, most likely that will be global, we'll have a global increase in heatwaves, not just in Florida.

So yes, Florida, a rich country, a rich state, the mass availability of air conditioning units.  You go to Bangladesh, Pakistan, poorer nations, they would have an increase in heatwaves too, but you might not have the same increase in air conditioning units.  So, maybe there's a global net change, but on a localised level, you might have an increased risk in different countries.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so we should talk about that.  So, I agree.  My main point is about methodology, we need to look at the negatives and the positives, and I agree you need to look at them in different places.  So, you can't just say, "I'm in Florida, so I don't care what happens in Pakistan".  But we can talk about, so if we're to take climate liveability, the general issues are: dangerous temperatures, and that includes cold and warm, we have to look at cold because cold actually kills a lot more than warmth; we have to look at drought; wildfire; storms; floods; and then broadly, sea-level rises.

Peter McCormack: Crop failures?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so you could put that under heat and drought.  So, in chapter 7 of the book, what I try to do is document, at least first, let's understand what is the state of those; what's happened in the last 100 years of climate impact and fossil fuel use?  So, unequivocally, what's happened is we've become radically safer in all of those realms.  So, we're far safer from dangerous temperatures, far safer from drought, far safer from wildfires, far safer from storms, far safer from floods.  I'm not saying everyone agrees with this, but if you look at the data, the data's unequivocal.

So, the overall statistic that I've popularised, and it's true from the International Disaster Database, is that climate-related disaster deaths, so quantifying these deaths, if you look 100 years ago when it was 1°C cooler compared to now, we've used a lot of energy to power a lot of machines to make the climate more liveable; what we've seen is, climate-related disaster deaths have gone down 98%, so a factor of 50.

Peter McCormack: And what do you bucket in climate-related disaster deaths?

Alex Epstein: Well, it's trying to capture -- so, the Disaster Database captures basically there's a bad drought, there's a wildfire, who's actually dying from these things.  The one exception to this, which is an interesting issue, is heat and cold deaths are not all -- most heat- and cold-related deaths are not bucketed in disaster deaths.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Alex Epstein: And it's important, because there's a whole literature of heat and cold having more mild impacts, that people think of as deadly over time.  So, it's different from just, you had a heatwave and someone dropped dead.  But it's like, okay, if you have generally too much heat in some area, how much of a contributing cause versus how much did cold suppress somebody's immune system.

What's interesting about those studies is they are universally saying, cold-related deaths are currently a significant multiple, like five or more, of heat-related deaths.  So, those are the two data sets we have: climate-related disaster deaths, and then heat versus cold.

Peter McCormack: So, what is causing the cold deaths and where?  So, there are significantly more cold deaths.  What is causing those deaths and where are they happening?

Alex Epstein: You mean, how does cold cause death?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Alex Epstein: Well, I mean in general, I mean I'm not a doctor, but it suppresses your immune system.  In most places, people die more in the winter than they do in the summer.

Peter McCormack: And where does that tend to happen, do we know?

Alex Epstein: So, this is an interesting thing, because you would think, "Oh, it's just happening in Scandinavia", or something like that.

Peter McCormack: No, I wouldn't think that.  My assumption would be cold snaps in places again like Pakistan, which we've seen; we saw the adverse weather there last year where there was a snowstorm, and perhaps they're not used to having central heating.

Alex Epstein: That's a very astute thing.  But in general, what happens is even warmer places can get cold to the point where cold is more dangerous.  So for example, in India, which you might think, "That's all heat", they have more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths.  So, even in many warm places, just warming on its own would be net beneficial for a significant amount of time in terms of temperature-related deaths.

Peter McCormack: So, why haven't we mastered heating in those places, as we expect to master air conditioning?

Alex Epstein: Because there's not enough freedom and not enough energy.

Peter McCormack: I don't think that's a strong enough argument.

Alex Epstein: That's the only argument.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think India has enough energy.

Alex Epstein: Well, I said not enough freedom and not enough energy, so those are the two.

Peter McCormack: India's been pretty economically successful this last decade.

Alex Epstein: Well, they've gotten a lot -- they're a lot better off, their life expectancy has sky-rocketed.  So, they're on a very amazing upward trajectory over the last 40 years.  I mean, I would suggest many more pro-freedom reforms.  What do you think is --

Peter McCormack: The point I'm trying to make is, I don't think we can make the assumption, if we have lots of heatwaves, just because of economic flourishing, everybody's going to have access to air conditioning, as people who right now are dying from cold snaps don't have access to central heating.  I don't think we can just make that assumption it will happen.

Alex Epstein: But there's two things.  So, one is I'm saying that warming will generally be better for temperature-related deaths.  So on its own, even -- so climate impacts can be positive as well as negative, so it's important we have to recognise warming has significant benefits.  One aspect of it that's important is we often call it "global warming", but it tends to take place in colder parts of the world.  So, it's mostly cold places becoming less cold, which came up in my debate with Dessler, and he acknowledged this very much in passing, but this is a mainstream view; the UN says this.

Historically, it's not like the equator was just crazy, crazy hot, but it's that the poles had no ice, the world had no ice for most of its history.  So, it's more polar warming, or cold warming.  So when you're looking at the net of this, what you're going to see is, you're going to have fewer temperature-related deaths, at least for a while; and, as more and more people use fossil fuels, you're going to have more mastery over climate in both directions, so we will become safer from temperature-related deaths and much safer from the others.

Peter McCormack: What are the numbers; what's the gap between heat-related and cold-related deaths?

Alex Epstein: As I said, the disaster deaths are a little bit more exact, because you're trying to count specific people where you can say the dominant cause of death was, like, this storm.  The heat- and cold-related deaths are more kind of extrapolations, but as I said, the range is something like 5 to 15 times cold versus heat, so you'll have some that say 5, some that say 15.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  And as we solve that, that number would eventually flip?

Alex Epstein: What I'm saying is global warming on its own "solves" a lot of that over time.  But I think the important thing is, we're only talking about climate liveability, and that's part of global liveability, which is over all life.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, I think the other thing you have to have in there is pollution-related deaths.

Alex Epstein: Oh, for sure.

Peter McCormack: I think if you're talking about climate deaths relating to climate change from fossil fuels, you have to talk about pollution deaths.

Alex Epstein: If you're talking about fossil fuels, for sure you do; it's not a climate issue.

Peter McCormack: Well no, but we're talking about climate related to the burning of fossil fuels that puts carbon in the atmosphere.

Alex Epstein: Exactly, right.  So you can think of it as, it's really just the overall state of human flourishing, and you can think of that as, "How liveable is the world for different people?" but that includes environmental quality.

Peter McCormack: But what I mean is, if we reduced cold-related deaths, but massively increased pollution-related deaths, that wouldn't be great.  What's this, Danny?

Danny Knowles: How many die from air pollution each year.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so this would be a really interesting thing to talk about.  I don't know if you want to talk about it in a minute, because there's a lot more to say about climate.

Peter McCormack: Let's talk about this.

Alex Epstein: So, this is another -- so, my basic point is we have to look at human flourishing as a whole, the liveability of the world as a whole, and so climate impacts are part of that, but our ability to master those is part of it too.  And pollution impacts are part of that, but our ability to master health is part of that as well.  And also, our ability to produce food and clothing; all of these need to be integrated.  And I'm saying that when you integrate them, it's unbelievably clear we need to be using more fossil fuels, that's my view.  So, we can talk about this in that context.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, do we know what were the numbers of deaths related to heat and cold; do we have actual estimated numbers?  Can you find that, Danny?

Danny Knowles: I'll have a look.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so you need to look at the different studies.  I think one is Gasparrini, but I never want to say a number that might be wrong, so I'll just withhold, but we can get that later.

Peter McCormack: But what a lot of yours comes down to is, humans flourish with the use of fossil fuels, and most of the negative externalities we can solve with more fossil fuels?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, interesting. 

Alex Epstein: It's really the cost-effective energy, and then fossil fuels are and will remain uniquely good at providing that for billions of people.  If we had nuclear now, I'd advocate for using that.

Peter McCormack: So, if it was a net balance calculation, we would want to understand the reduction in fossil fuel use, what number that would create.

Alex Epstein: Right, but what I'm saying is, there's already this life catastrophe of most of the world being poor, and that's what I don't think is factored in sufficiently.  Because, we know that the number one cause of death is poverty, which includes a lot of these different things.  Like, when you're richer, you can lower air pollution, you can do a lot of stuff.

Danny Knowles: So, this says, "1.7 million deaths related to extreme heat or cold".  That's from University of Washington.

Alex Epstein: I don't know if this is global.

Danny Knowles: Yeah, that's global.

Peter McCormack: So, 356,000 due to heat, 1.3 million with regard to cold, which is on the 5X version of your point, so that's about right.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, the 5X version.  But I mean this is all trivial compared to poverty.

Danny Knowles: But compared to 7 million from air pollution, according to this.

Alex Epstein: Right.  So, one plausible thing to say about fossil fuels, which I would actually agree with --

Peter McCormack: We should also say, burning fossil fuels doesn't guarantee a reduction in poverty deaths.  We have poverty in the UK, you have poverty here in the US, you have corruption across the world, you have failed states.  Burning fossil fuels doesn't guarantee human flourishing in failed states or corrupt regimes.  We can't just say in every scenario, burning fossil fuels is the utopian solution, as I can't say that everyone now holding Bitcoin is the utopian solution to money.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, well if we talk about externalities, I can almost make the case that that's not true, because in a sense, there are so many external positives from using energy.  But I would think of it more as, for everyone to have the opportunity to flourish, it's going to require a lot more energy, and that needs to come from fossil fuels.  That doesn't mean that if you just burn fossil fuels in someone's back yard for no reason, that would be --

Danny Knowles: But can I ask, why does it have to come from fossil fuels?

Alex Epstein: Sure, I mean this is the economic question.  I don't know if you want to talk about climate, pollution, and then --

Peter McCormack: Let's finish this.

Alex Epstein: We need to address that question, for sure.

Peter McCormack: When was, I mean I know I should know this; when was the Industrial Revolution?  I'm asking you, because you probably know.

Alex Epstein: Well, it depends on where you think.

Peter McCormack: What I mean is, what I'm trying to get at is, the US, the UK, Japan, a number of these countries have been very successful economically in development for decades, some maybe a couple of centuries, but let's just say decades.  How recent has the UN been objecting to projects in Africa; we're talking, what, 10, 20 years?

Alex Epstein: So, the anti-development precedes the anti-fossil fuels.  So, it really starts in the 1980s.  In the 1980s, it becomes massive.

Peter McCormack: Okay, but during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, when western nations were flourishing, was Africa flourishing then and we've curtailed it, or was it still…?

Alex Epstein: No, that's what I'm saying; I really like that you're bringing this up, because I do think it's not enough to say, "Oh, just fossil fuels".

Peter McCormack: Exactly, that's my point.

Alex Epstein: That's my point in chapter 10 of the book, I really try to emphasise you need the political freedom as well.  So, you need both, you need to advocate both and it's wrong to only advocate one, so you need reform.  But what we've seen is, you have even a significant increase in just the freedom to trade, using property rights, any kind of property rights and contracts, we've seen in China and India, it leads to a massive increase in wealth, and you're talking about 5X increases in fossil fuels, 10-plus-year increases in life expectancy.  So, we have a formula.

Peter McCormack: Even in Shanghai?

Alex Epstein: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Really?  How do you feel about, just generally speaking, about the air pollution situation in somewhere like Shanghai, because it's clearly a shit show?

Alex Epstein: Just to say one quick point about air pollution, then we can go into detail.  It's undeniable that the overall effect of fossil fuels in China has been to dramatically increase life expectancy.  So, when people talk about people are dying from pollution, that is very misleading, because they're living a lot longer because of the fossil fuels that allow them to have more food, clothing, shelter and medical care, including that offsets some of the diseases.  So, I'm not saying China's ideal at all.

Peter McCormack: So, the argument is, China's benefited from fossil fuels, life expectancy has increased; in Shanghai, there's a massive increase in pollution, which will disproportionately affect you, depending on your certain health conditions; but sorry, the net increase in Shanghai has improved?

Alex Epstein: Well, I'm not saying the sorry part, because I'm not endorsing the way China did it, but I think we have to agree it's undeniable that in terms of life expectancy and other things, it's been a benefit and many people have chosen it.

Peter McCormack: So, what do you disagree with how China -- the burning coal?

Alex Epstein: Because China's a dictatorship.  So, I mentioned that increasing the freedom, even doing it in some modest, incomplete way, has a lot of benefits.  But if you contrast it to a free country, in a free country you have to respect people's property rights, including certain thresholds for air and water pollution.  That doesn't exist in China, except they can make -- I know everyone here knows the word fiat, which is great; the Bitcoin audiences know fiat.

Peter McCormack: They know fiat!

Alex Epstein: Nobody used to know fiat, so it's a great thing.  So, they can say, by fiat, we don't want it here for the Olympics, but in China you have no right to be free from the endangerment of other people.  Whereas in free countries, there's that basic understanding of a right.  So, if you look at the way China will build things, they'll build things that will totally kick people off their land, but they'll also have huge concentrations of pollution with very few controls, only optimising for production and national glory.  Whereas in the US, that's not usually the way it happened at all, because we had property rights.  So, it wasn't that the whole country in the US decided, "Let's optimise to produce as much as possible", it's that you had freedom and people optimised, but they also had to respect other's rights.

Now, what's important though is, at the beginning of industrialisation, you can't have the same thresholds for pollution that you can when you're rich.  So, take the earliest industrialisation; fire.  When you invent fire, you can't say, "Smoke is bad, smoke kills people, so we can't use smoke", otherwise no one can use fire and no one can keep themselves warm and no one could cook their food and everyone is going to die prematurely.  So, the government can't say smoke from fire is a violation of rights at a primitive stage.  It can say, "You're not allowed to go in your neighbour's hut and burn something and asphyxiate them".

So, pollution standards evolve, and the point is they can get more and more stringent as you become wealthier, and as you have alternatives.  But this is all in the context of a rights-respecting place that's defining thresholds based on a concern for the rights of individuals.  China's not doing that.  So, what you're seeing is, the average individual is reaping the benefits of wealth, but they are not reaping the benefits of having their rights protected from endangerment by people creating wealth, and that is not fair. 

That is why I said, "I don't buy this".  I don't say, "You get to kill this person because you have a higher life expectancy".  I'm an individualist.  I will say, "You can have a pollution threshold that allows more pollution in India than in the US", because that's overall better for individuals in India, but I would not say -- much of what China's done is totally unconscionable in terms of killing people, but it's still true that the average person has benefited mightily.  I'm not endorsing the policies, but I acknowledge that reality.  I'm saying, with better policies, the reality would be much better and much fairer.

Peter McCormack: Can you look up the Shanghai life expectancy, just out of interest.  I'd be interested to know.

Alex Epstein: You're going to be impressed.

Peter McCormack: I'd just be interested to know.  I wouldn't fucking live there in that shit!

Alex Epstein: So, here's the thing; we are really, really rich.

Danny Knowles: 84 in Shanghai.

Peter McCormack: 84, and has it changed?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, I mean it's been a steady growth, but it's gone up for sure.

Peter McCormack: I wonder what the life expectancy of someone would be with asthma.

Alex Epstein: Well, here's the thing, asthma's a fascinating subject.

Peter McCormack: Okay, we don't need to go down that rabbit hole.  Let's talk about the implications of climate change, because one of the most interesting things, or the reason I wanted to talk to you is, you accept it's changing, you accept humans are doing it and there are implications.  How much have you dug into the implications, because you talk about mastering climate, which again, super-interesting.  So therefore, you're accepting that the net temperature of the Earth is going to continue to grow, and there's going to be implications for that.

Alex Epstein: Well, that's true.  But also, one other piece of context.  So, everyone is poor, most people are poor, is a key piece of context.  Another piece of context is nature is super-dangerous.  That's part of what's bad about poverty, is you can't protect yourself from nature.  So, climate is naturally very dynamic and it's very naturally dangerous; it's also diverse, which poses different challenges.  So, the mastery has made us unnaturally safe from climate now.  So, when you're talking about getting rid of fossil fuels, you could make people more endangered from climate, even if climate stays the same, because we can't alleviate drought, we can't alleviate heat, we can't alleviate cold in the same way.

That said, I absolutely think about these, and in fact I have racked my brain, particularly in Fossil Future, because I have really thought about, "What would actually be a problem", in terms of --

Peter McCormack: We should list them.  I mean, flooding in Miami --

Alex Epstein: Well, I'll give you my top three.

Peter McCormack: Give me your top three.

Alex Epstein: So my top three, but these are hypothetical, and then we'll talk about them; so, one would be a true acceleration of temperature, an indefinite acceleration of temperature, because right now, the Earth is super-cold.  So, it's not like it's been 25°F, 14°C warmer; it's super-cold, it could get a lot warmer and we'd be fine.  We'll talk in a second about sea level.

Peter McCormack: And is a true acceleration of temperature a possibility?

Alex Epstein: No.

Peter McCormack: But then that's not an implication of climate change.

Alex Epstein: But most people don't know that.  Okay, we can think of it on the level of --

Peter McCormack: I don't want to debunk things that…  What I want to know, from your perspective, it's undeniable that we've put more carbon in the atmosphere, you've seen the measure.  I think it's undeniable that's caused the net temperature of the Earth to rise.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I think so.

Peter McCormack: So, a rising temperature has implications.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, it has a lot of positive ones and negative ones.

Peter McCormack: Well, we can list them separately.  Let's deal with the negatives first.  So, what are the negative implications, because you talk about mastery, therefore you understand their implications; what are the ones that we should consider?

Alex Epstein: I think the main one by far that's plausible is sea level rise.

Peter McCormack: Sea level rise, okay.

Alex Epstein: But you should feel free to bring up others, because I can explain why I don't think -- so, the other hypothetical in my mind is a multiplication, like two or more, in the intensity of storms.  Frequency doesn't bother me, but intensity bothers me.

Peter McCormack: Because if you could master one, you could master ten.

Alex Epstein: You could master five, right.  But if hurricanes are twice as powerful, that's a different --

Peter McCormack: Well, it depends.  If you live in the tornado zone and there's an increase in frequency, whilst you can do certain work on structures, properties get destroyed, people get killed.  So, if there was a massive increase in tornadoes, you may choose not to live in that place.

Alex Epstein: Right, so I'm talking about the level of concern that would make me consider reducing energy use.  So to me, reducing energy use is a catastrophe.

Peter McCormack: Okay, intensity of storms, because you have to --

Alex Epstein: You don't have the infrastructure.  I mean, you could come up with a multiple of intensity that we do not know how to deal with right now.

Peter McCormack: All right.  They're the only two, or are there any others?

Alex Epstein: Well, the other one is the temperature one, but then I had to admit that I don't think it's possible physically.

Peter McCormack: What about crop failures?  We have direct evidence of impact on --

Alex Epstein: Yeah, that's not one that concerns me, I can explain why.

Peter McCormack: Okay, well I'll put it in there as one that concerns; let's have that as crop failures.

Alex Epstein: I expect wildfires are a big one for a lot of people.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, let's talk about these.  Let's talk about sea level rises.  You tell me what is the implication of rising temperature leading to sea level rises, what is the implication with that?

Alex Epstein: Sure, and with all these, I just want to stress that I regard fossil fuels as so crucial energy-wise that restricting them, to me, is like a catastrophe; and eliminating them, as people talk about net zero, I consider that the apocalypse.  I consider that making the whole world poor, which to me is the apocalypse.  So, when I'm thinking of these dangers, I'm thinking, is there anything catastrophic or apocalyptic, which is not to say negative; there are many more negatives, but these are big ones.  So, sea level rise, the hypothetical is -- so, Al Gore in his movie talks about sea level rises.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, let's go back to net zero. 

Alex Epstein: Oh, I'm sorry.

Peter McCormack: Define net zero for the audience.

Alex Epstein: Sure.  So, net zero means that there is, if you look at the emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2 from burning fossil fuels, by a certain date, usually 2050, there will be no more entering the atmosphere as being pulled out of the atmosphere.  So effectively, we won't be having any new greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Peter McCormack: But we could burn some fossil fuels, but we know some is taking out of the atmosphere?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, or you could try to suck it out manually.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I've looked into that.  That seems almost close to impossible with current technology.

Alex Epstein: I agree, but I'm saying hypothetical, that's part of what can happen.

Peter McCormack: And look, you get economies of scale, you get better investment, you get better technological advances.  But I saw some work that was done in carbon extraction, and the amount of work to extract a very small amount, it was something like 1,000 cars; whatever the number was I was like, "Okay, that's not viable in the short term".  And the extraction really is from plants.

Alex Epstein: Yeah.  But what you're talking about, I agree with you; I talk about this in chapter 7 of the book.  But what that means is that net zero really mean eliminating most fossil fuels.  If you can't easily extract the CO2, then you need to just get rid of the fossil fuels.

Peter McCormack: Let's forget extraction; so 80% of the world's energy is from fossil fuels, do we know what level that number would be at to be at a balance with what is extracted from plants?  Is it 50%, 20%?

Alex Epstein: Oh, it's just about 0%.

Peter McCormack: Do you know that, though?  Do you not know that, or do you know that?

Alex Epstein: I mean, you could try to -- remember, you'd have to add plants, because there's a carbon cycle.  So, the Earth is already emitting a lot of CO2 and it's pulling out a lot of CO2 all the time, and this is where you have all these fallacies about a lot of other things that emit a lot of CO­2; that's true, but it's pretty balanced.  That's why the level is flat until -- it's not flat historically long term, but short term over 100 years, it's pretty flat, because the things putting it in the atmosphere and pulling it out of the atmosphere are pretty equal, including the oceans and plants and that kind of thing.

So, when we start emitting, there's no new thing pulling it out, except what happens over time is more plants grow, because of the more CO2 in the atmosphere.  So, some people say basically, the plants end up offsetting half of what you put in.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so net zero is essentially no fossil fuels?

Alex Epstein: Yes.

Peter McCormack: But there could be an argument to transition and slow down fossil fuels, so we could slow down the need for mastering the impacts on the environment?  I mean, we'll come to it, but we've certainly transitioned parts of the grid to renewables, and those parts we've transitioned have reduced the need for fossil fuels.  So, if we could get from 80% to 70% without much of an impact on the planet, I assume you would agree that's a good thing?

Alex Epstein: Well, there's the issue of the percentage of energy use that fossil fuels constitute, but remember we're talking about a vastly growing pie.  So, I do expect them to go down, particularly if nuclear gets liberated, I would want it to go down over time, because it would actually be economically losing.  We can talk about the renewable situation; I don't think that's a hugely economic phenomenon, I think it's a government phenomenon.  But what I'm saying is, getting rid of fossil fuels, just to summarise, net zero, getting rid of fossil fuels in a world that needs vastly more energy, to me is very destructive.  Now, we haven't talked about the excellent question of, "What about alternatives?"

Peter McCormack: Well, we're going to come to that.

Alex Epstein: No, I know, so let's talk about the climate.

Peter McCormack: Sea level rises.  My example that I know of, just because of when I was there, I met Mayor Francis and I looked at the issue there, they have an issue of flooding, a growing issue of flooding, and we looked it up, didn't we?  What is it they expect to spend?

Danny Knowles: It's in Miami, just to be clear?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, did I not say Miami?

Alex Epstein: You just said Mayor Francis, but I know who he is.

Danny Knowles: Yeah, it was like $3 billion.

Peter McCormack: Over what period?

Danny Knowles: I think it was by 2060.

Peter McCormack: Okay, 2060.  Okay, anyway…

Alex Epstein: So, yeah, the first thing is, if sea levels rose fast enough, that would be a big problem for a substantially coastal civilisation, and also poor people near the coast; let's talk about that number in a minute.  But it's really all about, what is the rate of that?  So, in the movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore talks about ice sheets melting and a 20-foot rise in sea levels, which in the movie is implied that's going to happen soon.

Peter McCormack: Does he say that's going to happen soon?

Alex Epstein: I forget the exact words, but it's definitely implied that it's imminent.  It's not implied that it's over thousands of years, which is the actual science about it, or the actual scientific projections about it.

Peter McCormack: Can we see that?

Alex Epstein: In the movie?

Peter McCormack: No, you're saying it's 1,000 years --

Alex Epstein: I have the references in the book, if you want to see those.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Alex Epstein: The most aggressive ones are still hundreds of years, many hundreds of years.  So, what I'm saying is, what I'd be afraid of, and this goes to what I'd be afraid of, multi-feet per decade would be a very dramatic disruption.  Now, it's not an apocalypse, that's important.  It's not an apocalypse, but it is a very dramatic disruption and you would be really concerned and people would have to make a lot of changes in their plans.  And if you could avert that cheaply, which I'm saying you couldn't, even if it was happening, you would really want to.

But the thing is, we also know at the same time that smaller changes in sea level are very easy to deal with, relatively speaking, because we already have 100 million people who live below high-tide sea level.  So, humans are very good at living even below sea level.  The Netherlands was dealing with being below sea level, even in pre-industrial times.  It's nothing resembling an apocalypse.  So, there's a difference between a disruption and a catastrophe and an apocalypse.

Peter McCormack: And has anyone done the work to say, "Look, a one-foot sea level rise would impact this many millions of people globally on coasts"?

Alex Epstein: Well the thing is, there has been work, but what's interesting is when that work factors in people's adaptations, so there's one study that I talk about in the book and I learned about from Bjørn Lomborg, and you heard this claim about 187 million refugees under a certain scenario.  But then, if you look at the paper, they say that would only happen if it rose X amount and nobody adapted.  But it said explicitly, people will adapt, so you should never say this.  And of course, the media said 187 million refugees, and they promoted that idea.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I would ignore that.  What I would want to know is, per foot rise, how many people does it affect, and what is the cost to mitigate that and who's paying for it?

Alex Epstein: So, over time, it's -- so to jump to my conclusion, the extreme projections are on the order of 2, maximum 3 feet by the year 2100, and that is a very small cost.

Peter McCormack: Danny's going to load that up.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so I showed that in the -- I can share the graph later if you want.  If you just look up, it's in the IPCC reports.  Climate Feedback, which I view as a catastrophist group, but it's just a UN chart, and what they'll show is, "Here's what we project by 2100".  And then there's one version of it, one super-extreme version, that has always contingencies that I think might be 4.5 feet.  But the main extreme one, and a very extreme scenario, is 3 feet.  My view is, that is not a catastrophe at all.  They said, even if we aggressively get rid of fossil fuels, it will still rise 18 inches.

Peter McCormack: I mean, it's a catastrophe for you if you live on the coast and you can't afford to mitigate.

Alex Epstein: Well, I don't know what it means "you", because you have cities and you have groups of people who are incentivised to do it.  But again, we know that relatively, the Netherlands has been good at this, even when they were fairly poor.

Peter McCormack: Here we go, "Current and future emissions matter.  About 2 feet of sea level rise along the US coastline is increasingly likely between 2020 and 2100 because of emissions to date.  Failing to curb emissions could cause an additional 1.5 to 5 feet for a total of between 3.5 to 7 feet".

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I don't know where 7 feet comes from, it doesn't come from --

Peter McCormack: Where's this from, Danny?

Danny Knowles: But is the issue of this not down to coastal erosion as well, rather than just sea level rise, like the issue of flooding?

Alex Epstein: Well, this brings up Miami.  So, the issue with sea level is that most sea level issues, even with the warming we've had so far, are local issues, not global issues.  So, why is everyone focused on Miami?  Because there are certain local issues in Miami that people focus on.  Other places, sea levels are actually going down.

Peter McCormack: Where are sea levels going down?

Alex Epstein: I can look it up in the book if you want, but there are charts.  It's in Moral Case as well.

Peter McCormack: How, though?  If sea levels are net going up, how does it go down?

Alex Epstein: So, you have this with some of the land masses that people, like certain atolls, like in the Maldives and stuff, you can have a creation of things that prop up -- these islands can get bigger, because things can build up under.  I mean, these things are not just fixed in height, they can go up and they can go down on their own.

Peter McCormack: I'm not buying this one, sorry, what?  It doesn't make sense to me.  You might be right, but you're telling me an island can go up.

Alex Epstein: It doesn't make sense that coral and other things could get together, and the island could rise?

Peter McCormack: No, it doesn't.  It just sounds odd.

Alex Epstein: But this is how a lot of these things form in the first place.

Peter McCormack: No, but I've just never heard about this; this is new information.

Alex Epstein: Okay, right.  So, sea level changes are hugely a local phenomenon up and down.  So, one thing that will make the relative sea level go up is if you have more buildings.  So, you can build things and the land can go down and it's a non-trivial phenomenon.  So, you can also have pockets, this is really weird, but you can have pockets of water, even though it's a global thing and it's sort of equal, it's not exactly like a perfect bath tub; you can have relatively higher and lower pockets.

Peter McCormack: But if the net sea level is going up, are you saying that at the same time, it's going down in other places?

Alex Epstein: A global sea level rise will mean that on average, the sea level goes up that much, but certain places will still have -- the sea level will fall.

Danny Knowles: Is it the sea level falling, or the islands rising?

Alex Epstein: Well, the sea level is an experience.  So, the global sea level is an overall volume of water.

Peter McCormack: I need to see this one!  Can you look it up?

Alex Epstein: Well, hold on, if you just give me one second, I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you right here.

Danny Knowles: I'm struggling to find it.

Peter McCormack: I would need a source on that one; that one sounds odd.

Alex Epstein: Luckily, we've got sources for everything right here.

Peter McCormack: There's your sources and there's our sources.

Alex Epstein: Well, fortunately all my sources are primary sources, or I use mainstream.  You want to see it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, pass it over.  Right, I'm just looking at the book.  So, where am I looking here?

Alex Epstein: Look at that graph with multiple different sea levels.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so Alaska it's going down, Louisiana it's going up, New York it's going up, Stockholm it's going down, Helsinki it's going -- I mean, the most extreme one's Alaska.

Alex Epstein: It's generally true that most climate-related phenomena are primarily local, which means it's another reason why you need more energy.

Peter McCormack: What's the timescale on this?

Alex Epstein: Just see what it is at the beginning.

Peter McCormack: I've got the centimetres on the y-axis, I've got no timescale on the x-axis.

Alex Epstein: I can see it, but it's pretty recent, because they're using tidal gauges.

Peter McCormack: "Since 1950, sea levels off Alaska's coast have declined as much as 32 inches.  Scientists know this, because the sea level is measured every 6 minutes with equipment…"  That's so odd.  Interesting.  Do we know why?  Why has the sea level dropped in --

Danny Knowles: There you go, that first paragraph.

Peter McCormack: "As Land Rises", okay, "although ice melt from Alaska contributes to global sea level rise, sea levels near Alaska have been decreasing because the land beneath the state is rising.  Despite this, the state could see rising water in the future, as sea levels will eventually rise faster than the land".  Okay, this is relativity.  So, there's a certain level of -- the rise in the land is outcompeting the rise in the water.

Alex Epstein: There's local variation and global variation.  So, local variation so far is dramatically bigger than global variation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think this would be an example of, what I would call, cherry-picking, because I would want to know then on a global basis how much land -- you've got to look at how much land is rising and how much it's falling, because that's one example.  But that might be just one rare example.

Alex Epstein: I just want to be clear.  So, to maybe even make your point stronger, there will be certain places where sea level is naturally rising, like Miami, it's already rising; and then it's compounded by the warming, so it will rise.  So, what they think, and I think Suarez has been wrong about this, he's been taught to think that it's all a global thing, where it's significantly the local things, and then it's compounded by the global.  But that means that even if you've dealt with the global, which I would argue is catastrophic to try to reduce right now, you still have the local.  So, it's wrong to attribute a substantially local phenomenon exclusively to global.  But absolutely, that's why I said I'd be concerned.

Peter McCormack: But you've got to look at the global picture.  For the majority of people, is it rising? 

Alex Epstein: Of course.

Peter McCormack: Because if it is, bringing that argument like Alaska to me is cherry-picking.

Alex Epstein: Well, I didn't bring it.

Peter McCormack: Well you did, it's in your book!

Alex Epstein: But I think I brought it up in -- I was explaining the phenomenon that when you're looking at the challenges that people face from sea level, or have faced, they're mostly local challenges, which is why mastery ability is so important.

Peter McCormack: But what I'm saying is, this is where it's important, because somebody might turn round in a debate and say, "Yeah, but sea levels are dropping on some places, look in Alaska", and that might convince somebody this is not an issue.

Alex Epstein: Well, that would be a terrible argument.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that goes back to the start of our discussion.  We've got to sometimes look at the net impact.  If, for the majority of coasts, this is an issue, then Alaska's irrelevant, it's just a one-off local issue.  If the local issue exists for the majority of people, that's important.  Whereas here, I think I've been fair with you, but that I think is cherry-picking.

Alex Epstein: So, I don't want to be unfair to you, but I think what's happened here is this is a factor you didn't know about ten minutes ago.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I didn't know about it.

Alex Epstein: You've been talking to some of the leading climate scientists in the world and you didn't know a basic fact about how the sea level rise works.

Peter McCormack: No, what I didn't know is -- well, look, if you think logically, we have mountains and we have moving continents; I understand land moves, okay.  What I hadn't considered or hadn't been part of my thoughts is, "Oh yeah, maybe on some coasts the land is rising due to the land movement".  But what that specifically also says is, this is to do with the pace, the pace of change.  Right now, the pace of change in sea levels is such that Alaska, sea levels are falling.  But like it says there, if we had this rapid increase in temperatures and rapid melting of the ice caps, that may get outpaced.

Alex Epstein: Absolutely, that's exactly what I said.  But remember, we're talking about -- you asked me how much I think about our environment, and part of it is I think about the diversify of impacts.  So, I want to be aware of places where there are local factors that are a bigger deal in one direction.  The other thing I said is certain places will be hurt by the local factors and even more by the global factors, and you have to factor that in.  But all I'm saying is, it's wrong if you're having significant problems from local factors, which Miami is, it's wrong to fully attribute it to the global, because you're going to make decisions.  That's all I'm saying.

Peter McCormack: And so, the local factor for Miami, you said your point is that it's sinking?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I won't go into the exact things with Miami.  Miami is having much greater than average sea level rise challenges, which means that by definition, that it's more local than global.  So, I think Suarez is misled.

Peter McCormack: But what is that local issue?  Is the local issue that it's particularly flat, quite far in from the coast; or is it sinking; what is it?

Alex Epstein: It can be a number of things, so I don't know the proportion.  So, it can be building there sinks the land; it can be that there's these giant -- as I said, you can have these ocean masses that are slightly higher in some parts of the world over time, so it can be that.  The thing to do in Miami is just to try to name those as exactly as possible and say, "Absolutely, here the global sea level has increased by", let's say the current rate is about a foot a century, so it hasn't quite increased a foot over the last century, but at its current, it will be a foot, and so to say, "Here's what this is, here's what we expect", and then this is what gets into, as I said, if it was increasing by a foot a decade, 2 feet a decade, that would be really, really disruptive.

What I'm pointing out is that the extreme estimates, you're talking about 3 feet, 2 to 3 feet, by the year 2100.  What I'm saying is, that's not alarmist.

Peter McCormack: Well, 2 to 3 feet, up to 7 feet, depending on your source, because there are different sources.

Alex Epstein: Okay, but my source is the UN IPCC, which is already extreme.

Peter McCormack: Okay, but you already don't trust the UN!

Alex Epstein: Well, we can talk about that, but --

Peter McCormack: Look, all I'm saying is there's a range.  Seven might be extreme, but the point is --

Danny Knowles: That came from the National Ocean Service, part of the US Government.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so there's different sources.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, and it could be they have some reason for saying the US is going to be a little more than other places for some reason.

Peter McCormack: Or they could have a reason for looking globally.  What I'm saying is, there's a range of sources.  You're happy to take the UN's point here, and you've also been critical of the UN.  What I'm saying is, it doesn't matter which the source is, there's a range and with that range, there are some local and global impacts, and then there's mitigation and then there's cost.  So, what we're considering is, is the impact worth the cost of curtailing fossil fuels?  You would say, the net impact of curtailing fossil fuels is far worse, and I understand your argument.

Alex Epstein: Yes.  So, I want to make sure of the UN, because you raise a good point that I'm using the UN and I'm critical of the UN.  So, what I'm using, in particular the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; I'm critical of the UN in general, but this in particular.  But what I'm doing is, I want to think through for myself, what are the worst-case scenario things?  So, when I look at the UN, I believe there are systemic biases that the UN has, but it's also using a lot of good scientists.

So, when they say something is extreme, I'm pretty confident that what they say is extreme is the most extreme thing possible, because I think they have a track record of being way too extreme.  So, instead of saying -- what I'm not saying is, "There's going to be no significant sea level rise".  I want to think through, if what they're saying at the extreme end happens, how does that affect my argument?

Peter McCormack: Okay.  So, the mitigation, global and local issues, we know whether it's global or local, we know Miami is going to be spending billions on that.

Alex Epstein: Right.

Peter McCormack: We also know the majority of the fossil fuels have been burnt in western, successful nations, there are going to be nations that are going to be impacted by potential sea level rises, who can't afford that.  So, do you have any -- you say we talk about mastery; do you believe we have an almost global social cost for helping nations who have been negatively affected, even though they've burnt less fossil fuels?

Alex Epstein: Great question.  So, I don't believe they've been negatively affected, I think they've been dramatically positively affected.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, if you do the research, the impact on climate change, the largest impact will be on the poorest nations.

Alex Epstein: The largest impact of anything adverse will be on poor people.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, do you think the richer nations have a duty to the poorer nations to help them with the mastery?

Alex Epstein: Well, I think we should encourage them to be free, but I want to dispute the -- so, there's a narrative that we've caused them a problem, whereas the problem we've caused them is by advocating anti-freedom, anti-development, anti-energy policies.  But in terms of the global life expectancy and prosperity, we have radically increased the prosperity of the impoverished world through our use of fossil fuels.  So, our use of fossil fuels is a huge benefit to the impoverished world.  They have access to far better medical care, far more clean water, some of the things you're talking about, drought relief.

Peter McCormack: Because of our invention?

Alex Epstein: Well, inventions, wealth, charity.  But the average health around the world, access to clean water, lack of starvation, these have all radically improved, and they're all fossil-fuelled.

Peter McCormack: I'm troubled by this justification.

Alex Epstein: Okay, I don't know what you mean, justification?

Peter McCormack: The reason I'm troubled by it is, you're saying our use of fossil fuels to advance technological evolution has benefited these nations, and therefore they've had access to new inventions and technologies because of us; therefore, the negative affect of, say, global sea rises, we owe them no responsibility.

Alex Epstein: Well certainly, currently.

Peter McCormack: No, but when it happens.

Alex Epstein: Well, it's already happened.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, there'll be places like Miami, who may have flooding issues, sea level rise issues, and what you're saying is, because you've benefited from our inventions, therefore you have to suffer the impact that we've had, and we're not going to help you with that.  I'm troubled by that.

Alex Epstein: Okay, that's not exactly what I'm saying.  What I'm saying is, we have to first acknowledge, because this is denied by almost everyone, that our use of fossil fuels thus far has been an enormous net benefit to the poorer world.  99% of people commenting on this will not say what I just said, so I think it's an undeniable fact that most people are in denial about.  I always want, before I talk about the future, to evaluate the present where the facts are known.

Peter McCormack: Can I just throw something in there?  You're saying they've undeniably benefited from our use of fossil fuels; but you've also said earlier, they've undeniably been held back by our policies.  You have to bring the two together.

Alex Epstein: Sure.  Let's take something like clean water.  So, we've had innovations in clean water, and that has helped fund and facilitate certain types of clean water projects.  And in some cases that have pockets of freedom, we help with water purification plants and that kind of thing.  So, this has all be made possible by fossil fuels.  But at the same time, through different incentives and policies, we have deprived poorer people of the ability to do that themselves.  So, what I'm advocating as the solution is to liberate everyone so they can have an industrial civilisation as well; that's the fundamental thing.  It's not to say, "Let's use less fossil fuels so their sea level is a millimetre lower".

Peter McCormack: I'm not asking that, I've not made that point; let's make the point that I've made, is that you talk about 5 billion people living under $10 a day.  If they access to fossil fuels, they would have flourished, okay?  So, you're saying that.

Alex Epstein: If they had access to freedom and fossil fuels, yes.

Peter McCormack: But you're also saying, we've held them back through policy and bribing dictators, okay; and then you're also agreeing that sea level rises may come and adverse weather conditions on coasts may come from the burning of fossil fuels. 

Alex Epstein: Yes.

Peter McCormack: So, let's put that all in the mix.  Where are they right now?  They're in a position where they haven't flourished because we've held them back, because they've not had access to fossil fuels.  Yes, they've had these secondary benefits of maybe some clean water; but they're also going to have these secondary negative effects of potential coastal flooding.  If we'd have liberated them politically and economically, they would have been able to pay for these issues on the coast themselves.  But we haven't, so therefore they can't.

So, it feels like to me, we've had a negative impact on them, if you weigh up the benefits of the technology and the healthcare and the water we've given them, and then you weigh up the fact that we've completely held them back economically; it seems that we've net negative held them back, therefore we have a duty to them when we cause coastal issues.

Alex Epstein: Interesting, okay, that's kind of an interesting argument.

Peter McCormack: But this is where I come to, this is where I think, excuse me for saying this, you cherry-pick from both sides.  And what you might have noticed, I try and look at net things.  You can say they've had a net benefit from our inventions from fossil fuels, but then you can say that they've been held back, because we've restricted them from fossil fuels.  It's like, "What the fuck have we done to these people?!"

Alex Epstein: Okay, I try to integrate these and there are different people with different things.  So, I'll tell you what I think.  I said it has been evil of us to do anything to oppose freedom and fossil fuel use in these places.  That's different from saying that the lack of freedom and lack of fossil fuels is entirely the fault of the bad people in western civilisations who have done that; they should be condemned for doing that.  But it is not the fault of the free world, fundamentally, that the rest of the world is not free.  Freedom is an achievement, it's a new achievement and the default is not to be free.

I think we have insufficiently spread freedom and certain actors have done certain things to oppose freedom, and that's evil; but the main way you should remediate that is to advocate freedom as avidly as possible.  That's the solution.  I can also believe though that our freedom for us has dramatically increased life expectancy around the world; this is true.  So, the average person around the world is so much better off than they were.

Peter McCormack: The average person?  I'm talking about the people on the coast.

Alex Epstein: No, but let's talk about the poorer people in the world that I mentioned.  When I was born, what is it, four out of ten people are living on less than $2 a day; this is all adjusted for inflation.  So now, that's gone down by a factor of four.  That's amazing.  That's caused by freedom and fossil fuels, including our freedom.  That needs to be factored in, that's all I'm saying.  Continuing that is the number one priority.  Small changes in sea level rises are a drop in the bucket, and so that's what I'm trying to talk about.  The main thing is to make the poor world wealthy.  It's not enough that they have benefited a lot from our productivity, but they need their own productivity, and that's what I'm advocating for.

Peter McCormack: I completely agree that they deserve their own productivity, but they may have had a secondary benefit from our inventions; we've benefited far better. 

Alex Epstein: Of course.

Peter McCormack: We have far more developed economies, we have far better probably healthcare than most poorer nations; yet, the benefit we've had has come at a cost to them and their environment.  I feel like we perhaps have a duty, economically, if we have an opportunity to help them flourish economically, promote freedom, promote fossil fuel use, invest in them.  I also feel like we perhaps therefore also have a duty to support them when they need to master the coastal issues that will come.

Alex Epstein: I think it's a plausible position, and I would say it's mostly a plausible position, if there's a part of the world that is very disproportionately affected.  So, this doesn't turn out to be true, but if you take the Maldives, or let's say some place that's poorer, there is this idea that the Maldives are about to drown, but it's not happening at all, because there are these factors building up the land mass.

Peter McCormack: Can you look that up?

Alex Epstein: I mean, they're building new airports and I want to go on my honeymoon there.  It's a flourishing place, or it's increasingly flourishing.  But you could imagine, with a certain hypothetical distribution of change, that one area would be really adversely affected, or you could even imagine within a country.  Then you'd say, "You know what, we want to give some relief to these people", and that's a plausible thing, as long as you acknowledge the energy we are producing is benefiting everyone hugely, and that's what I don't want to leave out of the picture. 

The energy we are using is benefiting the whole world, and they need to use a lot more on their own.  That's what I want to keep stressing and not keep fixating on sea levels and small changes in sea level as the thing we're fixating on.  That's cherry-picking.

Peter McCormack: You see, in your world, they've talked about the predicament; in your world, you want to burn more fossil fuel.  So, there's a chance that in your world, it actually does accelerate things.

Alex Epstein: I don't agree.  What, it will lead to more sea level rise than will occur?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Alex Epstein: Of course, I want that.

Peter McCormack: So, you want more sea level rise?

Alex Epstein: Well, I want that overall picture for sure.

Peter McCormack: So, what about issues of flooding?  Now, I don't have any data on this, but it feels like to me, over the last decade, we've seen an increase in catastrophic floods from storms.  You talked about an increase in it that you were worried about an increase in intensity of storms.  We had what happened in New Orleans, what happened in Houston, what happened in New York.  I'm only anecdotally able to answer this.  It feels like over the last decade -- and it's not just there, it's in the UK, it's in Bangladesh, we've seen an increase in these catastrophic floods.  Do we know if there has been?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so it's in chapter 7 of the book.  So, there's not any documented increase, and there's certainly nothing in death.  I mean, death is a decrease and damage is pretty flat.  But I want to keep in mind, even if there was a significant increase, that would be trivial compared to the benefits of billions of people having the opportunity.

 So, what's interesting is, it would be okay if these areas were getting worse, but they're actually getting better, because the climate benefits of fossil fuels outweigh -- just the climate benefits outweigh the climate negative side effects, let alone the overall benefits.  That's why I think it's so obvious we need to be using more, because even in the climate areas, we're much better off over time, and we can expect to keep mastering climate going forward.

Peter McCormack: What are the things we -- by the way, I've really enjoyed this.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, it's great.

Peter McCormack: What are the things we have to master?  Actually, I had one more thing: crop failures.  Okay, so I've done some initial research into that.  The typical example people bring up, the one I've read most about, is coffee production in Ethiopia.  There has been an increase in failed crops in Ethiopia.  The mitigation for that is basically, they're having to move up just to a higher climate; I'm sure you know about this.  So, there is an inferred position here that a change in temperature will lead to a change in agriculture.

Alex Epstein: Sorry, one technical point, because people might attack me for this if I don't say it.  In the climate literature, they use the term "mitigation".  I like the way you're using it, but they use it differently.  So mitigation, they mean reducing fossil fuel use.  An adaption is what you're meaning.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean adaptation, yeah.

Alex Epstein: I just want to make clear.

Peter McCormack: Yeah so what I read, in Ethiopia, 5% of the people are employed in the coffee industry.  There has been an increase in failures and the way they adapt is to move their production to higher up the mountains.  That's just one example.

Alex Epstein: Right, so generally, if you think about crops and crop failures, I think what we see in general around the world, including in the poor world, is crop production increasing over time for a variety of reasons.  So, why didn't I include crop failure in my concerns?  One is, we're incredibly good at doing it using all kinds of technologies in different places.  But the other thing is, two of the main dynamics of rising CO2 warming and greening are both generally very friendly to crops, particularly when I mentioned warming occurs more in colder places of the world.

So what's going to happen is, in general, more of the Earth is going to have the right temperature; they're going to have the right temperature to grow things.  And then also, there's going to be more CO2, so it's easier to grow things.

Peter McCormack: But that's definitely a macro issue.  So, the areas that green, if you accept that some places are going to have lower crop production, because of rising temperatures, some are going to have an increase, you're moving crop production to different areas of the world?

Alex Epstein: So, it's true that some places, depending on their warming, will have lower production because of heat.  But I'm saying even more places could have higher production because of heat, because colder places will be open to crops that weren't open before.  So I'm saying in general, more of the world will be open to crops, even leaving aside the greening.

Peter McCormack: So, let's go back to my point earlier.

Alex Epstein: Ethiopia?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so already a poor nation, they have a reduced production of coffee, therefore that lowers their GDP.  Parts of Canada that maybe open up to crop production have an increase in their GDP.  How do we balance that?

Alex Epstein: So, the way I think of it as, just to bring in the big picture of Ethiopia, the main thing is freedom, fossil fuels, industrialisation.  As long as they're super-poor, they're going to be vulnerable to all kinds of disruptions.  With this disruption, there's always a question, just like the sea levels, of how much is local, how much is global.  You've talked about cherry-picking --

Peter McCormack: But how much would an increase in fossil fuels in Ethiopia change coffee production to the coffee producers?

Alex Epstein: I mean, it could radically change it, right.  They could have a modern industry that could be much more productive.

Peter McCormack: No, but specifically --

Alex Epstein: They could produce other things.  Ethiopia will be much better off in terms of crop production and other things if they industrialise; it would be radically better.  Ethiopia's not inhospitable to life.  Ethiopia could be amazing if it had the right policies and energy; that's what I keep coming back to.

One way is, every area of the Earth is incredibly habitable, almost every area is incredibly habitable, if you have freedom and if you have energy.  So, in the US, we have a microcosm of the globe.  We've got polar Alaska, swampy Florida, whatever Texas is, where I live in California, which is nice desert, ocean-type thing.  We can flourish in any climate, including with production of different valuable things, with freedom and with energy.  Without that, almost every climate is inhospitable.

I think what a lot of the catastrophists do is they take a place that's having a climate problem, sometimes they attribute a local problem to a global problem, but then they ignore the need for mastery.  So I'm saying if you have the ability to master, you can deal with anything.

Peter McCormack: Have I done this?

Alex Epstein: I don't know if you've done -- I'm not focusing on you, because we're not debating.

Peter McCormack: No, but this is where the discussion is.  Let's keep to what I'm discussing.

Alex Epstein: Well, I think that it hasn't come up enough, so I'm trying to emphasise it more in the minds of the listeners.

Peter McCormack: Okay, but I'm not a climate alarmist.

Alex Epstein: No, but I think you've been influenced by them and you've expressed admiration for a lot of them.

Peter McCormack: And I've been influenced by you.

Alex Epstein: I know, and I'm happy.  I'm trying to even skew it a little bit more.

Peter McCormack: Okay, because the one thing I don't buy here, the one thing I'm struggling with this, Alex, is this idea that Ethiopia has been completely held back from industrialising.  They already have an economy, they already have the ability to produce goods.  What are they being held back from producing right now?

Alex Epstein: So, "held back" can be equivocal, because are we holding them back, or is just lack of freedom holding -- so as I said, freedom is an achievement.  So, let's say you have bad government, various bad dictatorial forces.  I mean, that used to be almost the whole world.  So, it's a question of how do you overcome that?  What happened originally is people overcame that internally, they come up with better systems of government.

Peter McCormack: But countries with dictatorial governments have industrialised.

Alex Epstein: Well, as you've mentioned with China, it often has a lot of adverse things.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's a different point.

Alex Epstein: But hold on, even if you have -- so, you can have a dictatorial government that's more friendly towards industry and that has pockets of freedom in the economic realm, which a place like China does.  You can have other places that don't have that.

Peter McCormack: But I imagine there are other factors that come into play here.

Alex Epstein: So, what do you think are the other factors?

Peter McCormack: Well, I don't know.  Local factors; educational level; the availability of resource; I can imagine that there's a whole bunch of factors that are the reason that somewhere like Ethiopia hasn't industrialised, and I would be reticent to just attribute it to the fact that they don't have enough fossil fuels.

Alex Epstein: Well no, but as I said, I keep mentioning freedom and fossil fuels, because it's the government.  If you have the wrong kind of government, and that also relates to culture at a given time; if you have that, then you can't use fossil fuels, you can't do anything well.

Peter McCormack: Okay, imagine with all the will in the world, we can't bring that freedom to these countries, because it's difficult.  You can encourage freedom, you can try and bring freedom, but sometimes you just can't bring it to a country.  Imagine we cannot bring freedom to Ethiopia.  There are people there who right now, their coffee production is at risk, and therefore it's a risk to their GDP.  Do we owe a duty to them, by moving the availability of the right type of land for crop production to other parts of the world?

Alex Epstein: So, what are you proposing that we do?

Peter McCormack: What I'm saying is that, you can talk about greening in one area and that will increase crop production there, and the people who are working in Ethiopia right now are going to have a reduced crop production.  Do we owe them a duty?

Alex Epstein: Well, how would you fulfil this duty?

Peter McCormack: Subsidies.  I mean, if they have to move their crop production up the mountain, there's a cost for that.  Who's going to pay for that cost?

Alex Epstein: I don't agree that we can't change.  So, all the effort that's spent saying, "Poor Ethiopia, you're a victim of us, you deserve --" all that effort should be spent on, "You need radical policy reform.  We'll help, we'll do whatever we can to facilitate that", but viewing it as -- a really good friend of mine is an immigrant from Ethiopia.  He views life there as, "This was a catastrophe".

Peter McCormack: Oh, I agree.

Alex Epstein: He's like, "I'm in the US, I get to be the CEO of a company now and I can have these amazing opportunities".  So, when I talk about the cherry-picking that exists in general, and that is passed on to most people, we look at Ethiopia and we're taught to think mostly about these variations in climate.  What I'm trying to say is we should look at the abject poverty, that's the core, and climate is just one tiny sliver of the problems of poverty.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I see your point.  I'm conscious we're running out of time; we could have probably gone on for three or four hours, I've really enjoyed this!

Alex Epstein: Probably.

Peter McCormack: I'm just trying to think, what have I not covered?

Alex Epstein: We didn't cover the relative economics of energy at all.  I don't know if people are going to be upset about that.

Peter McCormack: Give me the TL;DR.

Alex Epstein: So, the TL;DR is, my view is that fossil fuels will remain a uniquely cost-effective source of energy for many decades to come.  By that I mean low cost, reliable, versatile, which means every type of machine; and then, on a scale of billions of people and thousands of places.  The basic facts that lead to that are, one, the world already needs far more energy; fossil fuels produce 80% of it, particularly specialising in heavy-duty transportation and industrial process heat, which are very hard to replace. 

The only even plausible replacement to those, on any future timeline that we've seen, is nuclear, which has been criminalised, so we're two generations away at least for making that a mass thing, and solar and wind are nowhere near.  There are arguments about how much of a supplement they can be, but I think there's no compelling argument that they can rapidly replace fossil fuels, so that's my argument.  By the way, I'm not against them, although I am against policies that favour them.  I can imagine certain scenarios where particularly solar could integrate well with natural gas and provide cheaper electricity.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean I would love to have got into the whole renewables thing, because I think here in Texas, it's interesting because it's used as an example, but it also has a great source of wind and a great source of sun, and has the economic position to try things.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I would love to talk about Texas, but I agree.

Peter McCormack: You know what, we'll just do another one.

Alex Epstein: I think the issues you've focused on are more important, so I'm glad we've talked about those.

Peter McCormack: Before I close, Danny, anything I've not asked that you wanted to ask?

Danny Knowles: The one thing that I kept coming to is, do you think it will lead to mass climate migration?  Like, if it gets too hot in places, "Go inside and turn the aircon on" isn't enough of an argument, maybe.  And the same with the people maybe in Ethiopia who can't farm on their land anymore.  And if it does turn to that, do you think countries would open their borders, because it doesn't seem like they will?

Alex Epstein: I think it depends on where in the range of temperature projections things happen.  So, if you look at the historical range, the way they do it is, every time you double the amount of CO2, how much global warming do you get?

Peter McCormack: It reduces, like there's an S-curve?

Alex Epstein: It's a logarithmic effect, a diminishing effect, so you get diminishing returns.  So, there's the historical range that the IPCC has had as doubling, so from 280 to 560; we're at about 420 now.  So, let's say we got to 560, that would mean at the bottom end, it's 1.5° above the Industrial Revolution, and we're already at 1°, and the upper end is 4.5°.

Now, in the recent report, they have gone from 2° to 5°, which I'm very suspicious of, but in any case, let's just say 1.5° to 5° to give the whole range.  Where in the range it falls will affect everything, particular the temperature.  So, at the upper of that, it is plausible you would have migration, but the thing is you have a lot of migration; moving is a normal thing.  And one of the nice things about climate changes is they're slow, and you learn more about them over time.

Another thing, which we haven't talked about, is there's plausibility that we could actually cool the climate, and that we'll develop that ability, which is a whole discussion.  But it's important, I think, that in the next 20 years, we'll learn more about these things, and that can inform adaptation decisions.  So, you could think of it as, "Oh, it's migration, it's bad", but there's also, it's really cool that human beings have the ability to move; because not only can we master climate locally, but we can master our location over time.

So, I have my doubts that it would be at the extreme end; but if it did, then yeah, you would have to talk about all of these things, but you would talk about them in a constructive way.  And we have a very rich history of moving a lot as a species, different places.  And I hope, if the world follows what I'm talking about more in terms of freedom and fossil fuels, more of the world will be a good place to live.  I hope it's not just the US that's the land of opportunity, or certain aspects of Europe; I hope more and more of the world is a land of opportunity and more places are like Singapore, which you wouldn't want to be in that climate, except it's just so amazing in terms of what they've done in terms of their government, what they've done in terms of energy.

But I do want to stress I'm not saying at all there won't be changes, even there won't be some significant changes.  There won't be what Al Gore says, and you have to factor this in over time, and you have to factor in what the availability of alternatives is.  And I would just add, if you care about alternatives, you should really join me in this quest to decriminalise nuclear energy, because I do believe that if we had not criminalised nuclear, we would have way more options in terms of no-carbon or low-carbon energy right now.

Peter McCormack: We definitely have to do a follow-up; there's a whole bunch of stuff we've not discussed that I'd like to get into, but I've really enjoyed this.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, I'm really grateful to you and I really enjoyed the challenges and enjoyed the agreement.

Peter McCormack: My only closing question, how long have you been on this subject?

Alex Epstein: 15 years.

Peter McCormack: 15 years.  Over that period, have there been things that you've got wrong that you've had to shift you position on?

Alex Epstein: Oh, yeah!  You want me to itemise all my --

Peter McCormack: I don't need them all, but what I'm wondering is, is your position evolving and can it evolve to less concern, to more -- how rigid…?

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so interestingly, these are my -- so, my framework is looking at the full context, benefits and side effects of the different alternatives.  So, as I said, the energy economics of the alternatives can change over time, as I could be wrong about something.  And then the climate impacts, including negative climate impacts, our knowledge of those can change.  So, the absolute state of knowledge can change, and then I could be thinking about one of them wrong.

For example, I had a really weird evolution, because I feel like after I wrote Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, I was off the issue for a little bit, and I became more fearful of climate stuff and more optimistic about the alternatives.  I wasn't really plugged in, but even I was just seeing so much stuff.  Then I looked into it, and I was like, "No".  Now, I wish this weren't true, but I'm now even more extreme than I was with the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

The thing that I would also say is that, in the last four or five years, I have an amazing researcher, Steffen Henne, and we've both learned over time.  So, there are certain things in the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels about climate that are not exactly accurate, that I think I've corrected in this.  And so, one thing, one difference that I think is really important, is the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels expresses too much confidence that the higher-end warming scenarios are exaggerated.  And so now, I would say I have three reasons to think that they're exaggerated, but I am open to them as a possibility. 

So, that's a way in which I think my thinking has become evolved versus saying, "Yeah, they're exaggerating".  We're not talking about models, but I think sometimes the criticisms of the models go overboard in saying, "The models are bad".  But that's a subject probably for another day.

Peter McCormack: I mean, to summarise anyway, I think we're going to face this climate change anyway, because I think governments will be inefficient, even if they wanted to, even if they felt they could transition to more renewables, I think there will be an inefficiency in it, and I think other nations will continue to burn them.  I think we will have to adapt, I think that is going to come. 

But the areas I guess that I think are still a bit grey for me are, what happens in a scenario where we hit $300 a barrel of oil?  That changes some of the economics of this and consideration for this.  I am most interested in how poorer nations are helped in certain scenarios.  And one area that I struggle with is this idea that we can suddenly just industrialise nations, just by promoting freedom and offering finance.  I still think there's a chance we can't have these nations advance as quick as possible, but I don't know.

But I mean for me, this is an evolving understanding of what's happening with regards to the climate, but an evolving understanding of the things that you've brought to the table and we could discuss for a long time.  Anyone listening, I'm not an expert, Alex is, by his admission!  I would treat everything sceptically, don't be angry at anyone for having a different opinion than you, and please go and do your own research.  You should tell people about your book.

Alex Epstein: Yeah, so the book is Fossil Future, and it covers a lot of these things in depth, and it uses all primary sources, or mainstream sources.  I would say the thing I'm doing distinctively is, I think I have a consistent pro-human full context method for thinking about this, so I think people should look into that, and then see whether I accurately represent the facts. 

I would just say also, if you want to reach me, easy to reach me on Twitter @AlexEpstein; and one other resource I have is called energytalkingpoints.com, which is a free website, and you can actually search any term and you can get my current well-referenced talking points on that issue.  So, if you're ever wondering, or you don't want to buy the book, and you want to know what does Alex think about rising temperatures, just put that in energytalkingpoints.com and you'll at least get my perspective.

Peter McCormack: Fantastic.  Well, I think we should do this again.  Danny will stay in touch.  I would love to have you sat with Katharine Hayhoe and have a lovely discussion between the two of you!

Alex Epstein: I have agreed to have those discussions many times, but it takes two to tango!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think that's unlikely.  I'm going to be doing my own research.  I expect when we do a follow-up, I will bring other things, but I appreciate you coming in, interesting chat, and yeah, speak to you soon.

Alex Epstein: Awesome, thank you.