Alex Epstein on the Humanity of Fossil Fuels
The Michele Tafoya Podcast
Salem Podcast Network
2.4 • 590 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fossil fuels are usually described as the enemy of the climate. But have you considered how much oil, gas, and coal have helped humanity? Michele welcomes Alex Epstein, author of “FOSSIL FUTURE: Why global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less”.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to sideline sanity with me, Michelle Tofoya. Hit subscribe. We'd love to have you with us every single day that we publish. Today, I want to do some second level thinking with you about climate change, about fossil fuels, about nuclear energy. Alex Epstein is really at the forefront of this movement of fossil fuels being a good thing. Now, look, I am as |
| 0:24.2 | conscientious about clean air, clean water as anybody. I recycle like there's no tomorrow. However, |
| 0:31.7 | I also understand the importance of fossil fuels in everything we do every day, the fact that we have |
| 0:36.9 | refrigerators, the fact that we have air day, the fact that we have refrigerators, |
| 0:38.0 | the fact that we have air conditioning, the fact that we have heating. Because I live in Minnesota, |
| 0:42.6 | heating is very important to me. And I know that this can't really be accomplished well without |
| 0:48.2 | fossil fuels. So we need to think a little bit deeper. I hope you'd come into this with an open |
| 0:53.2 | mind and listen to this guy. |
| 0:54.9 | He's got three books out and the most recent has garnered some interesting reviews. Slate wrote, |
| 1:01.2 | and this is Slate. Keep that in mind. This new style of climate denial will make you wish the bad old days were back. That's Slate. Now we go to, this is Forbes, so a very, |
| 1:14.3 | very different viewpoint, Alex Epstein's excellent and essential fossil future. So now you've got |
| 1:21.2 | those two ends of the spectrum as far as reviews go. And then there's yet a third. And this book |
| 1:26.1 | review comes from, I think this is a gentleman on |
| 1:29.8 | Substact. In my recent courses on energy policy, I like to explain that discussions of energy |
| 1:35.2 | technologies can be a lot like discussions of sport. And he goes on to say that Alex Epstein makes a good |
| 1:41.3 | point, but also fails in many ways. So there are three really interesting |
| 1:45.4 | reviews of this book coming from all different directions. Let's hear from the author himself, |
| 1:50.8 | someone that Cory Bush, a congresswoman from St. Louis, Missouri recently called a so-called |
| 1:56.4 | expert who is a white supremacist. He is anything but, and I'll let him tell you himself. |
| 2:01.6 | He is Alex Epstein. |
| 2:02.7 | He's next. |
| 2:05.7 | For nearly three decades, she's reported the action from the sidelines. |
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