The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

[Tamas]

It is a new book apparently. I have found the major points worthwhile of consideration, and it is indeed needed to view issues from both sides. We may very well need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels but that doesn't change the fact that the efficiency they provide has been unsurpassed and they made the well-being of today's world possible.

•"[M]ore energy means more ability to improve our lives; less energy means less ability—more helplessness, more suffering, and more death" (p. 39).
•"n providing the fuel that makes modern, industrialized, globalized, fertilized agriculture possible, the oil industry has sustained and improved billions and billions of lives. If we rate achievements by their contribution to human well-being, surely this must rank as one of the greatest achievements of our time" (p. 83).
•"It is only thanks to cheap, plentiful, reliable energy that we live in an environment where the water we drink and the food we eat will not make us sick and where we can cope with the often hostile climate of Mother Nature" (p. 86).
•"[W]e don't take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe. High-energy civilization, not climate, is the driver of climate livability. No matter what, climate will always be naturally hazardous—and the key question will always be whether we have the ability to handle it or, better yet, master it" (p. 126).
•"For years, actually centuries, opponents of fossil fuels . . . have said that using [them] is unsustainable because we'll run out of them. Instead, we keep running into them. The more we use, the more we create" (p. 178).
•"We need to say that human life is our one and only standard of value. And we need to say that the transformation of our environment, the essence of our survival, is a supreme virtue" (p. 201).

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/11/alex-epsteins-moral-case-fossil-fuels/?utm_source=TOS+Commentary+&+Announcements

[Viking]

What concerns me here is the perceived need to refute the assertion that modernity is bad.

[Tamas]

What concerns me here is the perceived need to refute the assertion that modernity is bad.

Well, there is that assertion in a considerable part of first world population IMHO

[grumbler]

The problem with all such simplistic statements as "[W]e need to say that human life is our one and only standard of value" is that it gets us nowhere.  "Life" isn't a value, it is a condition.  And even if we get more sophisticated than this writer, and say something like "qualify of human life is our standard of value," we still end up asking "what qualities? which humans?"  There is always a tradeoff between the present and the future, between today's human lives and future human lives, and pretending that there isn't doesn't at all advance the debate.

In short, this is a list of tautologies and meaningless buzz phrases.  There is a debate to be had, but it needs to be an intellectual one, and this list isn't an intellectual list.

[Berkut]

I think of fossil fuels as stored energy. They are basically a incredibly useful way to store really impressive amounts of energy in a form that is relatively easily turned into power.

It is like we humans have found a shitload of batteries lying around waiting for us to use.

The problem is there are a finite number of these batteries, and a finite amount of energy stored in them. Their existence has radically improved the human condition, without question, since they are "free" energy.

The problem is that now our standard of living is basically reliant on all this free energy, and it cannot last forever. And it seems very unlikely (but not impossible) that we will find a way of obtaining a replacement for all that energy before we run out of batteries. And we've created a society that likely cannot function at its current level without access to that kind of readily available energy.

[Martinus]

The problem with all such simplistic statements as "[W]e need to say that human life is our one and only standard of value" is that it gets us nowhere.  "Life" isn't a value, it is a condition.  And even if we get more sophisticated than this writer, and say something like "qualify of human life is our standard of value," we still end up asking "what qualities? which humans?"  There is always a tradeoff between the present and the future, between today's human lives and future human lives, and pretending that there isn't doesn't at all advance the debate.

In short, this is a list of tautologies and meaningless buzz phrases.  There is a debate to be had, but it needs to be an intellectual one, and this list isn't an intellectual list.

Or indeed there is a trade off between quality of human life for people living in one place vs people living in another.

[Martinus]

A better moral argument, imo, is that by eschewing fossil fuels, the developing world will have a much harder time catching up with the developed world (which took full advantage of fossils during its own development period). I think this conundrum can only be answered by setting different standards for different countries - an idea politically toxic for any Western politician.

[grumbler]

I think of fossil fuels as stored energy. They are basically a incredibly useful way to store really impressive amounts of energy in a form that is relatively easily turned into power.

It is like we humans have found a shitload of batteries lying around waiting for us to use.

The problem is there are a finite number of these batteries, and a finite amount of energy stored in them. Their existence has radically improved the human condition, without question, since they are "free" energy.

The problem is that now our standard of living is basically reliant on all this free energy, and it cannot last forever. And it seems very unlikely (but not impossible) that we will find a way of obtaining a replacement for all that energy before we run out of batteries. And we've created a society that likely cannot function at its current level without access to that kind of readily available energy.

This is the kind of intellectual argument we should be having.  I'd go further and argue (similar to Marti) that a morally superior use for the remaining easily-accessed fossil fuels would be to raise the standard of living of the poorest third of the population by 100%, rather than raising the standard of living of the richest third by 5%.  That is, of course, presuming that morality is an actual concern and not just a smokescreen, and that our values do have something to do with "human life" as opposed to a human life (one's own).

[Tamas]

A better moral argument, imo, is that by eschewing fossil fuels, the developing world will have a much harder time catching up with the developed world (which took full advantage of fossils during its own development period). I think this conundrum can only be answered by setting different standards for different countries - an idea politically toxic for any Western politician.

Good point.

But if I am not mistaken the developing third world largely ignores western concerns about this. eg. look at pollution levels in China and India.

[alfred russel]

The problem is that now our standard of living is basically reliant on all this free energy, and it cannot last forever.

It will last longer than our lifetimes. But there are many other sources of "free energy" out there: the sun (through sunlight), atoms, among others.

[CountDeMoney]

There is certainly a valid case for fossil fuels, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is moral.

[The Minsky Moment]

The premise is ridiculous.  Fossil fuels are an instrumentality.  You can't make a moral case for them any more than you can make a moral case for ball bearings or concrete.  The question is simply cost and benefit.  Climate change is significant because it is a cost with quite a lot risk attached.  So the cost of using fossil fuels has to incorporate those risks, and once those costs are incorporated, then the cost advantage of fossil fuels against available alernatives does not look so compelling.

The only moral question raised by all this is - per Martinus and grumbler - distributional.  Namely how do we distribute costs and benefits across geographies (e.g. low lying areas of Bangladesh or Pacific islands) and levels of economic development. 

[Barrister]

I think of fossil fuels as stored energy. They are basically a incredibly useful way to store really impressive amounts of energy in a form that is relatively easily turned into power.

It is like we humans have found a shitload of batteries lying around waiting for us to use.

The problem is there are a finite number of these batteries, and a finite amount of energy stored in them. Their existence has radically improved the human condition, without question, since they are "free" energy.

But this is wrong.

There is a virtually unlimited amount of batteries that exist.  The question is "how much do you want to pay to extract these batteries"?  And as technology improves, the cost of extracting these batteries decreases.

There are some very good reasons to limit our use of fossil fuels.  But "we're going to run out" is not one of them.

[Barrister]

The premise is ridiculous.  Fossil fuels are an instrumentality.  You can't make a moral case for them any more than you can make a moral case for ball bearings or concrete.  The question is simply cost and benefit.  Climate change is significant because it is a cost with quite a lot risk attached.  So the cost of using fossil fuels has to incorporate those risks, and once those costs are incorporated, then the cost advantage of fossil fuels against available alernatives does not look so compelling.

The only moral question raised by all this is - per Martinus and grumbler - distributional.  Namely how do we distribute costs and benefits across geographies (e.g. low lying areas of Bangladesh or Pacific islands) and levels of economic development.

The premise is not original to the author though.  There are many in the green movement that argue quite loudly that fossil fuel use is 'unethical', so it's quite natural some more rational people would want to make the counter-argument.

[The Minsky Moment]

The problem is that now our standard of living is basically reliant on all this free energy, and it cannot last forever. And it seems very unlikely (but not impossible) that we will find a way of obtaining a replacement for all that energy before we run out of batteries. And we've created a society that likely cannot function at its current level without access to that kind of readily available energy.

We have quite a lot of batteries.  The amount of proven reserves has increases steadily since coal and oil first began to be used in the 19th century.  In other words, for the last 100 years, our "store" of batteries has been filling up faster then we can use the batteries.  What has happened over the past decade or so is that the cost to make the newer batteries has gone up and is likely to keep going up.  So again this is really more of cost issue than a problem of literally running out.

On the other side, we do have plenty of replacements - nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geo.  For some of them - namely solar - costs have been declining nicely and are likely to continue to do so.  There are technical problems involved with much wider or ubiquitous use of clean options.  But if the world HAD to make the transition quickly it could be done.  Again the question is simply cost.