Episodes

We Need to Stop Thinking About Climate in an Anti-Human Way

Episode #366 | June 17, 2024

Episode #366 | June 17, 2024

We Need to Stop Thinking About Climate in an Anti-Human Way

In This Episode

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome author Alex Epstein to the show. Alex has written several books advocating for the use of fossil fuels, including his most recent work, Fossil Future. The self-described "energy-freedom advocate" joins the podcast to challenge the popular climate-change narrative and provide more context for the crucial role fossil fuels play in society.

Alex kicks things off by weighing in on the debate around climate change and the effects of fossil fuels. He argues that the benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the negatives and that, in many cases, energy can be used to overcome any adverse effects. Alex also breaks down the myth of unsustainability, the anti-human bias implicit in environmentalism, and the incorrect belief that more folks die of climate-related catastrophes today than in the past. Citing a specific example of energy's usefulness, Alex notes...

Energy allows you to do anything... So if you think about, "well, fossil fuels increase the incidence of drought" as a negative side effect, they also give you the ability to alleviate drought as a benefit through things like irrigation and crop transport.

Next, Alex discusses his impact with politicians and lawmakers. He explains that 200 major political offices use his content to direct policy and become more informed on energy topics. Alex then shares his opinion on climate change, pointing out that we're currently in a climate renaissance and that the Earth has never been more livable for human beings. He brings up geoengineering as a way to cool the climate, asserts that the negative environmental impacts are severely overblown, and emphasizes the crucial role energy plays in the economy...

If you're concerned about any threat, including climate, what you want to do is maximize your capabilities as a society... The main thing is you want to have as robust an economy as possible so that you can deal with it and you can be wealthy. It's so crazy to think, "We might have a climate problem, so let's get really poor."

Finally, Alex talks about climate-change rhetoric dominating in elections, the harm that tech companies have done by blatantly lying about being 100% renewable, and why humans should take pride in the fact that we're progressing as a species and learning to use the Earth in new ways. He puts the anti-impact perspective into both a philosophical and historical context, noting that primitive religions believed "sinning" against nature had dire consequences.