 This is Puro Pelka with Michael Pelka only on the blaze radio network This is your own book filling in for Mike of Pelka and I'll be here the rest of the day today for another hour or so and then Tomorrow for three hours from noon until 3 p.m. East Coast time. All right. We've got a I've got an exciting guest on now my former colleague Alex Epstein who is the CEO of the Center for Industrial Progress the number one Defender of the energy industry in the United States the only energy industry that really matters The fossil fuel industry. So hey Alex, how you doing? It's good to be here. I'm glad I got promoted to CEO. I'm actually president But it's good to get a promotion. Well, since you don't have a CEO then, you know Why not what they'll or maybe you do have a CEO? I don't even know. I hope I didn't demote anybody else Now we're good. So so you actually so you actually went out there and and Watched Al Gore's latest movie. I mean, we've been talking for the last hour about truth About what is truth and how to evaluate truth? So in terms of this new Inconvenient truth part two. Is there any truth in the movie? Well, I wish I had heard heard the discussion because I think that's definitely the right question to ask in advance and it's It's really remarkable how people don't ask in advance of a documentary What would it mean for this to be true? What what kinds of arguments would I expect? Because I've read a lot of the reviews and they all say well I'm sure Al Gore is right on the facts, but you know, this scene wasn't cinematography Whatever the advert there, you know is not perfect or something like that But they don't ask well, what would it mean to be true? And so I take what they mean as truth as well He showed me some pictures and videos and the pictures and videos in some form happened But that's not the relevant form of truth for our purposes because our purposes in watching a movie like this are To determine what is the right policy going forward on energy? Given that fossil fuel is the leading source of energy in the world 85 which produces 85% of the world's energy Also emits co2, which has some sort of impact on climate So what truth would mean would be giving us the full context. Yes with a lot of careful analysis of both what are the benefits of going forward with fossil fuels and what are the risks and on the flip side What are the benefits if any of Al Gore's policies of outlawing 80 plus percent of fossil fuel use and then what are the risks of those? But instead all he does is present the positives of his policies and Presents no negative so that the product is as worthless and and even if you put aside even the policy issues Is he presenting enough evidence to even suggest that his Perspective on the science is even true No, and I'm glad you asked that that question So one one sub so if the big question is what's the whole picture in terms of benefits and risks Then a subset of that has to do with scientific evaluation of what happens when you put more co2 in the atmosphere And what you would expect from that Would be to for example if you're claiming that there's been dramatic warming You would show how much warming there was and then you would also show the impact of that on human life And all of those statistics exist So there's no reason for board not to cite them. They are the relevant form of truth in this context in the movie doesn't cite them No, he doesn't give you any specifics on how much warming there's been and he certainly doesn't give any specifics on how Many climate-related deaths there have been because if you look at the actual trends what we have is a historically Mild not particularly interesting amount of warming despite record increases in fossil fuel use And we have a record low number of deaths from climate, which is what really matters from a human perspective So we've gone from from population adjusted 10 plus million deaths in the 30s multiple years to last year 6114 recorded climate-related deaths Which illustrate that there's no significant problem of having point oh one percent more co2 in the atmosphere But there's an enormous benefit of having industrial progress to protect us from the naturally dangerous climate Yes, so talk a little bit more about this. I think this is a fascinating point about deaths from weather and And what what that means and what in the fact that they ignore it What does that say about this standard of evaluation? I Mean you you make this great point about how deaths from climate have declined dramatically elaborate on that This is a fascinating issue because I remember when I was working at the Einrhein Institute I remember learning about this myself and even though obviously Objectivism is the most pro-human philosophy imaginable I realized that I myself when looking at the climate issue was too Focused on how much are we impacting climate and not what is the impact on life? Whereas if we think about it The only thing that matters about impacting climate is impact on human beings And we could be impacting it positively or we could be impacting it a little bit negatively But negatively for humans and the positives with far outweigh that and I remember this Learning from Keith Lockett. She works at AI of this guy ender go Kalani who who publicized the The data which is from this non-partisan international agency the international disaster database this data on What has happened to deaths from climate over time? So this is storms and floods and heat and cold and all these things that Al Gore supposedly wants to protect us from and There was this incredible stat that those deaths had gone down by a rate of 98% From the 30s, which is the time where they have any kind of decent data To the present and this was really shocking even to me and then I realized oh wait I haven't been thinking of it from a pro-human perspective I was sort of assuming that well if we're impacting climate then this area it can't be getting better But I didn't I wasn't thinking of it in terms of well from a pro-human perspective Nature doesn't give us a safe climate that we make dangerous gives us a dangerous climate that we need to make safe and Fossil fuel use powering industrial development and protecting us from climate That turns out to be an enormous driver of climate safety So it's not just that fossil fuels help us, you know get more electricity and run our refrigerators, which is true They do it's also that they help us they help protect us from climate So their alleged biggest problem is actually one of their biggest Accomplishment so how do they help us protect? How do they protect us from climate? How to fuss our fuels make it possible for us to reduce the number of deaths from a hurricane or for from our tornado? Well, let's take it by what are the most significant forms of death historically So the most significant form of death historically is definitely drought, you know and drought basically means you don't get the water That you expected to Well, it's not that putting more CO2 in the atmosphere has led to you know Nature magically giving us water when we want it, but through Industry what we can do is we can do two core effects One is we can take naturally dirty water and make it clean so we can use it to grow our crops and do all kinds of other things And we can take naturally unavailable water from remote locations and bring it where we want So that means this no matter what's going on in nature We have increasingly the ability to in effect negate the drought by bringing water to the place where nature in effect Wanted there to be a drought so you have these statistics where? 99.98 you have a 99.98 percent decline in the relative drought in the rate of drought related deaths It's just that staggering so just for for that one thing the fossil fuel industry by powering the machines That do all these things by powering the development has done this enormous service And of course they've been given no credit. Yeah, I know that that's staggering I mean we had a I mean we had a drought supposedly here in Southern, California Didn't really affect anybody's life. Yeah, you wanted your lawns a little bit less. Why? because fossil fuels powered pumps to Provide us with water from all kinds of different places including desalination including recycling water Technology is amazing in that way and and you know I think this is probably the most important point about the whole climate change debate people fixate on on Temperature changes, but this point about safety and about technology making it possible and technology driven by fossil fuels That's why nobody else, but Alex makes and it's it's such a crucial It's probably the most important point in the whole debate. All right. We need to take a break Alex is gonna stay with us for the next segment You're listening to your own books to your own book filling in for Mike a pelka and we'll be back right after this break You're listening to pure apelka with Mike opelka on the blaze radio network Well now with Mike today, this is your own book filling in for Mike. I'll be here today be here tomorrow And we've got Alex Epstein on the line He is the president of the Center for Industrial Progress and probably the number one Defender of Energy from the perspective of human flourishing and as a consequence the number one defender are the fossil fuel Business, so I got a question online here Somebody asked so so what do you make of Al Gore? Is is he basically just lying? Well, I make a vulgar. That's a good question Well, I think I think it's wrong to just think of things in terms of you're telling the truth Or you're or you're lying I think that that's the wrong kind of view of knowledge because usually it's not just they're Misrepresenting a particular fact so that can happen It's that their whole framework for thinking about things is distorted So I mentioned that what a documentary owes us is it owes us the whole picture? And I should add to that it owes us the whole picture of what you mentioned Which is what's gonna impact human flourishing and Al Gore's? Framework is not to think of things in terms of human flourishing He thinks of things in terms of minimizing human impact on the planet and in part because he has that framework He has this expectation which creates enormous confirmation bias that anything we do that impacts nature Must be bad so he looks at the universe and looks at hey Where is the basically Gaia punishing us for our environmental sins and and all of his focus is there and Then he doesn't expect any unique benefits to come from changing nature in the way that we do So it's that kind of distortion and when you have that kind of distorted framework It takes a lot of honesty to then Be be pulled back and to look at all the counter evidence and to not have your confirmation bias And let's just say Al Gore is not a person I would count on for a lot of honesty No, I mean I don't think he is I think it's fair to say that the guy is dishonest But but but you're right The right way to look at this is to look at the full context and look at all the information He's leaving out not necessarily whether he's lying about a particular fact, but you have a you've written a an article about about the movie and you talk about a lot of kind of his predictions about Catastrophic sea rises Miami's gonna be flood I mean isn't it true though given the context of human flourishing that if Miami's really going to flood We should be prepared and we should think about solutions How does he present it in the movie and how would you address this issue of Miami flooding? Well, I mean that's a big kind of if and even the way you posed it I mean, what does it mean? It's going to flood because part of how I'd think of it I'm sure how you'd think of it is we look at it from a technological perspective So we think about okay What are all of the different things that we could do if there was sea levelized and there is some sea levelized I mean, it's risen a ton since glass ice. So if that's really a concern, what can we do technologically? What Gore does is he actually tries to anticipate that argument by showing some road that's flooded and they took some sort of half-assed Like quote-of-quote technology measure and he just says well, you know, you can't compete with mother nature So then his solution is well, let's just starve the whole world of energy and then that'll be Fantastic, so he's not looking at this in a pro technology way He's looking at this in an anti-technology way and that his core solution is to withdraw Technology and to use technologies that are demonstrably inferior like solar wind It's very telling that he's not an advocate of nuclear and hydro, which are the best non-co2 forms of energy Yeah, and so Tell us a little bit about about this issue of Solar and wind. I mean, it's kind of cool, right that we can use the Sun to generate electricity You know, I get I get a salesman knocking on my door trying to sell me solar panels I think I actually did a thesis in high school I think my senior thesis on solar energy back then this is 1979 I think any day now they were gonna have to break through to make it completely economical and And I interviewed scientists and stuff and it was it was cool. So what have you got against technology Alex? These are major advancements. We're making a solar energy Yeah, it's such a backward perspective that the solar files have because they'll say, oh, well, you must you like fossil fuels So you must hate solar. Yep, and it's not that at all It's the reason I'm talking about fossil fuels is because you hate them and you're trying to restrict them so for if the government was going after Apple and I defended Apple that wouldn't mean that I hate Samsung and that I'm I would be indifferent to a superior Samsung Product it means that I want out Apple to have the freedom to compete and as part of that I'm championing the value of what they've done and what they plan to do in the future So I'm not advocating they're advocating for the suppression of currently superior technologies I'm not advocating for the suppression of currently inferior technologies because as customers We can suppress or promote things by buying them What sense is is? Solar and wind in inferior technology right now Well, the ultimate the ultimate thing is can it produce can you get reliable energy? including electricity on Demand at the lowest cost possible and the core problem that they have in delivering this is that the Inputs the Sun and the wind are not reliable inputs and therefore they need some sort of Reliability measure and using batteries is just insanely expensive So what every grid in the world does is they back it up? Using fossil fuels and to some extent nuclear and hydro, but then how much do you need to back it up? Well, since you can never really rely on it You need almost a hundred percent backup, but that means it's not backup It's just life support and then the the solar and wind to become dead weight so they have all sorts of and of Attempting gimmicks to get around this but ultimately the question is what happens to the cost of electricity on the grid? When you put solar and wind on and it always goes way up because it's just a bunch of dead weight Yeah, and the fact is that it's unbelievably even put aside even putting aside the dead weight aspect The technology is just not there in terms of competing with fossil fuels in terms of cost That is even if I think you tell me if I'm wrong Alex even if solar was on all the time Even if you had 365 days of sunshine we can pretty close in Southern California It still would be more expensive if it wasn't subsidized Then well that that that would be interesting. I mean I think it would be much more promising and exciting that way But okay 365 days first of all, you're talking about a very distinctive place second of all I've lived in Southern California a lot and it does not have 24 hours a day worth of sunlight, which is the really relevant thing It's that you have very dark nights and just go to the UCI I think it's a Carl's Jr. And they've got their solar reading on two minutes So they're after you know 4 p.m. It'll just be zero and it'll say powered by solar. Yep Yeah, I know nighttime is an inconvenience a really inconvenient truth for for our goal for the whole for the whole scam of solar energy All right, Alex We've got about a minute and a half Parting thoughts and where can people find out more about you the organization? What do you what do you want them to read? What do you want to live to read following your appearance here? There's one quick example that I think captures my perspective My friend in India was telling me when he grew up he'd experience 120 degrees and the environmentalist solution is let somehow Stop using energy and get him down to 119 and my solution is get him a damn air conditioner Yep, so that's how we recline it differently in terms of what I'm up to Industrial progress.com is our website and we have a newsletter. I just suggest that people join that and you can 60 All the latest things there's something coming up, which I like called human flourishing project But we just mail out weekly. We don't spam you the big battle That's the best way to see there's obviously social media as well But honestly, I want you on my mailing list. So Quickly Everybody should go out there by the mall case for fossil fuel Follow Alex on industrial progress comms sign up for the newsletter as he said he doesn't spam I'm I'm subscribed. I've read the book. I encourage all of you To do the same when we come back. We'll talk more about what we discussed here with Alex we'll integrate it with what we've talked about earlier on the show and We will we've got we've got the final half an hour and we'll wrap up You're listening to your own book filling in for Mike a poker and on the blaze radio network On the blaze radio network All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation with Alex Epstein And I encourage you all to go out there and and get his book Mall case for fossil fuels probably the best book you'll read on the whole climate change issue But broader than the whole climate change issue to give you a whole new perspective a whole new approach to dealing with both the environmentalists arguments, but also with with thinking about energy and fossil fuels and and Coal and and and gasoline and natural gas. I mean a whole new approach To looking at these things. That's that that that's a real that's real influence. That's a real achievement when not only Not only are you discovering new facts But you're discovering a new way of looking at something and I think that's the real contribution of the book and Generally of what you know the way Alex described it earlier is is when you go in and watch a movie like Al Gore's about Climate change. It's not just about what Al goes presenting It's about is what he's not presenting and about much more importantly about what is the fundamental question that he's asking What is the context that he's approaching the whole issue from and this goes back to a discussion of truth? What is framing his viewpoint if his perspective starts out with kind of a a basic idea that The earth is the standard The temperatures must be stable and then everything goes from there if that's his fundamental assumptions Then you know, maybe a lot of what he says is kind of factually true, but all in the wrong context What is the right context well the right context should be human life We're humans after all it should be our life. How does climate affect our life? What is climate doing? to our lives if That's the context if that's the context Then the questions he's asking the answers he's given. Are you relevant to the actual issue at hand? And as Alex points out, it's never been safer to be a human being From any perspective, it's silly from a perspective of climate. We've never been more protected from weather ever we can tolerate We're better shielded we have predicts the ability to predict and and to prepare and we have materials that protect us from tornadoes and hurricanes and and droughts that have killed Millions in human history, I assume and We have that ability to to a overwhelming extent because of fossil fuels because of technology because of progress and And we should celebrate that we should be celebrating that fact. All right, we've got a call from Skyler from Delaware. Hey Skyler. How's it going? green Go ahead. You need to speak up a little bit. You're kind of Breaking up there a little bit All right. All right. Hear me now. Yeah, I can hear you now Okay Go ahead. Do you what would it be would it be appropriate to call the environmentalists and the movement that they have? Okay, I think what you asked And you're breaking up a little bit. Is this it appropriate to call the environmentalists Basically a new religion and and I my I would argue. Yes. Absolutely. I think it is a new religion. It's a religion that basically Has a new god a new god is is mother earth and to that extent maybe it's an ancient religion because gaya Mother earth is a phenomena of of of ancient religions And that now the standard Is the well-being of the new god? um human beings because because we survive By adapting reality to us we change our environment. That is the way in which we survive We chop down trees to build homes We excavate the mountain in order to build better homes We use sand to turn it into silicone to use in our computers We are constantly we eat Animals and we we industrialize the eating of animals the way in which we survive the way in which we thrive the way in which we live well Is by changing our environment to fit our needs That for environmentalists is original sin So the original sin is the need of human beings to change the environment to fit their needs And therefore we are all as human beings sinful by definition And then technology because Human life necessitates changing the environment human life At some extent is filled with this guilt and original sin which generates which generates guilt And then anything we do and and and it's global warming now It was global cooling in the 70s. It was having too many babies in the in the 60s And and and again today. It's uh, it's chemicals We're putting out into the atmosphere in the 1960s Silent spring Was the famous book And on and on and on it goes everything we do as human beings has negative consequences on the environment If what you mean by environment some kind of mystical mythical mother nature And this is why the context how you frame what you're studying how you frame the debate Is so important because if it's true that mother nature exists And if it's true and that should be the standard for all human activity, then it's true That we're disrupting it Now, I mean the fact that we're part of nature the fact that human beings are product of nature They somehow ignore all that and and that's not Under consideration, but that's the point religion ignores What is inconvenient mysticism? ignores what is inconvenient For them to actually engage with so they you know, they just walk away from it and they don't address it But that's what frames everything now That's what the intellectuals have and and like In all religions the masses don't necessarily study and understand What it is that they high priests are actually doing They just accept what they high priests are telling them our goal is one of the high priests And we go to the movie and we say, oh, yeah We're flooding It's warming things are going to get bad Human beings. We're changing the environment, you know, and we're going to suffer and we're going to suffer because You know, hell is going to happen here on earth because We have this original sin So i'm not saying that all environmentalists Buy into the intellectual arguments and to the Deep religious arguments if you will But they all buy into the religion in the sense that they accept the pride priesthood Of al goh and the rest of them. This is the new secular religion One of the new secular religions that dominate the left not the only one there are a number of them But this is a dominant one. Thanks Skyler. Thanks for calling. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to say that and to bring that up We are going to have to take a quick break here You're listening to your on brook filling in for mike apelka and we'll be back after this break On the blaze radio network All right, this is your on brook our final segment for today filling in for mike apelka and you can you can listen to me every sunday from What is it 11 to 1 pacific time 11 to 1 pacific time? uh Every every sunday. So, uh, please You're listening to mike Follow me over on sundays. Uh, somebody on one of these chats writes Um, man wouldn't be man without the earth our existence depends on it so far, you know, don't we need to protect the earth? I don't know what that means I don't know what that means They only risk to the earth Really, I mean there is no risk to the earth. What are we gonna do to the earth blow it up? I mean even a even a nuclear war Wouldn't actually blow up the earth the earth would still be here. The earth is just a pile of rock We don't you know What we need to do is protect man What we need to do is make sure that human survival is guaranteed human flourishing is guaranteed And the only way to do that is by adapting technology. It's by changing our environment It's by using the resources that exist in the earth To better our lives gets too hot We buy more air conditioning, but getting too hot is not going to hurt the earth I don't know what that means hurt the earth doesn't hurt The earth doesn't have an existent It doesn't have a consciousness that it can it can feel pain The the whole framework for the environmentalist Discussions should be Is this good for human beings? Is this supportive of human flourishing or isn't it? That's the context. That's the way to frame the debate And the earth is there for us to use the earth is there for us to exploit So that we can thrive and be successful. And yeah, if we're running out of resources We need to solve that problem. But the way to the way to solve that problem The way to solve that problem Is allowing for a free market where? You know scarcity gets priced those scarce things get priced And by allowing innovation by lying the human mind the freedom to innovate. All right, we're going to take a quick call from Abboton Abboton. Are you there? Thanks for being really really patient my call. Hey We got to be quick. Unfortunately. So ask quickly sure So for me, I mean this this really connects back to your earlier point And the problem is here is that everybody has their own truth and we're so aware of it in politics But the reason we let the environmentalists get away with this I think is because we we don't have practice with Identifying the truth in our everyday life when we work with others Like we need to learn how to hold truth as a standard and often in work environments is considered like a taboo To challenge authority you might be considered difficult or hard to work with And failing to apply your mind And identify the truth that limits your own freedom because you have to defer to the emotions of others And in the case of environmental They're the ones who think the whole world is going to blow up. So we we have to give in to them Yeah, and it's all based on emotion. I agree with you completely In in in the sense what you're saying is that this is a cultural phenomena. It's not In any one sector it doesn't apply to any one specific Realm of knowledge, but this is there's a cultural phenomena Where people are not truth seekers and I said earlier in the show I said we should all be truth seekers in everything that we do in our relationships With other people in our relationships with our family In in in our workplace and a boss who has an employee tell me. Hey boss, you're wrong Here's the right answer The boss should celebrate that and should reward that in every aspect of our life in every place in our life We should Seek out the truth and also frame the truth correctly again The truth doesn't just implant yourself on you you have to have a whole context of knowledge You have to be asking the right questions So for example, if the environmentalists really believe that the purpose of everything is Gaia or or or the planet or something like that Then that colors everything that they think after that We have to know how to challenge. They deeply held assumptions Why is the earth important? What's your frame of reference and it all starts has to start with human beings It has to start with with with individual human life and the requirements of individual human life Otherwise, we're not even talking about the same thing And and and but it but this is why reason is so important. This is why facts are so important. This is why not Going by emotions or going by other people's emotions Is is so important, but I agree It's a completely cultural phenomena. It's everywhere. It affects the right. It affects the left It affects the middle. It affects our workplace. It affects our scientists who now Maybe the emotion of fear is preventing them from challenging some of the ideas behind climate change Or the fact that they find some indication that yes, the world is warming one minute immediately causes them to jump to the conclusion That we have to eliminate fossil fuels, right? So they they buy into that false Leap Which is not true. So it it affects every aspect of our life. So Unfortunately, uh, everything I have to end here. So we got we got like 30 seconds So let me just end on this You know what this show is about is about seeking truth What your life should be about 30 is about seeking truth seeking knowledge and living By that truth and that knowledge In the pursuit Of your own happiness That's what we talk about on the uran book show. I hope uh, you'll come back and listen tomorrow morning For nine to twelve pacific time. You're listening to your own book And uh, thanks to mike apelka who let me fill in this week and five four Three talk to you tomorrow two one Pure apelka right apelka on the blade see you tomorrow. Yep sounds good And to record after yeah All right Okay, that sounds good to me if you're not sure. All right, no problem. Bye. Here are some ideas While brushing your cat while defending your gender