by Alex Epstein
Given how much our culture is focused on the issue of CO2-induced global warming, it is striking how little warming there has been.
But most striking to me are the data on how dangerous the climate has become over the last few decades, during a time when all of the predictions said that the Earth would become progressively more deadly. The key statistic here, one that is unfortunately almost never mentioned, is “climate-related deaths.” I learned about this statistic from the work of the prolific global trends researcher Indur Goklany, who tracks changes over time in how many people die from a climate-related cause, including droughts, floods, storms, and extreme temperatures.40
Figure 1.8: Global Warming Since 1850—the Full Story
Sources: Met Office Hadley Centre HadCRUT4 dataset; Etheridge et al. (1998); Keeling et al. (2001); MacFarling Meure et al. (2006); Merged Ice-Core Record Data, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Before you look at the data, ask yourself: Given what you hear in the news about the climate becoming more and more dangerous, what would you expect the change in the annual rate of climate-related deaths to be since CO2 in the atmosphere started increasing significantly (about eighty years ago). When I speak at colleges, I sometimes get answers such as five times, even a hundred times greater death rates. And from the headlines, it does look as though the tragedies like Superstorm Sandy are the new normal.
The data say otherwise.
In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have most rapidly escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide fell by an incredible rate of 98 percent.41 That means the incidence of death from climate is fifty times lower than it was eighty years ago.
Figure 1.9: More Fossil Fuels, Fewer Climate-Related Deaths
Sources: Boden, Marland, Andres (2013); Etheridge et al. (1998); Keeling et al. (2001); MacFarling Meure et al. (2006); Merged Ice-Core Record Data, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; EM-DAT International Disaster Database
The first time I read this statistic, I didn’t think it was possible. But my colleagues and I at the Center for Industrial Progress have mined the data extensively, and it is that dramatic and positive. Because the numbers are so startling, in chapter 5 I’ll explain them in depth.
Once again, the leading experts we were told to rely on were 100 percent wrong. It’s not that they predicted disaster and got half a disaster—it’s that they predicted disaster and got dramatic improvement. Clearly, something was wrong with their thinking and we need to understand what it is because they are once again telling us to stop using the most important energy source in our civilization. And we are listening.
Why did so many predict increasing climate danger when the reality turned out to be increasing climate safety as we used more fossil fuels? Once again, they didn’t think big picture—they seemed to be looking only at potential risks of fossil fuels, not the benefits. Clearly, as the climate-related death data show, there were some major benefits—namely, the power of fossil-fueled machines to build a durable civilization that is highly resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on. Why weren’t those mentioned in the discussion when we talked about storms like Sandy and Irene, even though anyone going through those storms was far more protected from them than he or she would have been a century ago?
WHAT’S AT STAKE
Imagine if we had followed the advice of some of our leading advisers then, many of whom are some of our leading advisers now, to severely restrict the energy source that billions of people used to lift themselves out of poverty in the last thirty years? We would have caused billions of premature deaths—deaths that were prevented by our increasing use of fossil fuels.
What happens if today’s predictions and prescriptions are just as wrong? That would mean billions of premature deaths over the next thirty years and beyond. And the loss of a potentially amazing future.
Even if their predictions are partially right—certainly, fossil fuels have risks that we need to identify and quantify so as to minimize danger and pollution—we are in danger of making bad decisions because of the tendency to ignore benefits and exaggerate risks.
Today, proposals to restrict fossil fuels are more popular than ever. As mentioned earlier, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has demanded that the United States and other industrialized countries cut carbon emissions to 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2050—and the United States has joined hundreds of other countries in agreeing to this goal.42 And the UN panel reassures us that “close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies . . .”43 Around the world, it is fashionable to attack every new fossil fuel development and every new form of fossil fuel technology, from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the United States to oil sands (“tar sands”) in Canada.
To think about dire measures like this without seriously reflecting on the predictions and trends of the last forty years—and the thinking mistakes that led to those wrong predictions—is dangerous, just as it was dangerous for thought leaders to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels while focusing only on (and exaggerating) the risks. At the same time, we need expert guidance to know the present-day evidence about the benefits and risks of fossil fuels. History doesn’t always repeat itself.
But how do we know what—and whom—to believe?
USE EXPERTS AS ADVISERS, NOT AUTHORITIES
Remember the question from my Greenpeace conversation: “So many experts predict that using fossil fuels is going to lead to catastrophe—why should I listen to you?” She—and we—shouldn’t “listen” to anyone, in the sense of letting them tell us what to do.
To be sure, we absolutely need to consult experts. Experts are an indispensable source of information about the state of knowledge in specific fields—whether economics or energy or climate science—that we can use to make better decisions. But we can get this benefit only so long as the expert is clear about what he knows and how he knows it, as well as what he doesn’t know.
Too often we are asked to take some action because an expert recommends it or because a group of experts favored it in a poll. This is a recipe for failure. We have already seen that the people revered as experts can be disastrously wrong, as Ehrlich was in his predictions from the seventies. Such errors are common, particularly among experts commenting on controversial political matters, where thinkers are rewarded for making extreme, definitive predictions. Think, for example, of all the economists who were convinced in 2007 and 2008 that the economy was healthy and who were advising people to take on more debt and purchase more property, inflating the real-estate bubble further and further, until it finally burst.
To avoid falling prey to this sort of “expert” advice, we need experts to explain to us how they reached their conclusions, and make sure they are not overstepping the bounds of their knowledge, which is incredibly common.
No scientist is an expert on everything; each specializes in some particular field. For example, a climate scientist might be a specialist in paleoclimatology (the study of using ancient evidence to deduce what ancient climates were like), and even then he might be an expert in only one period—say, the Cretaceous (one of the periods in which the dinosaurs lived). He is not going to be an expert in climate physics, and the climate physicist is also not an expert in human adaptation.
Whether our escalating use of fossil fuels is good or bad for us is a complex interdisciplinary question, and everyone is a nonexpert in many relevant issues. In this respect, we are all in the same boat. To reach an informed opinion, we need to draw on the work of experts in many fields, working to understand and evaluate their opinions and to interrelate them with one another and with our other knowledge.
Each of us is responsible for taking these steps—for doing his best to find the truth and to make the right decision. This means treating experts not as authority figures to be o
beyed but as advisers to one’s own independent thought process and decision making. An adviser is someone who knows more than you do about the specifics but knows only part of what you need and can be wrong. An honest and responsible expert recognizes this, and so he takes care to explain his views and his reasons for them clearly, he is up-front about any reasons there may be for doubting his conclusions, and he responds patiently to questions and criticism. He strives to give the public access to as much information as possible about his data, calculations, and reasoning. In this book, all the graphs are based on data collected from nonpartisan international sources (including arguably the three sources most respected by scholars: the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy) and in-depth information about the graphs and how to re-create them can be found at www.moral caseforfossilfuels.com.
SEEK THE BIG PICTURE
Ultimately, what we’re after in examining the benefits and risks of fossil fuels is to know big picture how they affect human life and what to do going forward.
What experts in specific fields give us is knowledge that we can integrate into a big-picture assessment. For example, by learning from a combination of scientists and economists and energy experts, we can know how the risks of burning coal compare to the benefits of burning coal.
Looking at the big picture requires looking at all the benefits and risks to human life of doing something and of not doing it. To do otherwise is to be biased in a way that could be very dangerous to human life. One thing I noticed repeatedly when looking at the wrong predictions was a distinct bias against fossil fuels. The focus would be exclusively on the negatives of fossil fuels, which were often exaggerated, and not on their positives, which, given the results, were clearly overwhelming.
Often the cause of bias is an unacknowledged assumption.
For example, among those who disagree with catastrophic climate change predictions, it’s a common assumption that it’s impossible for man to have a catastrophic or even a significant impact on climate. For example, Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita says, “I think it’s arrogant that we think as people that we can somehow change the climate of the whole earth . . .”—as if there is some preordained guarantee that we can’t significantly affect the global climate system.44 There isn’t; whether we are or not can’t be known without first examining the evidence.
On the other side of the issue, among those who agree with catastrophic climate predictions, it’s a common assumption that there’s something inherently wrong with man having an impact on climate. If you hold that assumption, you’re likely to assume that the impact of man-made CO2 emissions is very negative, even if the evidence showed it was actually mild or even positive.
We cannot assume things are good or bad. We must rigorously seek out the big-picture evidence—hence the last issue: being clear on exactly what we mean by good or bad.
NAME OUR STANDARD
Ultimately, when thinking about fossil fuels, we are trying to figure out the right thing to do, the right choices to make. But what exactly do we mean by right and wrong, good and bad? What is our standard of value? By what standard or measure are we saying something is good or bad, great or catastrophic, right or wrong, moral or immoral?
I hold human life as the standard of value, and you can see that in my earlier arguments: I think that our fossil fuel use so far has been a moral choice because it has enabled billions of people to live longer and more fulfilling lives, and I think that the cuts proposed by the environmentalists of the 1970s were wrong because of all the death and suffering they would have inflicted on human beings.
Not everyone holds human life as their standard of value, and people often argue that things are right or wrong for reasons other than the ways they benefit or harm human beings. For example, many religious people think that it is wrong to eat certain foods or to engage in certain sexual acts, not because there is any evidence that these foods or acts are unhealthy or otherwise harmful to human beings but simply because they believe God forbids them. Their standard of value is not human life but (what they take to be) God’s will.
Religion is not the only source of nonhuman standards of value. Many leading environmental thinkers, including those who predict fossil fuel catastrophe, hold as their standard of value what they call “pristine” nature or wilderness—nature unaltered by man.
For example, in a Los Angeles Times review of The End of Nature, McKibben’s influential book of twenty-five years ago predicting catastrophic climate change, David M. Graber, research biologist for the National Park Service, wrote this summary of McKibben’s message:
McKibben is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value—to me—than another human body, or a billion of them. Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line—at about a billion [sic] years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.45
In his book, McKibben wrote that our goal should be a “humbler world,” one where we have less impact on our environment and “Human happiness would be of secondary importance.”46
What is of primary importance? Minimizing our impact on our environment. McKibben explains: “Though not in our time, and not in the time of our children, or their children, if we now, today, limited our numbers and our desires and our ambitions, perhaps nature could someday resume its independent working.”47 This implies that there should be fewer people, with fewer desires, and fewer ambitions. This is the exact opposite of holding human life as one’s standard of value. It is holding human nonimpact as one’s standard of value, without regard for human life and happiness.
Earlier we saw that human beings are safer than ever from climate, despite whatever impact we have had from increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from .03 percent to .04 percent. And yet Bill McKibben and others call our present climate catastrophic. By what standard?
In his book Eaarth, McKibben argues that it’s tragic for human beings to do anything that affects climate, even if it doesn’t hurt human beings. He writes, referencing an earlier work:
Merely knowing that we’d begun to alter the climate meant that the water flowing in that creek had a different, lesser meaning. “Instead of a world where rain had an independent and mysterious existence, the rain had become a subset of human activity,” I wrote. “The rain bore a brand; it was a steer, not a deer.”48
This means that something is morally diminished if human beings affect it.
If fossil fuels changed climate, but not in a way that harmed humans—or even helped them—would it be right to use them because of their benefits to human life?
On a human standard of value, the answer is absolutely yes. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with transforming our environment—to the contrary, that’s our means of survival. But we do want to avoid transforming our environment in a way that harms us now or in the long term.
You might wonder how holding human life as your standard of value applies to preserving nature. It applies simply: preserve nature when doing so will benefit human life (such as a beautiful park to enjoy) and develop it when it will benefit human life. By contrast, if nonimpact, not human life, is the standard, the moral thing to do is always leave nature alone. For example, in the 1980s, India had an environmentalist movement, called the Chipko movement, that made it nearly impossible for Indians to cut down forests to en
gage in industrial development. It was so bad that a movement literally called Log the Forest emerged to counter it. As one Indian who tried to build a road said:
Now they tell me that because of Chipko the road cannot be built [to her village], because everything has become paryavaran [environment]. . . . We cannot even get wood to build a house . . . our haq-haqooq [rights and concessions] have been snatched away. . . . I plan to contest the panchayat [village administrative body] elections and become the pradhan [village leader] next year. . . . My first fight will be for a road, let the environmentalists do what they will. [Italics in original]49
This is the essence of the conflict: the humanist, which is the term I will use to describe someone on a human standard of value, treats the rest of nature as something to use for his benefit; the nonhumanist treats the rest of nature as something that must be served.
We always need to be clear about our standard of value so we know the goal we’re aiming at. Aiming at human well-being, which includes transforming nature as much as necessary to meet human needs, is a lot different from aiming to not affect nature. The humanist believes that transforming nature is bad only if it fails to meet human needs; the nonhumanist believes that transforming nature is intrinsically bad and that doing so will inevitably somehow cause catastrophe for us in the long run.
Because many of the people predicting dire consequences from fossil fuel use avowedly do not hold a human standard of value and because the vast majority of discussions on the issue are not clear about the standard of value being used, we need to always ask, when we hear any evaluation: “By what standard of value?”
THE MORAL CASE FOR FOSSIL FUELS
In my experience, if we follow these principles to get a big-picture perspective on what will and won’t benefit human life, the conclusion we’ll reach is far more positive and optimistic than almost anyone would expect.
