Suitable for A Level, IB, IGCSE, GCSE students and teachers of Geography
The theoretical premise of Alex Epstein’s book can surely apply at best to the 21 st century and possibly to the first half or whole of the 22nd century, and only if human innovation and fossil fuel deposits are sufficient enough to allow the human race to gain, maintain and improve the current standards of living.
There are some very pertinent points and fundamental truths regarding energy that apply especially to now in the 21 st century. One of those truths, which is hard to accept for me, is that we absolutely depend on fossil fuels at the moment and for the foreseeable future and that we cannot not phase them out rapidly without catastrophic collapses in the standards of living that have been hard won over the last 200 years (Going by Hans Rosling’s 4 Levels of Development, too many people still remain at Level 1 and 2 and need lifting out of extreme and relative poverty to Levels 3 & 4).
The author argues that there an Anti-Impact Knowledge System exists, that is anti-impact
on nature. I agree that sections of the media and information outlets fall into this category
as they do not balance their reports and articles to take into consideration the benefits of
fossil fuel use for energy and products. If I as a teacher would ask my teenage students to
research and consider all (as many as possible) of the variables, then responsible adults and decisions makers should also seek to know and consider all of the variables.
The author takes what is called a ‘Pro-Human’ approach. For sure, the benefits to humans
need consideration, but a question I ask myself is: does this mean we go all out for
environmental destruction as long as it benefits humans for a short period of time? I would like to propose that some areas of nature are too important intact. Some bastions of nature need protecting and have an innate right to existence – don’t they? There are intelligences that are non-human in the form of animal and plant life. A sense a future article on the last point, but I won’t get too distracted with this tangent now. The impact on nature the author refers to is effectively terraforming. The moment a human takes an axe to a tree or clears an area for a garden they are starting to terraform. Not all terraforming is bad. Who reading this article has never enjoyed a botanical garden before or the fruits of farming output of any kind, or simply a cup of coffee?
Of course the coffee bean comes from a terraformed coffee plantation. So let’s agree that
some form of impact on nature is actually ok and the real debate is to what extent we
humans affect it, not whether we affect it at all. In this case Alex Epstein has a point. But do we deforest the last reserve of the Amazon in 2060 or beyond because there happens to be fossil fuels buried underneath and some people are still in energy poverty? There isn’t an easy answer to this question. If I say no, I’m an entitled human living on Level 4 who is ready to condemn others to poverty. If I say yes, we would lose the last bastion of Amazon rainforest with the beauty of the wildlife and biological secrets it contains locked within its ecology that can also be a boon to human flourishing. This is an extreme example though. Fortunately we’re not there yet, however, we are marching towards this scenario with current levels of biodiversity loss.
An impact on nature is inevitable and necessary, much to my dismay. I like to think of a
Middle Way approach in-between Anti-Impact vs Pro-Human, some human moderation is necessary on the march to destruction of nature, there are those of us who can be pro-
impact (because we’re also realists) and pro-nature and pro-human rolled into one. It’s
more nuanced, but these people are out there and possibly form the majority (just a
guess!), I count myself as one.
So why do we need to impact nature at all? Let’s look to some benefits Epstein identifies to the use of fossil fuel energy and materials, which need mining from the earth before being refining and produced on the surface, all of which lead to side effects (are these offset by benefits though?).
The author makes two radical claims:
1. Our world is unnaturally livable.
2. The role of ultra cost effective fossil fuels energy is not incidental but fundamental.
The benefits of an Energy Empowered world:
To take the first radical claim. It does not seem so radical on deep reflection. It is hard to
disagree that untamed nature is dangerous for humans. We had low life expectancies for
thousands of years when we had a lot less nature taming methods. Yes, we can romanticise living in harmony with nature – I would challenge people with such romantic notions to learn the necessary survival skills and give it a try for many years to see how long they can last and to figure out how much time they have for leisure, even if in a community of like minded people are doing it with them. All it takes is a serious illness to set in to realise what we have in the modern world. I mostly agree with the author on this point. However, there are some people for whom nature is not hostile, but something they have lived with in harmony to an extent. Can we learn from them? Even these people have relatively low life expectancies, so do I have a romantic notion creeping in too? (For example the Tsimane tribe of Bolivia has a life expectancy of 53 years old, when the rest of the country has a life expectancy of 64.)
I also agree with the second point. Fossil fuel use (FFU) has transformed the world in terms of energy for labour saving devices, fossil fuel derived products for materials and medical equipment and medication. For food and water, FFU has enabled the mass production of food and purification and pumping of water. They are needed for cultivation, irrigation, transportation, refrigeration and computer machines for food alone. I do not think there is evidence to suggest we could have reached similar levels of human development with a similar global population number using viable alternatives to FFU on such a scale. Could we even have managed a similar level of development using alternatives with a smaller population had the human race taken another trajectory? The jury is out, but this is of course a theoretical question.
We need to work with the current population of 8 billion people (and growing). The hope on the horizon is that, with economic development, there is a global decrease in the birth rate, which one day will translate into a plateauing of the world’s population and eventually a slow decline. Extreme population measures are not needed – development is.
The side effects of FFU – this needs its own article to consider whether FFU offsets these.
My main fear about Epstein’s arguments in favour for FFU is not that he is right and I have
been wrong to worry about ecological destruction and climate change all these years. It is that he is not as right as he thinks he is and that his arguments stand only for the rest of this century or until 2200 if we are lucky. If that is indeed the case, humans still do not have very long to adapt to a post-fossil fuel world, or at least a post-oil world and a world built to fossil fuel/oil economies is going to need radical change. What will that look like? Also a future article!
Like Alex Epstein, I am an optimist and do believe in the power of human innovation to
discover more deposits, invent new technology to recover, mine and transport fossil fuels
and to use the stocks we have in more efficient ways to make them last longer.
He argues there is a superabundance of fossil fuels for now. He could well be right. What
does the current research (which may in time be proved wrong) say? Let us explore in the
next article, coming soon.
Thanks for reading this, if you have any constructive comments or interesting questions do not hesitate to email me.
A little disclaimer – I am really trying to explore this topic using a facts and logic based
approach. Emotionally, I am a tree-hugger. But as a teacher and geographer I need to take emotions out of this broad issue in order to get some critical thinking done on this topic.
Sources used in this article:
‘Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less’ by Alex Epstein, Portfolio, 2022.
https://www.courthousenews.com/lifestyle-of-amazonian-tribe-may-hold-key-to-slowing-down-aging/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1_D4FscMnU
https://livingplanet.panda.org/
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