{"id":5249,"date":"2015-02-04T06:21:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T11:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5249"},"modified":"2015-02-04T06:21:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T11:21:22","slug":"book-review-the-moral-case-for-fossil-fuels-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5249","title":{"rendered":"Book review: “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book review: “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. Really?<\/a><\/h3>\n

I first heard about Alex Epstein\u2019s book\u00a0\u2018The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels\u2019<\/em>\u00a0via an\u00a0unsurprisingly fawning review over at the SkeptEco blog<\/a>.\u00a0 Its premise is so ludicrous that normally I wouldn\u2019t read it, never mind review it.\u00a0 There is no \u201cmoral case for fossil fuels\u201d, just as there was no \u201cmoral case for slavery\u201d in 1860. But given the alarming rise, in the US and elsewhere, of the climate sceptic\/pro fossil fuel lobby (witness, for instance,\u00a0Sen. James Infoe\u2019s ludicrous attack on climate science<\/a>\u00a0in the US Senate recently) it feels important to look a bit closer at the arguments presented here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Epstein recently started something called the \u2018Center for Industrial Progress\u2019, and lectures on the need to keep fossil fuels as a key driver for the economy. At other times he can be found, among other things,defending child labour<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0arguing that animals have no rights<\/a>. He likes to paint himself and the fossil fuel industry as the misunderstood underdogs, holding the line against the far more influential \u201cgreens\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s a curious character, as can be seen in this video of him standing in the middle of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the Peoples\u2019 Climate March in New York last year, heckling them with inane comments like \u201cyou know, your clothes are fracked!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs you read this\u201d, he writes, \u201cthere is a real, live, committed movement against fossil fuels that truly wants to deprive us of the energy of life\u201d.\u00a0 This painting of the oil industry as the good guys, as the misunderstood heroes being undermined by uninformed idiots (i.e. you and I), is the first, but by no means the last, place where Epstein parts company with reality.<\/p>\n

He bemoans the fact that fossil fuel companies \u201chave had to fight daily for permission to empower billions of people\u201d.\u00a0 Try telling that to the communities in Ecuador affected by the oil spills for which Chevron was fined $19 billion, people in Richmond, California who live in the shadow of\u00a0the Chevron refinery which exploded in 2012<\/a>, communities living near mountaintop removal coal plants, people living near fracking sites, or First Nation people living near the Tar Sands in Alberta.\u00a0 He continues:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book review: “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. Really? I first heard about Alex Epstein\u2019s book\u00a0\u2018The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels\u2019\u00a0via an\u00a0unsurprisingly fawning review over at the SkeptEco blog.\u00a0 Its premise is so ludicrous that normally I wouldn\u2019t read it, never mind review it.\u00a0 There is no \u201cmoral case for fossil fuels\u201d, just as there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3182,1760,3183,328,1278,3181],"class_list":["post-5249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alex-epstein","tag-book-review","tag-center-for-industrial-progress","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-oil-industry","tag-the-moral-case-for-fossil-fuels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5250,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions\/5250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}