Environment

In his 2022 book Fossil Future, Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress argues that fossil fuels are one of the greatest benefits to human civilization ever and that no viable substitutes exist, at least for now.

The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism’s goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where “nature” is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.

California officials are needlessly inflicting huge risks, costs, and intrusions on Californians, rather than relying on proven adaptation at a much lower cost and disruption.

The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

In Ehrlich’s worldview, humanity only transgresses and can only cause harm. In Simon’s view, humanity takes primacy and the sources of its enrichment also repair many harms done to the environment, and eventually allows improvements.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, mostly made with natural gas, are a modern miracle, crucial for feeding the world.

Using ESG investing to replace them harms both people and the environment, as there are no readily available alternatives for the 80% of the world’s energy that currently comes from oil, coal, and natural gas.

The oil spill in Southern California, very near where I live, is being used (abused) to call for anti-oil policies, including a ban on California offshore drilling. Here are my talking points on what actually happened and what the proper response is.

Magnetic water, beach-cleaning robots, and plastic roads are among the technologies humans are using to combat one of the world’s top environmental problems: plastic pollution.

Wealth is our protection against the potential effect of climate change.

Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

Today’s environmental activists are so hostile to capitalism that they end up killing animals they want to protect.

Growth, trade, economic well-being and yes, fossil fuels are the best protection we have from a nature that isn’t nice – so in the name of sustainability, let’s have more of those things. 

The rhetoric for a “climate change catastrophe” has been around for decades. When warming didn’t happen, the rhetoric changed to threats of freezing, which morphed back to warming.

Climate change is real. It’s a problem, but I doubt that it’s “an existential threat.” Saying that makes alarmists mad.

For years, people like Naomi Klein, the author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, have said that their goal is to destroy capitalism ‒ and climate change just happens to be the best tool and best argument she has found.

For years, they and environmentalists increased the risk of big fires by opposing the thinning of forests. Megafires could have been avoided if forests had just been better managed.

The environmentalists had a field day during the corona pandemic. The anti-human policies they have called for, protested for, disrupted societies and other people’s lives for, were suddenly implemented en masse, albeit on a temporary basis. Think of it as a trial for green policies. 

The Modern Warm Period from the late-19th to the early 21st centuries, is only trivially man-made and not pernicious, but rather, is overwhelmingly natural and fully benign.

Politicians “looking for something to do” like banning plastic bags routinely do more harm than good.

Are green jobs the bipartisan silver bullet they’re cracked up to be or are they instead a bipartisan mirage?