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Alex Epstein joins us for a discussion on fossil fuel use. How much have fossil fuels benefited humanity? Is there a moral case for their use?
This week we’re talking about energy, and specifically the fossil fuels that power everything in our modern world from electronics to manufacturing to heating to our trains, planes, busses, boats, and cars.
What’s the “secret history of fossil fuels?” What is the moral case for using fossil fuels? Is it possible to eventually get renewable sources of energy to work well? If using fossil fuels is bad for the environment, should we care? Or is that the wrong way of looking at it? How much has fossil fuel use benefited humanity? Can that be quantified?
Show Notes and Further Reading
Alex Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (book)
Indur Goklany, “Reducing Vulnerability to Climate-Sensitive Risks is the Best Insurance Policy” (essay)
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (Cato Capitol Hill Briefing video)
Alex Epstein is the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2014), and the founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.