Alex Epstein Profile picture
Dec 28, 2021 6 tweets 5 min read Read on X
This Holiday season I have contributed $500 each to 5 crucial pro-energy organizations: @ceidotorg, @IERenergy, @envprogress, @spikedonline, and @AynRandInst.

Here’s why I’ve contributed to each one.
👇
Why I I contributed to @ceidotorg: This organization has for years been taking courageous, principled stands for energy freedom and against climate catastrophism.

One realm they excel in is the catastrophist dominated legal realm. Courageous @Chris_C_Horner does great work here.
Why I contributed to @IERenergy: This organization has a track record of principled, pro-liberty positions and disseminating extremely useful, precise information.

IER's founder, Robert Bradley Jr., “discovered” me in 2009 and told me I could be an energy thought leader.
Why I’m contributing to @envprogress: @ShellenbergerMD is one of the world’s absolute leading voices for energy humanism, and has courageously undergone public mind-changes away from renewables/unreliables and away from climate catastrophism. I want his voice to be even louder.
Why I contributed to @spikedonline: this is an amazing and crucial British publication that takes humanistic stands on every issue, including climate. Hard to think of any publication with more consistently interesting takes. I’m happy to do anything I can to keep it going.
Why I contributed to @AynRandInst. I worked at ARI for 7 years, and before that wrote for them freelance and learned from their great educational programs. Their intellectual leader, Onkar Ghate, has shaped my energy and environmental thinking more than anyone else.

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More from @AlexEpstein

Oct 24
Myth: Fossil fuels have made the planet less livable.

Truth: Fossil fuels have made the planet incomparably more livable, by fueling an unprecedented increase in humanity’s productive ability.

(A summary of Fossil Future Ch 4, part 1 of 3)

🧵👇 Image
The Full Benefits of Continuing Fossil Fuel Use

To properly evaluate fossil fuels, we need to understand their full benefits and side-effects.

It's crucial to start with their benefits, since these can often be used to neutralize and overwhelm their negative side-effects.
Understanding the benefits of anything requires knowing 1) the state of human flourishing and 2) the role of that thing.

E.g., understanding antibiotics’ benefits requires knowing 1) we’re safer than ever from infectious disease and 2) antibiotics have an essential role.
Read 27 tweets
Oct 21
Myth: Elon Musk opposes all EV subsidies.

Truth: Elon, through Tesla, has been one of America's biggest advocates of direct and indirect EV subsidies—and of punishments for Tesla's competitors.

🧵👇 Image
Elon Musk likes to tell us that he is against all energy subsidies, including EV subsidies.

Yet the company he runs is one of America's biggest and most successful advocates of EV subsidies.

What gives? Image
Tesla under Elon Musk's leadership has consistently advocated for EV subsidies in various forms, including:

1) Biden's EV mandate (the most extreme form of subsidy)
2) Biden's EV subsidies (a direct EV subsidy)
3) Biden's heightened "CAFE" standards (an indirect EV subsidy)
Read 17 tweets
Oct 14
Why are leading institutions so biased against fossil fuels?

Because their operating “anti-impact framework” causes them to view fossil fuels, which are inherently high impact, as intrinsically immoral and inevitably self-destructive.

A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 3 🧵👇
An Anti-Human Moral Goal and Standard

Our knowledge system’s opposition to fossil fuels while ignoring their enormous benefits can only be explained by it operating on an anti-human moral goal and standard of evaluation that regards benefits to human life as morally unimportant.
Outside the realm of energy, an example of an anti-human moral goal at work is the scientists who, operating on the anti-human moral goal of animal equality, oppose animal testing for medical research and disregard its life-saving benefits to humans.
Read 22 tweets
Oct 2
LCOE must die.

If you ever hear anyone favorably compare solar and wind to coal, gas, or nuclear by citing a low LCOE—"Levelized Cost of Energy"—you are being scammed.

LCOE explicitly ignores "reliability-related considerations" and is therefore a garbage metric. 🧵👇 Image
You've heard it over and over: "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels."

You might suspect something is wrong here, because if solar/wind were so cheap their developers wouldn't always be asking for subsidies, or claim the sky is falling when subsidies are taken away. Image
The suspicious claim that "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually justified using an intimidating-sounding metric called LCOE: "Levelized Cost of Energy."

LCOE is used all the time in prestigious publications and in government.
Read 18 tweets
Oct 1
Our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignores the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels.

A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 1 🧵👇 Image
Save the World With…Fossil Fuels?

I am going to try to persuade you of something that might seem impossible: that one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to fight for more fossil fuel use—more use of oil, coal, and natural gas.
Questioning the “Expert” Moral Case for Eliminating Fossil Fuels

We're told rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is the expert consensus, but consider: 1) sometimes the alleged “expert” view is wrong, and 2) eliminating fossil fuels is a radical and potentially disastrous change.
Read 32 tweets
Sep 20
Apple, Google, Meta and hundreds of other companies claim be "100% renewable" while using mostly fossil fuel electricity.

How is this possible?

Because an FTC rule called the "Green Guides" lets them buy so-called "credits" to count others' solar and wind use as their own. 🧵👇 Image
No significant US company is close to being "100% renewable," since all such companies rely on the mostly fossil fuel electricity grid.

But in 2012, the Obama FTC rewrote a guidance document called the "Green Guides" to let companies falsely claim to be "100% renewable" anyway.
The FTC has published the "Green Guides" since 1992 to specify what constitutes deceptive environmental marketing claims under The FTC Act.

In particular the Green Guides specify when it is misleading—and therefore illegal—to claim to use a given amount of "renewable" energy.
Read 20 tweets

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