Alex Epstein Profile picture
Jan 19, 2022 13 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Last month, WV Senator Joe Manchin heroically stopped "Build Back Better" legislation that would have ruined America's and above all WV's economy.

Now The @NYTimes and others are pressuring Manchin to reverse his stance via the false narrative that coal miners support BBB.

🧵
In an effort to undermine Joe Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better, the @nytimes recently published a "news" article trying to portray @Sen_JoeManchin’s rejection of BBB as opposed to the interest of coal miners by citing a union that represents a small minority of miners.
The @nytimes article by @jonathanweisman, entitled "Manchin’s Choice on Build Back Better: Mine Workers or Mine Owners," cites certain unions supporting BBB, but neglects to mention that less than ¼ of WV’s coal miners are associated with unions. This is journalistic malpractice.
The reason that certain coal miner unions support BBB is not because they have an answer to the obvious truth that BBB would destroy the WV economy. It is because these unions overwhelmingly represent retirees, not workers, and are seeking BBB handouts. alexepstein.substack.com/p/why-build-ba…
A key fact evaded by the "coal miners support BBB" narrative is that the UMWA must pay out dozens of times more dollars to retirees than its limited coal miner members pay in: in 2017, it was $600M out vs. $15M in. Hence the UWMA prioritizes BBB handouts over miners and WV.
BBB would be an unmitigated disaster to WV energy in 3 ways:

1. It would make WV electricity much higher cost and much less reliable.
2. It would sabotage WV's growing would production.
3. It would sabotage WV's growing natural gas production.
alexepstein.substack.com/p/why-build-ba…
While supporters of BBB portray coal as inevitably dead, that is not true. While BBB would kill coal, without BBB coal has many decades left. Last year global coal demand rose faster than for any other form of energy. And in WV, coal is crucial to the state's industrial economy.
Low-cost, reliable electricity is one of WV's great assets. Thanks to its overwhelmingly coal-fired electricity, West Virginia has some of the lowest electricity rates in the country—second only to coal-heavy Kentucky on the East Coast.
Low-cost, reliable electricity saves everyone money and makes WV a hub of industry. The industrial sector uses over 40% of WV’s electricity.

Low-cost, reliable electricity also makes WV a major exporter of electricity to its regional grid, meaning more money from other states.
If BBB passes, WV will suffer the same fate that Germany, California, Texas, and many others have: prematurely shutting down many reliable power plants at great cost, paying for massive new unreliable solar/wind infrastructure at great cost, and facing huge reliability risks.
While every state will be harmed by BBB’s imposition of high-cost, unreliable electricity, WV will suffer especially—whether from fleeing industry or from deadly winters when the power goes out and over 50% of the population is relying on electric heat.
Contrary to claims that Joe Manchin has destroyed America's (and WV's) future by opposing BBB, he has protected our future by preventing an unprecedented destruction of our energy industry--the industry that powers every other industry.
alexepstein.substack.com/p/intellectual…
All the media organizations spreading disinformation about Build Back Better being good for WV coal miners--by ignoring the devastating consequences to WV's economy, and by pretending that the handout-seeking leaders of retiree unions represent most coal miners--should apologize.

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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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