In this issue:
- 4 projects for 2020
- Power Hour: Don’t stop living, live smarter: a path forward on COVID-19
- Three new interviews
- Overpopulation is not the problem
- New review for The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
4 projects for 2020
In this crucial election year for energy, with the industry under siege, my small team and I have big plans to change the debate by:
- Providing revolutionary energy and environmental messaging for pro-freedom candidates.
- Creating a national media presence for the moral case for fossil fuels
- Speaking and debating at leading universities.
- Completing The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels 2.0 and releasing a custom essay for the election, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels in 2020.”
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 crisis has put these plans in jeopardy.
Historically at the Center for Industrial Progress we have funded our championing of energy freedom largely through high-level speaking engagements.
The COVID-19 crisis has indefinitely destroyed the conventional speaking business.
But, as anti-fossil fuel forces seize on COVID-19 to push for Green New Deal and other anti-energy policies, our election plans are more crucial than ever.
If you believe that our work is crucial and you have the means to support it, I’m asking you to support our work in a new way by becoming an Accelerator of the Center for Industrial Progress.
We call our contributors Accelerators because every dollar they give goes to projects that accelerate our progress; they don’t go to me personally or to overhead.
In the past, Accelerators have funded my debates, thousands of free copies of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels for students, and marketing support that helped The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels become a bestseller.
This year, Accelerators can help us change the 2020 energy debate.
Because I believe in maximizing value, for the next two weeks I’m offering rewards for Accelerator contributions that often have a far higher dollar value than the contribution itself. For example, by making an Accelerator contribution in the next two weeks you can get:
- A virtual speech for 50% off
- An in-person speech anytime in the next two years for 60 percent off
- A one hour consulting or coaching call for 66% off
- A question answered on Power Hour or The Human Flourishing Project.
You can become a 2020 Accelerator here. (Here’s a video explaining more.)
And whether you can afford to or not right now, know that all of us at CIP are grateful for the overwhelming moral support offered by readers of this newsletter.
Power Hour: Don’t stop living, live smarter: a path forward on COVID-19
On this week’s Power Hour I explain why I’ve jumped into the COVID-19 policy debate and why I believe bad thinking methods are driving leading predictions and policies. Then I offer a first draft of a path forward, which I call “Don’t Stop Living, Live Smarter.” The six key steps are:
- Step 1: Acknowledge the difficult reality we are in.
- Step 2: Recognize that an indefinite universal lockdown is both impractical and immoral.
- Step 3: Massively increase testing and transparency
- Step 4: Liberate American ingenuity to massively increase treatment ability
- Step 5: Help the highly vulnerable minority protect themselves.
- Step 6: Go back to work (and school) with virus-prevention best-practices.
Also on the podcast:
- The failed wind and solar bailouts
- The insane destructiveness of the “Green Stimulus”
- How COVID-19 shows we need fossil fuels now more than ever
- How you can help accelerate CIP’s influence
Three new interviews
To get my message out on fossil fuels at this crucial time I’m taking to the literal and figurative airwaves.
I just did three appearances in the last week and plan to do many more.
- Green New Deal and “Indefinite Universal Isolation” are the wrong response to COVID 19 – Newsmax TV “National Report”
- A Green New Deal would be fatal in the fight against Coronavirus – Newsmax TV “Liquid Lunch”
- Humanity Comes First! – The Mark Meckler Show
I especially hope you’ll listen to and share my Mark Meckler interview, which covered everything from COVID-19 to energy to philosophy to dogs.
Let me know if you have any shows you can connect me to or recommend me to.
Overpopulation is not the problem
During a recent speech I was asked, “Do you believe that creating an overpopulated world is a moral thing to do?” Here’s a (lightly edited) transcript of my answer:
I don’t think there’s an overpopulated world. To put it bluntly, I know there’s not an overpopulated world. Even with all the restraints we have today on human ingenuity, thanks to the anti-human environmental movement, it’s still the best-fed population in history.
The premise behind overpopulation as a problem is that nature gives us scarce resources and we deplete them.
But here’s a question. Do we have more usable resources today or 300 years ago? We have more—despite the fact we have many more people who have consumed a lot of resources. That’s because resources aren’t taken from nature; they’re created from nature.
A resource is something you have available to use and gain value from. Aluminum isn’t a natural resource–it’s naturally useless. The same for coal. The same for oil. In order to make something a resource, you need human ingenuity to turn unusable raw material into a usable resource.
But once you have human ingenuity, there’s no limit to our ability to transform raw materials into usable resources. There’s no reason to think that we couldn’t sustain a population of 20 billion.
Now, the actual problem today is that the higher population levels are in poorer countries, which tend to have poor political policies and worse economies. The challenge there is not how to have fewer people but how to have better policies.
In the developed world, we’re mostly losing population. That’s the more alarming thing, particularly because we’ve created these enormous entitlement states where a shrinking population means fewer workers supporting a growing number of non-workers.
Bottom line: since resources can be created, and human beings are resource creators, we don’t have to worry about overpopulation. We do have to worry about the lack of freedom. That’s the real cause of starvation.
New review of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
On Instagram, someone named bean.stalker posted a great review and summary of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
Verdict: A 5 “Game Changer!”
Review: Probably one of the most controversial books I’ve read so far!
Well! Everything is referenced, with graphs and diagrams. Logic is the pervading basis for argument, with reasoning at its core.
Stand Out Moments:
- The moral foundation for the whole book is “what is good for mankind.”
- We will have an impact on our environment, every animal does in nature, but it’s the positive to negative ratio that we have to measure.
- Past Estimates, from the 70’s, (& Present Computer Models) on the effects of fossil fuels as negatives were wildly wrong.
- If we had followed the recommendation to reduce fossil fuels from 40 years ago, (or for the future) we would be in much trouble today re poverty, energy and productivity.
- There are still a billion people on the planet without access to cheap energy. The way to help them is to follow principle no. 1. What’s good for humanity ie. More Power in this case.
- The increase of power/energy via fossils fuels correlates to more energy = improved technology = safer extraction methods from fossil fuels = less pollution.
- Fossil Fuels have no chance of running out any time soon. Measure Fossil Fuel increase with the positives and negatives. The positives outweigh the negatives enormously.
- Solar and Wind are not cheap, scalable or reliable forms of Energy. Nuclear Energy is all of the above, that doesn’t produce CO2, however is still demonized by the Environmentalists.
- CO2 has some warming “benefits.” The rise in C02 over 100 years is actually very low.
- The usage of fossils fuels runs from “dirtier” to cleaner as the technology improves. Ie. The More we use Fossil Fuels for Energy Production.
Alex