My Wall Street Journal comments on David Koch

In this issue:

  • My Wall Street Journal comments on David Koch
  • Dr. Roy Spencer cites The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
  • Power Hour Special Edition: How many Gores do you emit?
  • Power Hour: Bernie’s totalitarian climate plan, David Koch’s legacy, the truth about Amazon fires 
  • The Human Flourishing Project: Internal direction vs. external direction

My The Wall Street Journal comments on David Koch 

Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn published a column this week celebrating the life and business achievements of David Koch. The piece features two quotes from me about why we should admire Koch—and, more broadly, the line of work he chose.

I highly recommend the entire column, which you can read here. But I also wanted to share my extended comments:

I believe we should be grateful to David Koch not primarily for his charitable contributions but for the two reasons his detractors hated him: he refined oil and he promoted liberty.

While oil refining, one of the key businesses of Koch Industries, is treated as shameful, it is one of the world’s most life-giving businesses. Every product and service we use is better and cheaper because of oil power—from the food we eat to the vacations we take to all the amazing items we buy on Amazon.

Refiners like Koch Industries make their profits by figuring out ever-better, cheaper, cleaner ways to refine crude oil into jet fuel for airplanes, diesel fuel for tractors, gasoline for automobiles, as well as the petrochemicals that are synthesized into thousands of life-enhancing materials.

When we hear that David Koch was a profit-seeking oil refiner we should feel, not contempt and blame but admiration and gratitude.

David Koch also deserves admiration and gratitude for his tireless promotion of liberty across many decades—which he did at great personal risk.

By promoting individual rights and capitalism in the face of an increasingly statist establishment, David Koch received incredible vitriol—including from President Barack Obama. As he and his brother Charles became public pariahs from such vitriol, they received many death threats.

As billionaires, they did not need to do this for financial gain. It would have been far easier for them to just enjoy the trappings of wealth. But because they believed in liberty—liberty for everyone—they persisted in the face of the threats and the smears.

Thus, not only did David Koch live a life of production himself, he courageously promoted a world where everyone else would have a greater chance to produce and profit in their own lives.

 

Dr. Roy Spencer cites The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

In a new article “How the Media Help to Destroy Rational Climate Debate,” climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer discusses the media’s exaggerated and sloppy climate reporting. The article includes a reference to my book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. 

[H]umanity depends upon abundant, affordable energy to prosper. Just Google life expectancy and per capita energy use. Prosperous societies are healthier and enjoy longer lives. Expensive sources of energy forced upon the masses by governmental fiat kill poor people simply because expensive energy exacerbates poverty, and poverty leads to premature death. As philosopher Alex Epstein writes in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, if you believe humans have a right to thrive, then you should be supportive of fossil fuels.

You can read the entire piece here.

Power Hour Special Edition: How many Gores do you emit?

In a special edition of Power Hour, I interview Power Hour listener Patrick McDonald on his idea for a more meaningful way to measure CO2 emissions. Instead of talking about how many tonnes of CO2 someone emits, we should talk about how their emissions compare to Al Gore’s annual emissions. 

Power Hour: Bernie’s totalitarian climate plan, David Koch’s legacy, the truth about Amazon fires

On this week’s Power Hour, Don and Steffen discuss five topics:

The Human Flourishing Project: Internal direction vs. external direction

On the latest episode of The Human Flourishing Project I discuss my challenges and successes with going on a “distraction diet” and being more internally directed.

Alex