Recognizing that global climate change and other environmental issues should be addressed, a San Diego organization suggests that it might be time to ask an entirely different question: Where would the US economy and standard of living be now without the benefits fossil fuels have provided?
“This is a major net benefit to human life, and we’d be far worse off if we restricted it,” said Don Watkins, education director at the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), a for-profit thinktank that believes that human beings potentially could improve their lives dramatically by using technology to improve the planet across a multitude of industries.
“Saying climate change is real is an incredibly sloppy statement. It doesn’t say whether it is catastrophic or can be managed,” he told OGJ during a Mar. 21 phone interview.
“If you think how most conversations go, one side stakes out a view and the other opposes it. We try to find a common framework that addresses the issue. When we ask if someone wants the energy that’s best for human life over the long run, people generally agree,” said Watkins, who is scheduled to address the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association’s 2019 spring meeting Apr. 10 in Pittsburgh.
Watkins helped CIP Pres. and Founder Alex Epstein edit his 2014 book, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” and joined the organization soon after. Information about CIP is available online at https://industrialprogress.com/.
“We try to examine the positive and negatives of solar, wind, and fossil fuels. Even if people disagree over facts, the framework is so clear that we don’t encounter much push-back. If you don’t have a common framework, it leads nowhere,” Watkins said.
‘A core positive’
“We try to lay out the most important facts as we try to assess what the best energy policy is,” Watkins noted. “The first is we need cheap, reliable, plentiful energy to flourish. Fossil fuels are the one source that’s able to provide that on a scale of billions. That’s a core positive that has to be considered. It also creates a high threshold for restricting fossil fuels.”
Watkins said the next step is to consider three main concerns: catastrophic depletion, pollution, and climate change. “The main point there is that people really undervalue and underappreciate our ability to use energy and its ability to deal with those challenges,” he said.
Technology definitely helped fossil fuel industries address pollution and other problems, Watkins said. “Humanity has always faced a hostile climate. Over the last 100 years, climate deaths have dropped dramatically because we use energy more efficiently and we’ve made our personal lives more comfortable,” he said.