“Anyone with real climate anxiety who can make a living outside of the Climate Industrial Complex should take up the Alex Epstein challenge….”
On social media, Greg Small, executive director of Climate Solutions, asked his followers:
Ok folks, looking for some ideas. We are starting to plan out the Climate Solutions dinner for next May. This is our big annual event that typically has about 700 or so people attend.
We are thinking about who a great keynote speaker might be. In the past we have had folks like Gina McCarthy, Van Jones, Bill McKibben, Bill Gates, Mindy Lubber, and Jigar Shah.
Who have you seen recently that lights things up and brings energy and excitement to a keynote speech.
Who do you want to hear from? Huge thanks for any ideas that you have. Feel free to pop ideas into the feed or send suggestions over a message.
Small’s list are all Statists now peddling false hopes. Each is at odds with the new political reality of energy affordability first, alleged climate harm last. To correct this, I suggested in a comment:
Alex Epstein on Fossil Future would explain why the anti-CO2 crusade is both failing and anti-human betterment.
Other nominees from Small’s climate crowd were Gavin Newsom (“Cap-and-Trade market … re-branded to Cap-and-Invest b/c he liked WA’s approach”), Katharine Hayhoe, Mary Nichols, Greta Thunberg, and a number of names I had never heard of. Some longed for a new inspiring voice now that past voices (think Gore, Kerry, Podesta) had lost their luster.
So what was the response to my suggestion? Nothing. Not a single like or a criticism–crickets. Yet Alex Epstein would challenge the crowd to understand why the anti-CO2, anti-fossil-fuel crusade was futile and wasteful.
This is not what the crowd wants to hear in their moment of growing crisis. Invested emotional capital (change my mind now?) and jobs (what will I do in the real world?) are controlling.
Open Minds?
But some minds (more will follow) might entertain a rethink, if only to understand their predicament and the reasons behind it. It will be a lonely endeavor, beginning from within. As Milton and Rose Friedman stated in Free to Choose (1980: xii):
The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and after a long time turn your preferences into convictions.
Anyone with real climate anxiety who can make a living outside of the Climate Industrial Complex should take up the Alex Epstein challenge, first by reading The Moral Case of Fossil Fuels (2014) and Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less (2022).