Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
9
WINNING THE FUTURE
“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?”
November 5, 2012
I am standing at the front of a lecture hall packed with three hundred students at the Levine Science Re-
search Center at Duke University. Twelve years ago, I was sitting in one of those seats. Now I'm standing
in front, across from Bill McKibben, who has been called the nation's leading environmentalist and is argu-
ably the world's leading opponent of fossil fuels.
1
Tonight he and I will be debating “the ethics of fossil fuel use.” I am nervous. Every debate where there's
a camera is immortalized, and no matter how experienced you are, something can always go wrong. Your
opponent can make an unexpected point or simply be a bully, and one second of losing your cool can negate
an hour and a half of calmness.
McKibben is much more experienced in debates than I am. I've seen him debate before, and he's very
skilled—he's calm, thinks well on his feet, and can, on demand, cite any one of hundreds of prestigious
studies and authors to make his points.
And he's going to be arguing a much more popular position than I am—that our use of fossil fuels is
immoral, an unsustainable “addiction” that causes catastrophic climate change, pollution, and resource de-
pletion. I'm guessing the students are steeped in these ideas; I certainly was when I went to Duke.
I'm going to be arguing that our use of fossil fuels is moral and should be continued and even expanded.
I'm going to be arguing that fossil fuels actually
improve
our environment, which is a counterintuitive idea
that most people have never heard, one that even I didn't hold a decade earlier.
Preparing for this debate has been rough. Although I am told I am a good debater and many fans of my
work have been “talking trash” on my behalf, I have known since day one that I would be in for a war. In
the previous two months, I have spent over half my time preparing for this one night.
Usually when I spend the better part of two months on a project, there is at least solace that I am getting
paid. Not here. In fact, I am
paying
to do this debate. I have agreed to pay McKibben ten thousand dollars
of my own money—which is a lot of money for me, perhaps a reckless amount of money, given that I run a
small business, four of five of which fail in their first five years.
