Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
What about the deep pockets of my friends in the fossil fuel industry? It is 2012, and I have no such
friends. I know barely anyone in the industry, and after months of putting out feelers for some kind of in-
volvement, I managed to get one organization to give me use of their video production crew to film the
event. All the promotion and logistics were funded by me, with twenty-five thousand dollars I raised in
crowd-funding to promote the debate—overwhelmingly donated by people like me who are outside the
fossil fuel industry but value our fossil-fueled civilization—and by our host, the Program for Values and
Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University, run by my former professor Gary Hull.
As I stood onstage, feeling a combination of adrenaline, nerves, and fatigue, I asked myself the question
that many of the audience members must have been asking inside their heads:
Why are you doing this?
It had all started in
Rolling Stone.
In July 2012,
Rolling Stone
published a fantastically popular piece by Bill McKibben about the evils of
fossil fuels entitled “Global Warming'sTerrifying New Math.” He arguedthat it hadlongsince been scien-
tifically proven that we needed to restrict the vast majority of our fossil fuel use—at various times, he has
called for outlawing between 80 percent and 95 percent over the next several decades. The only thing stop-
ping us, he said, is the political manipulations of the fossil fuel industry, which has fought for its profits at
theexpense ofourfutureandhasthusbecome “Public Enemy NumberOnetothesurvival ofourplanetary
civilization.”
2
He called for
a mass-movement to demonize the fossil fuel industry
and deprive it of politic-
al standing, much as South Africa's apartheid regime had been demonized and dismantled due to the moral
outrage of private citizens around the world. And just as one powerful mechanism for bringing down that
regime had been divesting—withdrawing investments from—South African businesses, McKibben called
for Americans to divest from the fossil fuel industry as a form of public ostracism.
McKibben's article was a sensation. It received 120,000 “Likes” on Facebook—which an exultant
Center for American Progress blogger described as “monster social media numbers of the kind usually re-
served for pieces on HuffPost about Kim Kardashian in a bikini.”
3
And it was celebrated by citizens and
intellectual elites alike.
What did not happen was opposition—least of all by the supposedly big and powerful fossil fuel in-
dustry. Was this because they do not fear McKibben? Hardly. McKibben is a master political activist,
widely credited with the more than five-year delay of the Keystone XL pipeline, the most prominent fossil
fuel project of the last ten years.
4
The lack of response was, I believed, because McKibben was making a
moral
argument—that it was
time to do the
right
thing about fossil fuels for our future, even if it was difficult. And very few people
knew that there was a moral argument for fossil fuels, an argument that using them is best for human life
across the board, economy and environment, present and future.
Someonehadtodosomething,andIhadcontrolofexactlyoneperson.Ifeltthatmybestshotatmaking
a difference, even though it was scary and risky, was getting the top anti-fossil fuel advocate on video
being challenged on moral grounds. At least then people could see that there was an alternative.
That's why I was there. That's why the stress and the time and the money were worth it. I won't say
who I thought won; you can decide for yourself at www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com. But I was gratified
that many people who had never heard the moral case told me they thought it was interesting and import-
ant—including a topic agent, Wes Neff, who watched it and told me I needed to write the topic you're
reading right now.
If, at the beginning of this topic, it seemed crazy for a human being to invest his life championing fossil
fuels and the fossil fuel industry, I hope I have convinced you why this is a more than worthy cause, a
cause I hope you'll want to join as part of the broader cause of human flourishing and human progress.
