Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Imagine if we had followed the advice of some of our leading advisers then, many of whom are some of
our leading advisers now, to severely restrict the energy source that billions of people used to lift them-
selves out of poverty in the last thirty years? We would have caused billions of premature deaths—deaths
that were prevented by our increasing use of fossil fuels.
What happens if today's predictions and prescriptions are just as wrong? That would mean billions of
premature deaths over the next thirty years and beyond. And the loss of a potentially amazing future.
Even if their predictions are partially right—certainly, fossil fuels have risks that we need to identify
and quantify so as to minimize danger and pollution—we are in danger of making bad decisions because
of the tendency to ignore benefits and exaggerate risks.
Today, proposals to restrict fossil fuels are more popular than ever. As mentioned earlier, the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has demanded that the United States and other industrialized
countries cut carbon emissions to 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2050—and the United States has joined
hundreds of other countries in agreeing to this goal.
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And the UN panel reassures us that “close to 80
percent of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right
enabling public policies . . .”
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Around the world, it is fashionable to attack every new fossil fuel develop-
ment and every new form of fossil fuel technology, from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the United
States to oil sands (“tar sands”) in Canada.
To think about dire measures like this without seriously reflecting on the predictions and trends of the
last forty years—and the thinking mistakes that led to those wrong predictions—is dangerous, just as it
was dangerous for thought leaders to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels while focusing only on (and exag-
gerating) the risks. At the same time, we need expert guidance to know the
present-day
evidence about the
benefits and risks of fossil fuels. History doesn't always repeat itself.
But how do we know what—and whom—to believe?
USE EXPERTS AS ADVISERS, NOT AUTHORITIES
Remember the question from my Greenpeace conversation: “So many experts predict that using fossil
fuels is going to lead to catastrophe—why should I listen to you?” She—and we—shouldn't “listen” to
anyone, in the sense of letting them tell us what to do.
To be sure, we absolutely need to consult experts. Experts are an indispensable source of information
about the state of knowledge in specific fields—whether economics or energy or climate science—that we
can use to make better decisions. But we can get this benefit only so long as the expert is clear about what
he knows and how he knows it,
as well as what he doesn't know
.
Too often we are asked to take some action because an expert recommends it or because a group of
experts favored it in a poll. This is a recipe for failure. We have already seen that the people revered as
experts can be disastrously wrong, as Ehrlich was in his predictions from the seventies. Such errors are
common, particularly among experts commenting on controversial political matters, where thinkers are
rewarded for making extreme, definitive predictions. Think, for example, of all the economists who were
convinced in 2007 and 2008 that the economy was healthy and who were advising people to take on more
debt and purchase more property, inflating the real-estate bubble further and further, until it finally burst.
