Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
But the doomsayers' response to the (fortunately) nonexistent tragedy is to express no gratitude for in-
dustrial civilization, and to condemn the fossil fuel companies as fundamentally evil. Bill McKibben calls
them “Public Enemy Number One.” James Hansen calls for them to be “tried for high crimes against hu-
manity and nature.” (Notice Hansen's equation of humanity and nature, making it unclear what his stand-
ard of value is.)
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Others act is if it's an “exciting economic opportunity” to try to switch to the least com-
petitive energy technologies on some insanely fast time frame, while opposing the truly effective energy
technologies, such as nuclear, that could at least cushion the blow. “The winners of the race to reinvent en-
ergy will not only save the planet, but will also make megafortunes . . . fixing global warming won't be a
drain on the economy. On the contrary, it will unleash one of the greatest floods of new wealth in history,”
says Fred Krupp, president of the anti-fossil fuel, antinuclear Environmental Defense Fund.
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Clearly the doomsayers are not really focused on minimizing CO
2
emissions. Clearly human life is not
their operating standard of value; nonimpact is.
I believe that we owe the fossil fuel industry an apology. While the industry has been producing the
energy to make our climate more livable, we have treated it as a villain. We owe it the kind of gratitude
that we owe anyone who makes our lives much, much better.
There is one other issue of justice to discuss: the relationship between fossil fuel use and the climate
difficulties of underdeveloped countries.
CLIMATE JUSTICE
One of the important moral issues of the climate-change discussion is the idea that the developed world is
ruining the underdeveloped world by burning fossil fuels and that the solution is to stop using fossil fuels.
This idea is usually accompanied by strongly emoted concern for the plight of the poor whose lives we are
ruining.
If climate endangerment of the poor is a moral issue, then the climate catastrophists are major sinners.
We know that the way to make climate livable is not to try to refrain from affecting it but to use cheap
energy to technologically master it. Thus, if the undeveloped world is having trouble dealing with climate,
it's not because of our .01 percent change in the atmosphere; it's because they haven't followed the ex-
amples of China, India, and others who have increased fossil fuels use by hundreds of percent.
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And the
goal should be to help them do so—especially because the benefits of fossil fuels go far beyond climate:
cheap, plentiful, reliable energy gives human beings the power to improve every aspect of life, including
productivity, food, clothing, and shelter. You can't be a humanitarian and condemn the energy humanity
needs.
Even if the underdeveloped world doesn't industrialize—which, by the standard of human life, it
should—it is still wrong to claim that we're making lives worse climatewise (or otherwise). The data com-
pletely contradict that notion. Climate-related deaths are down 98 percent
worldwide,
including in undeve-
loped countries.
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Our technologies and our wealth have given poorer countries better, cheaper everything:
materials for building buildings, medicine, food for drought relief. The scientific and medical discoveries
we have made in the time that has been bought with fossil fuel-powered labor-saving machines benefit
everyone around the world.
