Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
To oppose fossil fuels is ultimately to oppose the underdeveloped world. Fortunately, many up-and-
comingcountriesrealize this.ChinaandIndiaandmuchofSoutheastAsiaarecommitting totechnological
progress, which means energy progress, which substantially means fossil fuel progress—and they don't
appear to be willing to sacrifice their futures to climate fear. Neither should we.
THE BIG PICTURE
There is an incredibly positive story everyone should be told.
The climate future appears to be extremely bright. Fossil fuels' product, energy, has given us an un-
thinkable mastery over climate and thus record climate livability. And its major climate-affecting by-
product, CO
2
, has fertilized the atmosphere and likely brought some mild and beneficial warming along
with it. But we can't know how good the warming is because, whether it is net negative or positive, it's
completely drowned out by the net positive of the energy effect.
This will be challenged every day in the papers, by blaming storms on your tailpipe, by citing “studies”
based on climate-prediction models that can't predict climate, but the truth is in the long-term trends and
the powerful principles behind them.
Theproperattitude towardhumanactivity andclimate isexpressedinthe1957novel
Atlas Shrugged
by
Ayn Rand. Consider the following passage, where industrialist-philosopher Francisco d'Anconia remarks
to steel magnate Hank Rearden how dangerous the climate is, absent massive industrial development. The
conversation takes place indoors at an elegant party during a severe storm (in the era before all severe
storms were blamed on fossil fuels).
There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of
clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space
and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made vis-
ible.
“It's a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d'Anconia.
“This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.”
Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in
his voice, “Funny . . .”
“What?”
“You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . .”
“You were?”
“. . . only I didn't have the words for it.”
“Shall I tell you the rest of the words?”
“Go ahead.”
“You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are
able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstra-
tion of your victory over that storm. And if it weren't for you, most of those who are here would be left
helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.”
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