Apr 25, 2016
To make earth cleaner, greener and safer, which energy sources
should humanity rely on? Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial
Progress explains how modern societies have cleaned up our water,
air and streets using the very energy sources you may not have
expected--oil, coal and natural gas.
What if I told you that someone had developed an energy source
that could help us solve our biggest environmental challenges,
purify our water and air, make our cities and homes more sanitary,
and keep us safe from potential catastrophic climate change? What
if I also told you that this energy source was cheap, plentiful,
and reliable?
Well, there is such a source. You probably know it as fossil
fuel. Oil. Natural gas. Coal.
But wait? Don’t fossil fuels pollute our environment and make
our climate unlivable? That, of course, is what we’re told…and what
our children are taught. But let’s look at the data. Here’s a graph
you’ve probably never seen: the correlation between use of fossil
fuels and access to clean water. More fossil fuel. More clean
water. Am I saying the more we that we have used fossil fuel, the
cleaner our water has become? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m
saying.
In the developed world, we take clean water for granted. We turn
on a tap and it’s there. But getting it there takes a
massive amount of energy. Think of the man-made reservoirs, the
purification plants, the network of pipes. In
the undeveloped world, it’s a much different story.
They lack the energy, so they lack clean water. More fossil fuel.
More clean water.
The same is true of sanitation. By the use of cheap, plentiful,
and reliable energy from fossil fuels, we have made our environment
cleaner. Take a look at this graph. More fossil fuel. Better
sanitation.
Okay, what about air quality? Here’s a graph of the air
pollution trends in the United States over the last half-century
based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Note the
dramatic downward trend in emissions, even though we use more
fossil fuel than ever. How was this achieved? Above all, by using
anti-pollution technology powered by…fossil fuel: oil, natural gas
and coal.
But even without modern pollution control technology, fossil
fuel makes our air cleaner. Indoor pollution—caused by burning a
fire inside your house, cabin, hut or tent to cook and keep
warm—was a deadly global problem until the late 19th century when
cheap kerosene, a fossil fuel byproduct, became available in
America and Europe. Indoor pollution is still a major issue in the
developing world today. The best solution? Fossil fuel.
And now we come to the biggest fossil fuel concern of all—global
warming. On this very sensitive topic we need to get our terms
straight: There is a big difference between mild global
warming and catastrophic global warming. We can all agree
on that, right? The issue isn’t: does burning fossil fuel
have some warming impact? It does. The issue is: is the climate
warming dangerously fast?
In 1986 NASA climate scientist James Hansen—one of the world’s
most prominent critics of the use of fossil fuels—predicted that
“if current trends are unchanged,” temperatures would rise 2 to 4
degrees in the first decade of the 2000s. But as you can see from
this graph, since 2000 the trend line is essentially flat—little or
no warming in the last 15 years. That’s probably why we hear much
less talk about “global warming” and much more talk about “climate
change.”
Has this “climate change” made our world more dangerous? The key
statistic here, one that is, unfortunately, almost never mentioned,
is “climate-related deaths,” that is, how many people die each year
from a climate-related cause, including droughts, floods, storms,
and extreme temperatures. In the last eighty years, as CO2
emissions have rapidly escalated, the annual rate of
climate-related deaths worldwide has rapidly declined -- by
98%.
The reason is that the energy from fossil fuel has allowed the
developed world to build a durable civilization, one highly
resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on.
The developing world—where natural disasters can still wreak
terrible havoc—would like the chance to do the same. But to do that
they will need a lot more energy. The cheapest, fastest and easiest
way to get that energy is from fossil fuels.
In sum, fossil fuels don’t take a naturally safe environment and
make it dangerous; they empower us to take a naturally
dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer.
I’m Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress for
Prager University.