The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
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Last annotated on April 5, 2017
1 THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOSSIL FUELSRead more at location 39
Note: tesi 1 il gw non è un problema così terrorizzante vista la ns capacità di progresso e adattamento... i benefici dell uso di ff compensano i rischi... 2 le fonti alternative di energia nn sono affidabili ma tichiedono sempre un'integrazione cospicua.... 3 le scorte sono abbondanti... 4 gli esperti hanno fallito le loro previsioni di 30 anni fa: ci attendeva la catastrofe e siamo invece migliorati in tutti gli aspetti della ns vita. Possiamo ancora fidarci di loro? Di certo dobiamo aggiornare il giudizio che ne abbiamo... 5 inquinamento e salute: viviamo meglio oggi che consumiamo + ff... esperto x esperto le topiche di 30 anni fa... e la fama intatta... consigli disattesi il consumo è raddoppiato... epico disastro? no epico miglioramento! evidentemente nn sapiamo bene come agisce co2 nell'atmosfera... nè intrrnet nè rivoluzione digitale seguendo le misure dei catastrofisti... xchè l esperto fallisce? xchè si concentra sui rischi + che sui benefici d' altronde lui, quasi sempre, è un esperto di clima, ovvero dei potenziali pericoli. Purtroppo non sappiamo di cosa bisogna essere esperti x valutare i benefici visto che non sappiamo su quale settore della nostra vita impatteranno... Un indice eliquente: il "climate related death". Andiamo verso la catastrofe e lui diminuisce!... l' esperto va ascoltato ma va soppesato con quel che può sapere, difficilmente si soffermerà sui limiti della sua conoscenza. Inoltre, nessuno può essere esperto di tutto e in qs problematiche occorre connettere molti campi del sapere per guardare alla "big picture"... Il criterio principe: mettere sempre l'uomo al centro... Edit
“I study energy for a living—and I think it’s good that we use a lot of fossil fuels. I think the world would be a much better place if people used a lot more.”Read more at location 45
I thought the benefits of using fossil fuels far outweighed the risks.Read more at location 48
I think the evidence shows that climate change, natural or man-made, is more manageable than ever, because human beings are so good at adapting, using ingenuity and technology.Read more at location 50
Note: I PROBLEMI GW SONO PIÙ TRATTABILI DA UNA SOCIETÁ RICCA CHE DA UNA POVERA. PENSA A HUSTON E TORONTO. PENSA AGLI INSEDIAMENTI SULLA LUNAEdit
I think the evidence shows that ingenuity and technology make pollution a smaller problem every year.Read more at location 52
but I think the evidence shows that there are huge amounts of fossil fuels left, and we’ll have plenty of time to use ingenuity and technology to find something cheaper—such as some form of advanced nuclear power.Read more at location 53
the sun and the wind are intermittent, unreliable fuels that always need backup from a reliable source of energy—usually fossil fuels,Read more at location 56
Eighty-seven percent of the energy mankind uses every second, including most of the energy I am using as I write this, comes from burning one of the fossil fuels: coal, oil, or natural gas.Read more at location 63
For years, the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has demanded that the United States and other industrialized countries cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2050—andRead more at location 79
I had just concluded, based on my research, that the short- and long-term benefits of using fossil fuels actually far, far outweigh the risks and was happy to explain why.Read more at location 89
what I have found is this: leading experts and the media have been making the exact same predictions for more than thirty years. As far back as the 1970s they predicted that if we did not dramatically reduce fossil fuel use then, and use renewables instead, we would be experiencing catastrophe today—catastrophic resource depletion, catastrophic pollution, and catastrophic climate change. Instead, the exact opposite happened.Read more at location 94
Instead of using a lot less fossil fuel energy, we used a lot more—but instead of long-term catastrophe, we have experienced dramatic, long-term improvement in every aspect of life, including environmental quality.Read more at location 97
“We should be grateful for the role that fossil fuel played in creating our world and equally grateful that scientists now give us ample warning of its new risks, and engineers increasingly provide us with the alternatives that we need.”Read more at location 111
What is rarely mentioned is that thirty years ago, leading experts, including many of today’s leading experts, were telling us that fossil fuels were once necessary, but the latest science tells us they’re causing an imminent catastrophe unless we stop using them and replace them with cutting-edge renewables. Take the prediction we hear today that we will soon run out of fossil fuels—particularly oil—because they are nonrenewable.Read more at location 115
In 1972, the international think tank the Club of Rome released a multimillion-copy-selling book, The Limits to Growth, which declared that its state-of-the-art computer models had demonstrated that we would run out of oil by 1992 and natural gas by 1993Read more at location 120
The leading resource theorist of the time was ecologist Paul Ehrlich, who was so popular and prestigious that Johnny Carson invited him onto his show over a dozen times. In 1971 he said, “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,”Read more at location 123
Another catastrophic prediction we hear today is that pollution from fossil fuels will make our environment more and more hazardous to our health—hence we need to stop using “dirty” fossil fuels. This prediction was also made many times in the 1970s—with many assurances that these predictions were backed by the best science.Read more at location 128
I saw that many of the leaders who make that prediction now had, decades ago, predicted that we’d be living in catastrophe today.Read more at location 139
James Hansen, the most influential climate scientist in the worldRead more at location 141
Bill McKibben, when he told Duke students in 2012 that we were on the verge of drastic warming, neglected to mention the results of his decades-old claims, such as this one in 1989: “The choice of doing nothing—of continuing to burn ever more oil and coal—is not a choice, in other words. It will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a similar temperature”; and “a few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly.”Read more at location 148
In 1977, Amory Lovins, widely considered the leading energy thinker of the 1970s for his criticisms of fossil fuels and nuclear power and his support of solar power and reduced energy use, explained that we already used too much energy. And in particular, the kind of energy we least needed was . . . electricity, the foundation of the digital/information revolution:Read more at location 167
In 1998, Bill McKibben endorsed a scenario of outlawing 60 percent of present fossil fuel use to slow catastrophic climate change, even though that would mean, in his words, that “each human being would get to produce 1.69 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually—which would allow you to drive an average American car nine miles a day.Read more at location 171
Forget your computer, your TV, your stereo, your stove, your dishwasher, your water heater, your microwave, your water pump, your clock. Forget your light bulbs, compact fluorescent or not.”21 All of these thinkers still advocate similar policies today—in fact, today Bill McKibben endorses a 95 percent ban on fossil fuel use, eight times as severe as the scenario described above!22 And all of them are extremely prestigious. Since making these predictions, John Holdren has become science adviser to President Obama, Bill McKibben is called “the nation’s leading environmentalist”Read more at location 176
Thus, today’s leading thinkers and leading ideas about fossil fuels have a decades-long track record—and given that they are calling for the abolition of our most popular form of energy, it would be irresponsible not to look at how reality has compared to their predictions.Read more at location 191
Instead of following the leading advice and restricting the use of fossil fuels, people around the world nearly doubled their use of fossil fuels—which allegedly should have led to an epic disaster. Rather, it led to an epic improvementRead more at location 195
In the United States between 1980 and 2012, the consumption of oil increased 8.7 percent, the consumption of natural gas increased 28.3 percent, and the consumption of coal increased 12.6 percent.25 During that time period, the world overall increased fossil fuel usage far more than we did.Read more at location 203
Why did fossil fuel energy outcompete renewable energy—not just for existing energy production but for most new energy production? This trend is too consistent across too many countries to be ignored. The answer is simply that renewable energy couldn’t meet those countries’ energy needs, though fossil fuels could.Read more at location 219
And there is an incredibly strong correlation between fossil fuel use and life expectancy and between fossil fuel use and income, particularly in the rapidly developing parts of the world.Read more at location 231
The story is clear—both life expectancy and income increased rapidly, meaning that life got better for billions of people in just a few decades.Read more at location 248
Where did the thinkers go wrong? One thing I have noticed in reading most predictions of doom is that the “experts” almost always focus on the risks of a technology but never the benefits—andRead more at location 259
is a failure to think big picture, to consider all the benefits and all the risks.Read more at location 262
As we have used more fossil fuels, our resource situation, our environment situation, and our climate situation have been improving, too.Read more at location 271
MORE FOSSIL FUELS, MORE RESOURCES, BETTER ENVIRONMENT, SAFER CLIMATE?Read more at location 272
Let’s start with the popular prediction that we’re running out of resources, especially fossil fuels.Read more at location 273
What about the prediction that our environment would degrade as we used more fossil fuels and more everything?Read more at location 303
What actually happened? We’ll look at all major measures of environmental quality in chapter 8, but for now let’s look at clean air and clean water. Both have increased substantially.Read more at location 305
Overall, the improvement is incredible. Of course, there are places such as China that have high levels of smog—but the track record of the rest of the world indicates that this can be corrected while using ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels.Read more at location 318
Once again, the anti–fossil fuel experts got it completely wrong. Why? Again by not thinking big picture, by paying attention to only one half of the equation—in the case of fossil fuels, focusing only on the ways in which using them can harm our environment. But fossil fuels, as we’ll discuss in chapter 6, can also improve our environment by powering machines that clean up nature’s health hazards, such as water purification plantsRead more at location 319
Note: PERCHÉ GLI ESPERTI SI SONO SBAGLIATI? HANNO RAGIONATO SOLO SUI RISCHI. MACCHINE E AMBIENTE ARTIFICIALE Edit
Pessimistic predictions often assume that our environment is perfect until humans mess it up; they don’t consider the possibility that we could improve our environment. But the data of the last forty years indicate that we have been doing exactly that—using fossil fuels.Read more at location 324
Finally, we have to look at what the trend is in the realm of climate change. Catastrophic climate change is the most dire claim about fossil fuels today,Read more at location 326
if we go through the writings of the 1970s and 1980s, we see those same bodies declare many things confidently about global cooling only to contradict themselves several years later. In 1975, the American Meteorological Society told Americans that the climate was cooling and that this meant worse weather:Read more at location 327
Recall that in 1986 James Hansen predicted that “if current trends are unchanged,” temperatures would rise .5 to 1.0 degree Fahrenheit in the 1990s and 2 to 4 degrees in the first decade of the 2000s.37 According to Hansen’s own department at NASA, from the beginning to the end of the 1990s, temperatures were .018 degree Fahrenheit (.01 degree Celsius) higher, and from 2000 to 2010, temperatures were .27 degree Fahrenheit (.15 degree Celsius) higher—meaning he was wrong many times over.38Read more at location 340
notice that there are smaller trends of warming and cooling, signifying that CO2 is not a particularly powerful driver, and especially notice that the current trend is flat when it “should be” skyrocketing.Read more at location 352
But most striking to me are the data on how dangerous the climate has become over the last few decades, during a time when all of the predictions said that the Earth would become progressively more deadly. The key statistic here, one that is unfortunately almost never mentioned, is “climate-related deaths.”Read more at location 355
In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have most rapidly escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide fell by an incredible rate of 98 percent.41 That means the incidence of death from climate is fifty times lower than it was eighty years ago.Read more at location 369
Once again, the leading experts we were told to rely on were 100 percent wrong. It’s not that they predicted disaster and got half a disaster—it’s that they predicted disaster and got dramatic improvement.Read more at location 379
Clearly, as the climate-related death data show, there were some major benefits—namely, the power of fossil-fueled machines to build a durable civilization that is highly resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on.Read more at location 384
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.Read more at location 391
Today, proposals to restrict fossil fuels are more popular than ever. As mentioned earlier, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has demanded that the United States and other industrialized countries cut carbon emissionsRead more at location 395
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.Read more at location 409
Too often we are asked to take some action because an expert recommends itRead more at location 412
errors are common, particularly among experts commenting on controversial political matters, where thinkers are rewarded for making extreme, definitive predictions.Read more at location 414
No scientist is an expert on everything; each specializes in some particular field. For example, a climate scientist might be a specialist in paleoclimatology (the study of using ancient evidence to deduce what ancient climates were like), and even then he might be an expert in only one period—say, the Cretaceous (one of the periods in which the dinosaurs lived). He is not going to be an expert in climate physics, and the climate physicist is also not an expert in human adaptation.Read more at location 419
What experts in specific fields give us is knowledge that we can integrate into a big-picture assessment. For example, by learning from a combination of scientists and economists and energy experts,Read more at location 436
But what exactly do we mean by right and wrong, good and bad? What is our standard of value?Read more at location 454
I think that our fossil fuel use so far has been a moral choice because it has enabled billions of people to live longer and more fulfilling lives,Read more at location 456
many religious people think that it is wrong to eat certain foods or to engage in certain sexual acts, not because there is any evidence that these foods or acts are unhealthy or otherwise harmful to human beings but simply because they believe God forbids them.Read more at location 460
Religion is not the only source of nonhuman standards of value. Many leading environmental thinkers, including those who predict fossil fuel catastrophe, hold as their standard of value what they call “pristine” nature or wilderness—nature unaltered by man.Read more at location 463
In his book, McKibben wrote that our goal should be a “humbler world,” one where we have less impact on our environment and “Human happiness would be of secondary importance.”Read more at location 474
This is the essence of the conflict: the humanist, which is the term I will use to describe someone on a human standard of value, treats the rest of nature as something to use for his benefit; the nonhumanist treats the rest of nature as something that must be served.Read more at location 503
the cheap, plentiful, reliable energy we get from fossil fuels and other forms of cheap, plentiful, reliable energy, combined with human ingenuity, gives us the ability to transform the world around us into a place that is far saferRead more at location 515
Fossil fuel technology transforms nature to improve human life on an epic scale.Read more at location 517
I will make the case that no other energy technology besides fossil fuels can even come close to producing that energy for the foreseeable futureRead more at location 523
I will make the case that just as energy dramatically improves our ability to deal with any aspect of life by using machines—increasing our mental capacities with computers, our medical capabilities with MRI machines, and our agricultural capabilities with high-powered farming equipment—so it dramatically improves our ability to make our environment healthier and safer from natural and man-made threats. The data clearly show that we have never had higher environmental quality and we have never been safer from climate, despite—no, because of—record fossil fuel use.Read more at location 525
I will make the case that fossil fuel use is not “unsustainable” but progressive—by using the best energy technology today and in the coming decades, we pave the way for fossil fuel technologies not only to harness the copious amounts of fossil fuels remaining in the ground, of which we have just scratched the surface, but also to create the resources and time necessary to develop the next great energy technology.Read more at location 529
2 THE ENERGY CHALLENGE: CHEAP, PLENTIFUL, RELIABLE ENERGY . . . FOR 7 BILLION PEOPLERead more at location 536
THE GAMBIA June 2006 At 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, I was startled when the lights came on; the lights never came on after 2 p.m. on the weekends. The adrenaline really kicked in when I was invited to observe an emergency cesarean section—a first for me. When the infant emerged I felt my heart racing from excitement and awe! But no matter how many times the technician suctioned out the nose and mouth, the infant did not utter a sound. After twenty five minutes the technician and nurse both gave up. The surgeon later explained that the baby had suffocated in utero. If only they had had enough power to use the ultrasound machine for each pregnancy, he would have detected the problem earlier and been able to plan the C-section. Without early detection, the C-section became an emergency, moreover, the surgery had to wait for the generator to be powered on. The loss of precious minutes meant the loss of a precious life. At that time, in that place, all I could do was cry. And later, when the maternity ward was too hushed, I cried again. A full-term infant was born weighing only 3.5 pounds. In the U.S., the solution would have been obvious and effective: incubation. But without reliable electricity, the hospital did not even contemplate owning an incubator. This seemingly simple solution was not available to this newborn girl, and she perished needlessly. Reliable electricity is at the forefront of every staff members’ thoughts. With it, they can conduct tests with electrically powered medical equipment, use vaccines and antibiotics requiring refrigeration, and plan surgeries to meet patients’ needs. Without it, they will continue to give their patients the best care available, but in a country with an average life expectancy of only 54 years of age, it’s a hard fight to win.Read more at location 548
Note: NN PENSIAMO ALL ENERGIA IN ASTRATTO. È LA COSA PIÙ IMPO DELLA NOSTRA VITA PARTORIRE IN GAMBIA SENZA ENERGIA Edit
The story of energy for over 99 percent of history is that human beings couldn’t get enough of it to live, and if they could, they could make very limited use of it, because they lacked power.Read more at location 595
Milton Friedman:Read more at location 608
Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing—running servants replaced running water. Television and radio—the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets—all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.Read more at location 609
“What exactly does it mean to believe in ‘global warming’?” Some warming or a lot? Little deal or big deal? A little man-made or a lot man-made? Accelerating or decelerating?Read more at location 1303
most discussion of global warming would not stand up to fifteen seconds of scrutiny by Socrates, who alienated fellow Athenians by asking them to define what they meant when they used terms vaguely.Read more at location 1305
A huge source of confusion in our public discussion is the separation of people (including scientists) into “climate change believers” and “climate change deniers”—the latter a not-so-subtle comparison to Holocaust deniers.Read more at location 1308
Here’s how I put the right questions now, from a human standard of value. The first is: How does fossil fuel use affect climate livability? When we burn fossil fuels, what are all the climate-related risks and all the benefits that result?Read more at location 1318
Every year, the news is full of headlines about dramatic, often tragic climate-related events—headlines like these: “20,000 Killed by Earthquake: Toll Is Growing, Bodies Float Down Ganges to the Sea”3 “100 Are Injured, Property Damage Exceeds $1,000,000: Tornado Strikes Three States, Bitter Cold in North Area”4 “Death’s Toll Mounts to 60 in U.S. Storms”5 “1,500 Japanese Die in Hakodate Fire; 200,000 Homeless: Largest City North of Tokyo Is in Ruins and Mayor Says It Is ‘a Living Hell’”6 “Where Tidal Wave Ruined Norway Fishing Towns”7 “Antarctic Heat Wave: Explorers Puzzled but Pleased”8 “7 Lives Lost as Tropical Storm Whips Louisiana: Hurricane Moves Far Inland Before Blowing Out Its Wrath in Squalls”9 “Widely Separated Regions of the Globe Feel Heavy Quake”10 “Earth Growing Warmer: What Swiss Glaciers Reveal”11 “Death, Suffering over Wide Area in China Drouth [Drought]”12 “Toll of Flood at High Figure: Over 100 Bodies Recovered and 500 Persons Missing in Southern Poland”13 “Cuban Malaria Increases: Thousands Become Ill in Usual Seasonal Spread of Disease”14 “Mid-West Hopes for Relief from Heat; 602 Killed”15 “Famine Faces 5,000,000 in Drouth [Drought] Area”16 “Rumanians Are Alarmed by Epidemic of Cholera”Read more at location 1357
Some predictions of dramatic global warming (and ultimately catastrophic climate change) posit that the greenhouse effect of CO2 in the atmosphere will greatly amplify water vapor creation in the atmosphere, which could cause much more warming than CO2 acting alone would. This kind of reinforcing interaction is called a positive feedback loop.Read more at location 1453
Those who speculate that CO2 is a major driver of climate have, to their credit, made predictions based on computer models that reflect their view of how the climate works. But fatally, those models have failed to make accurate predictions—not just a little, but completely.Read more at location 1471
How good are the models at predicting warming or the changes in climate that are supposed to follow from warming?Read more at location 1483
The best way to test a model is to see whether it can make accurate and meaningful predictions about the future. In the last thirty years, the climate science community has had the opportunity to do that.Read more at location 1490
Many experts in modeling and in statistics thought this was an extremely dubious enterprise,Read more at location 1491
Consider perhaps the most famous model in the history of climate science, the 1988 model by James Hansen, who has a reputation in the media as the world’s leading climate scientist.Read more at location 1493
Note in particular that since the late 1990s, there has been no increase in average temperatures.Read more at location 1501
Hansen and every other believer in catastrophic global warming expected that there would be, for the simple reason that we have used record, accelerating amounts of CO2.Read more at location 1501
Here is a graph of 102 prominent, modern climate models put together by John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who collects satellite measurements of temperature. Even though the modern models have the benefit of hindsight and “hindcasting,” reality is so inconsistent with the theory that they can’t come up with a plausible model. And note how radically different all the predictions are; this illustrates that the field of predicting climate is in its infancy.Read more at location 1506
if one assumed that CO2 in the atmosphere had no major positive feedbacks, and just warmed the atmosphere in accordance with the greenhouse effect, this mild warming is pretty much what one would get.Read more at location 1519
every prediction of drastic future consequences is based on speculative models that have failed to predict the climate trend so far and that speculate a radically different trend than what has actually happened in the last thirty to eighty years of emitting substantial amounts of CO2.Read more at location 1521
Unfortunately, many of the scientists, scientific bodies, and especially public intellectuals and media members have not been honest with the public about the failure of their predictions.Read more at location 1528
CLIMATE DISHONESTY: EXTREME MISREPRESENTATION ABOUT EXTREME WEATHERRead more at location 1531
It is disingenuous for climate activists to blame every storm on climate change when there has been so little warming so far and when storm trends are so unremarkable.Read more at location 1545
Or take the issue of sea levels, which we hear are rapidly rising. Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth terrified many with claims of likely twenty-foot rises in sea levels.27 Given the temperature trends, however, we wouldn’t expect warming to have a dramatic effect on sea levels. And, in fact, it hasn’t.Read more at location 1547
CLIMATE DISHONESTY: EQUATING THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT WITH CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGERead more at location 1555
Imagine that we transported someone from three hundred years ago,Read more at location 2034
Thomas’s reaction would be disbelief that such a clean, healthy environment was possible. “How is this possible?” he would ask. “The air is so clean. Where I come from, we’re breathing in smoke all dayRead more at location 2038
“And the water. Everywhere I go, there’s this water that tastes so good, and it’s all safe to drink. On my farm, we get our water from a brook we share with animals, and my kids are always getting sick.”Read more at location 2040
“And then the weather. I mean, the weather isn’t that much different, but you’re so much safer in it; you can move a knob and make it cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold.”Read more at location 2042
“And you have to tell me, what happened to all the disease? Where I’m from, we have insects all over the place giving us disease—my neighbor’s son died of malaria—and you don’t seem to have any of that here. What’s your secret?”Read more at location 2044
I’d tell him that the secret was his invention: a method of transforming a concentrated, stored, plentiful energy source into cheap, plentiful, reliable energy so we could use machines to transform our hazardous natural environment into a far healthier human environment.Read more at location 2046
Development means water-purification systems, irrigation, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, genetically improved crops, dams, seawalls, heating, air-conditioning, sturdy homes, drained swamps, central power stations, vaccination, pharmaceuticals, and so on.Read more at location 2054
Of course, as I address in the next chapter, development and the fossil fuel energy that powers it carries risks and creates by-products, such as coal smog,Read more at location 2056
Take coal, the fossil fuel with the most potentially harmful by-products. Energy journalist Robert Bryce describes our “intense love-hate relationship” with “the black fuel.” Coal heated people’s homes and fueled the Industrial Revolution in England, but it also made parts of the country, particularly the smog-ruined cities, nearly uninhabitable. In 1812, in London, a combination of coal smoke and fog became so dense that according to one report, “for the greater part of the day it was impossible to read or write at a window without artificial light. Persons in the streets could scarcely be seen in the forenoon at two yards distance.” Today, two hundred years later, some of the very same problems are plaguing China. In Datong, known as the “City of Coal,” the air pollution on some winter days is so bad that “even during the daytime, people drive with their lights on.”Read more at location 2173
How was this achieved? Above all, by using antipollution technology to get as many of the positive effects of fossil fuels and as few of the negative effects as possible.Read more at location 2188
The way to deal with it is to use technology to transform risks and by-products into smaller risks and smaller by-products.Read more at location 2192
8 FOSSIL FUELS, SUSTAINABILITY, AND THE FUTURE IS OUR WAY OF LIFE SUSTAINABLE?Read more at location 2544
One big question remains: What are the long-term prospects for this way of life?Read more at location 2551
In chapter 3, we saw that the amount of unused fossil fuel raw material currently in the Earth exceeds by far the amount we’ve used in the entire history of civilization by many multiplesRead more at location 2555
the key issue is whether we have the technological ability and economic reason to turn that raw material into a resource.Read more at location 2556
using fossil fuels is unsustainable because we’ll run out of them.Read more at location 2558
Instead, we keep running into them. The more we use, the more we create.Read more at location 2559
The theory behind these predictions is that Earth has a finite “carrying capacity,” an idea that was spread far and wide in the 1970s.Read more at location 2570
The most direct reason is that there are far more fossil fuel raw materials and far more human ingenuity to get them than Ehrlich and Holdren expected.Read more at location 2582
THE UNLIMITED POTENTIAL FOR RESOURCE CREATION AND HUMAN PROGRESSRead more at location 2585
The believers in a finite carrying capacity think of the Earth as something that “carries” us by dispensing a certain amount of resources. But if this was true, then why did the caveman have so few resources?Read more at location 2586
Ultimately, a resource is just matter and energy transformed via human ingenuity to meet human needs.Read more at location 2592
