Google Talk: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

by ardoise • 7 years ago

4 2 7 years ago

glloydell• 7 years ago

From the pdf intro you can download off the authors site :

" Those who claim to care about a livable climate for the future should strive to understand the mechanisms by which industrial capitalism has already made our climate the most livable in history.

If they did so, they would learn from such thinkers as Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von Mises how capitalism, by permitting only voluntary associations among men, unleashes the individual human mind—and that billions of such minds, free to associate and trade however they choose, will engage in stupendously intricate, collaborative planning for everything from how to make sure they can always get groceries to how to account for nearly any weather contingency.

Armed with an understanding of individual freedom and individual planning, the climate-concerned would suspect that any preventable problem in dealing with weather—such as widespread vulnerability to flooding—is caused by government interference in voluntary trade, such as taxpayer-financed flood insurance that encourages people to live in high-flooding areas. "

I'm still reading through it, but it seems like a steady devolution into a patchwork of increasingly impressive logical fallacies with some half formed libertarian dogma slapped on top of it for style points.

Dude's also a hardcore climate change denier.

Just saying.

ardoise• 7 years ago

Did you watch the video?

I didn't get that he was denying climate change, merely arguing against sloppy thinking on the subject.

@08:29: "We can't be sloppy. So, for example, if you say, 'Oh, there's sea level rise. CO2 levels contribute to sea level rise.' Well, is it a one foot contribution in the next century, as one of the major UN organizations says? Or is it 20 feet, as Al Gore says in 'An Inconvenient Truth'? Those magnitudes make an enormous difference."

@08:54: "It would be like you're deciding whether to vaccinate your child---and you say, 'Well, how significant are the side effects?' And they just say, 'Vaccine side effects are real.' And you say, 'I know, but I want to know the magnitude.' And they say, 'What are you, a vaccine side effect denier?'

The first 15-20 mins is presenting a framework for thinking about the subject. He suggests that typical discussion about fossil fuels focuses solely on their drawbacks and ignores their tremendous benefits (particularly their unique benefits), and prioritizes "low environmental impact" above "human flourishing"---i.e. anti-human.

@14:53: "So, I describe my framework, if you want two terms would be: (1) full context---you want to look carefully at the positives and negatives; and then (2) human flourishing---we measure goodness by maximizing human flourishing, not minimizing human impact."

@16:02: "We need to look at both the potential unique benefits of fossil fuels (access to energy, maybe CO2 could have some benefits) and then potentially unique risks (the risks of CO2 pollution, and then depletion---running out of them or running out of other resources)."

Google Talk: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

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