Hockey Sticks

Human progress required massive innovation. Net Zero threatens a return to feudalism.

There’s a set of four charts in Alex Epstein’s book-homage to fossil fuels. The four charts he refers to, in Fossil Future, are essentially hockey stick charts. Like the flat head of an ice-hockey stick, things were essentially unchanging (for a very long time). But then, around about the time we started using fossil fuels in earnest, we had an explosion in progress - sweeping up like the hockey stick handle. Relative poverty was reduced, population took off (because of an increase in wealth), and people lived longer. And this all happened (largely in the developed West) as a result of the availability of relatively cheap and dependable energy. And this also happened relatively recently - in the last 200 years or so. Before then, the earth’s liveability (as far as human beings were concerned) was severely limited.

Northern Europe, for example, wasn’t really a viable place in which to live - largely because of cold, wet winters. Before widespread availability of coal, then gas, heating homes was virtually impossible. Finding or growing food without powered machinery or vessels was a life threatening experience.

Epstein explains in incredible, researched detail, just how human ingenuity and innovation made the world liveable-in for humans, thereby making us a highly successful species - powered by fossil fuels.

It is, of course, common sense that Alex conveys (although a common sense sorely absent these days). The powered world was highly successful. The unpowered world, the world that didn’t have ready access to huge power sources - or chose not to utilise them - was less so.

But this leads Epstein to make a very powerful point. In the past, when the world (presumably) had lower levels of man-made CO2, it was an awful, unliveable place. He then constructs an argument that a world without fossil fuels (or nuclear) - or a mandated reduction in their use - is likely to return to being unliveable-in again.

There’s a reason why the proposed so-called carbon free alternatives to fossil fuels just aren’t up to the task. They rely on diluted energy. Fossil fuels produce vast amounts of energy for much less land use. Just try replicating the power output of a modern gas fuelled power station with solar panels. Or try powering ocean-bound ships (that underpin the global supply chain) with wind or solar. Sure, there may be interesting use-cases for solar power for camper-van-fans or even street lighting. But sending man to the moon or powering earth moving equipment requires a hell of a lot more beef. Just about every aspect of our modern lives is made possible by fossil fuels. The suggestion that we stop using coal, oil, or gas is beyond ridiculous.

These vast benefits of fossil fuel barely get a mention, of course, by the ever more catastrophising green lobby. But it’s simply impossible to un-invent progress. Electric vehicles require robust energy grids powered by fossil fuels or nuclear. Solar panels require fossil fuels for their manufacture. Mobile phones and cloud data storage would be rendered impossible without the robust and dependable power grids we’ve assembled over the last decades - mostly powered by fossil fuels.

But all we hear from the green energy shills is that fossil fuels are bad, damaging. We never hear about the Net Positive. We never hear about how the world used to be: pest-ridden, cold, insecure, or malign, before we rendered it fit for purpose for humanity with the help of reliable power.

Fossil Future is a genuinely fascinating read. It also provides ammunition for argument. In the mould of other works that exalt human ingenuity - like The Better Angels of our Nature (by Stephen Pinker) and The Rational Optimist (by Matt Ridley) - Alex Epstein puts human progress and innovation against pseudoscience and rote thinking. Epstein, in common with Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm, sees CO2 as a bit-part player in a climate drama that started well before humanity entered stage left.

There’s a risk that climate emergency nonsense enters the popular discourse as a given - an argument that’s unanswerable, or undeniable. That’s simply not the case. Government or supra-national government propaganda can successfully be debunked - as was proven during the Covid-19 fiasco (and despite mainstream media being amplifiers of piffle).

Similarly, there was a time - not too long ago - that the Conservative Party (in the UK) and even Democratic Party in the US - kept a decent distance from the lunatic fringe arguments of the climate-babble lobby. But something happened. Al Gore became a Green investor billionaire and others jumped on a bandwagon that has become less about saving the planet and more about snorting in the trough of greenwash.

But people are paying the price. Elite scaremongering has, in rapid order, caused a collective panic attack that’s spooking markets and terrifying ordinary people.

I’m with Alex. We need more fossil fuels and more nuclear to provide the power that everybody needs - including the previously un-empowered, and those who have done very nicely with the power we’ve grown to depend on.

Do yourself a favour. Read this book and give yourself the arguments you need. Net Zero world feels very much like the lunatics are running the asylum.