Earth Day is Saturday! Hooray?

“Saving humanity from the climate crisis,” says EarthDay.org, requires us to “push away from the dirty fossil fuel economy.” //

“Three billion people in the world still use less electricity than a typical refrigerator,” explains Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” If they’re going to have “their first well-paying jobs,” “their first consistent supply of clean water,” “a modern life,” “that’s going to depend on fossil fuels.”

But the greens say we have a better replacement: wind and solar power. //

So I push back at Epstein: “Solar is getting cheaper all the time. It’s already cheaper than fossil fuels.”

“When we look at solar and wind around the world,” he answers, “it always correlates to rising prices and declining reliability. Why? Because solar and wind are intermittent. At any time, they can go near zero.” //

That means wind turbines and solar farms don’t replace fossil-fuel plants. You have to build them in addition to fossil-fuel plants.

Backing up all solar and wind with batteries would cost “multiples of global” gross domestic product, responds Epstein. “This is a total fantasy.”

“You say unaffordable,” I push back, “but who’s to determine what that is?”

“The general narrative is we’re destroying the planet with fossil fuels, so who cares how much energy costs?” Epstein says. “The truth is, the planet is only livable because of low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels.”

Before fossil fuels, “Life expectancy was below 30. Income was basically nonexistent. The population was stagnant because people had such a high death rate. The basic reason is that nature is not a very livable place for human beings.”

By contrast, thanks to cheap fossil fuels, “We make it unnaturally safe by producing all forms of climate protection. We produce drought relief . . . sturdy buildings. We produce heat when it’s cold, we produce cold when it’s hot. We have this amazing, productive ability. That’s the only reason we experience the planet as livable.” //

If we want more of the poorest people to have decent lives, we need to invest in both fossil fuels and nuclear power.