[Editor Note: MasterResource has reviewed Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels before, but new reviews are welcomed to better appreciate and promote one of the most important books of its genre (energy realism) since Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource (1981). For futher information about this review and its author, see below.]

Who would argue that producing and using fossil fuels is not only not shameful, but also positively virtuous? Alex Epstein would. And he has done so eloquently and thoroughly in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

Epstein aptly summarizes his book with its final sentence (p. 209): “Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”…

“To colleges, universities and pension funds, we say: Please demand and ensure open, robust debate on all these issues, before you vote on divestment. Allow no noisy disruption, walk-outs or false claims of consensus. Compel divestment advocates to defend their position, factually and respectfully. Protect the rights and aspirations of people everywhere to reliable, affordable electricity, better living standards and, improved health.” 

“Social responsibility” activists have designated February 13/14 as Global Divestment Day. They want universities and other institutions to eliminate fossil fuel companies from their investment holdings. Their demand is not just unrealistic and misguided. It is irresponsible and immoral, potentially lethal–and racist in result.

Having grown up in developed countries, these activists seem to have forgotten how nasty and short life was throughout human history, until quite recently.…

Life must be melancholy at best the neo-Malthusian closed-minded pessimists at such anti-liberty/pro-state organizations as Sierra Club, NRDC, 350.org, and Center for American Progress. No Julian Simon or Bjorn Lomborg or Judith Curry or Alex Epstein or Matt Ridley allowed at these shops!

Thankfully, most people–and certainly voters through demonstrated preference–are pessimistic about government and optimistic about life in a free society. And so it must be hard for the chronically discontent to interact on a personal, family level, particularly during the holiday season.

Consider the following quotations of Messing With The Holidays.

Heed the Warnings: Why We’re on the Brink of Mass Extinction (The Daily Beast, November 30, 2014)

“Evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll, executive producer of the doc Mass Extinction: Life At the Brink, on why mankind’s days are numbered….”

 “Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the [twentieth] century.”

– John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich[1]

Doom and gloom—and falsity—hallmarks the long career of John P. Holdren, neo-Malthusian and President Obama’s initial and still science advisor. Halloween Holdren has been quiet with the outlandish in recent years–he does not want to embarrass his boss–but his many quotations beginning in the 1970s, never disowned, remain for the record.

Today is a good time to refresh memories of the man who just might be the scariest presidential advisor in U.S. history!

Read—but don’t be frightened. The sky-is-falling gloom of Holdren, his mentor Paul Ehrlich, and others is in intellectual and empirical trouble. From Julian Simon to Bjorn Lomborg to Indur Goklany to Matt Ridley to Marlo Lewis to Alex Epstein, the technological optimists have the upper hand in a debate that continues to rage.…