Morning Wire XX
[0] Legacy media outlets, environmental activists, and many progressive politicians are calling for President Biden to declare a climate emergency amid the recent heat wave sweeping the U .S. In this episode, we talked to energy expert Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, about the growing calls for aggressive government intervention and whether or not we're really facing a climate crisis.
[1] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howl.
[2] It's Saturday, August 5th, and this is an extra edition of Morningwire.
[3] Joining us now to discuss the growing pressure for President Biden to declare a climate emergency is Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future.
[4] So Alex, first, is the U .S. facing a climate crisis that merits the federal government stepping in to impose emergency measures?
[5] The call to declare a climate emergency, I think, is one of the scariest and most unjustified things I can imagine.
[6] So the standard for declaring any kind of emergency involves at least three things.
[7] The phenomenon has to be dire.
[8] It has to be temporary, and it has to be in our control.
[9] And so in this case, there's no dire phenomenon.
[10] The earth is warming slowly.
[11] So we're in a warming period.
[12] We were in a warming period before we impacted things.
[13] And then I do believe that we impact things with rising CO2 levels.
[14] But it's a slow warming.
[15] And it's a warming that we're very, very good at dealing with.
[16] Not only does warming have some benefits in a world where far more people die of cold than of heat.
[17] But if you look at the overall deaths from climate -related disasters, like extreme temperatures and storms and floods, et cetera, those are down 98 % over the last century.
[18] So we're safer than ever from climate.
[19] So it's not a dire situation.
[20] The fact that we have changed does not at all mean catastrophe.
[21] And in fact, we've had an overall improvement in the livability of climate.
[22] And then on top of that, insofar as there is a problem.
[23] It's not an emergency problem.
[24] It's not a temporary thing.
[25] So this is going to happen for decades in large part because the developing world is going to keep emitting CO2 because it's in their interest too because they need fossil fuels and there's no viable replacement for decades.
[26] And it's not in our control.
[27] We emit about a seventh of the world CO2 and that's falling over time.
[28] So this is a non -dire situation.
[29] It's not temporary.
[30] It's not in our control.
[31] And so calling for climate emergency powers just means endless dictatorial powers over the economy.
[32] And that's un -American, I would say unconstitutional.
[33] And it's certainly just a totally devastating threat to our economy.
[34] So to expand a little bit on what exactly is being called for, in May 23, multiple members of Congress, including Representative Ocasio -Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, they introduced the climate emergency resolution, which demands, and I'm quoting here, that the president wield both existing authorities and emergency powers to unleash every resource available to mitigate and prepare for the climate crisis.
[35] What sort of control would the government have over citizens if an emergency is declared?
[36] What we saw with COVID at the federal level and maybe even more so the state level was that government today has an extraordinary and I think unjustified view of what it can do when it declares a state of emergency.
[37] And this is particularly scary with regard to energy policy.
[38] Because with energy policy, I think it's obvious that the government is already overstepping its bounds in terms of if you look at what's happening via different executive orders, different attempts to shut down drilling on federal lands, which you're not allowed to do, axing a totally vital pipeline and just arbitrarily saying, hey, this is in our interest and just destroying 10 plus years of work with Keystone.
[39] Or, I mean, let's take the most extreme example, is signing us up for the Paris Climate Agreement, which has no ratification, even though, which it's supposed to be ratified, but it meets all the criteria of a treaty.
[40] And yet, and it's calling for control of our economy for decades, and yet the executive thinks it has the right to just unilaterally get it done.
[41] So already they're massively overreesome.
[42] using their powers.
[43] And the whole premise of this emergency thing is, no, we need more arbitrary power.
[44] We need more power to do things.
[45] So what that means is, I mean, it could mean they can try to shut down drilling on private lands.
[46] They can take even more kind of ESG action against investment.
[47] I mean, I can't even imagine the scope of what they think they could do with emergency powers, given that with normal powers, they're already doing more than they should be able to do with emergency powers.
[48] To that point, we've seen the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity provide what they're calling a legal guide that they say Biden can follow under an emergency declaration.
[49] So they say, among other things, that he can end crude oil exports and all offshore oil and gas leasing, restrict U .S. fossil fuel exports, dramatically accelerate a transition to clean energy.
[50] Is that sort of approach possible and what impact would it have economically?
[51] Let me jump on this idea that, oh, the government has the power to dramatically accelerate the transition to clean energy or clean electricity.
[52] What does the government have the ability to do?
[53] What it certainly doesn't have the ability to do, which would be the relevant ability, is the ability to make, quote -unquote, clean energy globally cost -effective.
[54] So make it so cheap that China and India will want it.
[55] The only way to do that is to actually liberate the most.
[56] most potent forms of energy, and then really make sure that they have everything, all the freedom they need to develop and compete.
[57] And so that would mean things like I would call for the U .S. decriminalizing nuclear, more broadly just liberating all forms of energy from anti -development restrictions.
[58] That impedes all forms of energy, including promising things like deep geothermal.
[59] I mentioned nuclear already.
[60] But the government has no ability via emergency powers to make something cheap.
[61] That's just like saying, we have an emergency, so we need the government to create a superior phone than the iPhone for billions of people.
[62] That's not what the government does.
[63] Imagine Joe Biden leading an effort to surpass the iPhone globally.
[64] It's just an absurd thing.
[65] So what it means is they have the ability to forcibly prevent fossil fuel use and to forcibly mandate inferior things that people don't choose.
[66] And so what would it do to the economy?
[67] at what it's already done to the global economy.
[68] We've already had a global energy crisis that Europe got really lucky, but even they had mass destruction this past winter with.
[69] We're already seeing we have trouble keeping the lights on during the summer, despite the fact that whatever our temperatures are, they're far lower than other places around the earth that deal just fine with high temperatures, places like Singapore that are using fossil fuels and reliable electricity.
[70] We're seeing rising prices due to restricting fossil fuels and mandating inferior forms of energy.
[71] So I think we've already seen all the warning signs of anything in this direction, and they want to quintuple down with restricting the supply of cheap energy and then forcing expensive unreliable energy.
[72] So that makes all energy more expensive and less reliable.
[73] And then that makes everything more expensive and less reliable.
[74] So we have some recent comments from John Kerry, our presidential climate envoy, who talked about agriculture making up what he said is 33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
[75] He suggested we can't get to net zero on emissions without aggressively regulating agriculture.
[76] Here's the clip.
[77] Agriculture contributes about 33 % of all the emissions of the world.
[78] And we can't get to net zero.
[79] We don't get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution.
[80] And you just can't continue to both warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.
[81] It doesn't work.
[82] So we have to reduce emissions from the food system to keep the 1 .5 degrees alive.
[83] What are we to conclude there?
[84] What's the takeaway?
[85] John Kerry's statement is definitely not a scientifically or economically accurate statement.
[86] If you look at the last century, the planet has been warming, including from our impact, and agriculture is doing better than ever, in part because of longer growing seasons, which is a product of warming, but mainly because we have fossil fuels to power all the amazing machines that make agriculture productive.
[87] We have diesel powering a modern combine harvester that can reap and thresh a thousand times more wheat than one manual laborer can.
[88] So we have that kind of thing.
[89] And then we have natural gas derived fertilizer.
[90] So what we found is that fossil fuels as a whole make the earth incredibly good agriculturally.
[91] And the idea that we should be afraid of making it a little warmer versus being afraid of losing fossil fuels.
[92] That is absurd.
[93] What you see with all of these things is that there's always this fake concern for climate -related well -being, where, oh, I care so much about climate because I care about agriculture, but they care not at all about the huge proven benefits of fossil fuels for making these areas better.
[94] So one can conclude ignorance charitably.
[95] I would say there's more of a power lust where they're always looking for freedom to have a problem that requires their control as a solution.
[96] We've seen some statements from some political voices and in op -eds and major news outlets pointing to airplane flights as supposedly a big problem for the climate.
[97] There appears to be a growing push to clamp down on flying.
[98] Have you seen anything in terms of action in that direction?
[99] I mean, the hatred of flight, I find particularly repulsive.
[100] If you think about just what an amazing thing it is to be able to fly, the fact that everyone who's complaining about this prominently uses flight, and that flight is completely inaccessible to the vast majority of the world.
[101] And yet that is what is being attacked.
[102] So you're seeing it in the U .S., it's less.
[103] Insofar as there have been trial balloons, they haven't been as successful.
[104] In Europe, though, you're seeing clamping down, so saying, oh, you can't use flights unless we decide that it's a route that needs a flight instead of a train.
[105] In general, in Europe, there's a lot of hostility toward it.
[106] It's something we need to look out for because in general, for no good reason, U .S. intellectuals are always trying to copy Europe, despite the fact that Europe has a century history of having terrible collectivist, stateist ideas, have disastrous consequences.
[107] But unfortunately, U .S. intellectuals are still envious of European intellectuals and want to make America like Europe.
[108] Final question, zooming out a bit here to the broader discussion.
[109] Those who say the Earth is in danger, primarily blame five.
[110] fossil fuels, are fossil fuels really destroying the earth?
[111] Are they the primary cause of warming?
[112] We have to look at what are fossil fuels supposed to do in terms of, quote, destroying the earth.
[113] What they're mainly doing is emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but mainly CO2.
[114] And so that is a warming gas and a fertilizing gas.
[115] So it's very odd to say that a warming gas and a fertilizing gas is going to destroy the earth, given that most organisms on Earth, including humans, do better when it's warmer, and given that CO2 leads to a lot more greening, which we've seen dramatically increase around the world.
[116] So it's one thing to say, well, CO2 I'm concerned about because certain places might be warmer or we might have more heat waves.
[117] That'll happen, although it won't happen as much as people think because warming is distributed more in cold places than warm places.
[118] That's mainstream climate science.
[119] But the idea of the whole Earth, becoming less livable because you have more of a warming gas and a fertilizing gas, it's really the earth becomes a little bit more tropical.
[120] And so my view is this whole view that we're destroying the earth comes from the idea that human impact on earth is just inherently bad and a humanized earth is somehow a bad earth.
[121] Because if you look at it scientifically and humanistically, in general, we're making the earth a better place.
[122] In part, we're making it a little even more tropical.
[123] The main thing is we're making the Earth a place where human beings have a lot of energy to accomplish all our goals.
[124] And by the way, that includes any kind of preservation goals.
[125] So if we want to preserve a given species or a given area, with low -cost reliable energy, we can do that much more effectively than anyone has ever been able to do it.
[126] So this idea that fossil fuels, which empower us to accomplish our goals, including making the Earth better, and whose side effect is making the Earth more tropical, the idea they're destroying the Earth, that's an anti -human view.
[127] It's definitely not a scientific view.
[128] Alex, thanks so much for joining us.
[129] That was Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.