Science & Environmentalism — VOICES for REASON

This Earth Day, the Ayn Rand Center wants to help you understand the destructive campaign environmentalists have pursued for decades against energy production.

Environmentalists say they only want to protect us from the dangers of CO2 emissions, but when you look at the history of what energy projects they oppose, it becomes clear that environmentalists are not so concerned about carbon emissions—they fight against every form of practical, cheap energy regardless of whether it emits CO2 (like fossil fuels) or not (like nuclear and hydro).

What is their real agenda? Should oil and nuclear be viewed as “dirty” and “dangerous?” Do solar and wind represent the future of energy as the environmentalists would have you believe? What did the recent tsunami in Japan actually reveal about the safety of nuclear energy?

Check out the materials on this blog by ARC writers and speakers that expose how environmentalists consistently oppose the kind of energy industrial development requires.

We also hosted a live Q & A session this morning from our headquarters in Irvine, CA, where resident fellows Dr. Keith Lockitch and Alex Epstein answered viewers’ questions about “green energy,” environmentalism, the recent nuclear scare in Japan, and related issues. A recording of this Q&A session can be viewed below.

Updates

“Greens vs. Energy” by Alex Epstein published in American Thinker

Keith Lockitch quoted in National Geographic article on Earth Day

Alex Epstein and Keith Lockitch discuss energy and environmentalism on the PJTV news show “Front Page”

Recording of Q&A session:

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Proponents of “green energy” claim that oil and coal are “dirty” addictions and that “renewable” energy sources, like solar and wind, represent the future of energy. Should we get on board with their plans?

Not according to ARC fellow Alex Epstein. Last Earth Day he wrote:

Fact: there are three proven categories of industrial-scale energy: carbon-based, which produces about 86% of the world’s energy; nuclear, which produces roughly 6%, and hydroelectric, which produces another 6%. Revealingly, most environmentalists oppose nuclear and hydroelectric (both emissions-free) as insufficiently “green”; in the last several decades they have successfully made nuclear plants nearly impossible to build and shut down hundreds of dams.

That means a meager 2% of energy is produced by “green” sources such as wind, solar, and plant/animal materials (“biomass”). Is this a case of promising technologies denied a chance to develop? Hardly; they have been heavily subsidized in the United States for decades. Consider: In 1977 Jimmy Carter proclaimed that he would “develop permanent and reliable new energy sources. The most promising, of course, is solar energy, for which most of the technology is already available.”

But even with decades of subsidies, “green” proposals have failed to deliver the industrial-scale energy required to fuel our cars, light our homes, and make possible the daily activities of our modern economy—like running hospitals, transporting goods, and growing food on an industrial scale.

Why do “green” alternatives like solar and wind perform so poorly? According to Mr. Epstein:

“Green energy” has failed because it lacks the physical properties necessary to provide industrial-scale power: a combination of abundance, high energy concentration, and reliability. For example, where coal, oil, and natural gas can be burned whenever power is needed, at the exact quantity needed, wind and sunlight can be harnessed only when the weather cooperates—and electricity can’t be stored for a rainy day. Thus, they are always used as supplemental, not primary, sources of power on electric grids. Statistics about Denmark getting 10% or 20% of electricity from solar and wind are misleading; that is the maximum they can get without seriously endangering the grid with power outages and electronics-frying power overloads.

Yet despite the physical shortcomings of “green” alternatives, their proponents continue to push for political programs that would force a shift to these meager energy forms. What would this mean for our daily lives? In his essay “Energy Privation: The Environmentalist Campaign Against Energy” in Why Businessmen Need Philosophy, ARC fellow Dr. Keith Lockitch considers what life would be like without industrial-scale energy. He says:

Today industrial-scale energy fuels a global trade worth trillions of dollars, with automated factory equipment churning out all manner of life-enhancing goods and with petroleum-powered trucks, freight trains, and cargo ships carrying them all over the planet.

Yet even today, large numbers of people still suffer for lack of industrial-scale energy. About 1.5 billion people have no electric lighting, refrigeration, computer technology, electronic devices or medical equipment—no access to electricity at all. About 2.5 billion people—more than one-third of the world’s population—have no source of energy for heating or cooking other than biomass fuels such as wood or animal dung, and the resulting smoke from open fires is a leading cause of death in undeveloped countries. The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.6 million people die every year from respiratory diseases directly attributable to indoor air pollution—almost as many as die annually from AIDS.

Similarly, for lack of freshwater and sewage infrastructure built and powered using industrial-scale energy, “over 1 billion people globally lack access to safe drinking-water supplies, while 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation.” Consequently, “diseases related to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene result in an estimated 1.7 million deaths every year.” And for lack of an adequate capacity for food production and distribution, chronic undernourishment affects more than 1 billion people. The result is that in parts of the world today—particularly in parts of Africa—life expectancy is under forty years. It hasn’t been that low in the industrialized world since the eighteenth century—and today, in industrialized countries life expectancy is closer to eighty years.

Industrial-scale energy is an indispensable, life-saving value. It has completely transformed human life for the better in the industrialized world. And the benefits of industrial development will come to undeveloped countries only if they develop the infrastructure for the large-scale production and use of energy, as India and China are currently doing.

All of the life-saving, life-enhancing goods and services we enjoy today in industrialized society require massive amounts of cheap, concentrated, and reliable energy—and solar and wind just don’t cut it. But if “green energy” proponents get their way, what quality of life can we expect in the future?

If you have questions about the “green energy” movement, be sure to submit them here and watch the live Q&A on Earth Day (tomorrow, Friday, April 22) at 9 a.m. PST via ARC’s Facebook page to hear your questions answered by Dr. Keith Lockitch and Alex Epstein.

When the proponents today of “green” energy call for massive reductions in carbon emissions, they lead us to believe that their goal is to protect human beings from the negative consequences of a warmer planet. But is it?

The Ayn Rand Institute has been saying for years that, while the environmentalist movement has led the public to believe its goal is human welfare, this is a ruse. As Peter Schwartz wrote in “Man vs. Nature” more than a decade ago:

The common view of environmentalism is that its goal is the betterment of mankind—that it wants to purify our air and clean up our parks so that we can live healthier and happier lives. But that is a very superficial interpretation. When environmentalists are faced with a conflict between the “interests” of nature and those of man, it is man who is invariably sacrificed. If there is a choice between electric power for human beings and swimming lanes for salmon, it is always the fish that are given priority. If there is a choice between cutting down trees for human use and leaving them untouched for the spotted owl, it is always the bird’s home that is saved and human habitation that goes unbuilt. Why?

Because the requirements of human life are not the standard by which environmentalists make their judgments. Their goal is to maintain nature in its virginal state—despite the demonstrable harm this inflicts upon people. They want to preserve wildernesses, to enshrine wetlands, to tear down dams and levees—i.e., to prevent the man-made “intrusions” upon nature.

What does it mean if wilderness, not human life, is the standard by which environmentalists operate? In Schwartz’s words, “[it] means that man must suffer so that nature remains pristine.”

ARC fellow Dr. Keith Lockitch expands on this point:

Everything we do to sustain our lives has an impact on nature. Every value we create to advance our well-being—every ounce of food we grow, every structure we build, every iPhone we manufacture—is produced by extracting raw materials and reshaping them to serve our needs. Every good thing in our lives comes from altering nature for our own benefit.

Human survival, by its nature, requires re-shaping the earth to meet our needs. So if the environmentalist goal is to preserve the earth as is, it is human survival and progress that must be sacrificed. One of the most concrete, gross examples of this is the environmentalist campaign against DDT in the 1960’s. Dr. Lockitch explains:

The environmental crusade against DDT began with Rachel Carson’s antipesticide diatribe “Silent Spring,” published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide antimalaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence—Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson’s book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT’s crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation—alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT-use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.

[…]

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a “necessary” component of a “vibrant biosphere” and seeking a “reasonable accommodation” with them.

Similarly, today’s “green” energy proponents oppose every form of practical, cheap energy in order to minimize the human impact of industrialization on the earth. In his essay “Energy Privation: The Environmentalist Campaign Against Energy,” Dr. Lockitch notes:

Oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, hydroelectricity. Altogether, these sources provide essentially all of the world’s energy—more than 98% of it, to be exact. They collectively supply more than 96% of the world’s electricity, while petroleum alone accounts for more than 94% of the world’s transportation fuel. These energy sources are what currently power our modern world, and, given their indispensable role in agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and all the other elements of industrial civilization, it’s no exaggeration to say that they are literally keeping us all alive.

Yet, mainstream environmental groups systematically reject each one as unacceptable forms of energy.

With “green” alternatives like solar and wind being fantasy energy solutions, could the motive of “green” energy proponents actually be to oppose human welfare in the name of erasing man’s “footprint” from the earth? That is the controversial proposition Ayn Rand argues for at length in her book Return of the Primitive.

If you have questions about the “green energy” campaign and its opposition to every practical form of energy, or about environmentalism more broadly, be sure to submit them here and watch the live Q&A on Earth Day (Friday, April 22) at 9 a.m. PST to hear your questions answered by Dr. Keith Lockitch and ARC fellow Alex Epstein.

For years, environmentalists have warned us that economic progress under capitalism paves the way for future devastation. Smoking coal stacks blacken our lungs. Growing populations set the stage for widespread famine. Gas-guzzling SUVs warm the planet and lead to frequent hurricanes and droughts.

Ayn Rand held a radically different view of the impact of industrial development on human survival. In 1971, she wrote in the essay “The Anti-Industrial Revolution”:

In Western Europe, in the preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe’s population grew by 300 percent—which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great masses of people a chance to survive.

If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company):

1900—47.3 years

1920—53 years

1940—60 years

1968—70.2 years (the latest figures compiled)

Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent “Thank you” to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.

Rand viewed industrial development as an enormous positive that greatly improved the quality of life for everyone. Far from it being an impediment to human survival, she argued that industrialization dramatically changed for the better how people dealt with their environment. For example, she noted in the same essay:

Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In “nature,” the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man’s energy and spirit; it is a losing struggle—the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan; they had been men who lived without technology.)

ARC fellow Dr. Keith Lockitch expands on this point:

Consider the poster child of global warming alarm: Hurricane Katrina. In 1970, a severe tropical cyclone struck the coast of the Bay of Bengal, in what is today Bangladesh. It is estimated that the storm was a category 3 cyclone, and the death toll it left in its wake was estimated to have been as high as three hundred thousand people. Compare this with Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005. By the time it made landfall Katrina was also a category 3 storm and the directly affected population was comparable to that in Bangladesh. Yet the number of people dead or missing was far, far less—estimates put it at around two thousand

Without denying the tragedy of the lives lost to Katrina, two thousand versus three hundred thousand is an incredible difference. In assessing what accounts for that difference, one can debate the relative roles of social, political, geographic and climatologic factors, but there can be no question of the fundamental and decisive importance of the technology and infrastructure made possible by industrial capitalism. Unlike the helpless victims of the Bangladesh storm, the citizens of New Orleans could rely on advanced early warning systems and a functioning communications infrastructure, modern vehicles and paved roads to facilitate evacuation and transport relief supplies, sturdier homes and structures and advanced flood control systems, etc. Indeed, much of this even failed in New Orleans: the levees were breached, many people couldn’t or wouldn’t evacuate, the relief effort was delayed, and so on. Yet, even in spite of these failures, hundreds of thousands of lives were saved by the products of industrial technology and industrial-scale energy.

This is the real lesson of today’s climate-related tragedies: the immeasurable degree to which industrial development under capitalism has reduced our vulnerability to climate threats.

Read the rest of Dr. Lockitch’s paper here. Read more of Ayn Rand’s view on environmentalism here.

If you have questions about how industrial development has made us far less vulnerable to climate disasters or want to know about how it has kept us safer from other environmental dangers, like pollution, disease, resource shortages and more, be sure to submit your questions here and watch the live Q&A on Earth Day (Friday, April 22) at 9 a.m. PST to hear your questions answered by Alex Epstein and Dr. Keith Lockitch!

As Earth Day (April 22) approaches, the Ayn Rand Center wants to help you understand the destructive campaign environmentalists have pursued for decades against energy production.

Environmentalists say they only want to protect us from the dangers of CO2 emissions, but when you look at the history of what energy projects they oppose, it becomes clear that environmentalists are not so concerned about carbon emissions—they fight against every form of practical, cheap energy regardless of whether it emits CO2 (like fossil fuels) or not (like nuclear and hydro).

As ARC fellow Dr. Keith Lockitch explains in his essay “Energy Privation: The Environmentalist Campaign Against Energy” in the new collection Why Businessmen Need Philosophy:

Environmentalism is a broad social and political movement, with roots stretching back decades and with a diverse array of leaders, groups, institutions, and perspectives. But despite its diversity, it is, in essence, an intellectual movement animated by a particular ideology—by a set of philosophic premises that shape its actions and guide its ultimate direction. And the basic moral premise at the root of environmentalism is the premise that nature is something to be left alone—to be preserved untouched by human activity.

To the opponents of small hydro projects, for instance, the possibility of “cumulative impacts” on salmon runs or the habitat of the Furbish lousewort renders irrelevant the numerous homes that could be supplied with electricity. To Myers and his fellow desert activists, if a patch of scorched terrain is favored by the desert tortoise or the bighorn sheep, it should never be “bladed off” for the sake of any sort of industrial development—not even a solar power plant. This moral animus against human “intrusion” upon nature creates a basic conflict between the goals of the environmentalist movement and the needs of human life.

In the days leading up to Earth Day, Voices for Reason will be posting materials by ARC writers and speakers that expose how environmentalists consistently oppose the kind of energy industrial development requires.

Then on Earth Day, which is on Friday, April 22, we will be hosting a live Q&A session from our headquarters in Irvine, CA, where resident fellows Keith Lockitch and Alex Epstein will answer any questions you have about Earth Day, environmentalism, the recent nuclear scare in Japan, and related issues.

The event will be held at 9 a.m. PST and can be watched via the Ayn Rand Center Facebook page (you won’t need a Facebook account to attend the event).

If you have questions you would like answered, you can submit them via the Facebook page for this event (you will need a Facebook account for this). While the event is taking place, you can log onto Facebook and chat with us and others also watching. If you have a follow-up question, you can ask it at that time.

We encourage you to submit your questions!  And be sure to RSVP to the event if you are planning to attend.

On Earth Day, we’re told that we should take stock of our impact on our environment. The assumption, of course, is that it’s bad—that we are, to use the common phrase “destroying the planet.”

On this month’s Power Hour—my podcast/Internet-radio-show on energy issues—I bring in philosopher Dr. Onkar Ghate, a senior colleague of mine at the Ayn Rand Center, to question this assumption, and many other assumptions about the relationship between human beings in our environment. Dr. Ghate discusses everything from the political, philosophical, and religious origins of modern environmentalists (the leaders of Earth Day) to the Japanese nuclear situation to how industrialization has positively impacted our environment to the danger of “moderate” environmentalist policies.

I’ve read a lot about environmentalism over the years, and I sincerely believe that Dr. Ghate’s explanations in this podcast are some of the best, clearest explanations of environmental issues available anywhere. Make sure you listen to this interview at least once before Earth Day.

For more information on Power Hour, as well as other commentary on energy issues subscribe to my newsletter “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy” by sending an email.

Download “Power Hour with Alex Epstein,” Episode 3: Onkar Ghate

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image: sxc.hu

The Ayn Rand Center (ARC) along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) invite you to celebrate industrial civilization and defend the energy that makes it possible during “Human Achievement Hour” this Saturday at 8:30 p.m. EST.

The event coincides with “Earth Hour,” which encourages people worldwide to turn off their lights as a protest against carbon emissions. During “Human Achievement Hour,” we encourage you to leave your lights on and fully enjoy the benefits of industrial civilization made possible by burning fossil fuels. Beginning at 8 p.m. EST, CEI is hosting a celebration at its offices in Washington D.C. and via livestream.

Back in 2009, ARC fellow Keith Lockitch explained the importance of standing against the “Earth Hour” campaign:

Politicians and environmentalists, including those behind Earth Hour, are not calling on people just to change a few light bulbs, they are calling for a truly massive reduction in carbon emissions—as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels. Because our energy is overwhelmingly carbon-based (fossil fuels provide more than 80 percent of world energy), and because the claims of abundant “green energy” from breezes and sunbeams are a myth—this necessarily means a massive reduction in our energy use.

People don’t have a clear view of what this would mean in practice. We, in the industrialized world, take our abundant energy for granted and don’t consider just how much we benefit from its use in every minute of every day. Driving our cars to work and school, sitting in our lighted, heated homes and offices, powering our computers and countless other labor-saving appliances, we count on the indispensable values that industrial energy makes possible: hospitals and grocery stores, factories and farms, international travel and global telecommunications. It is hard for us to project the degree of sacrifice and harm that proposed climate policies would force upon us.

This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spend the hour stargazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offer special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.

Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.

Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about Earth Month, without any form of fossil fuel energy? Try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible.

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A common argument for “green” controls on the economy is that they are needed to promote “energy efficiency.” They aren’t–not in any rational sense of the term. All other things being equal, if the producer of, say, a washing machine can provide the same quality wash using less energy, the company will save its customers money and gain more buyers.

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine,” reveals that “energy efficiency” controls on washing machines do not promote energy efficiency–they promote energy deficiency: using less energy and getting worse results.

It might not have been the most stylish, but for decades the top-loading laundry machine was the most affordable and dependable. Now it’s ruined—and Americans have politics to thank.

In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.”

How’s that for progress?

The culprit is the federal government’s obsession with energy efficiency. Efficiency standards for washing machines aren’t as well-known as those for light bulbs, which will effectively prohibit 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year. Nor are they the butt of jokes as low-flow toilets are. But in their quiet destruction of a highly affordable, perfectly satisfactory appliance, washer standards demonstrate the harmfulness of the ever-growing body of efficiency mandates.

Next time someone tells you the government is needed to promote “energy efficiency,” remember these “efficient” washers that, as Kazman says, are “expensive” and “often have mold problems.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons

A recent New York Times op-ed floats the following trial balloon: force companies to label products and services with the amount of energy–especially oil–that goes into making them, so that we will reduce energy consumption just as we allegedly reduce calorie consumption based on mandatory food labels. (For what’s wrong with mandatory food labels, read this post by Don Watkins.) The author, Amanda Little, seems positively giddy at the idea of a “Decal” that would guilt Americans into using less energy, and perhaps into being primed for mandatory energy reductions.

Once Decal took hold, the Department of Energy could recommend daily energy allowances, in the same way the Department of Agriculture recommends daily intakes of different nutrients. Experts could offer “diet” plans for energy-efficient lifestyles, and the Internal Revenue Service could offer tax rebates to families that achieve certain energy-calorie reductions.

The whole food-calories/energy analogy is horrible. As human beings, food calories are something we can only healthily consume so much of. But there is no such limit when it comes to energy and machines. Energy is the capacity to do work–a potentially unlimited value; the more energy we use, the more productive we can be, and the more options we have to enjoy life (e.g., more travel).

Image: Wikimedia Commons

On the latest episode of Power Hour—the monthly Internet radio show where I interview today’s top energy experts to discuss today’s top energy issues—I talk to Michael Lynch, President of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, about the widespread theory of Peak Oil: the idea that the world faces an inevitable, imminent, and disastrous decline in oil production.

Here are a few of the many topics we covered:

• The most popular arguments for Peak Oil—do they add up?
• What is the future of oil production around the world?
• Why people keep confidently predicting “peak oil,” even though such predictions have been failing for decades.
• The overlooked role of politics and economics in determining rises and falls in oil production.

Download “Power Hour with Alex Epstein,” Episode 2: Michael Lynch

Subscribe to “Power Hour with Alex Epstein” on iTunes