Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAlex Epstein: The Randroid Climate Liar Whose Bullshit The GOP Just Can't Get Enough Of
Epsteins name may not be recognizable to most Americans, but his star has been rising on the right for quite some time. We may all start hearing about him more often because the time is ripe for his particular brand of fossil fuel boosterism to become the GOPs mainstream climate talking point.
Epstein began his career at the Ayn Rand Institute, where he rose to prominence with op-eds on subjects like abortion, animal rights, and keeping the United States hooked on oil, which he described in 2006 as a wonderful, life-sustaining product. In 2011, after leaving the organization, he founded the Center for Industrial Progress; per its website, CIP is devoted to helping industry fight for its freedom, with new ideas, arguments, and policies that will improve our economy and our environment. Since then, hes written two books (2014s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and 2022s Fossil Future). Hes been on countless right-wing media shows extolling the virtues of fossil fuels, and debated climate activist Bill McKibben on the topic in 2015. Despite his carbon-loaded arguments, Epstein famously does not want to be called a climate denier, claiming that he explicitly acknowledge[s] the phenomenon of global warming.
CIPs financial activities are harder to track than those of other right-wing organizations working against climate action. Epsteins organization openly bills itself as a for-profit foundation, claiming on a (now-deleted) part of its website that it is proudly not a 501c-3 non-profit. Still, even without this financial information, its clear from the company Epstein keeps that hes become a darling of groups with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. This year alone, hes spoken at two organizations that are members of the State Policy Network, a cluster of groups that work with the Koch-funded American Legislative Council, or ALEC, and gave a keynote address at the Heartland Institutes annual climate conference. Heartland has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil and coal giants to push climate denial.
Theres a big difference, however, between the rhetoric of these old-school organizationswhich, traditionally, have challenged the science behind climate changeand Epsteins schtick. While Epstein does his fair share of bad-faith science (like promoting the idea that carbon dioxide is necessary as a plant food), his central point is that using fossil fuels is a moral imperative. Because humans have achieved so much in the past using coal, gas, and oil, his thesis goes, we should keep using them. By contrast, stopping fossil fuel use will do nothing but stifle human flourishing and end up only hurting the worlds poor. The fastest way to decrease energy poverty and overall poverty is to end all favoritism for wasteful, unreliable solar and wind schemes, he writes. And above all reject any proposal to outlaw reliable fossil fuels and nuclear in favor of unreliable renewable energy.
EDIT
https://newrepublic.com/post/174478/alex-epstein-gop-darling-fossil-fuels-good-humanity
KPN
(15,679 posts)himself -- a principal goal of any Ayn Rand'er I know -- by defending the fossil fuel industry in the face of global warming. And that's low hanging fruit for a grifter.