Science & Technology

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014. 256 pp. $27.95 (hardcover). 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…

Alex Epstein focuses on two essential points: We should consider the profound benefits of fossil fuels, not just its costs and problems; and we should measure these benefits and costs by the standard of human life, not untouched nature. Epstein reviews relevant scientific and historical facts in view of those major themes.

Both Brittany Maynard and Christina Symanski bravely chose to decide for themselves the terms on which they would live and die—and both women bravely chose to make their decisions and struggles public in order to highlight the inhumanity of laws forbidding assisted suicide.

Alex Epstein discusses his bestselling book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and how burning these fuels makes the Earth a better place for human beings.

Far from threatening human life and well-being, fossil fuels make possible the mass production of goods and services—including food and the delivery thereof—that people need in order to live and prosper in a modern, industrialized society. Thank the energy producers without whom most of the food we buy simply would not exist.

The U.S. Senate will vote Tuesday on a bill to permit construction of the cross-border section of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. That this life-serving project has been blocked for six years is a moral obscenity. Oil producers have a moral right to transport their product across borders as they see fit.

Today fossil fuels—the lifeblood of modern industrial civilization—are under constant attack by environmentalists, including certain journalists, pundits, politicians, and activists. But, as Alex Epstein argues, the war on fossil fuels is impractical and immoral. He makes this case in his pathbreaking new book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

With the mid-term elections upon us, President Obama and other Democrats are trying to take credit for lower gasoline prices and other economic benefits flowing from the record volumes of oil being produced by U.S. oil companies. But Obama and his Democrat cohorts don’t produce oil; they throttle those who produce oil.

Petroleum is a fundamental fuel of our industrial economy. Gasoline prices are falling largely because many good people and businesses in the oil industry are and have for decades been developing technologies that increase production and decrease costs, which, in turn, render lower prices at the pump and elsewhere.

Although it is true that a person may reach a point when, given the diminished quality of his life, he no longer deems it worth living, the proper principle guiding such decisions—a principle Ezekiel Emanuel never states—is that the only person properly in a position to decide whether his life is worth living is the individual himself.