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How Fossil Fuels Will Save the World
- dreamweapon 12y agoThe environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them. Supposed argument (1) is definitely a straw man. What environmentalists generally warn of is not that we will "run out" of fossil fuels -- there always seem to be more reserves out there, deeper and deeper in the ground somewhere -- but that the environmental costs of extracting them are becoming ever greater, and are ultimately unsustainable. Argument (2) I don't know much about, so I'll pass. But is clearly of lesser importance. And (3) is standard pseudo-scientific libertarian denialism. It may help to understand the first source the author cities (Patrick Michaels) does paid advocacy work for the energy industry on climate change issues, for example: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Cato_Fellow_Patrick_Michaels_Runs_Climate_Denial_PR_Firm http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Ca...