The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 513
all too well. He writes that there have been improvements and technological
advances. I agree, there have been improvements, no thanks to the decades
of oil industry lies and obstruction. However, gasoline, petroleum diesel and
coal are still dirty, and its use creates terrible health risks. In addition, there's a
very major risk/side effect of petroleum oil fuels that neither Alex Epstein nor
Kathleen White points out: WAR!
The fact is that fossil fuels have been the cause of wars, disease, and ecological
and environmental disasters. Every significant war in the past 104 years has
been caused by or fought over petroleum oil. Tens of millions of people; no,
make that hundreds of millions of people have been killed in these wars. To the
war dead-toll, we have to add the people who have died as a result of the illnesses caused by the use of petroleum oil fuels. Then there's the life-long injuries and disabilities suffered by untold millions more. There's nothing moral
about any of this.
Even if it was correct to give some credit to fossil fuels for advances in mechanical devices (which it is not), the death and destruction caused by fossil fuels
make the argument for using them immoral.
And if you're the type of person that considers other animal life to be essential,
how can the literal slaughter of birds, fish, dolphins, turtles and other animals
from the wars and environmental disasters be anything less than wicked and
depraved?
Now, to be fair, the books written by Alex Epstein and Kathleen White are really
meant to fight against the belief in man-made climate change (global warming,
cooling, what-evering), not to denigrate alternative fuels. Therefore, they make
their arguments to try and show how the benefits of using coal, gasoline, diesel
fuels, and natural gas outweigh the concerns of (possible) climate change.
If Alex and Kathleen only made their arguments a debate on the legitimacy of
man-made climate change, I probably would not have gotten involved. I've already published my own position on man-made climate change, and so there
is little that I could add or disagree with in their respective books. However, in
their literary enthusiasm - or attempt to curry favor with the oil industry - they
chose to include criticisms of ethanol and other alternative fuels or energy
sources. Hence, I entered the fray. If they broke new ground in arguing against
ethanol, and they were able to provide proof of their complaints against ethanol,
it would have justified their inclusion in the debate about climate change - and
very possibly I could have learned something new.
