Energy Sound Bites on Fossil Fuels, Part 1

Originally published: July 20, 2024

For four years now, ETP has had fun breaking down every imaginable energy, environmental, and climate issue down into brief, self-contained “talking points” that are easy to understand and share.

Today, I am sharing a new, even shorter form of ETP: Energy Sound Bites. The goal of Energy Sound Bites is to distill key facts and insights about energy, environmental, and climate issues into a form—100 characters or less—that’s short enough to remember and repeat whenever you need them.

I’ll start the Energy Sound Bites series with one of my favorite topics: the future of fossil fuels.

At root, there are 3 core truths about the future of fossil fuels:

Today, I’ll share some Energy Sound Bites to support the first core truth: We must think about fossil fuels in a balanced way.

We must think about fossil fuels in a balanced way.

• To decide what to do about fossil fuels we must be balanced, looking at both negatives and positives.

  • Most “experts” look at the negatives of fossil fuels but ignore huge positives.

    • Many “experts” ignore that much of the world would starve without fertilizer from natural gas.¹

    • Many “experts” ignore that much of the world would starve without oil-powered agricultural machines.

  • Fixating on the negatives and ignoring the positives of any technology is deadly.

    • If we just looked at the negatives of antibiotics and ignored the positives, billions would die.

• Fossil fuels do impact climate—but even there we must consider positives along with negatives.

  • We can’t just look at how warming increases heat waves, we also must look at lives saved from cold.

• A huge, ignored climate positive we get from fossil fuels is the ability to master climate danger.

  • Fossil fueled cooling allows us to dramatically reduce danger from heat.

  • Fossil fueled heating allows us to dramatically reduce danger from cold.

  • Fossil fueled irrigation allows us to dramatically reduce danger from drought.²

  • Fossil fueled evacuation systems allow us to dramatically reduce danger from storms.³

  • Fossil fueled climate mastery has helped us become safer than ever from climate.

  • The climate death rate has decreased by 98% over the last century as fossil fuel use has risen.⁴

  • Sadly most “experts” ignore fossil fuels’ climate positives, including climate mastery.

    • The IPCC’s 1000+ page climate reports ignore all the ways fossil fuels increase climate safety.

• In weighing fossil fuels’ positives and negatives, we must be precise—not exaggerate or fabricate.

  • Sadly many “experts” exaggerate the negatives of fossil fuels in addition to ignoring the positives.

    • Al Gore portrays 20 ft sea level rise as imminent when extreme UN projections are 3 ft / 100 years.⁵

  • If we carefully weigh fossil fuels’ positives and negatives, it becomes clear we need more of them.

Next up: Only by using fossil fuels can 8 billion people have the energy they need to survive and flourish.

Michelle Hung contributed to this piece.

References