The Moral Case for Alex Epstein

A Review of The Moral Case for FossilFuels, Alex Epstein (2014, 256 pages), as published in Alternatives Journal, December, 2015, by Andrew Welch.

Alex Epstein wants to shake up the way that we think about fossil fuels and challenge what behaviours we consider moral and immoral.  In his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, he proposes reframing the conflict of environmentalists versus the hydrocarbon industry.  It’s not a question of fossil fuel usage being good or bad – it’s a question of what standard of value we are using to judge it.  I agree.

The author is a self-labeled humanist – a term he uses to describe someone who “treats the rest of nature as something to use for his benefit; the nonhumanist treats the rest of nature as something that must be served.”  What may at first appear to be conceit actually makes sense if we look deep enough inside the value system of most humans.  He argues that we should all hold human life as our one and only standard of value.

I believe this is a must-read book for environmentalists and climate change activists, but it won’t be an easy read.  Firstly, it’s hard to read anything that contradicts your strongly-held beliefs; however, questioning those beliefs is essential to gaining a truly balanced perspective.  Secondly, Epstein clearly targets an audience on the totally opposite end of the spectrum, opening with ‘proving’ that all the so-called ‘experts’ preaching the supposed detrimental impacts of rampant fossil fuel consumption are dead wrong and always have been.  (The ironic single-quotes and sneering italics are his frequent literary devices, not mine.)  Thirdly, although he conveniently lists the most common logical fallacies that surface in this debate, he happily (and frustratingly) employs each one in his own arguments.

Epstein is a practical philosopher and that’s where he shines.  He’s not a scientist, and when he attempts to take on science, his misuse and misrepresentation of statistics and data is unmistakable and shoddy.  Like every other non-scientist (and, sadly, some scientists) he chooses policy-based evidence over evidence-based policy.  To be fair, it’s a habit all humans have: being blind to evidence that contradicts our beliefs.  Furthermore, he does also present facts that many activists choose not to see.  However, he’s also happy to make up his own, such as “if there is no equal or superior alternative, then any government action against fossil fuels … is a guaranteed early death sentence for billions.”

The book is highly critical of mainstream thought leaders because they’re always preaching the costs of fossil fuels and never the benefits.  This is quite true, and while the reason might be not so much a bias as a tacit acceptance that such benefits go without saying, if we don’t consciously consider them, it may well skew our perspective.  Fossil fuels have made near-miraculous contributions to our standard of living in the last two centuries, and anyone who says we should stop using them needs to have their arguments seriously questioned.  Fair enough.

Accepting that there are errors and bias on both sides, I’d rather review the essence of his argument – that being, in his words:  “Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous – because human life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”  And consequently, we should burn more, not less.

The problem is the standard he has chosen to judge our morality as a species.  He may be a humanist, but his goodness indicators are entirely quantitative measures:  More people, living more years, earning more money, to buy more stuff – all good.  For example, the only scale he uses (repeatedly) to measure safety is number of deaths (including life expectancy and infant mortality) – never health.  Happiness?  Quality of life versus standard of living?  Those he avoids entirely.  By his singular measure of success, a planet with 120 billion extravagant consumers, living 150 years each should be a stunningly better place for all (all humans, that is).  It’s a deeply-flawed more-is-always-better approach for an author who claims to be writing about morality.

In The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein reframes the fossil fuel debate correctly (as a value question), but, with Ayn Rand as his muse, he employs a highly questionable perspective for his big picture: ethical egoism.  Still, I think this book should be on every environmentalist’s bookshelf, if for no other reason than Stephen Covey’s "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

The second review

The second full review of The Value Crisis was published by the well-respected Alternatives Journal.  I was totally blown away by this praise from such a prestigious journal.  As with my first review, reprinting it here gives readers another forum where they can post comments and feedback.

Andrew Welch has a thing about numbers.  He loves them. But as he gradually began to see the connection between growing, multiple global crises and the lack of awareness surrounding the day-to-day human behaviour that produces them, he began to wonder if humanity’s over-reliance on numbers was responsible. “We use debt to conjure up trillions of dollars from nothing; we voraciously run through our planet’s limited resources; and we recklessly contaminate our environment with waste, byproducts and dangerous substances.” The Value Crisis is the product of his attempts to reconcile this disconnect between behaviour and consequence.

The value crisis referenced in the title is the conflict between our human value system, which is ancient, and our number-based value system, which has developed over time, most of it very recently. Welch’s premise is that these two systems are incompatible and unbalanced and that fundamental human values are being displaced at great cost to us all – personally, as a species, and ultimately for every creature on the planet. This crisis of values is posited as the greatest challenge facing society and as the root cause of most of our environmental, economic and social ills.

Welch traces the origins of the value crisis from the beginnings of numeracy and the invention of math, through theories of decision making and indicators of well-being, to the history of money, the workings of the global economy and the nature of corporations. It’s quite a ride, and there are many fascinating side trips along the way.

For instance, he explains the concept of exponential growth (a phenomenon that is notoriously poorly understood), thoroughly and from several points of view. The examples are thoughtful and Welch relates them directly to the central premise of the book. And he performs this feat over and over again with such seemingly disparate concepts as the law of diminishing marginal utility, prospect theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the fractional reserve system and the pursuit of happiness.

The book is dizzyingly well researched, drawing on a wide range of contemporary scientific research, literature of all kinds and possibly more than one accounting textbook. It is also jam-packed with details, facts, quotes and equations. Fortunately, Welch seems to have an orderly turn of mind and his argument is well built and progresses logically. He makes good use of headings and text boxes to remind the reader where she is going and where he has been. Each chapter begins with an anecdote to ground the topic and ends with a comprehensive summary. He regularly returns to his central premise, showing how the new information he’s just introduced relates to the basic theme. Anything less would have made the book quite hard to follow and not nearly as useful. At the end he has gathered all the boxed text in a separate section and included page references.

There are many good reasons to read this book. For one thing, it will likely give you many excellent conversation starters. Did you know that capuchin monkeys make exactly the same poor financial decisions as humans? How about the fact that usury is a transaction in which money is acquired without goods or labour being exchanged (through the manipulation of numbers), that until recently it was considered unethical, and that it describes a great deal of today’s financial activity? Or that if corporations really were people, they would be classified as psychopaths?

Another reason is that this book is a great reference on the in and outs of economics, politics, finance and the human condition. But the best reason to read this book is for the basic background it can give the reader on how we got into our current environmental and social predicament – the historical and behavioural origins of a dysfunctional world.

Welch is remarkably free of blame for the groups of people operating within this dysfunctional system. He saves the blame for the system itself, explaining how what appears to be greed is simply an inevitable consequence, a side effect, of the numbers. Ultimately, numbers in general and money specifically, change the nature of our relationship to each other and to the world.
Along the journey, the author provides a number of possible solutions to the value crisis – some of them headsmackingly commonsensical and some of them wildly idealistic and unique. It is well worth reading this entertaining and accessible book to find out what those solutions are.

The Value Crisis: From Dollars to Democracy, Why Numbers are Ruining Our World by Andrew Welch, Caledon : Aanimad Press, 216 pages. Reviewed by Janet Kimantas

The first review

The first full review of The Value Crisis was just published in Tapestry Magazine (King Township, Winter 2015)  Reprinting it here gives me an open forum where other readers can post comments and feedback.  Please chime in!

reviewed by Hugh Marchand

"In The Value Crisis, Andrew Welch voices the concern – and examines the causes - that many of us have but cannot articulate as well as he does: that human values everywhere are decaying at an alarming rate.  And yet, collectively, we seem helpless or resistant to doing anything about it.  Why?  He adroitly sidesteps the blame games played by competing ideologies and economic interests and suggests instead a more fundamental cause – that we are witnessing the growing dominance of number-based value systems to the detriment of age-old human value systems.  Human value systems deal with quality of life, while number-based systems value quantity, and implicit in that is the possibility (and danger) of unchecked growth.

This is an elegant thesis that is launched through a series of simple questions that any uneasy person might ask.  An example: “Why does it cost more to repair things than to replace them?”  Reviewing all the questions piques our curiosity.  We want to know what it is that underlies this list of seemingly unrelated inquiries.

The author does not disappoint us; this is no stodgy economics text book, and anyone who suffers from math phobia has nothing to fear from this book.  The language is plain and jargon-free; technical terms where needed for understanding, are reduced to simple expressions.  Given the seriousness of the present situation as the author presents it, and the implications for the future, this is a surprisingly upbeat read.

The impact of undue reliance of number-based value systems is examined in detail in topics as wide-ranging as decision-making, international banking and currency, the unregulated power of corporations, and the erosion of our democratic institutions.  Welch brings to the discussion his interests and expertise in the arts, environmental and social issues, and his solid grounding in education, business and mathematics.  Throughout the piece his linking of personal anecdotes to the study of the larger issues provides remarkable clarity to what he has to say.

His objective is also clear, as evidenced by www.TheValueCrisis.com and the associated open blog:  To inspire discussions for a new way of considering the multiple challenges facing us.

The thrust of Andrew Welch’s book is to bring awareness of the coming and seemingly inevitable catastrophe.  His call to action is realistic and not devoid of optimism:  We cannot prevent what is coming, he states, but we can “ease the transition” and he cites examples of what can be done.  His speculation that a catastrophe may sweep away many elements of number-based value systems and improve the quality of life for many, is based on plausible economic theory.  This is a thought-provoking book that you should read, act upon, and share."

Thank you for that, Hugh Marchand.  My next major initiative is to offer book club sets to book clubs and libraries.  Book clubs are the perfect forum to find readers eager to discuss these ideas.  Having an author that is willing to attend their discussion night is even better!