The Candace Owens Show: Alex Epstein | Candace Owens Show

We had Guy Rethenschaler on, who is a congressman, and he's all about energy. Oh, I didn't see that one. Yeah, it was really great. So this is a great follow-up to it. Awesome. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we are rolling into another episode of the Candace Owens show. And let me ask you a serious question. Just for one second, stay with me. Serious question. Have you ever thought for a moment that maybe cows do fart too much? Ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about maybe we should ban airplanes? Me neither. I've never thought that. Not once. Here to discuss why not, I have Alex Epstein, who is the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress as well as the author of the book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Alex Epstein, welcome to the Candace Owens show. Thanks for having me. We're already in trouble because the moral case for fossil fuels, people don't like that. There is no moral case for fossil fuels. It's all bad. We need to just go backwards and stop making things because we are having a terrible impact on the planet. And what we need, Alex, is the green new deal. Do you agree? With none of that. Yeah, with none of it. So let's start out at, there's this interesting narrative today that the world is a bad place and it's getting worse. And what's interesting is if you look at the data, the world is the greatest place that it's ever been and it's getting better. So if you look at, say, population, how many people the earth can support, how much money we make, how much, how long we live, all of those things are improving rapidly. Just to give you one data point, I was born in 1980, in 1980, four out of 10 people in the world lived on less than $2 a day. Today it's less than one out of 10. So you just think about how amazing is the world that we live in. And then fossil fuels, that drives it all because energy is the industry that powers every other industry and fossil fuels are by far the world's leading source of energy. So that's enabled us to produce all the amazing food and clothing and shelter and healthcare that have made life great. We can also talk about, they've also produced a much better environment. We live in the safest, cleanest environment in history. So the whole narrative that the world is going to hell and that we need to rescue it by getting rid of fossil fuels, it's just all wrong. Well, that seems weird because Greta Thunberg, who is a scientist, a leading, no, she's not leading in anything. Greta Thunberg, who is a high school dropout, she says that we're not going to have a planet to live on and how dare you? So what is your argument to the fact that we have so many people and now Congress has taken it up? She's on the cover of Time Magazine. She is considered one of the most influential person. In fact, just a few days ago, they announced that she is once again up for a Nobel Peace Prize because she has bought this most important discussion to the forefront of the world, which is that the planet, we're not going to have a planet to live on in, say, a couple of decades. How do you respond to her? So what's interesting about Greta is, as you indicate, so she's 16. She obviously doesn't have any specific knowledge about these issues, but the reason she's so prominent is because she's a child and she's saying what everyone thinks is obvious, which is that the world is terrible and getting worse because of fossil fuels. So what's really interesting is not why she thinks it, but why lots and lots of smart people think it. And I'll make it even harder. There's a really interesting data point, which tracks how safe the climate is. So it tells you how many people die a year from storms and flood and heat and cold. And you would assume that's gone way up, right? I mean, everything you'd expect, climate related deaths are just going out of control, like thousands, millions, you know, your people are dying. So 12 years ago, I learned the data on this and it just totally blew my mind because what I learned is in the 1930s, you had years where there are millions of people a year dying from climate related causes. And then when I looked at the data, then it had gone down to tens of thousands. So you go from millions of people to tens of thousands. And if you look at the data, even the last year we have, 2018, it's about 6,500 people around the world died from climate related. Like think about that compared to medical accidents and car crashes. So supposedly the worst thing in the world is actually something that's getting better or safer from climate. And the short answer to why, and this is a big subject, but it goes to my background, which is philosophy. People aren't looking at the world from a human perspective. They're looking at the world from an anti-human perspective. Their whole perspective is if we're changing the earth, if we're having any effect on the climate at all, then that's bad and we should stop. Versus my, I have a pro-human perspective. My perspective is if we're making the world overall a much better place for human beings to live, we should keep doing what we're doing. A big element of this and why I think it would help Greta if she stayed in school, and I talk about this often, is just that our school system is not teaching history. It's not teaching. You talk about data points. If you look back this year, people are not learning that. They're almost obsessed with the present moment, right? And they just accepted that the world is terrible and it's getting worse. And they have, like you said, no data points to prove that. I mean, very interestingly, I mean, the whole concept of what they're arguing for is that if we removed human influence, the world would just be great. We wouldn't have these periods of cold. We wouldn't have these periods of heat. The world would be amazing. But that just does not hold up to human history. It is just so wrong. It's ridiculous. I mean, I was reading the other day more about the mini ice age that happened in medieval Europe. Like, literally, things just got so cold for no reason and rivers froze in Europe and it had never happened before. And it had nothing to do with technology, had nothing to do, these people were not running around in cars. You know what I mean? There was no gasoline. This is, you know, the 1300, right? And people don't, they have no answer to that. So this is a really important point. And so I call it the mythology about the planet, the perfect planet premise, and it's basically that until human beings came along and started impacting things, the planet was perfect. And the way they think of it is that, like, they think of the planet as stable and safe and sufficient until human beings screw it up, right? This is the perspective. And what's interesting about this is it's a totally false assumption, but it shows you how powerful assumptions are. Because when you hold this perfect planet premise, even if you're a genius climate scientist, you have all these crazy expectations about, oh my gosh, the world is going to end if we do anything. You know, if we disrupt the delicate balance, I mean, they really think the world operates according to, like, the Lion King, you know, it's like the delicate balance and then worse scar, you know, ruining it and taking all this, all this stuff. And there's this whole mythology, the perfect planet premise, and the reality is what I call the imperfect planet premise. So nature is actually dynamic, dangerous, and deficient. And what human beings do is we transform the world using a lot of energy and a lot of machines to be a much more livable place. So the reason they get it backward is they're not looking at the world from a human perspective, and they have this dogma of the perfect planet premise, and that way even geniuses become idiots. Right. And they also make it seem like, because what goes hand in hand about the climate is they want to protect animals, right? And they make it seem like animals never have a negative impact on the climate whatsoever, right? So they pay no attention to overpopulating certain animals, and they say, nobody, nobody should hunt. We should never do anything. We should never touch the environment. We should never touch the forest. We should do nothing. As if this, like you said, as if the world would be absolutely perfect if there was no human influence. But in reality, the world in so many ways has gotten so much better because of human influence, because of the technology that we bring, because of the science that we bring, because we're able to study and to understand the earth in a different regard. If you're measuring, as long as you're measuring it by human well-being. So I think of everything as I'm measuring good and bad by what I call human flourishing. So can human beings live to their highest potential? If you measure our impact on the world by human flourishing, it's amazingly positive, right? The earth used to be a terrible place to live. Even 200 years ago, it was a terrible place, even in the richest places in the world. And now it's an amazing, it's an amazing place. So when people are viewing the world as terrible, they're not measuring it by a human standard. They're measuring it by an anti-human standard. Their belief, as you indicated, is if human beings impact something, it's bad. If the rest of nature impacts something, it's good. And the way I think of this is anything the human race does is bad. And so I call them human racists. It's really, that's their perspective. I mean, it's in a sense worse than conventional racism because they're saying the whole human race, anything we impact is bad. And think about that. What low self-esteem that gives us as a species. And why is it that all these kids are having all these terrible psychological problems? Because they're told that being a human and living a human life makes you bad. Right. Which is completely ridiculous. And it's almost an infestation, especially across college campuses. And I read a story recently, which is quite ironic because it just shows the irony of the way a lot of these students live, which is that they wouldn't give up anything, by the way. They're not giving up their smartphones. They're not going to give up anything for the planet. But there was a professor. It was at Oxford University. Did you read the story? It's a great story. It's such a great story. So I just want to reiterate to everyone who is not maybe not aware of that's listening to this. But the students were up in arms and doing what they do and protesting, demanding that the university divest from the oil industry and saying it was wrong, of course, obviously, because blah, blah, blah, blah, all the Greta Thunberg argument is terrible for the environment and we should not be invested in this way as a university. So the professor came back to the students and I'm obviously paraphrasing here. And he said, you know, I cannot wave a magic wand and divest us from the oil industry, but I can turn off the heat, the dead of winter, the gas, the gas heat in all of your dorms. And of course, the students would have none of that. They said it's dangerous. Right. This is that would be dangerous. Well, that's nature. Right. Nature is a dangerous place. Even by their view, it's warmer than it should be. But yet they're saying it's too cold, which brings us to the fact that, again, nature is is is dynamic, dangerous, deficient. It's not a great place to live unless we have low cost energy and fossil fuels are the best way we have of producing that. That's absolutely right. And I think that we were talking about this off camera, that a lot of this is due to the education system. And because you said you got into fossil fuels and you were twenty seven years old. I got into it when I was twenty nine years old, twenty twenty eight years old, maybe two years ago. And I only got into it because of my husband, who worked in mining. And he's just sort of always had a natural interest. And he was explaining to me something that's so important. I want to stress this against people that are listening. The entire world is it's not there's not just the implications of of the environment when we're talking about fossil fuels. We're also talking about the implications of our place in the world, the entire world. If you do not understand the world map according to who is energy dependent or who is energy independent, then you do not understand the power structures of the entire globe. And that really is the truth. And that is why people understanding when people are telling us that we need to just give up all of this and go back to living like caveman. The question they need to ask themselves is, would you be comfortable, you know, being at the bottom of society? I mean, one way to think about energy, I use the term machine calories because we have the idea that for our body, we need calories to operate. And the thing is, all of our machines, they need calories, too. So everything in life that we do using machines involves energy. And if you take the U.S., we have 100 our machines do 100 times more physical work than we do. So if you look at our amazing standard of living, it's because we have 100 machine servants operating on our behalf all the time. Now, imagine what happens if you pass something like the Green New Deal. You bring that down to 25, 20, 15. What does that happen for your standard of living? But also, as you indicated, what does that mean for your national security? World War One, World War Two were both won on who was better at producing energy and in particular, who was better at producing oil. As you know, we are now the world's leading producer of oil and oil is the world's most versatile form of energy because it's so, so portable, unlike anything else. And so it's terrifying to think we have people talking about let's ban fracking, which is the process by which we get half the oil that we produce. And there's no knowledge of what this would do to our lives and what this would do to our security. So I agree that the education is just horrible. And I, you know, I supposedly went to really good schools. I went to college at Duke and I learned nothing positive about fossil fuels the first 20 some years of my life. And the way I think of it is, imagine if I had with antibiotics, if I had only learned about the side effects and not learned about benefits. This is what we learn about fossil fuels, right? We only hear about the side effects and then they're distorted and exaggerated. But we only hear about the benefits. If you're talking about fossil fuels, just like antibiotics, the first thing you have to say is, OK, this saves billions of lives. If you have issues with it, we can talk about the issues. But if you don't talk about benefits, you're going to be like the person who denies their kids antibiotics and kills them. That's really what they're talking about with our society. That's a great analogy and one that I will definitely use. That's a really, really great analogy. They're talking about it like antibiotics. So let me ask you a question. What is your perspective on some of the clean energy solutions? Do you have any in mind? Solar. Let's go solar first and then we'll go wind and then we'll go hydro. Well, so broadly speaking, what what we should be in favor of is energy. Like we don't really care where it comes from. We want it to have a few characteristics that we need it to be reliable. That's one really important thing. We need to have as much of it as we need on demand. And then we need it to be low cost on a large scale, because if it's not low cost on a large scale, then people can't have it. And part of the context is in the world today, three billion people lack reliable, low cost energy. Just think about that. Like no. And a billion people lack electricity totally. So no refrigerator, no lights, no warming. I mean, the most they're getting is they're cooking their food and heating their homes with wood and animal dung. So we've got a world of eight billion people and three billion are what I call unempowered, right? They don't have they can't use machine power to improve their lives. And so when we're looking at sources of energy, the question isn't just, oh, can this technically produce energy at some price at some point in some place? It's can it produce reliable, low cost energy for billions of people? Can it be scaled? Yeah. Can it be scaled and can it be reliable and can it be versatile? Can it do all the things like flying planes and running trains and agriculture? I mean, Agriculture Day runs on oil and it runs on natural gas. So we have to first understand that fossil fuels have this amazing thing where they provide 24-7 energy for every need of billions of people. And so when you're looking at something like solar and wind, the question isn't like, oh, do I like the sun? It's has anyone figured out how to create a process by which we can turn sunlight into low cost, reliable energy? And the short answer for all of these is going to be no. So if you talk about so so I'm all in favor of people trying, but I need to recognize the reality about whether they have and if they haven't, they should be free to try. So I'm in favor of energy freedom. But unfortunately, the Green New Deal is it's basically outlawing fossil fuels and then mandating solar and wind. And so if you take solar and wind, they have the same basic issue, which is that they are unreliable inputs, the sun and the wind or they're what are called intermittent. And so what you need to do is you need a process to take an unreliable input and then create a reliable output. Well, how are you going to do that? One way you could think of is maybe I'll have a battery and I'll store a ton of it. Turns out that's so expensive. Nobody does it that way. What they do is they combine the solar panel and wind turbine and then they combine it with a reliable source of energy like coal or gas or nuclear. And so what happens is and at any given time, the solar and wind can go to almost zero. So think about that. You have to build all this infrastructure, what I call this unreliable energy infrastructure. But at any point in time, it can go to zero. So then how much reliable energy infrastructure do you need? A hundred percent. So basically what you need is you need to build a 100 percent reliable energy system. And then on top of that, you build the unreliable energy system now, which is going to cost more just building the reliable energy system or adding the unreliable energy system. And this is and it gets even worse, actually, because the way the unreliable energy system works, it goes up and down all the time. And what that forces is the fossil fuels and the nuclear. They need to go up and down all the time. And so that's like stop and go traffic. You're operating our grid on stop and go traffic. So you actually end up using the fossil fuels really inefficiently. And this is why, to whatever extent you're using solar and wind, it drives up the cost. But there's no such thing as self-sufficient solar and wind. It's really solar coal or wind coal, because they're really parasites on the reliable forms of energy. So, of course, they can't scale in this 100 percent renewable way. And what about hydro? Hydro is fantastic. So I mentioned I'm looking at things from a pro-human perspective. I want any form of energy that can actually be reliable and low cost on a large scale for human beings. So hydro is great. It's just used for electricity, though. It's not used for airplanes and agriculture and mobility. But the other thing is, it's very site specific. You can do it in places like Washington State where you have the topography. Yeah. But you can't do it around the world. So when people say, oh, well, there's this fallacy of, oh, well, we use hydro. Why can't everyone else use hydro? Or Iceland uses geothermal. Why can't everyone else do it? But you have to see, is it scalable? Can it be used everywhere? And one thing that's great about fossil fuels and also nuclear, we can talk about nuclear, is it's a very dense form of energy. So you can move it all around the world and basically produce it anywhere. Well, I do want to talk about nuclear before. I just want to make this very clear to everybody, because what we're saying here isn't really crazy. What we're saying is that regarding solar, wind and water as relying on them for energy, not every place is sunny, not every place is windy and not every place has the water reserves for us to be able to do that. So we eventually have to then fall back on coal and these other more efficient structures. It's a very simple thing to understand. I mean, water, at least where it is, you can use it almost 24-7. So I designate energies as reliables and unreliable. So you can think of solar and wind as those are the unreliables. And then hydro is in the category of the reliables. I mean, it's a little bit weather dependent, like if it doesn't rain and stuff. But the main problem there is location. But solar and wind are in a different category where it's not sunny today. It's not windy today versus or a given, you know, it's it's clouds. I live in Laguna Beach and I'm just walking around all the time. And even, you know, 10 a.m. in the morning, there's not enough sun for the solar panels. But one thing that's interesting, though, about the modern environmental movement, you're mentioning hydro, but they're generally very anti hydro. For instance, the Sierra Club, if you look at their website, one of their top achievements is here's how many hydro dams we've shut down. And if you look at how renewable is classified, most renewable classifications exclude hydroelectric. But what is their issue with it? Their issue is they think it goes back to their their dogma. It has too much impact on the planet. So they'll say, well, it interferes with the swimming pattern of the salmon. So, for example, you know, that movie Avatar, which is kind of a veiled thing about catastrophic climate change, James Cameron, the director, right after making that movie, he went down to Brazil to try to shut down a hydroelectric dam. So the modern environmental movement, it's really an anti human environment. They should stop drinking water. That movement, they should all just stop drinking water. You know what I mean? Because it's just it harms the environment when human beings drink water. I mean, I think that's that's really you know, it harms human beings. That'll be there. That'll be where they're at. If we if we just around the corner, because they're so ridiculous, there's no way to please them. You know, they are exactly right. They're just anti human. And that that's really where I arrive at whenever I consider everything that they're angry at. What you're angry at is humanity just as a whole. Yeah, right. You're not looking for solutions for all of us to live together peacefully. You want us to be to be complete givers, to take absolutely nothing. And humanity cannot survive. We can't survive that way. But if you look at the whole idea of being green, it means minimizing human impact. And when I was 18, somebody pointed out something to me that stayed with me ever since, which is that human beings survive by massively impacting nature. And so if you have this whole philosophy that says thou shalt not impact in effect, that's an anti human philosophy. So this idea of green, we think of it as, oh, clean air, clean water. But it's much worse. I mean, it's infinitely worse than that, because it's saying we have no right to transform, to impact the planet, to benefit our lives. And what they're what's their ideal, then it's either they want human beings to die or what they really want, in a sense, they want us to live like animals. They talk about living in harmony with nature. They just want us to live at a level where we're barely surviving, where, you know, lots of kids die. This is they want us to live a natural life. But there's no living in harmony with nature. There's just dying in harmony with nature. And that's what we did for our whole history until about 200 years ago when we figured out how to use coal to empower us with machine power. And then we could start growing our food. Then we could start building houses. And not only the rich people could do that, but everyone could do that. And they want us to go back to the animal level. I mean, the leaders, most people are innocently following this. But it's really important for people to get rid of this idea of, oh, I want to be green. No, you should want to be pro human, right? That's that should be the perspective. It goes against basic survival instincts. Everything that they say goes against our basic survival as human beings. But I want to I want to pivot here and talk about nuclear energy because it's interesting because their arguments all fall flat here. And nothing makes sense at all. So just elaborate on, I guess, what is it that they hate about nuclear energy? Because I can't figure that out. That that's clean. It would power things. And they're so against. Yeah. Well, I think it's the the the example I gave of hydroelectric is important because that's another case where it's a very clean form of energy that would allegedly help solve the problem. If CO2 emissions are a problem, then that you'd look for what are the most low cost, scalable forms of energy that don't involve carbon. And guess what they are? They're hydroelectric and they're nuclear. And which forms of energy? The green movement most against hydroelectric and nuclear. So it's really interesting that the thing that would really help us is the thing that they're opposed. And I mentioned with hydro, the whole argument is ultimately it's unnatural. It has too much impact. And if you look at nuclear, they'll say they care about safety. But if you look at the data, nuclear is the safest form of energy ever created by far. It's the cleanest form of energy ever created by far. It has the most potential to scale. It's not as low cost as fossil fuels today. But if we decriminalize nuclear, which I think should be a big platform plank for any good politician, decriminalize nuclear, like if we decriminalize it, there's a very good chance that we would have cheap, at least electricity, whether we can power airplanes immediately. You know, we can't do that. But at least a lot of the world's energy in the next four or five decades could start to become nuclear. But the green movement has criminalized it. So there's no reason except they think of it as unnatural. They think it's unnatural for us to split the atom. What does that mean? Well, but it doesn't they think that it's, you know, man playing God, man tampering with nature. So the argument that's most revealing is the waste. If you ever hear them talk about the waste, they'll say, oh, well, what about the waste? We can't do it because of the waste. You say, well, wait a second. The waste is very small. First of all, it fits in very small spaces. But also, we don't have any problems with the waste. We have very good ways of storing it. It's it's not an actual problem. But people say, oh, it's going to be around for millions of years. And I'm like, well, if it's around for millions of years and it's safe, who cares? I'm like, no, it's wrong that we created it. We had no right to create this new substance. So it's again, this anti-human view, whereas it's the human racism. If human beings created it, it's bad. If the rest of nature created it, it must be good. Right. So let me ask you a question. The climate conspiracy theorists have been around forever, right? They tell us the world's going to end every 10 years. We learn it sometimes in school. When I was growing up, it was Al Gore. You know, the polar bears are all going to drown. Then the ice caps are going to melt and you're all going to die. And then, of course, we live. And then the next generation gets a new thing to be afraid about. But this feels different now. Like now it seems like things are really ramping up all of a sudden. Right. Like the Green New Deal. People are people are out there missing school. They've got kids crying. I mean, there are children that literally think they're going to die soon. Right. What's different? What's changed? Well, I think one key distinction is it's a distinction between manmade climate change and manmade climate catastrophe, because I believe in manmade climate change in the sense of I believe that we that we have an influence that slightly warms temperatures. I do believe that. But that's a very small influence and it's a very manageable influence. As I mentioned, we're safer from climate than we've ever been. So there's nothing resembling a catastrophe. But people brought up on this green philosophy think that it's immoral to impact the climate even a little bit. They think we have no right to do it. And it's very much like a religion. So they think of it as really thou shalt not impact the climate. And because we violate that, what they think is that really the climate gods are going to punish us. And so even though we've had warming for whatever, 40 years and life has gotten better and better, including we're safer from climate, they still expect that, oh, it's going to bite us in the ass right now. Like there's always this it's to what you mentioned earlier. There's always this expectation of doomsday. And you see in the 60s, 70s, 80s, there's always these catastrophic predictions. And it's because they believe in part because they believe in this perfect planet. So we've all been brought up from, you know, from like anyone from, you know, the poorest person to the highest scientist. We've all been brought up with this perfect planet premise. And so we expect that, oh, if we impact the planet, it's going to kill us. Versus if you're on the imperfect planet premise, you realize, oh, wait, no, we need to impact the planet a lot. And as long as our positive impacts far outweigh the negative ones, it's going to keep getting better and better. But it's it's this dogma that's so deep. And because there's some evidence that we are impacting it, not that it's catastrophic, there's so much guilt. And when people have the guilt, they'll believe anything. And because they have the dogma, they believe in catastrophe. I mean, Greta Thunberg says people are dying and people act like, oh, bravo. No, people are living. People have never been living as much. Again, 6500 climate related deaths compared to millions in the 1930s. Climate used to climate emergency every day used to be a climate emergency before you had low cost energy. Now we don't live in a climate emergency. It's a totally theoretical construct. But because of the dogma, this perfect planet premise, people just they can't even see the world around them, because if you could see the world around you, you think, oh, my gosh, I've never been safer from climate. If a time traveler came from 300 years ago to today, he would say, oh, I just escaped the climate emergency, right? I used to have drought all the time. My crops would fail. We'd starve like storms would just destroy our house. And I was like, we just hang out and talk about, oh, I care so much about climate change, but it's the it's these dogmas that blind people. But it seems to be getting a lot of power now. Yeah, what I mean, like suddenly it's like it's gone Hollywood. You know what I mean? Like it's all anybody can talk about. If you go on Instagram, you've got Greta Thunberg on the cover of Time magazine. Like there seems to be something unusual now where this is somehow hit the forefront, like the number one debate right on the left that people are talking about climate climate. We need to do more. He's a moral. It's a moral issue that they have a lot of confidence in, even more because everyone believes, oh, it's wrong to impact the planet. Well, I mean, it's been building, though. I mean, there's been 40 years and even, you know, I grew up with Captain Planet. I mean, you have generations of people who've been educated in this dogma. If you look in 100, 150 years ago, even the person who discovered the greenhouse effect, like he said, oh, yeah, well, it's going to be good if it's warming like people used to not be anti-human. They used to think, oh, it's going to get warmer and we'll have more CO2. So there'll be more plant growth. That's great. But now we have this dogma, oh, anything we do is bad and we need to repent. So and then it fits so many people's agendas, because if you want to control people, the best thing to control is their energy because energy powers everything. So if you want totalitarian control over someone's life, tell them that their energy is sinful. That's much broader than anything else you could possibly do. How do we fix it? How do we tether people back to the reality of fossil fuels and tell people to even understanding what energy is? I don't think people understand basically what energy is. I think there needs I mean, what I'm trying to do is have a moral movement in the opposite direction. Whenever you have a moral monopoly on one side, it's very, very dangerous. And so what I'm trying to do is say, hey, fossil fuels make the world an amazing place to live. I'm for human flourishing. If you want eight billion people to flourish before fossil fuels and just there needs to be a really passionate like I have this pin and I have a T-shirt actually that says I love fossil fuels. I've actually stood in the middle of New York City at a climate protest with a giant sign that says I love fossil fuels. How'd that work out for you? It worked out great. I didn't get beat up. But it's it's like you need that positive enthusiasm. And, you know, one thing I was actually going to ask you is, you know, you have a lot of experience empowering groups like, you know, empowering individuals who have sort of been not stood up for themselves. And I think about the fossil fuel industry. We have hundreds of thousands of people. And I try to think a lot about how do we get these people to stand up and say, hey, I'm proud. I'm making life better. I'm making the world a better place because if they have that self-esteem, they can be an incredible force in the world. Versus if they're apologizing for what they do, why should anyone else believe that they're good? Right. I think it starts with courage. You know, one person speaking out, standing in a crowd saying, I love fossil fuels in the middle of climate activists. But I think it spreads in just people just knowing they're not alone. I think there's this this feeling, you know, because the left and and these sorts of movements have been so dominant in the media that sometimes when everything you see on TV and represented in the media and every Hollywood actor and actress is standing up, they're giving a speech about how we need to do more to save the environment. You can think, wow, I'm the only person that doesn't think like this. Right. There's no one else but me. So I'm the ottoman out. I'm the weirdo because I think that energy is basically good. So in many ways, it's like the appearance. You think this is how everybody thinks, but it's not how everybody thinks. You know, there are people that that work in these industries that are tethered to the reality of what these industries do and how these industries save lives and how these industries have brought our world forward, as you mentioned. So I think a lot of what we need to get better at is communicating these ideas and being able to, I guess, operate in a way that we can all come together and say, you know what? You're not the only person that feels this way. I feel this the same way, too. And I think the biggest thing is education, just education, just just trying to figure out how we got to a point where we're not learning the stuff that you're learning at 27, that I'm learning it at at 28 or 29. You know, the significance of what even are fossil fuels. Right. I think if you ask that question to the average college kid, they wouldn't know. They wouldn't know. They'd be able to name, you know, 26 or 27 genders. But they wouldn't be able to tell you what fossil fuels were. Or 27 alleged climate catastrophes. Right. Right. That never happened. Case in point, Australia, these recent fires and everyone's giving speeches and saying how this is just evidence. It's now anything that happens. They try to pretend it's climate change. Well, it ended up happening. The truth of that story is that human beings were causing the fires. They were lighting the fires. And that's what was happening in Australia. And they arrested tons of people for lighting those, you know, for for starting those fires. And that's the education. The lies get out first. Right. That's the expression lies make their way around the entire world before the truth even puts its shoes on. And that is I think that is so true, especially when it comes to this climate stuff. And we need an answer. We should be sending, you know, more people that understand energy to Congress. Right. We need an answer to Greta Thunberg. We need an answer to AOC. We need an answer to the Green New Deal. Right. Well, that reminds me. So if anyone watching this is at all like if you're a candidate or anything and you want help on these issues, I'm happy to help for free if they just email me at Alex at Alex Epstein dot com, because I really want more people knowing the truth about this. One thing that's really scary to me is even pro freedom candidates. When I tell them these issues, they've never heard these facts. Even our candidates who want to support energy freedom, who want to support fossil fuels, they've been they've been brought up in all the same dogma as anyone else. And so what I'm worried is, is that the wrong side that's advocating these really suicidal policies. And I do regard the Green New Deal as a suicidal, suicidal policy. They're just they have the high ground. I mean, it's really people saying, hey, I'm going to I'm going to cut your power off. I'm going to ruin your life. And they're like, and it's going to somehow save the planet. And, you know, meanwhile, China's building like 60, 150 new coal plants a year. So they're smart. And, you know, we're really we might just disempower our country. There's like a real probability just in terms of and I'm not a particularly partisan person, but just in terms of this, these energy, these anti energy policies, it's such a big deal. So if anybody is interested in fighting it, you know, I'm more than happy to help you with any kinds of resources. Why aren't you? Why aren't you running for Congress? What's your excuse? I'll put you on the spot. I mean, it wouldn't even occur to me. I'm I'm I like I like clarifying these issues and trying to empower. You can still do that. You can still do that in Congress. OK, I'll think about it. Think about it. For next time, we need more people like you in Congress. You know, you say we want people to get involved, but, you know, you know, you have the information you should think about running for Congress. I always try to inspire people. You know, we see we see people that are not very educated and they get this huge platform. And we need to fight that back by having really smart people. So I think you should know. Orange County definitely needs a better Congress person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been it's been interesting. OK, so we wrap every episode by allowing you to leave a two minute face message for the world. It is your call to action. If every person in the world heard this and it would inspire them to get up and do something. So you're going to look directly at that camera world. I give you Alex Epstein. I think that it's worth on this issue and on on any issue, but in my issue in particular, like you just heard me give a certain case and you know that there are lots of other there. You don't not consider me smart, but there are lots of smart people out there saying all sorts of different things. And what I would suggest is just try for this issue and for any issue. Try to find the best arguments on either side and really see how they stack up. And one thing that I've done is I publicly debate some of the thought leaders on the other side. I recently debated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And I would just say, look at look at the best position for each viewpoint and see who is right, because I really, really believe that the truth is that the world needs more fossil fuels, not less. And if we rapidly eliminate fossil fuels or anything close to that, it's going to make life worse for billions of people. But, you know, you're not going to take it on faith. Just hearing one interview with me, just hearing my side. So I just say, get educated, view the best viewpoints on each side. And my prediction is when you do, you too will love fossil fuels. That's great. You did a good job on that on the spot. That was good. OK, thank you so much for joining the Candace Owen show. Thank you.