Alex Epstein Quotes


Southern Capitalist

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Alex Epstein is the director of the Center for Industrial Progress, an organization he founded in 2011. Its mission is to "inspire Americans to embrace industrial progress as a cultural ideal." He is also a blogger at Master Resource, a "Free Market Energy Blog," and a past fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute, an organization that has received funding from the Koch Foundations including at least $50,000 between 2005 and 2010.

I personally support his organization........

“The story of oil at its core is one of human aspirations, human challenges, and human triumphs. It’s a story of the aspiration to produce the best energy in the world—particularly the best portable energy to power the mobile machines that allow us to grow enough food to feed seven billion people, to whisk us away on amazing vacations, to have cars that allow us to work and play where we choose. Not to mention, the energy that improves our environment: by things like building water purification systems, sewer systems, and climate resistant buildings. Your story is a story of the challenge of figuring out how to produce this caliber of energy, which nature doesn’t automatically give us.”

“The most important thing to having a healthy environment to live in is development. Which, ironically, is considered bad for the environment. This is exactly why undeveloped countries have the worst environments. It’s not some coincidence; it’s exactly because they are undeveloped. They breathe smoky air from wood fires because they lack centralized power plants—built by oil. They drink naturally contaminated water because they lack irrigation and water purification plants. They live with filth because they lack industrial scale sanitation. They are vulnerable to climate because they lack sturdy climate controlled homes. And they don’t get to enjoy nature very much for that matter, which is supposedly what you get when you take away industry because they lack modern transportation—no one’s going to the Grand Canyon with a five mile travel radius.”

"The natural environment is not particularly hospitable to human life . . . the key to having a good environment is improving it through work. . . . Energy is fundamentally an environmental improver and if we classify it that way it makes sense out of a lot of these controversies. . . . It's our obligation and our right to make [our environment] as good for human beings as possible. With that view, it's very easy for people to understand precisely the reason it's good to alter it — because it doesn't naturally come the way we need it to be."

"The difference between a healthy environment and an unhealthy environment can be summed up in one word, and it's not 'CO2' or 'climate' or 'temperature.' It's 'development.' [...] Whether you're drinking clean drinking water, listening to a thunderstorm with pleasure instead of fear, or going to the Grand Canyon, you should be thanking Big Coal, Big Oil, and Big Gas."

"...so much of what has gone right in American industrial history is that this country used to have a philosophy that embraced the transformation of nature through energy and industry—that is, embraced industrial progress. The more I read and talked to experts in the field, the more I saw an opportunity to use my knowledge of philosophy, and in particular Ayn Rand’s philosophy, to change the way people think about energy, industry, and environment."

Resources

from:http://www.desmogblog.com/alex-Epstein

http://industrialprogress.com/

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Along with the thanks to Big Coal, there should be a thanks to nuclear power.

Thanks to you Emanuel Blankenship for this perspective from Alex Epstein.

Might you be attending OCON 2013 in Chicago this summer?

Welcome to OL.

Stephen*

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Thanks for the welcoming Stephen. Unfortunately I will not be attending. My wife is due in two months with my daughter. So between that and classes my time is limited. The good thing is Alex usually records what he participates in. I enjoy his wall street occupiers interviews. I like what he's doing, especially with me being in the field and in school for process Engineering so most likely I will continue my career in the Petroleum field.

Mark, thanks for the correction. The Koch Foundation seems to invest in some good organizations and have expressed that the belief in economic freedom is essential for well being and the economic progress.

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