#977 Alex Epstein On Why We Need More Fossil Fuels Not Less

Alex Epstein is the author of the new book "Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less" In this conversation, we discuss the ESG narrative and why it may not be as accurate as you may think, energy poverty around the world, why fossil fuels demand continues to grow, and what Alex thinks we should do to solve our energy problems. We also go through all of the crackpot narratives that are rewarded in the mainstream discourse, but don't offer any realistic solutions and only serve as a form of virtue signaling. ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the world's largest sports betting, casino, poker and horse racing website that accepts cryptocurrency for wagering. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Alex Epstein is the author of a brand new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. In this conversation, we talk about the ESG narrative and why it may not be as accurate as you previously thought, why fossil fuels have been growing so aggressively, and why there's so many crackpot narratives that are out there that probably are just simply rewarded for virtue signaling and morality, but don't actually have as many real-world use cases as previously thought. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex, and it definitely makes you think more critically

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  about some of these issues and what potential solutions could be. Hope that you enjoy this episode. Before we get started, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.us is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. You can trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors. There are no fixed minimum fees, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees either. FTX.us is also the only leading exchange that supports both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. Download the FTX app today and use referral code Pomp to earn these free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app today and use referral code Pomp.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Brave. Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser. What's Web3? Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy. But there's a weak point in Web3, your crypto wallet. Most wallets are browser extensions, a Web2 technology. That means the same old risks, app spoofing, phishing scams, and theft. Brave Wallet is different. Brave Wallet is the first secure wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser. No extension required. With Brave Wallet, you can buy, store, send, and swap assets, manage NFTs, even connect other wallets and dApps, all from the security of the best privacy browser on the market. Whether you're new to crypto or a seasoned pro, it's time to ditch those risky

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  extensions. It's time to switch to Brave Wallet. Download Brave at brave.com/pomp and click the Wallet icon to get started. Again, go download Brave at brave.com/pomp and click the Wallet icon to get started. Today's episode is brought to you by betonline.ag. Betonline.ag is the top spot for all of your sports betting, casino and poker needs. It's available on your computer, your tablet or your mobile device. BetOnline accepts Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto fees. Processing only takes minutes and transactions are 100% anonymous and secure. Head over to betonline.ag and

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  sign up today to receive a 100% crypto bonus on your first deposit. Just use ARC promo code POMP100 to get started. Discover why everyone is saying BetOnline is the fastest and easiest way to wager with crypto for sports, casino games, horse racing, poker and more. Sign up today at betonline.ag and double your deposit with our exclusive podcast promo code POMP100. Go check them out at betonline.ag.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:46Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, everyone. Bang, bang. Got Alex here with me. Alex, I thought the great place for us to start this conversation was, there's an ESG argument that has been circulating. It's become very popular. And one of the key tenets of being able to have a debate or conversation around a topic is that if you take one side of that debate, you should be able to argue the other side better than them. And so maybe you could explain to us, like, what is the ESG argument? And how does that pertain to energy production and consumption?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  So I think the ESG movement is really employing a broader argument that is held by many of the world's thought leaders. And I call this the moral case for eliminating fossil fuels. And the basic idea is that the fossil fuels that we're using a lot for energy today. Are creating a climate catastrophe, but they are rapidly replaceable by renewable solar and wind, and therefore we should rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. So it's got, it's got the element of they're causing climate catastrophe, they're rapidly replaceable, and therefore they should be eliminated as quickly as possible. And then what you see with ESG is ESG is basically saying, hey, we all know this is true, right? We know

• 4:59Speaker 02

  we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels. For some reason, the voters aren't doing it too quickly. So let's Larry Fink and other people, let's impose this because we know this is the right thing. So I'll write a CEO letter and I'll tell everyone, hey, you've got to get to what's called net zero as quickly as possible. And net zero means net zero CO2 emissions, which is the main emission of fossil fuels that impact climate.

• 5:23Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about their argument, what would you say is the most accurate part of their argument? Or what would you say is the thing that you're like, yep, that makes sense, or that's a fair thing to argue?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  The only thing that makes sense about the argument is that if the premises were true, the conclusion would be true. So if it were true, no, but that's important. But I should say, I'm giving a much better version of the argument than I think is is usually made. But if it were true, that we're causing a climate catastrophe, let's say, climate apocalypse, and the source of that, all of its benefits were rapidly replaceable, then you should rapidly eliminate it. Now, you might think, well, why isn't the market doing that? If there, you know, there's a lot of questions that arise, and it's ultimately because I think both premises are false. But yeah, I think it has a kind of, it makes

• 6:19Speaker 02

  a certain kind of sense if its premises are true, but I don't think they're true.

• 6:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's start with maybe the first premise of the climate apocalypse, or the climate change is being driven by fossil fuels and kind of the whole anti ESG argument. What is not true about that? Or how do you evaluate the accuracy of that premise?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Well, so with climate, you know, there's a good question of how do you measure this? So you're saying the basic narrative is we are in the midst of a climate catastrophe slash climate crisis. And this is why you have organizations like the Scientific American, outlets like The Guardian. They're using the terms climate crisis, climate emergency as mandatory terms, right? So this means we're in the middle of a catastrophe. And then the idea is it is going to become an apocalypse if we continue using fossil fuels emitting CO2, and then that leads to rising CO2 in the atmosphere. So that's, that's the view. And there's a question of, well, how do you measure this? And I think the most obvious way to measure this is what's happening to the death rate from these climate-related disasters that are getting worse.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  I should say, if your primary focus is on human life, and this is going to be a sticking point we'll see for ESG, but it is that this is my view. If your primary focus is on human life, then climate-related disaster deaths are really interesting to study. And before I studied this issue, I was suspicious of some of the catastrophe claims, but for sure, I thought, obviously, these deaths are going up, right? I mean, how could they not be going up, given how much we hear about this deadly climate crisis? And yet, what's fascinating, I learned this first in 2007, and it's even more true today, is that this is very well documented, that the climate disaster death rate, get this, has gone down, down by 98% in the last 100 years.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  So this means that we are 1/50th as likely to die from a climate-related disaster. And what's further fascinating about this is it's never reported in the media. Okay, you might say the media are biased, but then even if you look at, say, the UN, what's called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their summary reports don't mention this. And isn't that crazy? Reports on climate, not mentioning the death rate from climate? Isn't that a kind of important thing if you care about human life? But even beyond that, I show in the book, even their multi-thousand-page synthesis reports that are supposed to synthesize all the best research in the world, don't mention the climate-related deaths. So what is, there's this question of like, what the hell is going on?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  There's, there's some sort of bias here. And it becomes particularly relevant to fossil fuels because if you ask, well, what drove this death rate down? It's pretty clear that fossil fuels have a lot to do with it. Things like warming us up when it's cold, cooling us when it's hot, building sturdy infrastructure. The most important one is actually irrigation and other forms of drought relief. Like irrigation is powered by energy, drought relief convoys, you know, alleviating some famine in some foreign country. That saves millions of lives. So we have this fascinating phenomenon where fossil fuels have actually made our climate safer. And nobody is talking about this. And if you, if people are not talking about the fact that we're making our climate safer, which I call fossil fueled climate mastery.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  How can you trust anyone about the future if they're denying or distorting the present?

• 9:50Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about something like the climate related deaths going down so drastically, that, that, that's a eye catching statistic. And goes very counter to the public narrative. How much of that is a misunderstanding? A mathematical kind of manipulation and it used to be manipulated very high. And now it looks more like reality versus there's technology, there is better, you know, weather spotting. There, there's all these other things that go into helping humans avoid these climate disasters. Like, like, what do you attribute the driver of such a drastic decrease in climate related death?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's, it's all about our mastery of climate. And so part of the, the crucial context that's missing from this is climate is naturally extremely dynamic and extremely dangerous. And I'll, I'll emphasize the dangerous part. So if you just look at, so you, you can wonder, oh, well, were we somehow getting numbers wrong in the past? But actually you'd expect the opposite to be true. I think because you'd expect under reporting of certain things, but there are many, you know, there are many news stories you have, say in the thirties, when we're not exactly that primitive. And you have millions of people dying from these climate related famines. I mean, China in particular. I have a lot of quotes about in Fossil Future. It is really just tragic to see these talks about, oh, this flood happened, or this drought happened, it just wipes out millions of people,

• 11:14Speaker 02

  and the lives are just over forever because they cannot cope with the naturally dangerous climate. Of course, if you think about the amount of development that has happened, our mastery, things like flood control in that case, as I mentioned before, drought relief, that's really what's taken the naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe. But part of the reason we can't see this is we were taught this false view that nature, including climate, is what I call a delicate nurture. That's kind of this, this stable, sufficient, safe place, and that our impact ruins it. And this is really a myth, but it's really widely believed, including, I think implicitly by many scientists. And so we just think of climate as perfect, and then we ruined it.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  So it's not even on our radar that we have actually made climate much better by mastering it.

• 12:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's a fascinating thought process of, uh, literally the antithetical view of our relationship with climate. Do you have, like, a really good example that people could wrap their heads around in terms of a place where humans have actually made it drastically better from a climate perspective, compared to maybe the overarching thought process around it making it worse?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I can't think of any place where we haven't made it much better, because we've made it much better in what I call the empowered world, the places with low-cost, reliable energy that you can, that you can use to develop, but also the unempowered world. And so, I mean, you could take either one, but just, just consider the United States. I mean, we have every form of climate imaginable here, which is part of why I don't worry about the, the kinds of changes people are even speculating, let alone what I think is realistic in the global climate system. So you have something like polar Alaska, and then you have swampy Florida, and where I live in California is not perfect climate politically, but I think it's a perfect climate in terms of just, you know, that, that really nice kind of dry climate near the ocean. So we have every climate imaginable.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  And we all live really long lives and we don't have that much trouble with climate. Climate is a rhetorical thing in our lives, like it's a rhetorical negative. But life used to be an emergency in general because people were poor. And in particular, it was a climate emergency because of, you know, even something like a harvest. So maybe a harvest is a great example, just we don't think now of something like the dust bowl being possible. And it really isn't possible to us now because of modern irrigation and other modern technology. But all of this depends on machines and the ability to use machines at a very large scale depends on low cost reliable energy. And that's part of why I think fossil fuels are so crucial because I'm going to argue this goes to the second point, but they're a uniquely cost effective form of energy.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  They're not at all rapidly replaceable by solar and wind.

• 14:03Anthony Pompliano?

  So I was going to ask, uh, the second premise is that they are replaceable, uh, and not just replaceable, but rapidly replaceable. And I think built into this premise is not only rapidly replaceable, but also remaining as low cost or lower cost as, uh, what is available via fossil fuels. So unpack for me this premise and what you agree or disagree with.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Well, to unpack this premise, I actually have to introduce a missing premise. And this is actually one of the problems with, with the argument. You could think of it as one or two missing premises. I'll break it down into two quickly. Um, one is the fact that the world has woeful, it like has woefully little energy. There is far more energy needed in the world. So one statistic that I think drives this home is that there are three billion people. So three billion individuals who in their lives are using less electricity than one of our refrigerators. So you just think about that, like somebody, all the electricity in their life, right? So washers, dryers, I mean, these aren't happening, but you think about like incubators, uh, refrigeration for vaccines,

• 15:08Speaker 02

  lights, all of these things have to somehow take up the same amount of electricity as a refrigerator. And what do you think happens? Just people have incredibly impoverished lives, but there are three billion people right now around the world. This is their life. You would consider this, I don't say you, but just the audience, we would. Consider this a catastrophe, right? If we woke up one day and we used less electricity than a refrigerator and that was our life, we would consider that a crisis. And so this is the way I think of the world. I think the world is in a perpetual state of crisis because for most people, because of poverty, which is very, very related to what's called energy poverty, uh, lack of energy. And I, and the reason I'm bringing this in is that the ESG movement doesn't really think about this.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  So what they do is they say, yeah, oh yeah, we can rapidly replace fossil fuels, sure. But they don't acknowledge the fact that the world needs something like four times more energy. If everyone is to be even remotely close to us and what, why should we think that what we should have the opportunity to flourish and others shouldn't? That makes no sense at all. So everyone in the world should rightly want to use a lot of energy. And the fact that that is not coming up front and center, and all we're talking about is how do we get rid of the fossil fuel we use now? But which is 80% of the world's energy and actually growing. And we're not talking about like how to provide energy on a much larger scale. That points to there's not much valuing of energy.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  And this, this is the second premise, which is just, energy is incredibly valuable because energy gives us the, the ability to use machines to become far more productive and prosperous. And so, so the real thing with the ESG is not just those two premises that are wrong, but it's leaving out the massive need for more energy and the massive value of energy. And then that leads to, is it's, is it's claim of rapid replaceability, uh, valid? But once you look at it from the perspective I just gave, it's pretty obvious it's not right. Fossil fuels provide 80% of the world's energy. They're growing fast, particularly growing fast in the parts of the world that care the most about cost effective energy, namely China. So there's clearly something special about them that isn't disappearing anytime soon.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  By the way, we're in an energy crisis for lack of fossil fuels, which have been heavily restricted by the ESG movement. So that's another blow against it. And they're saying that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels, mostly with solar and wind that are currently 3% of the world's energy. That exist as parasites on the reliable electricity provided mostly by fossil fuels, but also by nuclear and hydro and that do not exist at all in standalone form for electricity, let alone the 80% of the world's energy that is not electricity. So I submit, this is a total crackpot idea that this is all going to happen in 27 and a half years. And in particular, this idea has been around for over a decade and fossil fuel use has grown dramatically.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  So what I consider this whole ESG argument of replaceability, it's not a real argument by people who understand or care about energy. It's a fake argument designed to reassure us that it's okay to get rid of fossil fuels and we won't suffer any consequences.

• 18:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it feels like to your point, kind of market participants, people who are used to dealing with energy, who understand the value of energy, who understand why you want energy versus energy poverty. Those people, this isn't even a debate. It is more of a moral argument or a virtue signaling argument that goes on at the Davos's of the world, et cetera, where people say these things and it makes them feel good. It sounds amazing, right? Of we're going to replace all the fossil fuels with, you know, wind and solar. But it just, there's no path to it. And you've written a book called Fossil Future, Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less.

• 19:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when we think about this, I thought that maybe we could go through some of the energy sources and you could kind of talk about what we're seeing. And let's go right to what the ESG kind of proponents, I think, believe is the replacement, which is solar and wind. And they position this as a low cost, reliable, renewable energy source. Why are they wrong?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Whatever possible, I always like to look at, this came up with climate. What is people's account of the present? So if you view the climate as in a state of crisis, if you think we're experiencing a climate crisis, then you're either ignorant or you're not looking at the world from a pro-human perspective, which I, which we could talk about. But basically, I think that with climate, people are looking at it as the goal is not advancing human flourishing through a more livable climate, because by that standard, climate is far more livable, we're far safer, but their goal is to eliminate human impact on Earth, including eliminating our impact on climate. And it's really this kind of primitive religious asceticism and fear that just says we should, let's eliminate what we're doing. Let's just stop, let's go net zero.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  It's not make the climate livable, it's just stop our evil impact. So I think it's very, very much a primitive anti-human religion that believes that our impact is evil and that nature is like a vengeful god that's going to punish us with this kind of hellish warming and climate change. So I just think it's, it's, it's based on a total distortion. And so the point here is if somebody doesn't acknowledge the present or they deny or distort it, I don't trust them to predict the future. And the same thing is true. I make a big point of this in Fossil Future about the renewables thing. Look, if people said what I just said, so if they said, hey, look, I have to admit, so far, solar and wind are a disaster, because what they have done is they have not replaced

• 20:51Speaker 02

  reliable electricity, because we don't have anywhere resembling the batteries for that. As I calculated in the book, Elon Musk's batteries had cost us about $400 trillion to back up the world for three days. So that is a fantasy or worse. So basically, they're a failure because they've added a lot of cost to the grid, because we have to pay for the solar panels and the infrastructure, but we haven't really been able to replace any of the reliable fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro, because the unreliable solar wind can go near zero at any given time. And then when we do try to get rid of the fossil fuels or nuclear hydro, such as has happened in Texas and California, we have blackouts. And so we're having problems with cost and problems with reliability.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  And in any case, these things are nowhere near replacing fossil fuels, even in electricity, let alone. Alone, things like heavy duty transportation such as flying or cargo ships. And so right now they're a failure, but I have an amazing explanation of how they're going to be a wild success. Like if they said that, I would listen to that explanation, but instead what we get is denial and distortion about how they're working. And a total evasion of the fact that they're making the world worse. Now, I should say, this is getting a lot better intellectually because we have an energy crisis. And it's pretty clear that we've artificially restricted the supply of fossil fuels through ESG and political opposition to investment, production and transportation.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And unreliable solar and wind, as I think we should have expected, cannot at all replace fossil fuels. Which is why I was talking to Michael Schellenberger, who's running for governor in California, a good friend of mine. Like he was pointing out yesterday, why is nobody running for more solar panels right now? Like, why is it Biden not begging China for more solar panels? He's begging Venezuela for more oil. And it's because the solar and wind, this unreliable energy cannot replace fossil fuels. And nobody expects it to be able to do so in the near future. And that's just the reality and all of these arguments are just total crackpot fantasies. So we can get into the crackpot fantasies, but the fact that they deny, totally deny the terrible present of solar and wind is very revealing.

• 22:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about the crackpot fantasies. That sounds like exactly what I want to talk about.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Okay, well, this has become one of my favorite topics because I actually have a, this is the only thing in fossil future that I can explain better now than I could when it was, when it was written. I've thought a lot about this because I don't know if you, do you happen to see those Joe Rogan episodes with Steve Koonen or Andrew Dessler?

• 23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I have not, no.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Okay, those, those are interesting, just many, many people watching this, I'm guessing, saw some of them. So Steve Koonen is a guy who's kind of known as allied with me. He's one of these people who says, yes, we impact climate, but the benefits, the negatives of that are far outweighed by the benefits of fossil fuels. So I don't mean to attribute everything he believes to me and vice versa. We have differences, but we're generally aligned in that way. And then the person who came on to kind of, you know, be equal time was a guy named Andrew Dessler, who's a climate scientist from Texas A and M. And interestingly, Andrew basically made no arguments about climate catastrophe, but his, his almost sole focus, or very few, let's say, his almost sole focus was, oh, renewables

• 23:59Speaker 02

  can rapidly replace fossil fuels. And he and I, uh, he fortunately had agreed to debate me, uh, before he did that Rogan show. And so we debated in Colorado, and people can look it up if they search our names. And I was just kind of astonished like how in denial he was of the actual reality of solar wind. Uh, and but I noticed he's relying on this one argument that came up on that show, which is basically, hey, there are academic studies that show that we can rapid, we can do this. So leave aside like Dessler, because he wasn't representing the studies effectively, this accurate and this kind of thing. But here's what's going on. All of these studies are claiming that in one way or another, again, we can rapidly replace fossil fuels with

• 24:42Speaker 02

  solar wind. They all have three things in common. One is that they, and, and all of these, all of these we know are things that lead to indeterminate and high prices. So one is they involve things that have never been done before, uh, on a large scale. They've never been done before, and they involve doing them on a large scale. So for example, one of the mainstream ones by a guy named Jacobson out of Stanford involves hydrogen planes. Okay, they're not, we don't have commercial hydrogen planes. This is just a total fantasy of this even existing, how it would work, what the costs would be. So if you claim to know that that will work and what the cost will be, you're a charlatan. And there are all sorts of things like this in these schemes. They're just things that aren't working on any scale, and they're claiming they'll work on every scale.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So that's number one. You know, it's, it's just crackpot. Number two is that they involve a crash program of unprecedented mining and infrastructure building. So you take like what's happening with lithium prices right now, they're skyrocketing. This was obvious that this would happen because we had this crash program of even on a small scale, but we're talking about, I think Elon was talking recently about a thousand times more lithium, at least they're talking hundreds of times more lithium. How is that going to be cheap to do that in the next 27 and a half years? How is it going to be cheap to build unprecedented infrastructure in 27 and a half years? Whenever you do a large scale thing on a crash program, your costs go up. And then the third thing that makes it just totally disingenuous is that all of this is supposed to happen.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  All of this unprecedented, never done unprecedented development is supposed to happen in today's environment, which is very hostile to development. So this is all an anti-development environment, which the green movement has created. The people claiming these schemes have created this anti-development environment where none of this can happen. You know, if you're lucky, it takes 10 years to approve a lithium mine in the US and it may not get approved. Solar and wind are radically slowed already by green activists who are against mining, who are against transmission lines, who are against construction. So this is another example, that these three crackpot elements are just another nail in the coffin of this being a movement that cares about energy. They don't care about energy.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  They care about getting rid of fossil fuels. They're also hostile to nuclear and hydro, which is also revealing. So their whole focus is just how do we, how do we get human beings to stop impacting the planet? And let's make up, uh, let's make up a fantasy so that we're not worried, so that people don't worry about giving up fossil fuels. But we have an energy crisis that shows we should have been worried. And I just, by the way, I posted the other day, some testimony I had in 2016 in front of the Senate. And I told Boxer and others, hey, like this is going to cause a crisis. It's obvious. And they're like, and they ridiculed me because like, oh, you're a philosopher. You don't know anything. And I'm like, no, I'm a philosopher, so I know you need to look at the big picture and you're not looking at the benefits of fossil fuels. And that's why it's going to be a disaster.

• 27:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So in the book, along these lines, uh, you have, um, a section that has a number of quotes from various people. And of course, as books go, uh, the bigger the name, the more experience they have in a field, uh, the more that I think people kind of pay attention to what's inside the book. Um, and one of the folks, uh, that you have a quote from is Scott Pruitt, who's the former head of the, uh, U S Environmental Protection Agency. It was an environmental agency. And again, the book's name is Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. And so immediately already, the E S G people's heads are in a blunder because they don't understand what is the former EPA head doing, you know,

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  providing quote for this book. But what he says is, quote, "Stepping in once again to the oftentimes divisive but very consequential energy and climate conversation is Alex Epstein's Fossil Future, arguing that fossil futures, fossil fuels not only have a place in our global tomorrows, but are a necessity to human flourishing. We need more, not less, voices in the climate marketplace capable of thoughtful engagement and critical analysis. Alex proffers both in Fossil Future, and it is my hope that the amalgamation of his research, data, analysis, and rhetoric will yield a more constructive conversation about our energy and climate choices." Now, end quote. When I read that, it tells me that the former EPA head says, hey,

• 29:02Anthony Pompliano?

  maybe there's way more weight in the fossil fuels and the importance of it for human flourishing, which he explicitly states there. But he's not approaching it in a binary sense. All fossil fuels, all renewable. He's saying that there's probably room for both. Is that a fair position for somebody like that to take? Or do you think that's kind of where the world will end up where it's like 98% fossil fuels and 2% renewable type stuff? Or do you think it ends up being more binary where it's either everyone moves to renewables and like the E S G argument wins and or everything stays fossil fuels?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I wouldn't think of it as binary. Now, one thing to say about Pruitt, because some people are going to be thinking this, is so he was very controversial head of the EPA. I mean, first of all, it was under Donald Trump, so that's going to have controversy to it no matter what. And I've gotten a lot of flak for praising him before I knew him and certainly before he wrote this. But I think he was very good compared to the others, because I do think he really looked at energy and negative environmental impacts in a very holistic Stick way and he really understands energy much better than almost anyone I can think of from the EPA that I've ever seen. And I think it leads him to to have make much better decisions. Also, he was, you know, he was very focused on, and I think this is right, he was focused on

• 30:24Speaker 02

  real pollution issues. So like toxic waste sites and, you know, having good air quality, a good water quality, like he's very focused on that versus other people who tend to ignore that and are just focused on CO2 emissions, which I don't think should be the primary focus at all. In terms of the balance of this kind of thing, the way I think of it is, we shouldn't really care about what form of energy we use. What we want is the most cost effective source of energy at a given time in a given place. And so in fossil future in chapter one, I lay out what I think are the four aspects of being cost effective. So there's just how affordability. So how much does it cost? There's reliability. To what extent can you get it on demand? When

• 31:07Speaker 02

  you need it? And crucially, in the quantity that you need it versatility. So how many different types of machines can it power? Can it just power like electricity that's fixed? Or can it power planes and cargo ships and that kind of thing? And then scalability, to what extent can it produce energy for billions of people in thousands of places? And the fact is right now fossil fuels, so that's oil, coal, natural gas, that's in order of use. Oil is the biggest, gas is the smallest right now, although that might, might, it'll probably expand in the future. Like those combined, that is the only source of energy that provide that hits all four aspects of cost effectiveness. But we should want other things, but we want other

• 31:48Speaker 02

  things to be as good or better than fossil fuels in a given situation. So let's say, for example, in Washington State, you have hydroelectric power, and that is probably better than fossil fuels in Washington State because it's it has great resources for that. And that's quote renewable. But the it doesn't really matter if it's renewable. Nothing is really renewable because all the materials are non renewable. But the issue is, is it the most cost effective solution? Nuclear, I'm a huge proponent of, it's unfortunately been made unbelievably expensive by very irrational government regulations that I think should be changed. But I think that would be great. I think ultimately, if we play our cards right, we'll have a nuclear future. That's like,

• 32:29Speaker 02

  So I'm all about, I just want the most cost effective energy for the most people. And right now, I think you have to recognize that means a lot of fossil fuels, but I avidly want other things to happen that are good. So the people have this idea like you should be partisan, you shouldn't be partisan, but you need to be objective and you can't claim that solar and wind are really good right now when they're not. I think that in the future, they might have some potential, particularly solar, but they need to be, they have to compete on a level playing field, whereas right now they get unbelievable government preferences, including they get to sell unreliable electricity for the same price as others get to sell reliable electricity. And then in fact, they get a subsidy, so they get paid more.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  So that's a total racket that needs to be changed, but I'm totally open to them participating in the future if they actually do so reliably.

• 33:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about nuclear in the sense of, uh, obviously there's a ton of regulation. Uh, we've seen people shutting down nuclear power plants. We've seen, uh, the prevention of building of new nuclear, uh, power plants. There's just an immense red tape. Uh, it seems like people who are interested in this technology, uh, and doing this, they run into what I'll call kind of the public narrative or the, uh, the, the fear that is uneducated about nuclear, uh, but also there's very real obstacles, uh, to making this a reliable, um, kind of popular energy source, uh, both in the United States and globally. What, what's your read on this and kind of what is the path forward to make nuclear energy, uh, a core component of the energy mix that humans use?

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I think we need to say at the beginning, there's a lot of evidence that nuclear has amazing potential. So one piece of evidence that I, I, I take, I put a lot of stock in for anything economic is there's market evidence when people like make things up about the future that haven't been tested on the market. I'm very suspicious of them and my first thing is why don't you do this? And then I'll believe it versus you tell me you're going to force it on me and then you're promising it'll work. So with nuclear, we had it, it quite cheap and very reliable in the seventies before the onset of a massive amount of, of government control and regulation that I consider to be, uh, criminalizing it. So, but we have a track record, it's very important. Where this is producing low cost, reliable, very clean, very safe energy.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  And what happened is even though nuclear is, this might surprise me, but it's factually, and if you understand the physics, uh, kind of obviously the safest form of energy. Basically, it can't explode, so it can melt down, but that's a very slow process that the damage can be contained versus exploding, which you're going to kill people. So nuclear is the safest for a whole bunch of reasons and its track record uh is the safest. We could go into some of the alleged disasters that disprove this, but I think it's pretty conclusive. I think it's totally conclusive that it's the safest. But it was portrayed as uniquely dangerous in part with this idea that somehow a nuclear power plant resembles a nuclear bomb, even though it's literally impossible for a nuclear

• 35:26Speaker 02

  power plant to explode, given the way that uranium and chain reactions work. So, but unfortunately, by, by making something a public menace and by treating it that way, what it justified was an unlimited amount of uh control and delay for every aspect of the process. And, and one fact that illustrates this is since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which I think should basically be called the Nuclear Criminalization Commission, since that was established in 1975, not one nuclear plant has gone from conception to completion. And the ones that have come closest have just had catastrophic cost overruns on the order of 10 times more expensive than nuclear plants used to be. So nuclear plants, you know, you could build them in four years total.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Now it's 16 or they could be destroyed. Why, it should have been that we got them down to two years. Like in general, we have evolution in terms of economic evolution. So nuclear was proven very safe. So it's a total catastrophe that we've stopped nuclear and criminalized it. But it is nevertheless part of the world that we live in and thus we have to, you know, it could be if, if things had gone differently, we could be half nuclear by now, but we're not. And so the idea that we're going to rapidly replace fossil fuels with nuclear is um, it's unfortunately not even remotely uh possible, although we should certainly liberate it as soon as possible. And I'm probably the world's biggest advocate who's actually working on this in practice with elected officials right now on how do we decriminalize nuclear?

• 36:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So you mentioned decriminalize, uh, I'll use the word deregulate. Maybe they're interchangeable uh in, in people's eyes.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  There is a very strong argument, some people have been making this for decades, some people, these are new arguments, of deregulating a lot of these energy markets, of deregulating a lot of fossil fuel industry, etc. What are the implications of doing that? Both pros and cons in your mind? And is that something that we should pursue from a public policy standpoint? And people should be calling up their elected officials and really pushing that forward? Or is it something that maybe we don't understand as well? What are your thoughts on deregulation?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  So, yeah, there's a reason I use decriminalize versus deregulate. And if people want more of a resource, I'd highly recommend chapter 10 of the book, which is about energy freedom. So the issue with deregulate is it's broad and regulation, regulation has this very woozy meaning. And so what it can, it can often conflate two things. One is where the government, more than two things probably, but I'll give two. So one is where the government is treating us as guilty until proven innocent. And so basically, we have an unlimited obligation to prove that we're not going to do something bad, and that leads to potentially unlimited cost, versus the government is protecting people's rights from violation.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  So an example would be, okay, in the first category would be, okay, you have a farm, like you're a hog farmer, and every day, there's an inspector who goes to your farm and checks every little thing to make sure that you don't contaminate your neighbor with too much smell, versus a law that says, hey, there's a threshold at which you can like admit things that go to your neighbors. And if you violate that, then you get prosecuted. And I'm a very big believer in innocent until proven guilty, and that that should be the principle for our law. And if you do that, you just have to have clear standards of what constitutes endangerment. So what level of pollution constitutes endangerment? You know, for, that's basically the idea. You know, what, what, like, yeah, what point are you, is, you know, you know, what point

• 39:02Speaker 02

  are you doing something that is legitimately considered a threat to others? And I talk about this in some detail in, in chapter 10 of the book. But so I think of it as we should have freedom, and then we should protect people's rights and freedom from endangerment. And we need to define endangerment more rationally. So with nuclear, it's not just about vague deregulation. It's, I say decriminalization because we're treating it as a criminal enterprise by treating everything as guilty and, and having unlimited danger until proven innocent. But it's mainly about how do we define like what is allowed to do in nuclear and what is not in a way that actually represents how dangerous it is compared to other technologies. I think if you did that, then it would be free, but it's a lot more precise than just

• 39:46Speaker 02

  saying, hey, let's deregulate. And then, because maybe you would take away a crucial protection in that process.

• 39:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there a country or a region in the world that you think is doing this well? Like, like if you had to say, hey, here's the example of who the United States should follow or other countries should follow, can you point to one? Or do you think actually, no, this is a global problem and we've got to improve everywhere?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  I think the best example would be the United States 50 years ago. I think that's a much better example. I mean, today you would say South Korea is arguably the best. You know, France is, but here's the issue with nuclear. So it's so much, it's been so demonized as dangerous that it is just, it is a government controlled thing. Like you think of the nuclear industry, but someone once pointed out to me, there is no nuclear industry, at least in the United States. There's a lot of utilities that own natural gas, coal, hydro, and then like nuclear is one of their assets, in part because the grid is so government controlled, which is another kind of an issue maybe for another day. But it's, there's not a real nuclear industry in the US. And what we want is a dynamic nuclear industry where you, you have people starting different

• 40:57Speaker 02

  kinds of nuclear reactors in their garages. And I think if you, if you define the endangerment standards properly, you could totally have that and you would have a proliferation in the good sense of nuclear innovation. But as long as it's, hey, you're only allowed to do this if the government says this and you can only do this design. You're not going to make any progress. And I think there's a lot of wishful thinking by people who are pro nuclear that, hey, this is going to rapidly replace fossil fuels as long as it's as long as it's this total non market, it's just going to be a cost disaster and it'll be stopped and we'll just keep using fossil fuels plus a bunch of unreliable solar land.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the other quotes that's in the book that lends support is from Peter Thiel, obviously, one of the world's most well respected, well known entrepreneurs and investors. He says, quote, "The climate debate ignores the reasons we burn fossil fuels in the first place." Alex Epstein reminds us that rich countries may be able to treat green lifestyles as luxury fashion, but for most, but for much of the world, reliable energy is a matter of life and death, end quote. Talk to me about that, this idea of luxury fashion. You mentioned a little bit earlier about energy poverty, but is it just that people in the Western world were super privileged to be able to even talk about getting rid of fossil fuels? And like, we've literally lost our minds. If people that were saying that went

• 42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  and spent time around the world, they would come running back and immediately abandon the ESG narrative?

• 42:22Speaker 02

  There's definitely something to that. Maybe I forget exactly what he said in the first part of that quote, but I think it's really crucial about ignoring the reasons why we burn fossil fuels in the first place. And so this is my version of we're not seriously considering the benefits of fossil fuels. We're just focused on the side effects. Now I'm arguing also we're, we're what I call catastrophizing the side effects or making them far worse than they are. That's why people think that's one reason why people think, oh, it's a climate catastrophe. When in fact, yes, we've had some warming impact, but overall, we're far safer, far better in terms of climate, let alone everything else. I think part of what he's pointing out is, yeah, you're ignoring the benefits. And then he says, well, the benefits of fossil fuels are most obvious for the people who want to use them, but aren't using them. So you think of the people, again, who are using less

• 43:06Speaker 02

  electricity in their lives than one of our refrigerators. To them, it's obvious. And I'm actually really happy that I'm getting more and more people from the impoverished, what I call unempowered world, speaking up about this because I, since my first book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, I've been very encouraging of that. And it's really cool to see that. Now, this other thing about like luxury things, I would agree, I would agree that partial use of solar and wind is a luxury in the sense of it makes our electricity more expensive. And if you try to cut costs at all, less reliable. So that's what we've had in California. I would argue that's also what's going on in Texas. Clearly, clearly, it's what's going on in California. So, but so in that sense, yes.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  But I wouldn't jump to, and I don't think Peter would either. I know I've talked to him about this quite a bit. This idea of 100% replacement, that is not a luxury lifestyle for anybody. Because it cannot be done in a remotely cost-effective way. And then what that basically means is you cannot use much energy and you revert to a manual labor life. So it's not true. There's this narrative of, oh, well, the poor places need fossil fuels, but we can afford all solar and wind. Nobody can afford all solar wind. This doesn't work anywhere, even in the richest places. The closest you get are places like Denmark, to some extent, Germany. But what you notice, so that's in the realm of like 35 Germany, about 50% Denmark, just for electricity, mind you.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  But what they're doing is they have to import huge amounts of electricity from their more reliable neighbors. And they also have to have the ability to export it when they have too much. And what we're noticing in the United States, I don't know if you've heard about these claims about these predictions of blackouts and all this risks around the country. What's happened is there are more and more states that are trying to use more and more unreliable electricity. And saying, we'll import it from others. But what's happening is not everyone can do that, right? Not everyone can say, we're going to import it from our more reliable neighbors. California tried to get away with that two years ago. There was not enough as much wind as we expected during heat wave. And so we got screwed. But now it's happening to everyone because everyone is saying, hey, let's cut back on fossil fuels.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  And use unreliable solar wind, but don't worry, when they're not working, we'll import it from somewhere else. But that doesn't work if everyone is trying this scheme. And so there's just no real reality at all in the world of relying on unreliable solar. Again, this is a crackpot fantasy slash distortion that is perpetrated by people who don't really care about energy.

• 45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question for you is, obviously Peter Thiel probably is the best example, very well known for having a contrarian thought process and thinking from first principles. Maybe an Elon Musk, also known for being a first principles thinker. Those individuals, you would expect to be able to critically think about a problem like this and come to their own conclusions and have independent thought. How do we take the ideas that are in your book and other folks who have thought critically about this from a first principles standpoint and mainstream those ideas? Like, it's one thing to arrive at these conclusions. How do you think is best suited to take those ideas and then get them into the mainstream

• 46:17Anthony Pompliano?

  narrative to, at least at a minimum, give people two different ways to think about it, which is, one, the ESG narrative, one, kind of this fossil future narrative, but even to potentially be able to change their mind and have them see what some of the errors are in that ESG narrative? Like, how do you think about the distribution of the idea or the adoption of the ideas?

• 46:38Speaker 02

  For me, the most important thing is to, when I'm making a case like this, explain from the outset, like, what's my method of approaching the issue? And so, I haven't stressed it that much today, but it's a really crucial thing that I think everyone can agree to, but few people practice, is that we need to, what I call, look at the full context. And in particular, we need to look carefully and weigh carefully the benefits and side effects of fossil fuels. And what I submit we tend to do is we only look at the negative side effects, but not the benefits. In chapter one, I point out that one of the world's leading thinkers on this stuff, Michael Mann, has a whole book, and he only talks about the agricultural negative side effects

• 47:19Speaker 02

  of fossil fuels, but not the agricultural benefits, even though fossil-fueled machinery and fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers, specifically natural gas, are totally crucial to 8 billion people being able to eat. And the lack of fossil fuels in the world because of ideas like Michael Mann's is leading to a food crisis right now. So I think everyone can agree that we need to carefully weigh benefits and side effects, and it It becomes pretty clear that most of our leading thinkers aren't doing this. But I think that if we're talking about spreading the idea, it's really about spreading, hey, how, what's a method we can all agree on? And then let's look at the facts. And I think Elon is an interesting example. Because I think he's a very good thinker with certain engineering kinds of things.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  But I don't think he thinks about this very carefully. Although I should say, he has, well, he and I have a bit of a history. He blocked me on Twitter for saying that, for writing a popular article about how the Tesla was a really good fossil fuel car, which I guess he didn't like that, although it was factually, factually true. But he has been moving a bit in my direction, not saying because of me, but he's become much more pro oil production, which he has been very hostile to for years. He's become more pro nuclear, which he was sort of subtly hostile to for years. And he's become, this is the most important, he's become anti-climate catastrophe. So he had a recent Ted, if you look at his Power All presentation several years ago, it's like climate apocalypse, the world is terrible because of fossil fuels. It's like shows the earth is like an inferno.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  And now he's telling Ted, hey, look, there's not a catastrophe. It's going to be great. We can just sort of slowly transition. So I don't, I can't speak about where he will be, but I, I think it's very important, if you want to call it first principles, to have these first principles for how do you think about the issue? And I found that's made me effective because I'll just say, hey, look, can we all agree to think about the issue that way? And everyone says yes, but they wouldn't do it on their own. So it's like, it's common sense, but not common practice. And by making the common sense explicit, you can make it more common practice.

• 49:18Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a fascinating way to kind of think about distributing ideas and getting them actually adopted and shared. I lied, I have actually two more questions.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Okay, can I, can I say something about Peter Thiel, though?

• 49:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  In particular, and this is, this is my, my. My necessary like hard sell type thing for Fossil Future, but it's somewhat time sensitive. So Peter, I've gotten to know pretty well over the years and I'm grateful he's endorsed both my books. And one thing we did recently was we did a 90 minute conversation at a guy, a guy I also really admire named Palmer Luckey's house. He created Oculus and sold it to Facebook and he now runs an amazing defense company called Audrill. Anyway, he hosted this event and we recorded it and part of, I asked these guys to do it because I wanted something to incentivize people to order Fossil Future on launch week. So if you order Fossil Future on launch week and you just send an email to [email protected].

• 50:14Speaker 02

  So [email protected], then you'll get this whole 90 minute discussion with me and Peter, my follow-up discussion with Palmer and a whole bunch of other cool resources. And if you want to know more, you can go to fossilfuture.com. But I know people here are really interested in Peter in particular. So I'm very deliberately offering this to you as a carrot so that you buy the book this week and that it gets more well-known this week. Because the more well-known it gets, the more that these ideas have a chance of penetrating the mainstream even more than they already have. Okay.

• 50:43Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fantastic way to drive some book sales.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  It's nice that they agreed to that. You know, that was getting, getting two guys like that to agree to help my preorder campaign was, and we had an amazing live event, but there were only like 70 people there. So it's amazing that they allowed that and we can hopefully get a lot more book sales out of it.

• 51:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. The, the next question that I have, I guess, is what can people at home do? Like obviously they can read the book, they can get the ideas. How can they help push these ideas forward?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Love questions like that. So the, you know, one thing I created, I have a Substack page, alexepstein.substack.com. And probably by the time people are hearing this, the second or third article will be called something like "Easy and Effective Ways to Promote Fossil Future", to promote these ideas. So one thing I talk about in chapter 11 is that people have not yet caught up to the reality that sharing effective resources is incredibly effective. And it's, it's kind of Kind of a weird thing because it sounds so cliche to say share things. And of course, people will always say buy my book and stuff, but it's not really about books. And in some way, books are inferior for sharing because you have to buy them.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  But there are a lot of really good resources on any given topic that if you share them with people, like that's going to be much more effective. So I don't know what those are in Bitcoin, but I'm sure that they, I mean, I know of some of them, but I don't know the most sort of absolutely effective ones. But for example, on energy, one thing I've created is called energy talking points.com. Right. Energy talking points.com is totally free thing. Initially, I created it for clients and elected officials I work with, but it's available to everyone. And if you go on that site, you can search any topic. And it's very likely you're going to get a Twitter length talking point with a really good reference. And the idea was to just make a comprehensive thing where you could just have the right answer on any kind of issue.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  And it's persuasive, it's concise, and it's accurate. So that's one thing. And then the other thing, so I think, I think already I've created all of these free shareable resources. And you can, you can really change the world by influencing the right people. Like even something like asking, you know, asking the right host to have me on or someone else you have on. Like, you know, people, do you know who Dave Rubin is?

• 53:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I do.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  I'm guessing you've heard of him.

• 53:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Been on the podcast before, yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So Dave, so he's an interesting example where he had listeners harassing him for a year to have me on. And then, and so he finally had me on, I guess he gave in. And it was, I think it was really popular and like, I get recognized on the street for that. And I was talking like, I won't name names because I don't want to out anyone. But like one of the really, really successful person in Hollywood is a huge fan of my work. And like, he learned about me from the Dave Rubin show and is kind of spreading the truth about fossil fuels in Hollywood. Like that's just, think about that. That was just some annoying fan was bothering Dave Rubin. And it led to like a big Hollywood person learning about it. So you,

• 53:45Speaker 02

  you cannot underestimate the power of you sharing. I would just say the thing that you want to focus on is how good is the resource? Because if you share something that is really Going to be persuasive and powerful to someone who disagrees with it, or will empower someone who agrees with it to become more effective, either of those two, then it's going to be effective. If you just send them something that's just some partisan nonsense that only appeals to you and to no one else, then they're just going to consider you their annoying friend or relative. So I like my whole focus is creating these resources that are designed to persuade people who expect to disagree and that empower people who already agree. So Fossil Future, that's the best one. If you can pay 27 bucks on Amazon, but energytalkingpoints.com is awesome and it is totally free.

• 54:30Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question, one of our sponsors is Eight Sleep. They're a thermo-regulated mattress and they make it super cool, or you can make it super hot and they help you get better, deeper sleep. What's your sleep schedule? And you know, you're running around, you've got a bunch of stuff going on. You got the book release, etc. What does that sleep schedule look like right now?

• 54:49Speaker 02

  I think I generally do well in most aspects of human flourishing. You probably see the sign beside my book. Like I'm very into human flourishing. I'd say sleep is a little bit of a weakness of mine relatively speaking, but I have a strength that somewhat somewhat offsets it in my view, actually significantly, which is that I'm an amazing napper. And in particular, I live, I live like 150 feet away from my favorite beach in Laguna Beach and I take naps two or three times a day and I feel amazing. Like I have really, really good energy. And I have that like, and the weird thing about it is I take 22 minute naps. And what I do is I listen to old episodes of, and they're all old. I listen to Seinfeld episodes and I've memorized them all to such a degree

• 55:32Speaker 02

  that it's like meditation and I just fall asleep and I wake up at the credits. It's, it's bizarre, but it's unbelievably effective. So that is my sleep method.

• 55:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. That's amazing. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 55:47Speaker 02

  Oh, so I am really big on Twitter. So Twitter at Alex Epstein. Actually, I just finally have my personal website up, alexepstein.com. And then that website I mentioned before, energytalkingpoints.com. And yeah, if you want to get in touch with me, you can message me on Twitter. I have open DMs. Not always the best of them. And my email address is [email protected]. I read everything, don't necessarily respond, but I like to be accessible in case anyone wants to send me something amazing that I'll learn from.

• 56:16Anthony Pompliano?

  This is uh, this is amazing, man. I appreciate you. Uh, one, doing the work. Two, writing the book. Um, and, uh, and then taking the time to, uh, to come on here and talk. I learned a bunch.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, you, you were one of the ones I wanted to go on. You were like on my top 10 list, uh, from the beginning. So it's, it's very, and then we took fucking forever to get you a book, uh, cause we put the wrong address on, but, uh, I'm glad we got it. I'm glad we got it to you. And it's sorry, I only gave you like a day to, to read some of it.

• 56:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I was reading my ass off, man. I was trying to read as much as I could. Um, the book's name is Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less. Alex Epstein, thank you so much for doing this and, uh, we will definitely have to bring you back as, uh, as all this continues to progress.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. And hopefully sometime in person. I'm in, in Miami quite a bit.

• 57:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.