No, Fossil Fuels are not ‘the Cause of Wars’

Marc Rauch posted this comment on my blog article In his Book ‘The Moral Case,’ Is Epstein Attacking a Straw Man?

: 

I recently published a rebuttal to Alex Epstein's book titled "The Immorality of Arguing That There's a Moral Case for Fossil Fuels." At the same time it also rebuts a book by Kathleen Hartnett White of a similar title and proposition. 

It is preposterous to claim that there is anything moral about fossil fuels, and to claim that we owe any debt of gratitude to gasoline/diesel/coal for enhancing our lives. If a debt of gratitude is owed, it is owed to the inventions that utilize various fuels...regardless of what those fuels are. The inventions were all created without consideration to any specific fossil fuel. Internal combustion engines, for example, were created before the invention of either gasoline or diesel petroleum fuel. The steam engine was not created because coal was available.

The fact is that fossil fuels have been the cause of wars, disease, and ecological and environmental disasters. Every significant war in the past 104 years has been caused by petroleum oil. Tens of millions of people; no, make that hundreds of millions of people have been killed in these wars. To the war dead-toll we have to add the people who have died as a result of the illnesses caused by the use of petroleum oil fuels. Then there's the life-long injuries and disabilities suffered by untold millions more. There's nothing moral about any of this.

Previous attempts to rebuke Mr. Epstein and Ms. White, such as the one written by Jody Freeman, have failed because the writers have as little understanding of history, fuels, energy, and real solutions as Epstein and White do.

You can read my complete rebuttal at https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2018/02/19/511177-immorality-arguing-that-there-s-moral-case-for-fossil-fuels.html.

Marc J. Rauch

Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher

THE AUTO CHANNEL

I replied:

Marc: 

Thanks. I read your piece. 

Right off the bat, I can confidently reject the idea that oil causes wars. True, wars have been fought over control of oil reserves. But that’s only because governments have attempted to seize economic control. In all instances of “wars over oil”—or anything else, for that matter—the problem is not oil or some other commodity, but statism. The solution is individual rights-protecting, constitutionally limited republican government and its economic corollary, free market capitalism. You don’t see conflict between the relatively free market nations of the world, which protect free global commerce, including in oil. Within the United States, you don’t see conflict between oil producing and non-oil producing states.

Even if the use of fossil fuels could be shown to cause more human and environmental harm than good, it does not follow that petroleum oil, any more than any other economic factor, can in and of itself cause wars. As long as the rights of individuals to produce and trade wherever they reside is not seriously restricted by political boundaries, how exactly could a war over oil begin? If people could gain access to oil energy by peaceful means (trade), why on Earth would they pick up arms?

RELATED: https://fee.org/articles/the-roots-of-war/ [The Roots of War by Ayn Rand]

Thanks.

As to Rauch’s other charges, that “The fact is that fossil fuels have been the cause of wars, disease, and ecological and environmental disasters,” Epstein does not deny that fossil fuel use  has negative side effects. But he thoroughly exposes the biased “sloppy thinking” of fossil fuel enemies, who routinely minimize the benefits and vastly exaggerate the negatives of fossil fuels. In that regard, I’ll defer to Epstein in his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels* and to his October 2019 debate with Robert F. Kennedy.

* [An updated version of this book is in the works.] 

Related Reading:

The Environmentalists’ War on People—Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard