Climate activists worry about a potential “existential crisis” decades down the road, but poor people, really poor people, face an existential crisis every day. Limiting the availability of fossil fuels in the name of climate activism would cut off many of the world’s poor from these benefits. There has been, and remains, a strong correlation between the use of fossil fuels and life expectancy.
Oil- and coal-burning transportation opened up access to education, commerce, professional opportunities, and vital services such as medicine. Before the advent of the automobile, the ability for many people to venture far from their hometown was an unfathomable dream. Fossil-fuel-based fertilizers greatly increased crop yields, reducing starvation and malnutrition. Fossil fuels let people heat their homes in the winter, reducing the risk of death from exposure. Anyone on an investment committee has likely spent untold amounts of time discussing ways to mitigate the impact of climate change, but they’ve likely never heard anyone state one simple and incontrovertible fact: The widespread exploration and production of fossil fuels that started in Titusville, Pa., not quite 170 years ago, has done more to benefit the lives of ordinary people than any other technological advance in history.īefore fossil fuels, people relied on burning biomass, such as timber or manure, which was a far dirtier and much less efficient source of energy.