For years we have been told that the world should rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use to avoid climate catastrophe — and this is eminently doable because fossil fuels can rapidly be replaced by solar and wind.

Today’s global energy crisis is rightly calling this into question. More than a decade of global opposition to fossil fuel investment, fossil fuel production, and fossil fuel transportation has led to skyrocketing prices for fossil fuels, which contribute to rising prices everywhere — including truly terrifying rises in the price of fertilizer that have prompted talk of starvation. We were promised by our leaders that restricting fossil fuels would not be a problem, because intermittent solar and wind energy would somehow make the difference. That promise has proved false.

Now, anti-fossil-fuel leaders such as Joe Biden who were eagerly shutting down fossil fuel projects are now scrambling to get their hands on more fossil fuels — not more solar panels and wind turbines.

While crises are tragic, they do have the benefit of opening our minds to new ways of thinking. I submit that today’s crisis should open our minds to a case I have been making for the last 15 years, culminating in my new book Fossil Future — the possibility that continuing fossil fuel use is a good thing — and should actually be expanded.

What has led me to the conclusion that, as the subtitle of my book says, “Global human flourishing requires more oil, coal, and natural gas — not less?”

It is the product, of all things, of my background as a philosopher.

As a philosopher, I believe passionately in objective thinking methods. One crucial thinking method is “full-impact thinking.” This means that when we are evaluating an industry, like oil and gas or solar, we look carefully at the full impact, positive and negative, of that industry.

When I became interested in energy 15 years ago, I was disturbed that most media and politicians didn’t look at the full impact of fossil fuels, but just looked at the negatives. Whereas for solar and wind,, they just looked at the positive impacts.

When I decided to look at the full impact of fossil fuels, without the bias of most media and politicians, I found that the positive impacts far, far outweigh the negative impacts — and will continue to do so for generations to come.

What are the positives of fossil fuels? They are the only form of energy in the near future that can produce the low-cost, reliable energy that 8 billion people need to survive and to flourish—that is, to live to their highest potential.

While we are told that wind and solar can provide low-cost, reliable energy just as well as fossil fuels, nothing could be further from the truth. Because solar and wind are unreliable, they don’t replace reliable power plants — they add to the cost of reliable power plants.

The more wind and solar that grids use, the higher their electricity prices. German households have seen prices double in 20 years due to wasteful, unreliable solar and wind infrastructure. Their electricity prices are 3X ours — which are already too high due to wind and solar.

But wait, what about the claim by Elon Musk and others that with enough batteries, unreliable wind/solar will work? Using Musk’s best battery prices, the batteries necessary to store just 3 days of the world’s energy would cost 400 trillion dollars— that’s 4.5 times global GDP.

The fossil fuel industry is the only industry that can produce low-cost, reliable energy for 8 billion people in the next several decades. That’s why globally, fossil fuel use is 4X all other energy use combined — and why oil, gas, and coal use is exploding in the developing world.

How important is low-cost, reliable energy for billions of people? If you care about human life, nothing is more important. Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. The lower cost energy is, the lower cost everything is.

Low-cost, reliable energy enables billions of people to enjoy the miracle of modern machines that make us productive and prosperous — such as the oil-based agricultural machines that enable one modern farmer to do the work it used to take hundreds of farmers to do.

Low-cost, reliable energy produced by the fossil fuel industry has made humanity so productive that since 1980, the fraction of people living in extreme poverty — less than $2 a day — has gone from more than 4 in 10 to less than 1 in 10.

While billions of people today get low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels, billions more need it. For example, there are 800 million people who have no electricity and 2.6 billion people are still using wood or dung for heating and cooking. 4.5 billion live on less than $10 per day.

To restrict fossil fuel use, as so many leading institutions advocate,  is to oppress billions. As Indian energy researcher Vijay Jayaraj wrote to John Kerry: “you have asked India to reduce its dependency on these life-saving fossil fuels! But your policy recommendations…threaten the energy security and livelihood of my people.”

What about the pervasive  idea that fossil fuels  should be condemned for the CO2 emissions that are supposedly causing a climate crisis? This is another example of bad thinking — wildly exaggerating negative impacts and ignoring positive impacts.

When you hear scary claims about a “climate crisis,” keep in mind that climate catastrophists have been claiming climate crisis for 40 years. For example, President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren predicted in the 1980s that we could have up to 1 billion climate deaths today.

After 40 years of “climate crisis” predictions by climate catastrophists, human beings are safer than ever from climate. In fact, the rate of climate disaster deaths—deaths from extreme temperatures, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods—has decreased by *98%* over the last century.

Fossil fuels were supposed to make climate far more dangerous in the last 40 years but they have actually made it far safer by providing low-cost energy for the amazing machines that protect us against storms, protect us against extreme temperatures, and alleviate drought.

Fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions have contributed to the warming of the last 170 years, but that warming has been mild and manageable — 1 degree Celsius, mostly in the colder parts of the world. And life on Earth thrived when CO2 levels were at least 5 times higher than today’s.

Let me be clear: fossil fuels do impact the climate. Climate change is real. But “climate crisis” is a fiction that comes from wildly exaggerating fossil fuels’ negative climate-related impacts and ignoring fossil fuels’ massive positive climate-related impacts.

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It’s time to stop thinking about fossil fuels and climate as: either you believe that fossil fuels impact climate, and therefore fossil fuels are bad–or you believe that fossil fuels don’t impact climate, and therefore fossil fuels are okay.

By engaging in full-impact thinking, we can clearly see the truth: that fossil fuels do impact climate–but any negative climate impacts are far, far outweighed by the enormous, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels for billions of people going forward.

Going forward, global human flourishing indeed requires more oil, coal, and natural gas —not less.

Alex Epstein is the president and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less.”