College Republicans to host fossil fuel advocate in lecture, Q&A session

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UPDATE: This story was updated at 3:00p.m. on Sept. 20, 2023.

Tom Rand will not be participating in Wednesday night’s debate. John Parker, president of the College Republicans at SU, notified The Daily Orange Wednesday afternoon that Rand would be unable to attend because of “bureaucratic issues.” The event, which will still be held in the Schine Student Center Goldstein Auditorium at 6:30 tonight, is set to be a lecture and Q&A session with Alex Epstein, Parker wrote.

Syracuse University’s College Republicans club will host fossil fuels advocate Alex Epstein, a speaker for the conservative group Young America’s Foundation, as part of a climate change carbon emissions policy debate on Wednesday night.

Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” is known for his pro-fossil fuels sentiment and undermining the consensus belief among scientists regarding the dangers of increased carbon emissions. Epstein has also been criticized for racist and colonial sentiments in past articles he wrote during his time with a conservative newspaper at Duke University.

Epstein in his book championed fossil fuel use for “the sake of our economy and our environment.” In the book, Epstein argues that fossil fuels created increased life expectancy, better air quality and rising incomes. He wrote the growth of fossil fuels is the “greatest benefactor our environment has ever known.”

Melissa Chipman, an assistant professor of arctic paleoecology and paleoclimate in SU’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science, said Epstein’s argument and fossil fuel advocacy are “extremely dangerous” because of his broad statements that imply fossil fuels automatically guarantee prosperity.

“It’s really unfair to create this narrative that life is better for everyone. Life is demonstrably not better for everyone because of fossil fuels,” Chipman said. “The solutions that we need in the future are people who have benefited from fossil fuels and people who have not benefited from fossil fuels … we can only do that with complicated solutions and complicated dialogues.”

In May 2022, Epstein claimed that the scientific community’s view that human impact is “immoral and self-destructive” in regard to climate change is disrupting the public’s views on energy. In February 2022, he asserted that there are “huge positives” in rising global temperatures, according to the Washington Post.

Gregory Hoke, chair of SU’s Earth and Environmental Sciences department, said Epstein’s views claiming fossil fuels do not exacerbate global warming are demonstrably untrue.

“I’ve dug into his record, (and) it seems like the points he takes are an implicit denial of climate change via fossil fuel usage,” Hoke said. “He might want to be labeled in one way or another, but it seems like the preponderance of the record would show that he’s on board with being basically a denier or supporting their cause.”

In February 2023, Epstein gave a keynote address advocating for expanded fossil fuel use at the annual climate conference of the Heartland Institute, a think tank that denies man-made climate change.

Epstein also authored articles regarding race and non-Western nations during his time as editor and publisher of the Duke Review, a then-operational conservative student newspaper, from 1999 to 2001.

Epstein’s claims during his time at the newspaper include that modern-day Black Americans are not forcibly held back by segregation or Jim Crow laws and that historical advancements by African and Asian countries were “almost exclusively” due to Western influence, according to the Washington Post. Epstein also wrote an article accusing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of being largely responsible for the “destruction” of America.

In response to the Washington Post’s coverage of his writings, Epstein posted a YouTube video to a channel operated by the Center for Industrial Progress, a nonprofit organization which he serves as founder and president. He criticized the outlet’s “smear campaign” and said the Washington Post’s analysis of his writings as racist is “absolutely false and despicable.”

In April, SU announced it would push for net-zero carbon emissions by 2032, eight years earlier than its previous goal. SU and the Student Association together released subsequent new sustainability goals to gradually reduce carbon emissions and single-plastic use on campus over the next few years.

A university spokesperson said SU has defined its sustainability goals and remains focused on achieving them.

John Parker, president of the College Republicans at SU, wrote in an email statement to The D.O. that Epstein’s case for fossil fuels comes from a desire to help enrich underdeveloped countries around the world, a goal he wrote that SU’s College Republicans “are happy to stand with.”

“So often, we see strawmen of conservatives as ‘science deniers’ on this issue, while the right will often call climate activists hysterical or socialists. In reality, neither of these is necessarily the case,” Parker wrote. “There is a real, serious policy question here about the potential benefits and genuine drawbacks of aiming for net neutrality by 2050.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that an article Alex Epstein published in the Duke Review said Black Americans were not forcibly held back by segregation or Jim Crow laws. This statement was inaccurate. Epstein’s sentence about segregation and Jim Crow laws referred to modern-day Black Americans, not Black Americans during the times of segregation and Jim Crow laws. The Daily Orange regrets this error.