Epstein, who has argued that fossil fuels are good for developing countries, wrote in 1999 in the Duke Review, a conservative college newspaper, that African countries are inferior to the West. The 1999 article was found by Documented, an investigative group, and reported by the Washington Post in April 2022. In a video response, Epstein denied racial biases but said, "Western culture is overall superior and certainly in terms of government historically, because it’s really the birth of modern freedom," and called for the Washington Post writer, Maxine Joselow, to be fired.
In 2011, Epstein founded the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), which he calls a "for-profit think tank".
In 2012, Epstein debated American environmentalist Bill McKibben while representing CIP at an event held at Duke University.
In 2013, Rolling Stone placed Epstein and the Center for Industrial Progress on its list of top global warming deniers. Epstein wrote a rebuttal in Forbes that criticized the term global warming denier, which he said was a smear tactic intended to liken critics of environmentalism to Holocaust deniers.
In 2014, Epstein and CIP publicly supported the Keystone Pipeline. He wrote The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which reached #17 on a list of bestselling science books in early December 2014. In the book he calls the idea that the majority of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change a "fabrication." A Foreign Policy review of the book found that it "doesn't engage with much of the relevant scientific context" and "paints a paranoid picture of a climate science that cannot be trusted."
In 2015, The Guardian published an opinion piece by Jason Wilson critical of Epstein and CIP, stating, "Epstein's work has been popular and influential on the right because it is a particularly fluent, elaborate form of climate denialism. The CIP prides itself on being able to train corporate leaders to 'successfully outmessage "environmentalists"'."
In 2016, Epstein testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at the invitation of the committee's chairman, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called climate change a "hoax." Epstein suggested that rising carbon dioxide levels "benefit plants and Americans." When questioned by committee member Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as to why Epstein, whose academic training is in philosophy, was even there, Epstein responded, "to teach you how to think clearly." Boxer replied "... you are a philosopher, not a scientist, and I don’t appreciate getting lectured by a philosopher about science."
I've been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow lately and they shit on this so hard. The "epic individual liberty enlightenment values" that these types love to jerk off about were the result of cultural exchange between Europe and native North American civilizations, their notions of freedom and their critiques of European societies, as many of the European enlightenment philosophers themselves admitted in their own work.
To the extent that there was a "Western Culture" it was very specifically NOT about having individual liberty because you're supposed to obey authority, not do whatever you want like some godless heathen.
Then they genocided the native Americans, turned "individual liberty" into "owning private property" and claimed to have invented freedom
lmao, of course
”I'm not racist, I'm a Western chauvinist”
Holy shit this guy fuckin sucks, what a demon
Ban all :epstein: :epsteingelion:
Wall
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Western culture = freedom of speech.
Also, please fire this journalist, because I don't like what she says.
to people like this, it's not coercion if "market forces" are doing the coercion
Not true, because if market forces mean that your spokesperson having a heated gamer moment is not okay, that's a violation of :freeze-peach:
Usually there's a logical throughline of deniability to these kinds of excuses, but this truly means less than nothing.
I've been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow lately and they shit on this so hard. The "epic individual liberty enlightenment values" that these types love to jerk off about were the result of cultural exchange between Europe and native North American civilizations, their notions of freedom and their critiques of European societies, as many of the European enlightenment philosophers themselves admitted in their own work.
To the extent that there was a "Western Culture" it was very specifically NOT about having individual liberty because you're supposed to obey authority, not do whatever you want like some godless heathen.
Then they genocided the native Americans, turned "individual liberty" into "owning private property" and claimed to have invented freedom
:took-restraint:
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