If Epstein’s thesis is, broadly, “cheap energy from fossil fuels is awesome and climate change isn’t that bad”, weaknesses would be likely to fall somewhere under these, classified in increasing controversy:
Climate change might be worse than he’s positing. Particularly, climate is a global system we only partly understand, and our error bars for the effects of inadvertently perturbing it may be quite large
Cheap energy may be obtainable from non-fossil sources. Epstein is keen on nuclear energy (why?), but, as AnthonyC points out, solar & wind are getting surprisingly cheap (for example https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants). Obviously that only gives you a bonanza of cheap energy when the wind blows and the sun shines, but “the sometimes-free-energy bonanza will destabilise the grid!” feels a long way from common-sense
GDP may be possible to decouple from energy use by purely technical means: compare the computation-per-watt-hour of a Pentium with that of an iPad. Compare a Passive-House-standard building with an average building. How far are we from the optimal frontier? There will be, at some point, a limit, because we’re operating with optimal designs and can’t get any better, but we might be quite far from that point—countries with more energy-tight housing often have codes that require that, rather than the market doing it spontaneously? Why is that? Principal-agent problems? “Market for lemons” informational issues?
GDP may be possible to decouple even further from emissions use via selective lifestyle changes (higher-density cities, more bicycles, fewer automobiles)
If Epstein’s thesis is, broadly, “cheap energy from fossil fuels is awesome and climate change isn’t that bad”, weaknesses would be likely to fall somewhere under these, classified in increasing controversy:
Climate change might be worse than he’s positing. Particularly, climate is a global system we only partly understand, and our error bars for the effects of inadvertently perturbing it may be quite large
Cheap energy may be obtainable from non-fossil sources. Epstein is keen on nuclear energy (why?), but, as AnthonyC points out, solar & wind are getting surprisingly cheap (for example https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants). Obviously that only gives you a bonanza of cheap energy when the wind blows and the sun shines, but “the sometimes-free-energy bonanza will destabilise the grid!” feels a long way from common-sense
GDP may be possible to decouple from energy use by purely technical means: compare the computation-per-watt-hour of a Pentium with that of an iPad. Compare a Passive-House-standard building with an average building. How far are we from the optimal frontier? There will be, at some point, a limit, because we’re operating with optimal designs and can’t get any better, but we might be quite far from that point—countries with more energy-tight housing often have codes that require that, rather than the market doing it spontaneously? Why is that? Principal-agent problems? “Market for lemons” informational issues?
GDP may be possible to decouple even further from emissions use via selective lifestyle changes (higher-density cities, more bicycles, fewer automobiles)
GDP may be argued to be decouple-able from human welfare. Broadly, this is the “degrowth” argument. Critique here, for example (https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/people-are-realizing-that-degrowth)