Cheap energy and human freedom move together. High energy costs historically coincided with slavery; abundant cheap energy enabled freedom and mobility. The speaker argues we have a moral obligation to keep energy affordable rather than impose policies that limit how people live.
If you look throughout history, there is a correlation between cost of energy and the amount of slavery in the world. When energy is very expensive, there's a lot of slaves. When energy is very cheap, there's a lot of freedom. And this is why, as a humanist who very much cares about nature and the environment, I think we have a moral obligation to make sure that energy is abundant. I'm all about not wasting energy. I'm also all about not wasting human potential to save energy, because that would be stupid. That's why we have electricity. I'm unwilling to give up human human freedoms and create a place where everyone has to walk because it's too expensive to drive a car, because that isn't the kind of world that any of us thrives in. So abundant energy equals abundant freedom and abundant happiness, which is why affordability matters.
