I just find it so funny how this person is willing to use completely different ethical frameworks in the same sentence when talking about slavery, versus when talking about fossil fuels.

With fossil fuels, we go and start talking about 'net benefits', and we're willing to accept some catastrophically bad effects in order to reap some benefits, but then when the conversation is about slavery suddenly we switch to toddler ethics of "that's evil." without any consideration for weighing the positives and negatives.

I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others. This is mostly fine in western rich countries, and we already do this to some extent by putting extra taxes and fees on petrol, carbon emissions and stuff.

Becoming reliant on countries you dont want to be reliant on, and pretending we dont desperately need this to get the wheels turning is a strategic blunder.

Higher global fossil fuels costs have strong negative effects on peoples welfare, especially in poorer countries. Whenever we get high oil/gas prices, we get price jumps on artificial fertilizer, food, transport and energy. Everything gets more expensive. Its straight up national emergency when something threatens supply of oil and gas in many of these countries when we get events like closing of the hormuz strait.