128. Michael Shellenberger — Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

<p>Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. His conclusion: “Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.”</p> <p>Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. Shermer and Shellenberger also discuss:</p> <ul> <li>what’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism,</li> <li>the powerful financial interests in environmentalism,</li> <li>the desire for status and power among environmentalists, along with the all-too human propensity to moralize and tell other people what to do,</li> <li>Shellenberger’s hypothesis that environmentalism is a faux religion primarily followed by secular people searching for transcendence,</li> <li><em>Environmental Humanism</em> as a replacement worldview,</li> <li>the problems and shortcomings of climate computer models,</li> <li>how much warmer it’s going to get and what the consequences of that warming will be, and what we do about it? (hint: nuclear),</li> <li>m