From environmentalist
Michael Shellenberger,
in his new book
"Apocalypse Never:
Why Environmental
Alarmism Hurts Us All."
Shellenberger
had been a devout
advocate of the
environmentalists
-- a leader in the field.
This reversal
will surely be termed
"heresy" by the
climate alarmists.
Shellenberger says
our current global
conversation on the
environment is largely
inaccurate, misguided,
and filled with
“exaggeration,
alarmism, and
extremism..”
“The trouble with the
new environmental religion
is that it has become
increasingly apocalyptic,
destructive, and self-defeating,”
Shellenberger writes.
“It leads
its adherents
to demonize
their opponents,
often hypocritically.
It drives them to seek
to restrict power and
prosperity at home
and abroad.
And it spreads anxiety
and depression
without meeting
the deeper psychological,
existential, and spiritual
needs its ostensibly
secular devotees seek.”
He disagrees that
climate change
is humanity’s
most pressing problem,
nor does he see it
as a threat to human
survival.
Climate change
is a problem
demanding attention,
but we are not killing
the earth, or ourselves.
Are we seeing
a mass extinction
of animal species
today?
Only if 0.001%
of all species
going extinct
each year
is a “mass.”
Shellenberger explains
how plastics actually
break down into nothing,
much faster and fully,
than environmentalists
claim.
And climate change
is not responsible
for weather events.
Forcing environmentalist
religious dogma
onto Third World countries is
“environmental colonialism"
... “rich nations should
do everything they can
to help poor nations
industrialize.”
Carbon dioxide emissions
decline as people move
from wood to coal
to natural gas, to what
Mr. Shellenberger calls
the safest and cleanest
source of electric power:
Nuclear energy.
Shellenberger
demonstrates that
for a group of people
who proudly claim to be
“people of science,”
the environmentalists
are a secular bunch
of fundamentalists,
whipped up into
a religious frenzy
by misguided faith,
contrary to the
best climate science.