"Environmentalism offers emotional relief and spiritual satisfaction, giving its adherents a sense of purpose and transcendence"
By John Tierney,
Wall Street Journal
June 21, 2020
Summary of article:
“There is a recurring puzzle in the history of the environmental movement: Why do green activists keep promoting policies that are harmful not only to humans but also to the environment? Michael Shellenberger is determined to solve this problem, and he is singularly well-qualified.
“He understands activists because he has been one himself since high school, when he raised money for the Rainforest Action Network. Early in his adult career, he campaigned to protect redwood trees, promote renewable energy, stop global warming, and improve the lives of farmers and factory workers in the Third World. But the more he traveled, the more he questioned what Westerners’ activism was accomplishing for people or for nature.
“He became a different kind of activist by helping start a movement called eco-modernism, the subject of ‘Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.’ He still wants to help the poor and preserve ecosystems, but through industrialization instead of ‘sustainable development.’ He’s still worried about climate change, but he doesn’t consider it the most important problem today, much less a threat to humanity’s survival—and he sees that greens’ favorite solutions are making the problem worse.
“He chronicles environmental progress around the world and crisply debunks myth after gloomy myth. No, we are not in the midst of the ‘sixth mass extinction,’ because only 0.001% of the planet’s species go extinct annually. No, whales were not saved by Greenpeace but rather by the capitalist entrepreneurs who discovered cheaper substitutes for whale oil (first petroleum, then vegetable oils) that decimated the whaling industry long before activists got involved. No, plastics don’t linger for thousands of years in the ocean; they’re broken down by sunlight and other forces. No, climate change has not caused an increase in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes.
“In 2002, Mr. Shellenberger proposed the New Apollo Project, a precursor to the Green New Deal. Many of its ideas for promoting renewable energy were adopted by the Obama administration and received more than $150 billion in federal funds, but Mr. Shellenberger was disillusioned with the results. A disproportionate share of the money, as he documents, went to companies that enriched donors to the Obama campaign but failed to yield practical technologies.
“He now considers most forms of renewable energy to be impractical for large-scale use. Windmills and solar power are too expensive and unreliable as a primary source of power for people in poor countries, and they cause too much environmental damage because they require vast areas of land and harm flora and fauna. He faults Western activists and governments for trying to force these technologies on Third World countries and prevent them from building hydroelectric and fossil-fuel power plants.
“‘Rich nations,’ he writes, ‘should do everything they can to help poor nations industrialize.’ Instead ‘many of them are doing something closer to the opposite: seeking to make poverty sustainable rather than to make poverty history.’”
After discussing some of the benefits and disadvantages of industrialization the reviewer concludes:
“‘The trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating,’ he 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.’
“Mr. Shellenberger wants to woo them to an alternative faith that he calls environmental humanism, which is committed to the ‘transcendent moral purpose of universal human flourishing and environmental progress.’ I’m not sure that’s enough to attract converts, but it makes for a much truer picture of the world—and a much cheerier read.”