Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

Now a National Bestseller

Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.

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.

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.

What's really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

ISBN-13: 9780063001695

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Publication Date: 06-30-2020

Pages: 432

Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

Michael Shellenberger is the nationally bestselling author of Apocalypse Never, a Time magazine “Hero of the Environment,” the winner of the 2008 Green Book Award from the Stevens Institute of Technology’s Center for Science Writings, and an invited expert reviewer of the next Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has written on energy and the environment for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Nature Energy, and other publications for two decades. He is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent, nonpartisan research organization based in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 It's Not the End of the World 1

2 Earth's Lungs Aren't Burning 27

3 Enough with the Plastic Straws 45

4 The Sixth Extinction Is Canceled 65

5 Sweatshops Save the Planet 85

6 Greed Saved the Whales, Not Greenpeace 107

7 Have Your Steak and Eat It, Too 126

8 Saving Nature Is Bomb 145

9 Destroying the Environment to Save It 175

10 All About the Green 200

11 The Denial of Power 222

12 False Gods for Lost Souls 250

Epilogue 283

Acknowledgments 287

Notes 289

Index 395