 First edition | |
| Author | Michael Shellenberger |
|---|---|
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 30 June 2020 |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 0063001691 (Hardcover) |
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All is a 2020 book by Michael Shellenberger.
| First edition | |
| Author | Michael Shellenberger |
|---|---|
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 30 June 2020 |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 0063001691 (Hardcover) |
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All is a 2020 book by Michael Shellenberger.
In June 2020, Shellenberger published Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, in which the author argues that climate change is not the existential threat it is portrayed to be in popular media and activism. Rather, he posits that technological innovation, if allowed to continue and grow, will remedy environmental issues. According to Shellenberger, the book "explores how and why so many of us came to see important but manageable environmental problems as the end of the world, and why the people who are the most apocalyptic about environmental problems tend to oppose the best and most obvious solutions to solving them." [1]
Before publication, the book received favorable reviews from climate scientists Tom Wigley and Kerry Emanuel, and from environmentalists such as Steve McCormick and Erle Ellis, [2] but reviews after publication were mixed. [3] For example, Emanuel said that while he did not regret his original positive review, he wished that "the book did not carry with it its own excesses and harmful baggage." [4] [5]
The book has received positive reviews and coverage from conservative and libertarian news outlets and organizations, including Fox News, the Heartland Institute, the Daily Mail , Reason , The Wall Street Journal , National Review , and "climate 'truther' websites". [3] [6] [7] [8] [9]
In National Review, Alex Trembath generally praised the book, writing that "despite the flaws", "Shellenberger ... do[es] a service in calling out the environmental alarmism and hysteria that obscure environmental debates rather than illuminate them. And they stand as outliers in those debates for precisely the reason that they claim: Abjuring environmentalist orthodoxy carries heavy social and professional penalties, so few are willing to do so." However, Trembath criticized some of the book as "nuclear fetishism". [7]
In The Wall Street Journal , John Tierney, a long-standing critic of environmentalism, wrote that "Shellenberger makes a persuasive case, lucidly blending research data and policy analysis with a history of the green movement and vignettes of people in poor countries suffering the consequences of 'environmental colonialism.'" [8] In the Financial Times , Jonathan Ford wrote that the book "provide[s] a corrective to many of the green assumptions that dominate the media. And if they make the world a little more questioning of the next polar bear story, that is no bad thing." [10]
In Scientific American , John Horgan said that "Apocalypse Never will make some green progressives mad. But I see it as a useful and even necessary counterpoint to the alarmism being peddled by some activists and journalists, including me." Horgan criticized the book for arguing too "aggressively for nuclear power" and added that "my main gripe with Shellenberger isn't that he's too optimistic; it's that he's not optimistic enough." [3] The book received a positive review from Die Welt . [11]
Reviewing Apocalypse Never for Yale Climate Connections , environmental scientist Peter Gleick argued that "bad science and bad arguments abound" in Apocalypse Never, writing that "What is new in here isn't right, and what is right isn't new." Gleick criticizes Shellenberger for using flawed arguments to dismiss the threat of species extinctions due to climate change, saying that Shellenberger confuses the concept of species richness with biodiversity, and that he misunderstood the study that he cites. Gleick claims that Shellenberger uses a set of logical fallacies, misrepresentation, and selective use of evidence in his book. He complains that Shellenberger used cherrypicking of events and out-of-date research in arguing that people were wrong to say that recent extreme events like forest fires, floods, heat waves, and droughts, were worsened by climate change. According to Gleick, Shellenberger ignored an increasing abundance of literature that shows strong links between climate change and worsening of extreme events, including hurricanes, heat deaths, flooding and decreasing ice. [12]
In the Los Angeles Review of Books , environmental economist Sam Bliss wrote that "the book itself is well written", but that Shellenberger "plays fast and loose with the facts". Furthermore, "...he seems more concerned with showing climate-denying conservatives clever new ways to own the libs than with convincing environmentalists of anything." [13] Writing in the conservative journal The New Atlantis , social scientists Taylor Dotson and Michael Bouchey argued that, as an "environmental activist" and ecomodernist, Shellenberger's writing in his books and on his foundation's website "bombards readers with facts that are disconnected, out of context, poorly explained, and of questionable relevance", and that ultimately, his "fanatic, scientistic discourse stands in the way of nuclear energy policy that is both intelligent and democratic." [14]
Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish political scientist, author, and the president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is the former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001).
The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.
Environmental skepticism is the belief that statements by environmentalists, and the environmental scientists who support them, are false or exaggerated. The term is also applied to those who are critical of environmentalism in general. It can additionally be defined as doubt about the authenticity or severity of environmental degradation. Environmental skepticism is closely linked with anti-environmentalism and climate change denial. Environmental skepticism can also be the result of cultural and lived experiences.
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World is a book by Danish author and statistician Bjørn Lomborg which focuses on the author's view of environmental economics and issues. It was first published in Danish in 1998 by Centrum, and in English by Cambridge University Press in 2001.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States–based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, India, and Beijing. The group was founded in 1970 in opposition to a hydroelectric power plant in New York.
State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organizations have disputed the views presented in the book.
Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction), for example by sub-replacement fertility.
Mark Lynas is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He has written for the New Statesman, The Ecologist, Granta and Geographical magazines, and The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post in the United States; he also worked on and appeared in the film The Age of Stupid. He was born in Fiji, grew up in Peru, Spain and the United Kingdom and holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh. He has published several books including Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans (2011).
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Michael D. Shellenberger is a professor, author, and journalist who writes on a wide range of topics including free speech, homelessness, and the environment. He is a co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition. Shellenberger founded the pro-nuclear non-profit Environmental Progress in 2016.
Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, first published in October 2007, is a book written by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, both long-time environmental strategists. Break Through is an argument for a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the traditional environmentalist focus on nature protection for a focus on creating a new sustainable economy.
Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration.
Barry William Brook is an Australian scientist. He is an ARC Australian Laureate Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania in the Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology. He was formerly an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia, where he held the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change from 2007 to 2014. He was also Director of Climate Science at the Environment Institute.
Cool It is a 2010 documentary film directed by Ondi Timoner. It is based on the book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg. The film stars Lomborg, best known for authoring The Skeptical Environmentalist, and explores his views on global warming and criticisms of conventional mitigation approaches. It premiered in Canada at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and had a theatrical United States release on November 12, 2010.
Ted Nordhaus is an American author and the director of research at The Breakthrough Institute. He has co-edited and written a number of books, including Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (2007) and An Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015) with collaborator Michael Shellenberger.
The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, the World's Most Dangerous Fuel is a 2012 book by Martin Cohen and Andrew McKillop which addresses a broad range of concerns regarding the nuclear industry, the economics and environmental aspects of nuclear energy, nuclear power plants, and nuclear accidents. The book has been described by The New York Times as "a polemic on the evils of splitting the atom".
The Breakthrough Institute is an environmental research center located in Berkeley, California. Founded in 2007 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The institute is aligned with ecomodernist philosophy. The Institute advocates for an embrace of modernization and technological development in order to address environmental challenges. Proposing urbanization, agricultural intensification, nuclear power, aquaculture, and desalination as processes with a potential to reduce human demands on the environment, allowing more room for non-human species.
Green imperialism is a derogatory epithet alluding to what is perceived as a Western strategy to influence the internal affairs of mostly developing nations in the name of environmentalism.
Zion Lights is a British author and activist known for her environmental work and science communication.
Shellenberger has a history of anti-green contrarianism. He thrust himself into the limelight in 2004, when he and Ted Nordhaus wrote an essay titled "The Death of Environmentalism." Thirty-three at the time, Shellenberger was already portraying himself as an environmentalist who had realized that environmentalism's problem was environmentalism itself... The story Shellenberger has stuck with is that the things environmentalists resist — nuclear, GMOs, fracking, industrial agriculture, and so on — are actually good for the environment.