Environmentalism as a religion:

a prominent environmentalist regrets the fact

What do you think of a leading, progressive environmental thinker who says the current environmental movement is doing more harm to humanity and the environment than helping it? That person is Michael Shellenberger and he presents his deeply informed and conflicting ideas of his in his new book, published later this month, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. His good faith in the constellation of environmental leaders is stellar. Time magazine praised him as an "environmental hero" and a "green pioneer fighting for a cleaner, greener future."

Andrew McAfee, a leading MIT research scientist says, "Michael Shellenberger loves the Earth too much to tolerate the conventional wisdom of environmentalism," adding: "I wish I had been brave enough to write [Revelation never] ..." Shellenberger says our world today The conversation about the environment is largely inaccurate, misguided, full of "hype, scaremongering and extremism." In short, he is going in the wrong direction, doing more harm than good.

"The problem with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive and self-destructive," writes Shellenberger. From his perspective, the implications and results of this are deeply troubling, “He leads his followers to demonize their opponents, often hypocritically. It prompts 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 that its seemingly secular devotees seek.

Shelleberger sees the path to a stronger and healthier environment in a very intuitive way. It is not through sustainability, the current buzzword among the enlightened classes, but rather industrialization itself. He does not agree that climate change is humanity's most pressing problem, nor does he see it as a threat to the survival of humanity. A problem to be sure and that demands attention, but we are not killing the earth or ourselves.

Apocalypse Never is a heavy book that destroys myths. Who saved the whales? He explains that it was not Greenpeace, but the capitalists who discovered viable and cheaper alternatives to whale oil. Are we seeing a mass extinction of animal species today? Only if he can reasonably define the 0.001% of all species that go extinct each year as "mass." Plastics are not friends of the earth, but neither are they its condemnation. He explains how they actually break down to nothing much faster and completely than popular environmental lore. And she says that climate change, in fact, is not responsible for the increase in dramatic weather events.

His answer is not that developed nations export (or force) the fashionable environmental religious dogma to Third World countries - "environmental colonialism" as Shellenberger calls it - but rather that "rich nations should do whatever they can to help poor nations to industrialize ". As John Tierney explained in the Wall Street Journal this weekend in a review of Apocalypse Never, “While industrialization causes short-term increases in carbon emissions, in the long term it is beneficial to the environment as people move to cities, allowing farmland to revert to nature, and as prosperity allows them to switch to cleaner and more compact forms of energy. "And he adds:" Carbon emissions decrease as people move on from wood to coal and natural gas, and then to what Shellenberger calls the safest and cleanest source: nuclear power.

Tierney explains how much Shellenberger has pioneered the direction of America's environmental policy and how those efforts have been thwarted by the reckless execution of previous administrations who are commonly portrayed as environmental heroes.

“In 2002, Mr. Shellenberger proposed Project New Apollo, a precursor to the Green New Deal. Many of his ideas to promote renewable energy were adopted by the Obama administration and received more than $ 150 billion in federal funding, but Mr. Shellenberger was disappointed with the results. A disproportionate part of the money, as he documents, went to companies that enriched donors for the Obama campaign but failed to provide practical technologies. "

What Shellenberger demonstrates layer by layer is that, for a group of people who proudly and nauseatedly claim to be "people of science," the environmental movement is the opposite. It shows them that they are a secular group of fundamentalists who turned into a religious frenzy by a mistaken faith in a particular view of humanity and ultimate reality that is actually very much at odds with the best science and reason. It is encouraging that his message receives great endorsement from many of his most thoughtful colleagues in science and academia.

Posted by Glenn T. Stanton

Daily Citizen

June 23, 2020