Apocalypse Never

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 90 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.

“"With Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger provides a master class in rigorous reporting, stout science, and unapologetic humanism. Whether the issue is climate change, sweatshops, whales, the myth of 'energy leapfrogging' or the importance of power density, he pulls them together into a coherent, timely, and important book that will make you feel optimistic about the future of people and the planet."”

"Plenty of action and solid prose, along with plenty of intriguing little-known historical and technical facts." -- Publishers Weekly

Michael Shellenberger is Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment," Green Book Award winner, and invited expert reviewer of the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has written on energy and the environment for The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Nature, and other publications for two decades. And he is Founder and President of Environmental Progress, an independent, nonpartisan research organization based in Berkeley, California.

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