“Apocalypse Never”: a great read | Michael Shellenberger

I’ve just finished this book, a stonking pager-turner. Really! It’s a fabulous read, unless you’re triggered by facts about nuclear energy, showing it’s safe, reliable, clean and cheap.

Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never has nearly 5,000 reviews on Amazon, 95% 4-5 Star. 

He is no “climate denier”. A lifelong climate activist, he is winner of Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” and of the 2008 Green Book Award”. 

What’s happened is that he’s been persuaded by the science that nuclear power is important in combatting climate change and that it’s needed to back up wind and solar which have limitations. For that view he is sometimes demonised by climate activists. But his is a knowledgeable voice, standing up to Thunbergian climate alarmism, which, he argues, is not justified by the science, including that in the United Nations IPCC Report. To, which, by the way, he’s been appointed as a coordinator of the “Summary for Policymakers”, arguably the most important chapter, for the next Report due in 2025. So there. 

He now describes himself as an “Environmental humanist”. He has a shop front for his non-profit Environmental Progress, in downtown San Francisco. (He’s written a great book on San Francisco’s homeless problems, which I’ve also read).

Here is the top-rated 5-star review: 

Frederic G. Marks

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely important and highly readable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

APOCALYPSE NEVER—Amazon review
Apocalypse Never is an extremely important—and highly readable—book about Earth’s environment and contemporary human society. The author is a lifelong environmentalist. This book carries forward Michael Shellenberger’s personal mission—to protect the natural environment and to achieve the goal of universal prosperity for all people. [More…]

And here is the Publisher intro:

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.