Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All Hardcover – Illustrated, June 30, 2020
by Michael Shellenberger (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 3,232 ratings
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.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book. Within its lively pages, Michael Shellenberger uses science and lived experience to rescue a subject drowning in misunderstanding and partisanship. His message is invigorating: if you have feared for the planet’s future, take heart." -- Richard Rhodes, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
“Environmental issues are frequently confused by conflicting and often extreme views, with both sides fueled to some degree by ideological biases, ignorance and misconceptions. Michael Shellenberger’s balanced and refreshing book delves deeply into a range of environmental issues and exposes misrepresentations by scientists, one-sided distortions by environmental organizations, and biases driven by financial interests. His conclusions are supported by examples, cogent and convincing arguments, facts and source documentation. Apocalypse Never may well be the most important book on the environment ever written.” -- Tom Wigley, climate scientist, University of Adelaide, former senior scientist National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
“We must protect the planet, but how? Some strands of the environmental movement have locked themselves into a narrative of sin and doom that is counterproductive, anti-human, and not terribly scientific. Shellenberger advocates a more constructive environmentalism that faces our wicked problems and shows what we have to do to solve them.” -- Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now
"If there is one thing that we have learned from the coronavirus pandemic, it is that strong passions and polarized politics lead to distortions of science, bad policy, and potentially vast, needless suffering. Are we making the same mistakes with environmental policies? I have long known Michael Shellenberger to be a bold, innovative, and nonpartisan pragmatist. He is a lover of the natural world whose main moral commitment is to figure out what will actually work to safeguard it. If you share that mission, you must read Apocalypse Never.” -- Jonathan Haidt, author of Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
"The painfully slow global response to human-caused climate change is usually blamed on the political right’s climate change denial and love affair with fossil fuels. But in this engaging and well-researched treatise, Michael Shellenberger exposes the environmental movement’s hypocrisy in painting climate change in apocalyptic terms while steadfastly working against nuclear power, the one green energy source whose implementation could feasibly avoid the worst climate risks. Disinformation from the left has replaced deception from the right as the greatest obstacle to mitigating climate change." -- Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science, MIT
"The trouble with end-of-the-world environmental scenarios is that they hide evidence-based diagnoses and exile practical solutions. Love it or hate it, Apocalypse Never asks us to consider whether the apocalyptic headline of the day gets us any closer to a future in which nature and people prosper.” -- Peter Kareiva, director of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA, and former chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy
"In this tour de force of science journalism, Michael Shellenberger shows through interviews, personal experiences, vignettes, and case histories that environmental science offers paths away from hysteria and toward humanism. This superb book unpacks and explains the facts and forces behind deforestation, climate change, extinction, fracking, nature conservation, industrial agriculture, and other environmental challenges to make them amenable to improvements and solutions." -- Mark Sagoff, author of The Economy of the Earth
"We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias. But too often we are guilty of the same. Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets. Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.” -- Steve McCormick, former CEO, The Nature Conservancy and former President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
"Michael Shellenberger loves the Earth too much to tolerate the conventional wisdom of environmentalism. This book, born of his passions, is a wonder: a research-driven page turner that will change how you view the world. I wish I'd been brave enough to write it, and grateful that he was." -- Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at MIT and author of More from Less
"Will declaring a crisis save the planet? The stakes are high, but Michael Shellenberger shows that the real environmental solutions are good for people too. No one will come away from this lively, moving, and well-researched book without a deeper understanding of the very real social challenges and opportunities to making a better future in the Anthropocene." -- Erle Ellis, professor of geography and environmental systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction
"Michael Shellenberger methodically dismantles the tenets of End Times thinking that are so common in environmental thought. From Amazon fires to ocean plastics, Apocalypse Never delivers current science, lucid arguments, sympathetic humanism, and powerful counterpoints to runaway panic. You will not agree with everything in this book, which is why it is so urgent that you read it." -- Paul Robbins, Dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison
About the Author
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.
Product details
Publisher : Harper; Illustrated edition (June 30, 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 432 pages
Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States
Kelly A
5.0 out of 5 stars A course-correction to follow up Silent Spring 58 years later
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
Michael Shellenberger was on track to be the perfect environmental activist: supporting local farmers in Latin America, earning a degree in Peace and Global Studies, working as a professional progressive activist in San Francisco, and helping save the last old-growth redwood forest in California.
In the early 2000s, Shellenberger became disillusioned with what he saw as dogma and sentimentality in the environmental movement. Activists passed over clear, evidence-based solutions, sometimes even opposing them. This led him and fellow dissident Ted Norhaus to co-found the Breakthrough Institute and pen the heretical essay, "The Death of Environmentalism."
For the past two decades, Shellenberger has matured and proliferated his contrarian ideas into lectures, essays, tweets, books, and even his campaign for California governor in 2018. In a way, Apocalypse Never is the culmination of this apostasy.
It's clear that the author is a dedicated environmentalist. There are serious environmental issues, including climate change, but there are also serious issues in the environmental movement, such as the rejection of nuclear, a uniquely promising energy technology. His writing exudes a passion for both helping the environment and helping the movement accomplish its goals.
The writing is overstretched at times. On the topic I know most about, meat production, Shellenberger's chapter can feel like cherry-picking or missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of exaggerations about animal-free food as a panacea, and I agree with the author's critique of the environmental benefits of "grass-fed," but there is also a clear moral impetus to reform the food system, for both climate efficiency reasons and to end the suffering of over 100 billion animals suffering on factory farms at any given time.
Still, the potential of Apocalypse Never is clear. In 1962, Silent Spring provided the environmental movement what it needed: national attention and awareness of the problems. 58 years later, there are some glaring problems with the modern environmental movement. The bottleneck is no longer simply more attention—it is advocating for tractable, evidence-based solutions that can address Earth's climate despite the turbulent political climate. Apocalypse Never directly addresses this challenge.
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406 people found this helpful
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TW
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice to hear from a genuine environmentalist with integrity
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
Eventually things get so ridiculous in popular media and culture that even the environmentalists (the honest ones) have to speak up and call BS. I'm so tired of having the word "science" thrown in my face when I make simple points that don't fit the popular alarmist movement's agenda, as constantly spoon-fed to the eager masses by the media.
I don't know that I would agree with the author on many issues, but it is refreshing to hear from someone with expertise on the subject and not just drinking the Kool-Aid or bowing to the pressure from the power hungry fear-mongers.
I wish everyone would pull their heads out of (the sand ? other ?) wherever and read this book, especially students and educators who have blindly bought into all the propaganda.
257 people found this helpful
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bookster
5.0 out of 5 stars Rare Courage From the LEFT
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
Good for Shellenberger. It's always been the case this nonsense can only be stopped by the very people who promoted it. But that takes courage. Kudos to Michale Shellenberger. May there by many more heroes willing to speak up.
193 people found this helpful
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frisbee_ten
5.0 out of 5 stars The book they don't want you to read
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
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I became interested in this book, for the simple reason that the environmental thought police forced Forbes to cancel publication of an article by this author. If they are afraid the truth will get out, then I will pay to buy the truth found in Apocalypse Never. Who thought in this day and age, that lies would have so much power... The author has the credentials both to expose the lies and comment expertly on truth. He has been a Leftist environmentalist most of his life.
137 people found this helpful
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Nayyer Ali
1.0 out of 5 stars The Plural of Anecdote is not Data
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2020
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I was assuming this would be a current version of other books I’ve read and mostly agreed with, particularly Bjorn Lomborg’s 2001 “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and Gregg Easterbrook’s 1995 “A Moment on the Earth”. Unfortunately, this was not along those lines at all. While heavily footnoted, there is very little data in this book.
Chapter 1 begins with noting that decadal death tolls for natural disasters have fallen sharply in last century. This is true. He also cites that the Dutch have adapted quite well to subsidence putting much of their nation under sea level, and they have been able to survive and thrive, suggesting cities around the world can do the same in the 21st century. By 2100, the IPCC predicts global GDP will exceed 500 trillion dollars, meaning everyone will be rich enough to do what the Dutch can do.
Moving to wildfires, and he rightly points out that fire suppression and accumulation of wood and shrub play a much bigger role in wildfires in both California and Australia than climate change. He should have mentioned the role of above ground power lines in California, which spark fires during windstorms when knocked over.
The question about whether natural disasters are getting worse due to climate change is contentious and depends on your frame of reference. If an Indian Ocean cyclone in 1970 has top wind speeds of 100 mph and kills 100,000 people on landfall is followed by a cyclone in 2020 with a top wind speed of 120 mph but only kills 500 people, have things gotten worse due to climate change?
The final point is that carbon emissions are already down sharply in the EU and US over the last 20 years, but he asserts that environmentalists get zero credit for this.
Chapter 2 opens with anecdotes about various celebrities lamenting the demise of the Amazon. The Amazon is not the “lungs of the Earth”, but Shellenberger doesn’t really make metaphorical sense in this discussion. Lungs do not produce oxygen, they transmit it from the atmosphere to the blood. Razing the Amazon would not change oxygen levels. The real argument for saving the Amazon is preserving species, not avoiding a fall in atmospheric oxygen levels.
He does rightly point out that over the last few decades there has been net forest expansion around the world (temperate and boreal, but still net decline in tropical), and a CO2 fertilization effect driven global increase in plant cover, along with a reduction in land use for agriculture due to rising productivity. An area the size of Alaska has been freed up by rising livestock productivity.
Chapter 3 starts off with the famous turtle with the straw in his nose. Shellenberger rightly points out the main threats to species are direct killing and loss of habitat to human agriculture. He does rightly argue that plastics are fine, especially as they allow us to substitute for animal products. What we need is better waste management, especially in poorer countries, so that debris does not end up in the oceans.
Chapter Four opens with the recent famous IPBES prediction that we are at risk of losing 1 million species. Shellenberger doesn’t really tease this out. The IPBES did not identify 1 million actually at risk, it did a projection that there are 10 million species and that 10% of them are at risk, but even that is confusing. In what timeframe? In the next 10 years or next 1000? In fact, we have only identified 1.6 million species, 350,000 of which are beetles. Of the species we really care about, the vertebrates, there are only 5000 mammals, 10,000 birds, 10,000 reptiles, 7,000 amphibians, and 33,000 fish. We should try to save all of them, but I’m willing to do without the anopheles mosquito. The IPBES relies on the species area model of extinction that was derived from islands and has clearly been shown not to actually be valid. The best source of biodiversity risk assessment is the IUCN, and they clearly do not support the notion that a mass extinction is under way.
Shellenberger then returns to the DRC and its Virunga National Park, home to gorillas. He laments the charcoal mafia that is chopping down trees to make fuel for the impoverished local residents. I agree, creating an effective distribution network of propane gas for cooking would help save the forest. He also laments that baboons from the park eat the crops of local farmers but Shellenberger offers no solution to this problem he highlights. Instead he goes onto a digression about letting European oil companies drill for crude oil in Virunga. That is totally beside the point. That unrefined crude cannot be used by the locals for fuel, nor does it stop baboons from eating crops. He concludes the chapter by suggesting that the DRC go ahead with the Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River. This would be the largest hydroelectric station in the world, twice the size of the Three Gorges Dam, producing 40 gigawatts and costing 80 billion dollars. Who’s paying for it?
Chapter Five makes the point that working in an urban sweatshop factory is actually a major step up in quality of life for rural people in poor countries. Also that as we raise agricultural productivity, we return farmland to nature. On page 100 he makes the odd statement that “power dense factories and cities require energy dense fuels.” What they require is lots of electricity, and what is the energy density of electricity? That’s totally undefined.
Chapter Six begins by telling us how awesome whales are. Historically, humans have hunted whales, and Greenpeace did not save them. Who said they did? Does Shellenberger in fact oppose the ban on whaling? He does not say. He notes that 20th century whaling was mostly for blubber to be rendered into margarine or soap, and was driven out of business by cheaper palm oil. He bizarrely blames continued whaling in the 1960’s by Norway and Japan to a rigged international margarine market that forced those countries to rely on blubber instead.
He then turns to natural gas. On page 118 he states that “climate activists…have claimed that natural gas is worse for the climate than coal.” But then on page 120 he says “most environmentalists support natural gas as a substitute for coal”. Hmmm.
Turning to Atlantic salmon, he declares it the “world’s healthiest food” due to low saturated and trans fat. He correctly points out that fish farming is good for preserving wild fish stocks. He then confuses environmentalist opposition to GMO’s as opposition to fish farming. The opposition is to the use of a GM salmon.
He shifts back to natural gas and confuses the technology of fracking that made massive amounts of cheap nat gas available in the US in the 2000’s, with the decision to prioritize coal over nat gas in the 1970’s for electric power. Back then supplies were much more limited, and nat gas was a highly regulated industry, only freed by the Carter administration.
Chapter Seven begins with an inaccurate quote from CNN, where CNN claimed scientists say “we must immediately eat less meat to halt the climate crisis”. He then quotes the co-chair of the IPCC report CNN was referencing who informs him explicitly that “we don’t want to tell people what to eat”.
He states he once thought cutting out meat would cut carbon emissions by 70%, which is not correct. He rightly concludes that ending meat consumption would make minimal difference to the climate. He shifts to praising factory farming again, which is hyperefficient and spares land and reduces methane emission from bovine flatulence. He also makes a bizarre claim that farmers raising low fat pigs harm the environment (page 140). Perhaps he could calculate how much extra carbon was emitted by not raising fat pigs.
The rest of the chapter is a useless paean to carnivorism. When talking about the Atlantic salmon, he called it the world’s healthiest food for being so low in fat, and now tells us fat is good for us. Contradictory? He never seriously wrestles with the moral argument for vegetarianism, that modern factory farming is unnecessarily cruel in its methods and practices and should be shunned.
Chapter Eight is the heart of the book. He is correct that nuclear is a reliable producer of carbon free power. But his discussion leaves out any sense of perspective. There are currently 435 nuclear reactors worldwide, 97 of which are in the US, with a combined capacity of 370 gigawatts and producing 10% of world electricity. But there are only 46 new plants under construction, which takes 10 years on average. He must be aware that nuclear construction peaked 45 years ago, when the world began work on 40 plants annually, that number collapsed and has been under 5 plants for many years.
Lazard in 2018 found the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for new wind and solar to be 20% of that for new nuclear, and that nuclear LCOE will rise 23% in the 2020’s while RE continue to plummet. Compared to 1997, by 2018 wind was annually producing 1258 more TWh, solar 584, and nuclear only 299. Total nuclear power generation worldwide in 2018 was still 2563 TWh, but that reflects capacity built before 1997 and still online. He mentions disposal problems with used solar panels or wind turbine blades. Perhaps we can dump them in or on Yucca Mountain.
Shellenberger ignores the immediate history of RE. Costs have fallen so much that deployment is exploding. The first terawatt of RE was installed by 2018, the second by 2023, and two more by 2030 likely. Nuclear will bring less than 100 gigawatts of net new power online by 2030, a drop in the bucket. Already, China produced in 2018 more from wind alone than nuclear (wind 366 TWh, nukes 277 TWh, solar 177 Twh).
The US nuclear fleet has a total capacity of 100 gigawatts, but is on average 39 years old, and starting to age out. Only 8 plants are less than 10 years old. Several plants are only able to stay open due to zero emission credits effectively subsidizing them.
Shellenberger also claims on page 168 that if nuclear is not used then “fossil fuels must be used”. Not true. When California closed San Onofre nuclear power station, it lost 19 TWh/year in generation, but replaced that with 47 TWh from renewables and energy efficiency. Californians pay a lot more for electricity, in fact we pay on average 16 cents per KWh, compared to a national average of 10 cents. However, up to 1970, US and California per capita electricity consumption was the same and rose in tandem. After 1970, California pursued an aggressive policy of energy efficiency, and while US consumption rose 100%, California has stayed flat. We pay more but use half as much. Fair trade.
He then moves on to Hollywood and Ralph Nader, and blames them for souring America on nuclear power. But the collapse in new nuclear starts after 1975 was a global phenomenon, not just American. He does not grapple with or explain the immense financial problem of nuclear power.
The main impediment to nuclear power is not irrational fear by the public. The main problem is the massive capital required and the cost of that capital. A new plant would need 7 billion dollars and ten years, and at 90% capacity, it would sell about 7900 GWh, at a price of 10 cents per KWh, that would generate about 800 million dollars per year. If the company secured a 40 year loan at 8% interest, it would pay 600 million dollars every year just to cover the loan. What if there are massive cost overruns? Who would provide this amount of capital for 40 years? Who would take on the bankruptcy risk? Because of the massive capital involved, a nuclear plant needs guaranteed revenue for forty years, which means they can only exist in a highly regulated power market. In a free market, nuclear would have to compete with other power providers, for example solar companies providing power for 2 cents per KWh during daytime. Or wind providers. In a truly free market, nuclear would be the high cost power of last resort, which would destroy its economics as it has such massive capital costs it has to sell its full output 24/7. This is why no deregulated electricity market in the world has any nuclear plants under construction. It’s got nothing to do with irrational fear, which I don’t think figures in Chinese or Indian decision making.
Chapter Nine is mostly an attack on solar and wind. Shellenberger is right that the main drawback is intermittency. But his economic analyses are deeply flawed. He denounces rooftop solar because the payback is so long but neglects the obvious solution of financing it. I put solar on my roof in 2016 for 25,000 dollars. My house uses about 12 MWh per year, and I used to pay about 3000 dollars per year to SCE. I financed my solar system at 6% over 20 years, and I pay less monthly then I did to SCE. I did not buy the Powerwall storage system, that is a gimmick for survivalists. Storage is very expensive, but the costs are dropping rapidly, and that will change everything in 10 years, just as utility solar went from an expensive vanity in 2010 to the cheapest power of all in 2020.
Shellenberger misstates the cost of a 100% solar plus storage or wind plus storage grid. Getting that last 10% accounts for much of the cost, because you need a lot of wasteful storage that mostly sits idle. The same numbers would be generated by a hypothetical 100% nuclear grid. In fact, solar (daytime power, more in summer) and wind (more in evenings and winter) complement each other. In addition widescale integration of power and complex demand management can offset much of the intermittency limitations. There will of course need to be a massive increase in storage, but costs are dropping and new technologies are likely to come along.
We then read about the slaughter of birds and insects by windmills. This is a minor problem, and he provides no evidence otherwise. What bird species have been driven extinct by windmills? Is it not likely that birds will eventually adopt flight and migration patterns away from these? Siting windmills to minimize these hazards is important. Shellenberger does not mention offshore wind, which is actually far better and more reliable source of wind power, and will likely become the dominant wind energy in the 2030’s. Offshore windmills are unlikely to harm wildlife in a material way or cause bird extinctions.
Shellenberger states that “no amount of technological innovation can solve the fundamental problem with renewables” because they are “unreliable and energy dilute”. If he is referring to the amount of surface area needed to generate power, he needs to actually do the math.
He claims that solar panels generate 50 watts per square meter. That’s a little light, modern panels can do 125 watts, but perhaps he is taking into account capacity issues. Let’s use his numbers. Even he concedes that 18,000 square miles would be enough to provide the entire electric power needs of the US. Why is that in any way a prohibitive amount? Earlier, he pointed out that an area the size of Alaska has been returned to nature due to improved agriculture, and that is 660,000 square miles. We can’t use 18,000 for solar power? We use more land area to grow corn for ethanol, why don’t we just use that land? Or the 20,000 square miles currently leased out for oil and gas drilling by the BLM? He then makes much of the fact that the needed storage would take up another 250 square miles. I find his arguments here completely unpersuasive. He then says that if the US used solar for all its power needs (I assume this means all cars are electric, and so is heating and industrial), it would require 50% of the US surface area (page 191). That would be a bit under 1.9 million square miles and I have no idea what he is talking about there.
Shellenberger appears to believe that the size of the physical footprint of a power plant is the most important factor determining its attractiveness. If we developed fusion power, and it used half as much land as nuclear fission, but cost five times as much, would he suggest we have to switch to fusion? I don’t think so, because fission power is not land constrained, so the increased density of hypothetical fusion is practically meaningless.
Shellenberger makes valid arguments against biofuels.
Chapter Ten is basically a long ad hominem attack on various villains, as Shellenberger sees them, who instead of opposing nuclear on principle, were merely grifting for natural gas for decades. He bizarrely claims that Governor Jerry Brown singlehandedly killed so many nuclear power plants between 1976 and 1979 which otherwise would have resulted in California having zero carbon power emissions currently. Actually, for California to generate all its power from nuclear would require 30 additional nuclear power plants in the state. Brown killed the only seriously proposed plant, Sun Desert, but there were not 29 others he stopped.
Shellenberger rightly complains that skeptics of global warming are sometimes attacked for their alleged ties to fossil fuel industries. I agree that is unfair. But the same applies in the other direction, and his game of connect the dots in this chapter is off-putting to say the least.
Chapter Eleven begins with some flightshaming of celebrities who attended a conference on climate change. This is a totally petty thing to do. Flightshaming or strawshaming is ridiculous. Personal behavior is not going to end climate change, it is a public policy matter entirely. I might have solar and drive a hybrid, but those decisions made economic sense as they saved me some money. I still can have an opinion about climate change if I drive a gas guzzler. Flying for that matter, is the highest hanging fruit. Let’s solve everything else first, as modern life requires air travel, and flight requires jet fuel. Air travel makes up less than 5% of carbon emissions. If we get rid of the other 95% by 2050, we can then figure out what to do about planes. If flying only raises CO2 concentrations by 1-2 ppm per decade, we might decide to do little or nothing. We’ll see.
He then moves on to complain that the World Bank and NGO’s are trying to stifle development in poor countries. Poor countries are sovereign and develop themselves, and don’t need permission from the World Bank or NGO’s. In the scheme of things, World Bank funding is trivial, almost all investments come from the private sector and the national government. He finishes up whining about Paul Ehrlich’s misguided Malthusian doomsaying from the 1960’s, but what relevance does that have today? Outside of Africa, the biggest problem most countries face is a collapse in fertility below replacement.
Chapter Twelve concludes the book by rambling about what he calls “apocalyptic” environmentalism being a type of religion. He calls on “rational” environmentalists to oppose them. I’ll sign up for that, but not for nuclear power. @nayyerali10.
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Annie
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally someone with courage
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020
I’ve listened to Michael as well. Things we just knew were true but had no one from the opposite view discuss it. If you can’t handle truth, don’t buy it.
138 people found this helpful
Top reviews from other countries
Angus Rose
1.0 out of 5 stars It now makes sense why Forbes retracted Shellenberger's article on Apocalypse Never
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2020
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It now makes sense why Forbes retracted Shellenberger's article on Apocalypse Never, as the book contains many erroneous claims. Shellenberger is neither a climate scientist nor even a scientist, and in the book he regularly cites Roger Pielke, a climate scientist on the fringe, who cherry-picks scientific literature to downplay the risks between climate change and extreme weather.
To counter one of his key claims about climate change and impacts:
The world's largest re-insurers are very aware of current and future risks of climate change "[due to climate change there's already] an increased frequency and severity of major weather events means a higher number of more costly claims for insurers to deal with" and "there is a growing risk that certain perils will gradually become uninsurable in future (e.g., flood, wildfires) unless we act now". Morgan Stanley has shown that climate disasters cost North America $415 billion in the years 2015-2018. JPMorgan Chase has said that "we cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes [from climate change] where human life as we know it is threatened", even ExxonMobil has cautioned of "globally catastrophic effects [from climate change]". And the conservative IPCC report states "In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans" and of risks "increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts".
It is well known that Shellenberger is a lobbyist for the nuclear industry, and that may in part explain what motivated Shellenberger to write a book that is far removed from mainstream science, whilst downplaying renewables. Nuclear is a necessary part of our future energy supply, but so are renewables and 2020 on course to be the warmest year on record.
I therefore cannot recommend his book.
Update: Six scientists have now reviewed the Forbes article, written by Shellenberger, and have estimated its overall scientific credibility to be 'low'.
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163 people found this helpful
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Chris Worth
5.0 out of 5 stars An important balance to an often media-hyped, facts-devoid debate
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 1, 2020
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Before I was born, Rachel Carson and the Whole Earth folk alerted the world to the noxious things governments and their connected insiders were getting away with; half a century later, with the pendulum swung far too far the wrong way thanks to misguided celebrities and truanting teens, a new author with impeccable credentials breaks with his own past to present what the debate lacks: facts.
In short, this book's important.
I can't imagine the painful shift in worldview the author had to go through to write it - he basically turns his entire personal history and life experience through 180 degres to reach the beliefs he now holds - but whatever it costs him, it's worth it.
Yes, it's well written and nicely sequenced - as any professional book should be - but its value comes from filling in the blanks the environmental movement consistently and unforgivably fails to fill. Over a quarter of the book is footnotes and attributions. Properly contextual scientific data, reasonable assumptions and projections instead of doom-mongering, a look at history and trends instead of media-friendly snapshots.
Yes, there are more forest fires, but it's because the controlled burns of the past don't happen, and disasters are getting pent-up. Yes, there are natural disasters, but they harm fewer people in developed economies, despite a far larger population. Yes, there may be a tipping point beyond which catastrophe becomes likely, but it's more like a 4C rise than 2C, impossible on current trendlines. Yes, we burp a lot of Co2 into the atmosphere - but levels in developed countries have been falling for decades, and are already starting to peak in much of the developing world.
All this means good news for the planet. Yes, our pale blue dot is fragile and we shouldn't abuse it. But it also lets us thrive economically with its resources, build better lives, create more opportunities for ourselves. Technology is solving climate-related problems - and has been solving them for hundreds of years. We live in a dynamic system. Coastlines change, seasons fluctuate, and in response populations move and cities die and grow. Humans are adaptable.
Most unforgivable of all? That friendlier technologies - fracking, natural gas, nuclear, intensive farming - are consistently opposed by those who claim to love this planet most. The worst environmental issues may already be behind us. Far too many green-thinking people are charlatans, however well-meaning. And chapter by chapter, this book explains why.
The author takes on multiple green shibboleths and demonstrates just how many of them stem from the excitable imaginations of activists - not real science or observed reality. All the more poignant when you learn the author is himself a lifelong activist - the real deal, living and working with peasants in Brazil and Nicaragua in his socialist youth, not an "armchair activist" applauding truanting teens on YouTube.
For those of us (most) who care deeply about the world we share, but want to base our decisions on actual facts rather than histrionics, this book lets you rebut essentially every argument. The world isn't perfect, but nor is it dying, and it doesn't have an expiration date of a few years ahead. Indeed, on the evidence, we're treating that planet better and better as we learn more about it.
This book is both enjoyable and informative. Everyone with even a passing interest in ecology should read it.
And a final word to all those "activists" who'll doubtless be turning on the author in fury: we might have taken you a bit more seriously if you didn't all dress like postapocalyptic children's entertainers.
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156 people found this helpful
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Lawrence
5.0 out of 5 stars A thorough and comprehensive debunking of climate alarmism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2020
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This is a much needed counter to environmental alarmism, which is more harmful to the environment than many people realise. Well researched, full of footnotes and data, presented in a clear and unambiguous fashion, highly recommended.
73 people found this helpful
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Roger F. Alsop
5.0 out of 5 stars Nuclear power is safe and cheap.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2020
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This man was born in 1972 and has been a serious environmentalist since age 15. He says that the science behind the IPCC is 'broadly correct' but that the 'picture promoted by apocalyptic environmentalists is inaccurate and dehumanising'. He has travelled to the Congo - Goma - and to Indonesia, and has talked and listened to the people there who are truly poor. What will help them is infrastructure: sewers, dams, good roads and cheap energy. Cheap energy can only be produced by nuclear power. He thinks much the same as James Lovelock and Bjorn Lomborg. Like them, Shellenberg is experienced and well informed. The BBC will ignore this important book which illustrates just how disgraceful the BBC has become. However, the author can easily be found on YouTube, Twitter and Sky News Australia,
60 people found this helpful
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Madmax
5.0 out of 5 stars Not what you might be expecting - whichever side you're on
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2020
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Regardless of the hype, this is not a climate change denier crib book, nor is it a scare-mongering diatribe; in fact its not (only) about climate change at all. Open-minded people from either side may be surprised. Rather like Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist, Shellenberg, a long time environmental activist who has worked in the countries most affected, reviews the statements put out by activists and lobbying groups against the science and also investigates where they came from. In many cases he finds they were cherry picking, exaggerations or errors but is also able to highlight where there are real problems and who is most likely to be affected.
What resonated with me, as a development economist, is the solutions proposed in many cases, which is where this book goes against the grain of activist prescriptions. Extinction Rebellion and their ilk seem to operate from a position of "human activity created these problems, therefore human activity should be shut down". As with the carbon emissions debate, this places all the burden on developing countries, effectively denying the world's poorest access to the comforts that we in the west take for granted. Shellenberg's position in many cases is that development and technological progress are the solution, not the problem. The way to stop erosion, for example, is to provide access to electricity so that energy-poor villagers dont have to cut down trees for fuel. In that regard, if you truly want to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear is a far better solution than wind or solar (see also the recent Michael Moore documentary that was banned from YouTube). On climate change, he does NOT deny it is happening, but believes that i) the amount of change will be far less and over a far longer period than the doomsayers claim; ii) that rising temperatures could be beneficial, eg in terms of crop yields; and iii) technological change will help humanity to deal with the negative results, as it has done for similar crises in the past. This is exactly the argument against the Malthusian population explosion adherents that keep re-emerging. If Malthus had been right none of us would be here.
Overall this is an intelligent and stimulating book. I suspect it may be criticised by both sides for not being extreme enough. I strongly support its advocacy for those in developing countries who are most vulnerable, not just to the environmental problems but also to the "solutions" put forward by lobbying groups.
Read this with an open mind. You may not agree with everything in it, but hopefully it will lead you to question some of the wilder positions held by both sides, and better yet, to form your own opinion based on (unbiased) evidence
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False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg; Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger – review
Two prominent ‘lukewarmers’ take climate science denial to another level, offering tepid manifestos at best
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice lead a walk-out at the company’s HQ in Seattle. Photograph: Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty
Bob Ward
Sun 9 Aug 2020 16.00 AEST
It is no longer credible to deny that the average temperature around the world is rising and that other phenomena, such as extreme weather events, are also shifting. People can now see with their own eyes that the climate is changing around them.
Nor is it tenable to deny that the Earth’s warming is driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, resulting from human activities, such as the production and burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Such denial is only now promoted by cranks and conspiracy theorists who also think, for instance, that the Covid-19 pandemic is linked to the development of the 5G network.
So instead, a different form of climate change denial is emerging from the polemical columns of rightwing newspapers. They paint a Panglossian picture of manmade climate crisis that will never be catastrophic as long as the world grows rich by using fossil fuels. The “lukewarmers” are on the march and coming to a bookshop near you.
Two prominent lukewarmers are now launching new manifestos: False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg, and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger.
Although they are aimed primarily at American audiences, they will appeal to anyone who, like the authors, proclaims themselves to be an environmentalist, but despises environmental campaigners.
Both books contain many pages of endnotes and references to academic publications, conveying the initial impression that their arguments are supported by reason and evidence. But the well-informed reader will recognise that they rely on sources that are outdated, cherry-picked or just wrong.
Shellenberger claims that windfarms might be responsible for an alarming decline in insect populations in Germany
The content of False Alarm will be familiar to those who have read Lomborg’s previous books, The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It. New findings and evidence are twisted and forced into the same haranguing narrative for his new contribution. Shellenberger’s book is far easier to read, at least near the beginning, but gradually descends into a bitter rant against environmentalists, the media and politicians who do not share his fervour for nuclear power.
Not everything that Lomborg and Shellenberger write is wrong. They are both correct in saying that the world should be investing far more in making populations, particularly in poor countries, more resilient to our changing climate. Even if the world is successful in its implementation of the Paris Agreement and limits global warming to well below 2C by the end of the century, the impacts will continue to grow over the coming decades, threatening lives and livelihoods across the globe.
But their argument that adaptation to climate crisis impacts is easier and cheaper than emissions cuts is undermined by their admission that the economic costs of extreme weather are rising because ever-more-vulnerable businesses and homes are being built in high-risk areas.
Lomborg is also right that the world should be spending far more on green innovation to develop technologies to help us to tackle climate breakdown. But he is pinning all his hopes on the breakthrough discovery of a magical new energy source that will be both zero-carbon and cheaper than fossil fuels.
This is wrong-headed for at least two reasons. The first is that most innovation occurs through the incremental improvement of existing technologies and we will probably need several different sources of affordable and clean energy. The second is that climate crisis results from the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is already happening, so we cannot afford to delay the deployment of today’s alternatives to fossil fuels.
I also have some sympathy for Shellenberger’s argument that nuclear power has a role to play in creating a zero-carbon energy system. However, instead of calmly explaining its advantages over fossil fuels, he attempts to promote it by trash-talking about new renewable technologies, particularly wind and solar.
Walney Extension windfarm
Walney Extension, the world’s largest offshore windfarm, on the Cumbrian coast. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters
He is right that we cannot yet store energy affordably on the scale needed to power an entire electricity grid with intermittent renewables. But he also claims that windfarms might be responsible for an alarming decline in insect populations in Germany, which entomologists have blamed on agricultural practices. And he complains that the turbines “are almost invariably loud and disturb the peace and quiet”, although he stops short of repeating Donald Trump’s ridiculous falsehood that the noise causes cancer.
Both Lomborg and Shellenberger also make some legitimate criticisms of “alarmism” by environmentalists. One of the most difficult problems in making the case for action on climate crisis is that the elevated levels of greenhouse gases we create over the next few decades will have consequences not fully realised until the next century and beyond. Some campaigners deal with this communications challenge by wrongly warning of imminent catastrophe.
However, many scientists do suspect that we are approaching, or have already passed, thresholds beyond which very severe consequences, such as destabilisation of the land-based polar ice caps and associated sea level rise of several metres, become unstoppable, irreversible or accelerate. Lomborg and Shellenberger both downplay these huge risks because they fatally undermine the fundamental basis for their lukewarmer ideology.
Lomborg’s book relies heavily on the creative use of the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (Dice). William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2018 for his pioneering work on climate change, created the Dice model, but it has been strongly criticised for omitting the biggest risks.
A graph in Lomborg’s book shows that he has used Dice to predict that 4.1C of global warming by the end of the century would only reduce global economic output, or GDP, by about 4%. He also finds that even more extreme warming of 7C would lead to a loss of GDP of just 15%. These are hard to reconcile with the scientific evidence that such temperature changes would utterly transform the world.
We cannot afford to delay the deployment of today’s alternatives to fossil fuels
Lomborg also exaggerates the costs of action by automatically doubling researchers’ estimates for reducing emissions. He justifies this by referring to an obscure study in 2009 that concluded it may prove twice as costly as the European commission expected for the member states to cut their collective emissions by 20% by 2020. But the European Union reached its target ahead of schedule in 2018, with the price of emissions permits over the previous decade usually at less than half of the level anticipated by the commission.
Nevertheless, Lomborg doubles Nordhaus’s estimates of the costs of global action and concludes that the “optimal” level of global warming, balancing both damages and emissions cuts, would be 3.75C by 2100.
This calculation made me laugh out loud because modern humans have no evolutionary experience of the climate that would be created by such a temperature rise. The last time the Earth was more than 2C warmer than pre-industrial times was during the Pliocene epoch, three million years ago, when the polar ice caps were much smaller and global sea level was 10 to 20 metres higher than today. Only lukewarmers would claim that modern humans are best suited to a prehistoric climate!
In short, these new books truly deserve their place on the bookshelf among other classic examples of political propaganda.
Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg is published by Basic Books (£25). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
Apocalpyse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger is published by HarperCollins (£22). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
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