Michael Shellenberger, prominent climate change activist, has apologized in a new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. The following is an excerpt from his summary of the book: “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. Here are some facts few people know: Humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction’; the Amazon is not ‘the lungs of the world’; climate change is not making natural disasters worse; fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003. Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s. We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter. The above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies. But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. Some highlights from the book: Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress; the most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land. Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did. Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon. In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests” (“On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare,” Environmental Progress, Jun 29, 2020).
(Friday Church News Notes, July 10, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)