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.