The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, and The Center for the American Experiment’s Isaac Orr are joined by Michael Shellenberger in episode 250 of the In The Tank Podcast. Shellenberger is on the show to talk about his “controversial” new book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
The book destroys the climate alarmist narrative that the world is coming to an end and that wind and solar are the future of energy in the United States. He also discusses how climate alarmism has become the new secular religion that he once observed, and his journey to the side of reason, science, and realism.
On Amazon: Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
Environmental Progress https://environmentalprogress.org/fou…
Deep reading: Climate Change Reconsidered series (published by The Heartland Institute) http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
Schellenberger doesn’t see the whole picture. There are true believers (Schellenberger’s New Religion adherents in his book) in the Climate Crisis and Renewables, but the political power behind the movement doesn’t give a damn about the environment. That’s why it’s ok to take out the endangered Raptors and Bats with wind Turbines. They just in enter and use the Climate as a Trojan Horse to gain power. “They” are Globalist Socialists. “They” lie through the Press that they control. They lie about everything. “THEY” also have a lot of $$ invested in this fraud. And they use the government to gain $Billions in subsidies to carry out their plans….so we taxpayers get to pay them to destroy our country. “They” are a vile evil.
DocSiders,
I don’t doubt that there are plenty of politicians who are using The Scam of Scams. I only disagree maybe on how organized, how ideological, and how uniform the motives. To claim some massive conspiracy by global socialists doesn’t strike me as realistic.
It seems to me that the politicians who are most involved would be better described as statist/fascists or just gangsters. They are not all that interested in global socialism. They just want a way to stay in power where they can continue to skim wealth off the top.
Setting up massive subsidy schemes working together with big business interests and NGOs in the donation collection business, they build a money-votes engine. The crony capitalists make money selling useless junk to the government and/or selling their products and services to those who are mandated by government to buy the subsidized products. The politicians get paid indirectly by donations from the subsidy recipients and political support from the NGOs and their membership.
On the face of it, these are legalized bribes and are all out in the open. Everybody acts on their own selfish interests so it isn’t necessary to hold big meetings to collude and conspire. Crony capitalists lobby lawmakers and bureaucrats for schemes that benefit themselves. Lawmakers seem to agree to meetings for some reason only with people who made campaign contributions.
The only people who actually give a rat’s tail about the environment or “saving the planet“ are the useful idiots sucked in by the NGO alarmism business. Everybody in the money-votes loop is well aware that it’s a scam that they’re milking, or at least knows that they are benefiting far in excess to any supposed benefit to the environment.
Actually implementing global socialism would be risky for the politicians who might lose power and to the crony capitalists who could lose control of the means of production. They are more like an organized crime gang protecting their racket than anything.
This is not to discount the fact that some of the NGOs may well be motivated by the desire to destroy capitalism. UN types are in that category for the most part.
Then there are the professional alarmist-scientists. They advance their careers by generating evidence that supports the need for the schemes that the politicians and crony capitalists are pursuing. Even if they would rather just do straight science, they like to eat and pay their mortgage.
That’s how we have tens of thousands of people acting in a coordinated way without having any overarching formal conspiracy. It’s also how we have people with vastly different motives cooperating toward the same goals.
There is certainly much to commend about Shellenberger’s apparent sea change in attitude towards his fellow travelers, and they will certainly pour their vile hatred towards him for his apostasy. He does say that “this is just the beginning”, and I certainly hope that that is the case, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I think his love of nuclear is somewhat misplaced and overblown, because he thinks it is some miraculous “answer” to a “problem” we have. I suspect, for example, that he is adamantly anti-coal, even though coal is something we have in abundance, and is relatively cheap. He probably thinks it’s “dirty” or some such nonsense. It can be, but so can wood. In fact, I’d argue that biofuels are considerably more “dirty” and environmentally unfriendly than coal.
I don’t think he has at all delved at all into the Skeptic/Climate Realist Movement, which is driven primarily by a love of truth and of actual (not fake) science, and not so much politics, which he seems to believe.
So, he has a long way to go, and I hope he doesn’t think that he can just rest on his laurels no.
If you read the book you’ll find he IS Not “adamantly anti-coal”
Ok, good to know. That at least takes him out of the James Hansen camp.
You need to read the book.
I’m sure a lot of WUWT regulars are thinking – “I already know everything in Shellenberger’s book” – at least that’s what I thought. I got the book on kindle and read most of it on a long airplane flight. I learned a lot. The book is very comprehensive and well laid out.
Shellenberger may have written something on the scale of Luther and his” 95 theses”. There is something about a “messenger” from the inside writing a theses that upsets the current dogma. Luther was a Catholic priest and wrote how “selling indulgences was corrupt”. Shellenberger is/was a man of the left/environmentalist and explains in detail the corruption in environmentalism , from the lies about nuclear to the nonsense about renewables being the future of energy.
He still keeps using the phrase ‘how to tackle climate change’ and he’s not referring to natural climate change, which can only be addressed by adaptation, but so called ‘man made climate change’. He still obviously believes that CO2 drives the climate so work in progress.
Isn’t this really just another storm in a teacup. I mean, I wish our Chavez loving Shellenberger all the best, but this is hardly a revolutionary turn around on his part.
Way back in 2004, he wrote an essay with his buddy Nordhaus, entitled: “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World” the paper argues that environmentalism is conceptually and institutionally incapable of dealing with climate change and should “die” so that a new politics can be born.
Later in 2007, again with Nordhaus, he published “Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility”, again calling for “post-environmental” politics that abandons the environmentalist focus on nature protection for a new focus on technological innovation to create a new economy.
….and then in April 2015, he was part of a group of 18 self-described eco-modernists who collectively published “An Eco-modernist Manifesto”, in which they argue that economic development is, in fact, an indispensable precondition to preserving the environment.
I think he knew that his “apology” was going to create headlines, and, call me cynical………..book sales, but it’s hardly Mann repenting for his hockey stick.
Also, apart from the hardcore circle of people who follow these issues, he’s hardly a well known figure to your average Joe.
In our social media mad world he’s only got 80k twitter followers, that’s in the same ballpark as someone like Patrick Moore (107k), greenpeace co founder, who I admire greatly.
Compare that to Greta the Great with over 4 million, and a group like Extinction Rebellion with 355k, he’s got his work cut out.
It would be nice to think that Shellenberger’s book, following Planet of the Humans, would be a game-changer. It may have some effect in the USA, where a debate on climate seems to be possible. But in the UK, and in Europe, no debate is allowed. I don’t suppose this book will be mentioned by any of the British or European broadcasters. Minds are closed over this side of the Atlantic.