Well-known climate activist Michael Shellenberger has issued a public apology for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.
Writing for Forbes Monday, Mr. Shellenberger — a Time magazine Hero of the Environment and winner of the 2008 Green Book Award — said that 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,” Shellenberger declares.
As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public,” he states.
Mr. Shellenberger proceeds to deny 12 climate myths that have been drummed into the modern psyche, but which have no basis in scientific fact.
“Humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction,’” he begins, the Amazon “is not ‘the lungs of the world,’ and climate change “is not making natural disasters worse.”
Moreover, he continues, a few key facts help put global warming and its supposed effects into perspective.
“Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003,” he states, and the amount of land we currently use for meat “has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska.”
Contrary to popular belief, it was not climate change but rather “the build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests” that caused the rise in the number and ferocity of fires in Australia and California, he continues.
“Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for decades and peaked in Britain, Germany and France in the mid-seventies,” he adds, a key piece of information for those tempted to place the blame for air pollution and carbon emissions on the backs of affluent nations.
“We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter,” he states, and wood fuel “is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels.”
All of these facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people, Shellenberger admits. “But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.”
Shellenberger writes that until last year, he avoided speaking out against the climate scare, in part because he was embarrassed, since he was “as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist.”
But then, last year, “things spiraled out of control,” he notes.
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, ‘The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed ‘Climate Change Kills Children,’” he writes.
These and many other statements led to a glut of misinformation that left people around the world terrified and completely misguided about the reality of climate change.
This, in turn, impelled Shellenberger to issue an extended formal apology for “our fear-mongering” in the form of a book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
When it comes to facts triumphing over fear, it’s better late than never.
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