There Will Be No End of the World. Why Environmental Alarmism Harms Us

Michael Shellenberger is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an environmental hero according to Time magazine, a recipient of the 2008 Green Book Award from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and an invited expert reviewer for the IPCC assessment report. For 20 years, he has written articles on energy and the environment for leading global publications. Climate is indeed changing, but it is not the end of the world. And it is not even the most serious environmental problem. Often, those who panic the loudest about environmental issues are also prone to oppose obvious solutions. So what really lies behind the rise of apocalyptic environmental thinking? Although media attention has been focused on ecological issues for decades, many of us still do not know the basic facts. Carbon dioxide emissions have peaked and are decreasing in most developed countries for over ten years. Mortality from extreme weather events, even in poor countries, has decreased by 80% over the past 40 years. And the risk that the Earth's atmosphere will heat up to very high temperatures is becoming increasingly unlikely due to slowing population growth and an abundance of natural gas. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for decades to make our planet greener. He saved the last sequoias in the world, co-authored the predecessor to today's Green New Deal, the New Green Course, and, along with climate scientists and activists, made enormous efforts to keep nuclear power plants running, which helped prevent a sharp increase in harmful emissions. When rumors spread in 2019 that billions of people would die, and panic took hold, Michael decided that, as an experienced environmental activist, a leading energy expert, and the father of a teenage daughter, he simply had to contribute to separating science from fiction. The result of his research is the book There Will Be No End of the World. Michael Shellenberger methodically dismantles the principles of apocalyptic thinking that so