Michael Shellenberger has been an environmentalist since he was 16, an actual climate activist for more than two decades. A leftist for three. And he has a confession. “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years.”
Related: Michael Moore’s New Documentary: Green Energy is a Scam and We’re All Fools (Video Added)
“…as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.”
His list of mea culpas is impressive. More so, given his pedigree. International traveler. Socialist (supported the Sandanistas). He protested Nike (worker conditions). He even “helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion” on renewable energy. And now, he has come forward and written a book about how he is guilty of climate alarmism and how what Environmentalists want is often worse than doing nothing.
Talk about classic leftism.
This makes him the second high-profile leftist to not just abandon the faith but to admit that many in the Climate Clergy are guilty of screwing more than the children. A few examples of the things that are problematic.
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Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
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The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
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Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
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Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
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The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
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The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
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Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
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Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
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We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
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Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
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Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
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Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
He also provides a few highlights from the book that damage the Climate Cult’s narratives.
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Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
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The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
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The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
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100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
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We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
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Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
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Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
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“Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
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Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
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The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants
In other words, we were right, they are lying, and it is a scam. Which it is. The movement, like the current shenanigans, is about securing a dominant ideology, and lying is not just required it is expected.
Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.
Michael had the linked article published in Forbes until Forbes pulled it. They censored it. It is not the approved narrative, and more than likely, either the money behind the movement made a few calls or Forbes is just another tool that keeps the BS machine running and well oiled.
The Climate Cult does not brook dissent. Any deviation from the dogma is denialism. He wrote an entire book after 30 years of not just being inside of the movement but leading it to clear the air.
With that high level of defection, he may need money for paid security.