Apocalypse Never

<p><strong>Now a National Bestseller! </strong></p><p><strong>Climate<br>change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most<br>serious environmental problem.</strong> <br>Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a<br>greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected<br>redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a<br>successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating <br>preventing a spike of emissions.<br>But in 2019 as some claimed billions of<br>people are going to die contributing to rising anxiety including among<br>adolescents Shellenberger decided that as a lifelong environmental activist <br>leading energy expert and father of a teenage daughter he needed to speak out<br>to separate science from fiction.<br>Despite decades of news media attention many<br>remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining<br>in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather even<br>in poor nations declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk<br>of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to<br>slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. <br>Curiously the people who are the most<br>alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. <p/> <p/> <p/> <p/>What's really behind the rise of apocalyptic<br>environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for<br>status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular<br>people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy.<br>But in preaching fear without love and guilt without redemption the new<br>religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.<br></p>