A senior UN environmental
official once told The
Associated Press that
governments have a 10 year
window of opportunity to solve
the greenhouse effect before it
goes beyond human control. When
was the article written? 1989.
In the decades that followed,
many more people have predicted
doom if the world does not
adequately address climate
change.
There's some really serious
environmental problems that we
don't pay enough attention to
because we're so wrapped up in
our own personal apocalyptic
drama.
One in five British children say
they've had nightmares about it.
According to a large national
survey earlier this year.
Michael Shellenberger, an
environmental activist for 30
years, used to be convinced that
climate change was an
existential threat to human
civilization. But now, he
believes climate alarmism is out
of touch with science and
reality. In his new book,
"Apocalypse Never," he separates
fact from fiction in the climate
change debate. This is American
Thought Leaders, and I'm
JanJekielek.
Michael Shellenberger, such a
pleasure to have you on American
Thought Leaders.
Thanks for having me on.
Michael, first of all, thank you
for writing this book. I think
there's a lot of people outside
of just myself who have a sense
that humans are creating some
change in the climate, and are
alarmed by the climate alarmism,
but don't necessarily have the
information to justify that
feeling or that thought. You've
kind of separated out the
science from the rhetoric which
is, I think, a great service to
society, frankly. So tell me a
bit about your journey to get
here.
Sure, so I've been an
environmental activist for 30
years. I've been a climate
activist for 20 years. I got
involved in climate change like
a lot of people at the end of
the Cold War, as the fears of
nuclear war were declining.
Also, the fears of
overpopulation were declining.
And I think people who were
oriented towards an apocalyptic
mindset were looking for a new
vehicle for their concerns. And
so I became involved in climate
change, I think like a lot of
people, believing it to be an
existential threat to human
civilization, perhaps even a
threat to the human species.
I've spent the last 20 years
working on the issue, advocating
both [first] renewables and then
I had a big change of mind about
10 years ago, and I came to see
nuclear energy was needed. And
over that period of time, the
conversation about climate
change just got crazier and
crazier. People started saying
more and more radical things.
Last year in particular, I
became very upset because
adolescents were starting to
believe things like they might
not live long enough to have
children. My daughter who's 14
is fine, but her friends are
very scared. Some of them don't
know if they'll live long enough
to have their own kids. And I
felt like somebody needed to
speak out. I kept waiting for
somebody else to do it. Nobody
did. And so I decided to write
"Apocalypse Never" to really
help people understand what the
science actually says, as
compared to what they imagine it
says.
I noticed you mentioned a few
times in the book that you
actually were deeply involved in
creating the Apollo Project, the
predecessor to the Green New
Deal. One of the arguments about
the Green New Deal—I don't know
much about the Apollo project at
this point, but the big argument
against the Green New Deal is
that it's a kind of subterfuge
to impose more central control,
okay, that it's actually just a
means to that end. How do you
respond to those kinds of
arguments? I'm curious.
It was more like, "We need to
harmonize human society with
It's partly what it is. The
people who are advocating 100 
ercent renewables, if you kind 
f look at it, really what's 
nature." [I] Definitely thought
that. And there was sort of a
eing proposed is a lot of 
nvestment in renewables, energy 
sense in which once that would
happen, that would be kind of
fficiency, mass transit. I 
on't think that people that are 
dvocating those things [for 
entral control] themselves. 
hey don't think to themselves, 
I want to exercise control over 
the final event. There is an
apocalyptic sense in which it's
ociety." I mean, I didn't. 
like, once that happens, then
we're not going to have any
problems anymore—not just
environmental problems, but
society will sort of heal
itself, and there will be this
sort of benevolent virtuous
cycle where we create good jobs,
I think what I didn't realize,
and I think most people don't
and we all take the train, and
there are solar panels and wind
turbines everywhere. So ... that
involves a lot of control. It
involves the desire to pretty
radically remake society.
realize, is just how much land
it would require. So just on
average, it takes 300 to 400
times more land to generate the
same amount of electricity from
a solar farm as it does from a
nuclear power plant or a natural
gas plant. [It's the] same thing
for wind turbines. With wind
turbines, you're putting thes
 spinning blades into the airs
ed of birds and bats and inse
ts. It's hard to imagine anyt
ing worse for the natural envi
onment or for endangered spec
es than putting spinning blad
s right where they fly. 
in there, you know, including
the stuff around mass transit.
It's interesting that in Los
Angeles, the number of people
using mass transit over the last
five years declined. And the
reason is because the poor and
working class Latin American
immigrants, as soon as they got
a little money, wanted to have
So I think when you look at
things like this desire to make
their own car.
people take mass transit, yes,
there is a kind of will to
control people's lives. And ther
's this hatred, honestly, a rea
 hatred of cars which provide
people with freedoms that I th
nk the radical left, the apoc
lyptic environmental left, reall
 hates I think for reasons that 
hey're not even aw
Something that's really
interesting in here, which is
different from what I've seen
anywhere else, is basically, you
say that the International Panel
on Climate Change's science is
right. It's just that it's
grossly misrepresented in even
in its own reporting. This is
just fascinating because people
will use that and say, "You're
not on the right side of history
unless you believe everything
that's in here." Tell me about
that.
Yeah, I wrote the book in part
for other environmentalists, but
I also wrote it for
conservatives who I think have
not known how to interpret the
science. What I wanted to do is
I show ... the basic science
that carbon dioxide is a heat
trapping molecule, that the
world is clearly warming. We
have a lot of different measures
of that now, [warming] mostly
due to humans, but that it
doesn't show that it's the end
of the world.
It shows that humans have a big
impact on the natural
environment. And, of course,
there are seven and a half
billion of us. We live these
really amazing high-energy
lives. We've had these big
negative environmental
consequences. So that's not a
surprise. We've been aware of
those.
But there is no apocalyptic
scenario in IPCC. In fact, IPCC
doesn't predict anybody dying
from climate change in the
future. It says things like
climate change appears to be
contributing to disease, to some
kinds of infectious disease. But
then it also goes on and says
that the things causing
infectious disease, the biggest
things, don't have anything to
do with climate change. It's
just all the stuff that we know.
It's similar with floods. Well,
what determines whether you're
protected from floods is whether
you have a flood control system.
Could you get slightly more
floods in the future? Sure, 2 to
3 inches more rain. But the
difference is that my
neighborhood in Berkeley,
California can adapt to a little
bit more rain, whereas the Congo
suffers from floods right now
because it does not have a flood
control system. So ... I think
there's been a confusion on a
lot of this stuff just because
people don't understand that
what makes us safe from natural
disasters is economic development.
And that points to other things
like forest fires. The biggest
factors for forest fires,
whether in California or
Australia is whether or not we
suppress the fires to prevent
them, which basically allows the
wood fuel in the forest to build
up. I mean, the fire season's
longer because it's warmer. But
I mean, in every case, really,
there's more mundane
explanations for natural
disasters. And the big picture
what determines whether we have
these hotter, more frequent
fires is just that we've allowed
wood fuel to accumulate in the
is, of course, that everyone's
doing a lot better. The deaths
forests and also whether we've
built too many houses near
from natural disasters have
declined 90 percent over the la
t hundred years, just in the sa
e way that we're all living long
forests that are burning. So
there's just usually [other
r and living better lives. Y
u know, we are much more resilie
factors].
t in our national environments
 and there's no reason to expect
that to change or reverse it
elf. Even if the world gets
two or three or four degre
s hotter.
So one incredibly important
concept that you outline
throughout the book in different
ways is this concept of energy
density and that there's this
sort of progression. I just love
that term "energy density." It
suddenly encapsulates this whole
idea, right? You're starting
with really low energy dense
fuels, like wood and charcoal
and so forth, and you're moving
up the chain. And the more
energy density you get, the
better it is for the
environment? That's the case you
make. Tell me about this.
Yeah, this is a very simple
physical concept. It's as basic
as gravity is for physics. It is
that the environmental impact of
a fuel is determined by the en
rgy density of the fuel and th
 power density of its ex
raction or production. So a lu
p of coal has twice as much en
rgy as a lump of wood. A lump of
uranium, which we use for nu
lear power, has a million ti
es more energy than a lump of co
l. So I can cook a pot of be
ns with a lump of wood; I mi
ht be able to heat my house fo
 24 hours with a lump of co
l; and with a lump of ur
nium, I can power my entire hi
h-energy life, including all of
my jet travel and the things th
t require so much energy.
I wanted to ask you about
fracking. Because aside from
the environmental questions 
hich there's a lot of discu
sion about, it kind of revo
utionized the U.S. relati
nship with energy, i.e.
it allowed for effectively fos
il fuel independence for the 
.S., which is a dramatic shift f
om the past. At the same ti
e, there are some policy proposa
s that suggest banning fracking 
ltogether at the federal leve
. What are your thoughts on th
s?
Right. Fracking just refers to a
method of extracting natural gas
from below ground. My basic view
of energy is that there's a
physical hierarchy of energy
that also represents
environmental and human
progress. We go from wood and
dung to coal and hydroelectric
plants to petroleum to natural
gas to uranium. So people
sometimes say, "Are you in favor
of natural gas?" And I say, "I'm
in favor of natural gas when it
replaces coal, but I'm opposed
to natural gas when it replaces
uranium, because you just have
bigger environmental impacts
from natural gas than you do
from uranium, but you have much
fewer environmental impacts from
natural gas compared to coal."
When you look at the last 15
years in the United States, but
also in the last half century in
Europe, ... the biggest driver
of the decline of carbon
emissions comes from the
replacement of coal with natural
gas. And in the United States,
we do that mostly by fracking
below ground, cracking the
shale, releasing the natural
gas. It's just much better for
the environment to get your
natural gas from below ground
than to remove whole mountain
tops to get coal, which is
really what we had been doing.
So the transition from coal to
natural gas has been fantastic.
If the people who are proposing
to ban fracking were similarly
proposing to build a lot of
nuclear power plants, that might
be an interesting idea. Mostly,
though, they're not. They're
saying we should replace it with
solar panels imported from
China. That's not going to work
for a variety of reasons,
including that the solar is
unreliable. And usually, by the
way, when solar panels aren't
producing electricity because
it's not sunny, the backup
electricity is coming from
natural gas anyway.
So a better approach in my view
is to do what both the Russians
but also United Arab Emirates
and other natural gas rich
countries do, which is build
nuclear power plants to replace
the natural gas you're burning
for electricity at home and then
export your natural gas abroad
for what President Trump calls
energy dominance, which is
basically a way to have strong
exports. And honestly, helping
countries to use natural gas
rather than coal is great for
the climate, great for the
environment.
So here we have this incredible
blessing in the United States in
the form of all this abundant
natural gas. I mean, even the
petroleum that comes from
fracking for shale below ground
is the best kind of petroleum,
because it's called light sweet
crude. It's much better from an
environmental standpoint than
the kind of oil that's in what
they call the tar sands of
Canada or in places like
Venezuela, where it's an oil
that's a really heavy, sticky,
dirty oil that has to be much
more refined. So I think it's
just one more example of
apocalyptic environmentalists
being opposed to solutions,
because they don't really want
to solve the problem.
Well, this is really fastinating
to me because my father was a
nuclear engineer. And so of
course he had his biases and so
forth. But I always understood
nuclear energy to be an
incredibly clean source of
energy. And it was always
baffling to me that it's being
excluded from the discussion or
somehow anti-environmental.
Well, ... originally I was
working on a book about nuclear
energy. And this book still has
a lot of nuclear energy in it.
Nuclear energy has come to be
seen as almost a satanic force,
I think, to people who think
they're secular. It's such a
powerful energy. Obviously, its
primary purpose is as a weapon
for national security. In the
book, I argued that there was a
lot of displacement of anxieties
around nuclear weapons onto
nuclear power plants.
Those the people who were
displacing their anxieties were
of a particular political
ideology. These are people that
tended to think there were too
many people on earth. They
tended to think there was
something wrong with human
civilization. They tended to
come from the political left
like myself. And so one question
was always, "Why do people who
seem to be secular and in
adherence with modern science
profess such seemingly religious
beliefs about the apocalypse,
which is a religious idea?" And
[they] start describing nature
in ways that seem spiritual.
They describe nature as a kind
of God.
I'm rushing ahead to the end of
the book, but basically, I look
at some of the drivers behind
this apocalyptic fear, and I
think that they really have root
in a desire to put oneself in
the middle of a major historical
drama. And so I think we see a
lot of climate activists are
adolescents and middle-aged
people in the midst of what you
might call a midlife crisis, who
are seeking to construct a
dramatic story in which they are
the hero figures out to save the
rest of the world.
It's fascinating. When I was
reading through that part, I was
thinking about how this
corresponds with a kind of
decline in traditional
religiosity in society. So it
could be a kind of a
replacement, I guess, is that
what you argue?
Yes, and by the way, it's not my
argument in a sense. There's a
way in which the whole book is a
synthesis of existing science
and existing scholarship.
There's a large body of research
showing that environmentalists,
particularly apocalyptic
environmentalists, tend to be
more secular. They tend to not
believe in traditional religion,
traditional Judeo-Christian
religions. And in particular,
they reject the idea of
dominion, that humans have been
given the earth, have been given
nature to use.
What we find, most
interestingly, in this research
is it shows that these people
end up repeating many sort of
religious ideas from the book of
Genesis, where we fell from the
Garden of Eden because we sinned
against nature or God, to the
book of Revelations, where the
world is destroyed because of
our sins. The people who are
repeating these stories don't
know that those are basically
religious stories, in part
because they never learned them
because they were secular
people. And so I thought that
was one of the interesting
twists.
These stories of saving the
world are so common in the
If you look at the problem of
climate change itself and even
culture. I mean, you see them in
sort of the Marvel comic book
if you were at your most
alarmed, the obvious solutions
movies, but you also see it with
Greta Thunberg or Extinction
Rebellion, which is this climate
activist group in London.
is to produce electricity and
energy without carbon emissions.
Literally people sort of
dressing up, standing in front
of crowds. Even the word
movement, by the way, comes from
It's kind of the work for
engineers and people like your
a religious movement.
dad, who are nuclear engineers.
You basically just need
different ways to produce power
and transportation fuel and
heating and cooking. It's kind
of boring stuff actually. It
doesn't really necessarily
require standing on the top [in
public places], thousands of
people marching.
There's sort of this idea that t
ere's ways in which the movemen
 part of this, the religio
s element of this, is the goa
 in and of itself. That's 
hat makes it so excitin
. I think we see it now with the
Black Lives Matter movement.
You see it in a lot of the movem
nts that people are actually ex
ited to be a part of some
hing larger than themselves. The
e's something, I think, quite be
utiful about it, in the same 
The problem is, it's creating a
lot of anxiety and depression
ay that there's something beauti
ul about a lot of religious mov
ments that you feel like
you're part of something lar
er than yourself, but yo
 also are feeling courageous. A
d so I think those needs
are being met by the climate mov
ment. 
among young people. We see one
out of five British children
have nightmares about climate
change. And then, many of the
policies that are being
advocated are harmful, both to
people and the natural
environment. Both in the rich
world, but also as I talked
about in the book, including in
poor and developing countries,
where people are more
vulnerable. The people that need
modern ways to make energy and
are being deprived it by the
World Bank and other
institutions that have been
taken over by this apocalyptic
mentality.
Well, so that's actually a
really fascinating piece of
this. You have Greta Thunberg,
who's one of the chief public
proponents of the apocalyptic
worldview that you're
describing. She's speaking at
Davos. These are some of the
most influential and wealthy
people in the world. You have
the World Bank, as you
mentioned, basically playing
into this. And you have a lot of
lobbyists, as you described in
the book, a lot of big
corporates involved. It's
actually incredible how much
support this perspective has or
at least, in some cases
cynically as you described. Tell
me a bit about this. How does
that work?
I mostly, by the way, don't
think it's cynical. I mean, I
certainly think there's
corporations trying to make
money on it. But I think that
even the people that run those
corporations are true believers
that this is the dominant
religion of secular people. ...
I think a big part of this, by
the way, and I mentioned it
briefly at the end of the book,
is the fact that we no longer
have a very strong national
religion. And but what I mean by
that is we no longer have a very
strong nationalism or
patriotism.
I think Americans used to have
the Soviet Union. At the end of
this, during the Cold War, ...
we were always all against this
other system, the Soviet system.
Now, I think we should, I think
we have a similar system that
we're all against, which is the
Chinese system. The Chinese are
perpetuating genocide against
their own people. They are a
dictatorship. I don't think that
I think that there is really
another outside opponent, but
the global elite are so
integrated with the Chinese
system and with the factory
system and the cheap goods that
we get from China. Without that
external enemy, we turn in on
ourselves.
And so I think that that's what
we're seeing right now. That's
why you have so many different
movements around identity,
whether it's race or sex, and I
think climate change is
basically an identity movement.
It's a way of saying, "I'm with
the good people of science and
nature against the evil,
anti-environment deniers, the
people who deny the truth of
this reality." It's obviously
very troubling, for the United
States and for the world. I
don't think it can last. My hope
is that we return to a more
benevolent, national patriotic
identity, which points out the
ways in which America is special
because of the freedoms that we
have, and the ways in which we
have a liberal democracy.
But I do see the elites sort of
embracing what I think is really
a globalizing ideology,
supposedly in service of nature,
but really, in some ways more in
service of a kind of narcissism
and a kind of self
congratulation. That really
betrays an underlying
insecurity. I mean, it's notable
to me ... when people need to go
around telling you how good they
are. Clearly they are worried
that they may not be good enough
in some way. So I think it's
betraying some underlying
insecurity in the culture, and
that's why there's so much of
this hostility antagonism right now.
I mean, this is really fasc
nating, too, because what you'
e describing, at least to me k
nd of fits how the relatively n
w Black Lives Matter movement is
functioning. Again, it's
identity. I think simil
rly, it's trying to deal wit
 some real issues, but doesn'
 deal with the underlying th
ngs, doesn't actually attack th
 underlying things which ar
 causing the problem. I mea
, that's my take, but becaus
 this is your argument for this 
hole apocalyptic environmenta
ism as you're describing i
. How many more moveme
Yes. Well, I could go on forever
about this issue. For example, I
ts like this are we going see? 
his is this is just a fasci
ating concept right now to me
look at the Black Lives Matter
movement, and I see basically
the same people that were in the
streets last year on climate
change are now in the streets on
Black Lives Matter. I'm in a
upper middle class neighborhood
in Berkeley, California. It's a
very left wing. My neighborhood
is, you know, mostly white, and
one of my neighbors across the
street has painted a huge "Black
Lives Matter" above their
garage. The house is painted
white, and they've got a big
"Black Lives Matter." And then
they've painted all the names of
African Americans who have been
killed by the police, and
they're out there painting
almost every day.
They're doing that to show that
they are more moral than their
neighbors. ... They're doing
that to get recognition and
approval from their neighbors
like me, for me to stop and say,
"Wow, you're really such a good
person for doing that. You're
doing so much more than I am."
That's the motivation clearly,
because the hard work of doing
things like improving policing
tactics or improving African
American performance in the
schools, creating a stronger
sense of community in African
American neighborhoods, or
shrinking the wealth gap.
Those things are hard. And my
neighbors don't want to do that,
or maybe it's really they're not
able to do that. Similarly, when
it comes to reducing emissions
... if you want to reduce
emissions, the best way is just
to build more nuclear power
plants. My neighbors don't want
to do that and don't know how to
do that.
And I think more to the point,
if we did do that, if we did
solve climate change, if you did
improve police tactics or
whatever it might be, then you
wouldn't have this issue to
moralize around. And so
ultimately, I point out that the
obvious solutions for reducing
carbon emissions are just to use
natural gas instead of coal and
to use nuclear power. Well,
climate activists almost
overwhelmingly oppose both
natural gas and nuclear power.
And they support only solutions
that really can't work, like
solar panels and industrial wind
turbines.
So I think one view is you can
sort of say, well, everybody's
mistaken. They're ignorant. They
don't really know how the energy
system works. I think in other
ways, maybe at some level they
do know, and they don't really
want to solve the problem. What
they really want to do is
moralize and feel good about
themselves in comparison to
their neighbors. I think that's
ultimately what drives ordinary
folks.
There's definitely environmental
elites who are have a darker
view and really want to move
towards a low energy society.
The whole point of renewables
was that they don't produce very
much energy. Renewables can't
power an industrial
civilization.We've known that
for 200 years. There would have
been no Industrial Revolution
had the British not turned from
wood to coal. In some ways,
everybody kind of knows that at
some level. So I think the fact
that people want to go to
renewables and move to a low
energy society also speaks to
some darker impulses. Because of
course, such a world could not
sustain seven and a half billion
people. There would have to be a
much significant shrinking of
the human population.
Well, one of the things you
pointed out—I don't know if you
put it this way, but this is how
I was imagining it—it seems
incredibly patronizing to go to
the developing world and say,
"Hey, you can't do this; you
can't develop the power
generation that allows for our
standard of living. We're gonna
prevent you from doing that."
Yes, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and
80s, the World Bank and other
international development banks
would finance the infrastructure
of economic development in poor
countries, which is mostly
roads, hydroelectric dams, flood
control, electric grids, and
sewage systems. That's the
difference between poor
countries and rich countries: we
have those things and poor
countries don't.
Well, after apocalyptic
environmentalists exercised
their influence over the World
Bank, the World Bank now doesn't
fund development, it funds
charitable activities. So
instead of funding modern
agriculture with irrigation,
tractors, and fertilizer, it now
funds agroecology and other
things to basically keep people
on the farm.
Well, the process of economic
development is that people go
from being farmers to being city
people. That's kind of all it
is. So, in poor countries, 75 to
80 percent of the country are
small farmers. In the United
States in Europe, just two to
three percent of us are small
farmers anymore, and when we are
farmers in our country, we farm
very big tracts of land and
produce a lot of food on very
small amounts of land. So that
all changed.
Yes, I think it's unethical. And
I wrote the book in part to
denounce it, because I don't
think most Americans know that
we're financing activities that
everybody knows can't result in
development. You're right, it's
totally patronizing. Here you
have rich people going to poor
countries saying, "We're going
to help you not make the mistake
we made." Which mistake would
that be, the mistake of jet
travel and having too much food?
I wrote this book because I just
think it's wrong. And from an
national security perspective,
China and Russia and America's
other rivals in the world are
out there financing development.
So if the West isn't going to
finance the roads and power
plants and stadiums and all the
things of development in Africa
and Asia and Latin America, it's
being financed by China. And
China's not interested in
freedom and democracy. They're
just interested in what's good
for China. So I think it's a
scary thing. I think it's
unethical on the one hand, and
on the other hand, I think it
really threatens national
security for the United States
and Europe.
This is an incredibly well
researched book. I mean, your
footnotes amount to almost a
third of the end, which is
incredibly helpful, by the way,
because you can actually
reference a lot of what you're
talking about. What was one of
the most surprising things that
you found in this research, and
how long did it take you put
this together?
By the way, I have a very small
nonprofit research institute.
We're lucky that we're
independent. We don't take up
funding from any industry so we
can follow the truth wherever it
leads. The whole thing—there was
a six month push at the end, but
really, maybe a year total. I
[wrote it] with a bunch of
people helping me. And
obviously, I've been working on
this so long, so I already kind
of knew the broad sense of it.
So it's hard to say exactly.
There were two issues that I
didn't really know very well or
I only knew from reading the
news coverage which was plastics
and meat. And that was also
where I discovered some really
cool stuff. On plastics, I
started just reading the
newspaper archives. There's two
natural resources that we used
to use for plastics. The first
was ivory from elephant tusks,
which we used for piano
keyboards, but also billiard
balls, pool balls.
And then the other was tortoise
shell. Everybody's or most
people's glasses, the dominant
style, are these tortoiseshell
glasses. Well, these are made
out of petroleum plastic. But
that used to come from sea
turtles, not tortoises; they
just named it that. One of the
coolest things I
discovered—because in this
chapter on plastics, we open
with this famous viral video of
a woman pulling a plastic straw
out of a sea turtle's nose—is
that sea turtles had been hunted
almost to extinction for their
shells, which were used to make
tortoiseshell plastic for
eyeglasses, jewelry, and all
sorts of other things because
you can heat the turtle shell,
and it's malleable and strong
like plastic.
So the original plastics were
all bio plastics. The way that
we stopped using them, the way
that we are able to leave the el
phant tusks—there are still pe
ple that hunt elephant tusks, ob
iously, but [we've] massively re
uced the amount of elephants th
t we killed for their ivory an
 the number of sea turtles th
t we killed for their to
toiseshell or so-called to
toiseshell—was because of the in
ention of plastics from fo
sil fuels. So I think this is th
 side of plastics we don't th
nk of which is that they are su
stitutes for natural re
ources that we shouldn't use.
That's also a parable I tell
around the whale oil. We used to
use whale oil for our lighting.
We now use petroleum or we then
[began to] use petroleum. And
similarly, the Europeans used
whale oil for soap and for
margarine, and then we invented
the substitute in the form of
vegetable oil. So this process
of substitution, that was such
an exciting discovery because it
gave me a more optimistic view
that actually how you save
nature is by not using it. That
means that if you want to save
the environment, we need to use
more artificial products. It
So vegetarianism is really more
like environmentalism in that
it's a political ideology. It's
an identity. It's a it's a set
of values. It's not actually
what people are doing. In fact,
sounds completely
counterintuitive. But that's
I think the two are very
related. I argue that they're
very related. Again, I just
think there are a lot of things
that people are doing and saying
to make themselves feel better
where the facts lead you.
about themselves in the world.
We talked about it this whole
time, virtue signaling or
conspicuous compassion, and
those don't have anything to do
with saving the natural
environment. In many instances,
they actually get in the way of
protecting the natural world.
Well, one of the really
interesting things in the book
is you talk about how one of the
biggest environmental problems
is overfishing, the decimation
of the fish stocks and so forth.
To me, I've always thought about
that because the oceans are
effectively a kind of a commons.
I think back to the tragedy of
the commons idea, right? That if
you don't own it, or you're not
responsible for it, hey, you can
extract from there as much as
you like, and the oceans, to
some extent, have become that
way. The effect of that though,
today is this industrial level
overfishing. It's fascinating. I
didn't realize that it was that
bad.
This is important because in the
book, the first third is
debunking myths. And the second
third, second part, is how do we
save nature? And the third part
is, why do we think of these
problems as unmanageable or
apocalyptic when clearly we can
deal with them? One of the
points I make is that there's
some really serious
environmental problems that we
don't pay enough attention to
because we're so wrapped up in
our own personal apocalyptic
drama.
One of the biggest things, maybe
the biggest still, that really
threatens the wild animals in
the world is just that we still
eat a lot of them. Certainly in
poor countries, there's a lot of
eating of wild animals on land,
but the biggest consumption of
wild animals is wild fish. And
the craziest thing is that many
environmental groups, because
they have this romanticization
of nature and harmonizing with
nature, have actually condemned
farmed fishing.
Farmed fish is how we save wild
fish. And we should save wild
fish, not just for the wild
fish's sake, but also because
that's how whales and the sea
animals that we all love and
care about survive. So really,
transitioning from wild fish to
farmed fish is one of the most
important things we can do. And
yet we never talk about it.
Sure, there was some farmed
fishing 20 years ago I pointed
out that had some negative
consequences, but it's improved
enormously. The most important
thing was just moving farmed
fish from being in the oceans
itself, where it took up
habitat, to on land. And what we
find is that if you produce
farmed fish on land, you can
produce a huge amount of
protein, huge quantity of fish,
with very small impacts on the
natural environment. So, I think
it's both an inspiring story,
but also a reminder that people
should distrust, what they hear
about what saving the
environment requires because so
many of the people that are
telling you things are in the
grip of a religion, rather than
paying attention to what the
science says.
Well, so this is another big
question, right? I feel that
across many disciplines right
now it's very hard to find
information that you can really
trust that isn't ideologically
tainted, if you will, or just
pushing you in a particular
direction. Again, your book, I'm
going to recommend it to our
viewers because one of the
beauties of it is that it's
sourced. And it, I would say,
breaks down a lot of mental
barriers. I found it very
helpful that way to just
basically have a healthy
approach and even think about
how to explore further if you're
not buying what you're reading
in "Apocalypse Never."
Thank you so much. I don't want
people to take my word for any
of it. There's no reason anybody
should trust me. That's why,
you're right, a quarter of the
book [is footnotes]. There's
over 1100 footnotes in the book;
a quarter of the pages are
dedicated to references. People
would always [question me]. I
testify in front of governments
a lot and journalists and
policymakers. They always say,
"Why should we trust you?" And I
say, "Don't trust me. Why would
you?"
It's so easy now [to look things
up]. You read something that
sounds shocking, so for example,
plastic waste mostly breaks down
in the ocean. That's not to say
it's not a problem, but it's
kind of good news. It's shocking
that so much of the plastic
waste, 99 percent of plastic
waste, breaks down in the ocean.
Don't take my word for it, just
look at the footnote and Google
it and read it yourself.
That's what I always
joke—because I wrote this book,
and I did dedicate it to my
children who are 14 and 21 years
old, so they're high school and
college age kids. I joke that
I've hidden an environmental
studies textbook in a book of
stories and kind of fascinating
characters and a little bit of
some events from my life that's
meant to be readable. I want
kids to read this, I want adults
to read it. I want people to
read it and get some pleasure
from these stories, but also
learn a lot. So I wanted it to
be something that was both
entertaining and educational at
the same time.
One of the things you talk about
is how the media take
information that's published in
scientific journals or by
scientists and look for the
exciting or dangerous sounding
or threatening elements and
publish that. I think you even
talked about in the IPCC stuff,
how the initial report is in
that direction, and then the
media took that and took it
further. And then this is what
influenced a lot of the alarmist
thinking about climate change in
the first place. ... How should
media behave with respect to the
information that they're
getting?
Well, I think the first thing we
have to understand is that most
mainstream environmental
journalists are environmental
activists who went into
journalism to be activists.
That's not some conspiracy or
something. I just know them. I
mean, I know many of them
personally. And that's also why
I went into into. I've been an
activist, but also an
environmental journalist. So
informal journalism is basically
a kind of environmental
activism. So you should just
intuitively distrust what you're
reading.
I think what's cool right now is
that people don't really trust
the news media. I think that's
good. We now have a bunch of
different information sources,
including yours, including
YouTube. And so this diversity
of viewpoints is really healthy
and excellent. People should
know not to trust The New York
Times or The Washington Post,
particularly those two
newspapers which have been
absolutely pseudoscientific in
many of the claims that they
make, grossly misleading. And so
in some ways, it's a little bit
harder.
I guess if you thought, "Oh,
there's just one newspaper I
could read and trust for all my
information," that's kind of a
child's view of the world. A
more grown up view says, "I
don't trust anybody for all my
information. I don't trust
myself for my information. I'm
going to go look at a variety of
sources and try to sort it out."
Environmental journalists are
one of the groups that [mislead
eople]. It's really scientists,
activists, and journalists.
Those are the three groups of
people that have perpetuated so
much of the misinformation. For
me, I see this book coming at a 
ime when people are more capabl
 and more interested in cutting 
hrough the official sources a
d at a time when many of our
institutions are clearly failing
The World Health Organization
said not to wear masks. We now
know masks are really important
for preventing the spread of
coronavirus. We have the New
York Times, supposedly "all the
news fit to print," but it won't
print a lot of important
information. It's at a time
whenthe older institutions are
losing their power, and we need
to look to new voices. I'm
hoping to contribute to that,
but also allow people to
investigate this stuff for
themselves.
This is not theoretical physics
by the way. Most of the science
in this [is simple]. I'm not a
STEM person; I'm an ordinary
dude. I've read a lot, but this
does not involve [complicted
science]. There's no advanced
math that's required on most of
these questions. Most of the
cases, it's arithmetic. It's
fairly simple physical processes
that are simple to understand.
And, like you said, certain
concepts like energy density,
once you understand energy
density, once you understand
that the higher the energy
density of the fuel and the
higher the power density of the
production, which includes
farming, by the way, the less
environment and the less natural
resource you use, once you
understand that, it's impossible
not to see it everywhere.
First of all, I guess I should,
in that case, invite you to
become a contributor to the
Epoch Times because I think you
have a very, very valuable
perspective on the environment,
which is frankly quite important
to us. So that's one. Second, I
should wish you luck in the
testimony you're going to be
doing in Congress. And thirdly,
any final words before we finish
up?
No, thanks very much for being
here. I guess I would just say
to parents and kids, I hope that
they read "Apocalypse Never." I
think it's a great thing to read
together. There have been a lot
of readers who buy a copy for
themselves,  and they also buy
copies for their children, their
grandkids, their cousins, for
people who are particularly
alarmed. The people who need to
read "Apocalypse Never" the most
are the people who are most
afraid of environmental
problems. And, so I would
encourage them to read it. You
don't have to agree with it, but
it seems like if you are really
so concerned about the natural
environment, then it would be
worth your while to to confront
the facts and the evidence and
see where it takes you.
Yes, and also learn its frankly,
profoundly hopeful message,
which I really appreciate.
Michael Shellenberger, such a
pleasure to have you on.
Thanks for having me.
