Authors: Jan Jekeilek, and Irene Luo Via Epoch Times
The Views of the Authors are not necessarily the Views of Enigmose
For years, experts have predicted impending catastrophe from climate change. Thirty-one years ago, a senior U.N. environmental official told The Associated Press that governments had only a 10-year window to reverse global warming before it went beyond human control.
Like many others, Michael Shellenberger feared climate change was an existential threat to human civilization. He has devoted three decades of his life to environmental activism and improving the lives of people in poor or developing nations. At age 16, he threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. He’s fought to protect redwood trees in California, traveled to the Congo to study the impact of wood fuel use on gorillas, sought better working conditions for factory workers in Asia, and pushed the U.S. government to fund renewable energy.
Now, he believes the climate movement is radical, alarmist, and causing anxiety and depression, especially among young people. One in five British children say they’ve had nightmares about it, according to a large national survey earlier this year.
Although global temperatures are rising and humans are a major contributor, that doesn’t mean the world is ending, Shellenberger argues in his new book, “ Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
Contrary to what media headlines would suggest, climate change hasn’t made natural disasters worse. Fires, for instance, have declined 25 percent around the world from 1998 to 2015. And in California and Australia, where fires have increased, the biggest contributing factors have been humans allowing wood fuel to build up and constructing homes near forests—not climate change.
Claims of crop failure are similarly exaggerated, in his view. Humans already grow enough food for 10 billion people, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predict crop yields will continue increasing.
Global sea levels are rising, but Shellenberger believes humans can adapt in the decades to come. The Netherlands managed to become a wealthy nation while adapting to having one-third of its landmass below sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates sea levels could rise 2.7 feet by 2100; some areas of the Netherlands are as low as 20 feet below sea level.
To Shellenberger, climate alarmism is creating more problems than it solves....
Wind and Solar Aren’t the Future
In 2003, Shellenberger co-founded a “New Apollo project,” a predecessor to the Green New Deal, to direct taxpayer money to renewable energy.
“What I didn’t realize—and I think most people don’t realize—is just how much land it would require,” Shellenberger said in an interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program.
Crippled Development
Many rich countries today, as a result of the climate movement, are no longer seeking to eradicate poverty, but instead trying to make poverty “sustainable,” according to Shellenberger.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, “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, sewage systems,” Shellenberger said.
“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, fertilizer, it now funds agroecology and other things to basically keep people on the farm.”
Overshadowed Environmental Problems
There are “serious environmental problems that we don’t pay enough attention to because we’re so wrapped up in our own personal apocalyptic drama,” Shellenberger said.
Animal populations are declining not because of climate change, but because of tropical deforestation. People in developing countries still rely on charcoal and biomass for fuel. The solution is to help people get access to liquefied petroleum gas and cheap electricity, he argued.
Besides shrinking habitats, one of the biggest threats to wild animals “is just that we still eat a lot of them,” he said. Overfishing endangers wild fish species as well as the whales and sea animals that rely on them to survive.
“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.”
To Shellenberger, the modern-day climate movement is driven by a secular quasi-religion. “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.”
This has been a Summary, you can read the Full Article @ The Epoch Times
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