Upon the passionate recommendation of a close friend, I read Michael Shellenberger's book, which is titled Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Like many people across the political spectrum, I would love it if there were no environmental alarms going off in our society. It would be nice to live in a world where the environment was in pristine condition, and we as a society had nothing to worry about. What a wonderful thought, living in a world where we don't need to invest any tax-payer money or convince anyone to be good stewards of the environment. Alas, even after reading the book, I still believe a myriad of environmental alarms, warning lights, caution flags, and the like should be signaling to society that we need to deviate from the status quo. We still, in my humble opinion, need a culture shift.

Reasonable people can disagree on the rhetoric and effectiveness of various activist efforts. In fact, some of the anecdotes of activism that Shellenberger uses in his book are, in my opinion, good examples of ineffectiveness and/or poor communication with the general public that at times does more harm to environmental progress than good. However, I would also assert that Shellenberger's book also has the potential to do more harm than good to the environmental movement. Functionally, if done right, sounding an environmental alarm doesn't need to include fear mongering, but does demand that society take action, just as a fire alarm in a building doesn't include fear mongering, but does necessitate further investigation and response.

About a quarter of the pages in Michael Shellenberger's book are devoted to the references he cites, which is perhaps impressive in the sense that he is not making completely baseless claims out of thin air. For the average reader, it may not make sense to dig deeply into the references to thoughtfully validate Shellenberger's analysis, but I found the references to be vital to my ability to develop an honest and well-informed opinion about the book's overarching message.

For this critique, I am going to focus on the points made that I am either most skeptical about or that I find to be most compelling. One can imagine a typical book critique being a spectrum of everything from acknowledgement of unique insights, highlighting gaps in logic, discussion on differences in opinion, and pointing out fallacies. There are at least a handful of fallacies articulated in Shellenberger's analysis that I have only realized after first being intrigued, and then finding out that others have over the past few years debunked some of those pieces of information. My more common critical commentary can be mostly chalked up to differences in opinion about messaging and skepticism of certain deductive reasoning.

Chapter 1: Discounting and distracting

In the first chapter of Apocalypse Never, there are a few assertions, deductions, and associated references that I take issue with. I mostly found this chapter to be focused on discounting climate concerns and distracting from them.

1. On page 5, Shellenberger asserts that "rich and poor countries have become far less vulnerable to extreme weather events in recent decades." He cites the decline in people dying from natural disasters as the global population quadruples. He then later on pages 13–14 suggests that the increase in costs associated with natural disasters is driven by increases in population and property in harm's way. It is easy to see the contradiction here. The increase in costs shows the increase in vulnerability. More people and property in harm's way inherently means more vulnerable. Also, the references attributed to the statement about declines in people dying from natural disasters show incomplete data over the past century, and I think this decline can mostly be attributed to progress in the realms of medicine, public health, and emergency response.
2. Shellenberger's commentary on food production in the first chapter is compelling to me. It is logical that food production capacity would increase with the addition of fertilizer, tractors, and irrigation in undeveloped countries. However, the fact that increased food production capacity would be made possible by those three additions doesn't sufficiently refute that a human-caused warming climate would impact food production. The real paradox is that fertilizer, tractors, and irrigation would have other environmental externalities including likely increases in dead zones downstream of the fertilizer use, increases in greenhouse gas emissions from the tractors, and increased water scarcity due to the new agricultural use thanks to new irrigation. And it is safe to say that food production capacity impacts and responses will not be uniformly distributed across the globe.
3. On page 8, there is a distracting reference to sea level rise when talking about the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is an almost entirely land-locked country. That was a little bit confusing, but more confusing was the assertion about climate not having any impact on conflicts, while at the same time describing Rwanda's selling of Congo's resources. I think this is where I started to think Shellenberger should've distinguished more directly between climate and environmental issues. Conflicts being related to natural resources is a difficult concept to refute, but I think the point Shellenberger was trying to make was that there is no data or study to support that there is an increase in conflicts directly tied to climate change, but the tripping point is that natural resources, most notably arable land and water, can easily be connected to conflict and are impacted by climate change. However, no study could ever show that direct and singular connection between climate change and conflict. What data would be able to prove that? Conflicts are never just about one thing. Environmentalist assertions related to conflict and resource scarcity and the climate's impact on those two things are difficult to quantify. How would you quantify the change in tensions and psychological stress related to resource scarcity over the past century? I'm guessing that data hasn't been quantified and recorded in many places at many points in time.
4. On page 6, there was a distracting reference related to ocean acidification. Shellenberger cites a study titled "Ocean Acidification Does Not Impact the Behaviour of Coral Reef Fishes". But in talking about this, I don't think Shellenberger's goal was for us to ignore ocean acidification, but rather show an example of a scientist falsifying data and/or getting something wrong. I would find it hard to believe that he as an environmentalist is suggesting that the reader discount or ignore information about ocean acidification. In that regard, I find his reference and discussion about the coral reef fish to be distracting from his argument, which at this point in the book really seems to be about calming the rhetoric of climate activists not tearing down the concept of anthropogenic climate change in general.
5. Throughout most of the first chapter, Shellenberger seems to be advocating for climate adaptation over mitigation, suggesting individuals, cities, and countries have always adapted to changing conditions. But Shellenberger also expresses in an odd contradicting moment of storytelling that "We should be concerned about the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations, without question. There is nothing automatic about adaptation." Given the inadequate action of society so far to mitigate climate in a timely manner, I think it is obvious that climate adaptation is a necessity at this point. Shellenberger also leans on the IPCC reports a lot in the first chapter. Those reports don't speak to the impacts of more extreme anthropogenic climate change where we completely ignore and blow past the various degree thresholds. Focusing solely on adaptation is of course irresponsible. We need a culture shift. Sounding an alarm is healthy.
6. In the first chapter, Shellenberger unpacks over and over again explanations for why things are happening, which are of course nuanced with multiple causes, but he seems to consistently discount climate change and more heavily focus on other confounding contributions to environmental problems we face. He also simultaneously paints the news media in two different lights as he is telling different stories. One news media that does their homework and asks good questions and another news media that is part of the problem as he sees it. On page 21, he starts a paragraph refuting the news media, and ends the same paragraph with a statistic that confirms the news media isn't lying. Unfortunately, I think this is misleading to the passive reader.
7. I think the most compelling arguments from Shellenberger in Chapter 1 are about the rhetoric of a group called Extinction Rebellion, a group that I had never heard of until reading this book. Based on the anecdotes Shellenberger provides, and without any additional context, it seems easy to get on board with the notion that Extinction Rebellion's rhetoric is at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Though I would welcome information to refute Extinction Rebellion's ineffectiveness.

Chapter 2: A lack of peer-reviewed sources and contradicting messaging

The first thing I noticed when digging deeper on the references Shellenberger uses in Chapter 2 was that they are mostly not from peer-reviewed journals, and the claims he is making about the science of carbon sequestration really necessitate more rigorous references. Blogs and interviews with non-scientists that he conducts himself are just not going to cut it in my opinion. And the message that this chapter sends is completely antithetical to environmentalism in general. Is it ok to burn down the Amazon if the forest doesn't sequester a certain amount of carbon and produce a certain amount of oxygen? What about the value of being a biodiversity hot spot? The way this chapter starts makes me think Michael Shellenberger no longer sees the value in prioritizing environmental stewardship over anything and certainly not economic development.

"Rainforests in the Amazon and elsewhere in the world can only be saved if the need for economic development is accepted, respected, and embraced." — Michael Shellenberger

This statement is tough to get on board with and see the logic in. It feels like that logic will undoubtedly lead to more deforestation and more and more until the economy is satisfied, that is if it is ever satisfied. The children's book The Lorax seems relevant to this conversation. On page 32, Shellenberger talks through how economic growth enabled more farmers to clear forests for agricultural using machines instead of fire. This is stated as a positive, but I think this chapter in reality is Shellenberger communicating things that are not good, but rather less bad.

And he continues to contradict himself, claiming to care about the environment while stating very clearly that economic development should be prioritized over the environment.

"None of this is to suggest that rising carbon emissions and climate change bring no risks. They do. But we have to understand that not all of their impacts will be bad for the natural environment and human societies.

Nor does any of this mean we shouldn't be concerned about the loss of primary old-growth forests in the Amazon and elsewhere in the world. We should be. Old-growth forests offer unique habitats to species. While the total amount of forest cover in Sweden has doubled during the last century, many of the new forests have been in the form of monocultural tree farms. But if we are to protect the world's remaining old-growth forests, we're going to need to reject environmental colonialism and support nations in their aspirations to develop." — Michael Shellenberger

In this chapter, I am most interested in his discussion related to the Cerrado, soy farming, and improving the use of current agricultural land in Brazil. This was the most compelling part of the chapter and unfortunately, I don't think he focused enough on the peer-reviewed articles. Most of the remainder of the chapter is based on a conversation he had with one person. The two peer-reviewed references at the end of the chapter that I think are compelling are below.

Chapter 3: Wondering about single-use plastic? What are you advocating for?

At this point in the book, Shellenberger has established a trend where he will start by describing the seriousness of an environmental problem, then transition to discounting the problem or describing multiple causes of the problem, then suggest we aren't focusing correctly on the problem, and then pivot to advocating for economic development as a means to poverty alleviation. I think most people would agree that as an economy grows, poverty will be alleviated. But the overarching messaging of this book doesn't get more people to be good stewards of the environment nor does it give individuals anything actionable to help alleviate poverty, rather it is a signal to people that they can rest easy and live their lives without regard for the environment and let economic development alleviate poverty.

Shellenberger makes good points about the multiple causes of many of our environmental problems, but these points are often followed by contradicting messaging that would suggest we not disrupt or deviate from the status quo in any significant way. If the general thesis of the book is to tone done the rhetoric of environmental activism, I can get on board with that, but it seems like Shellenberger is saying something different than just tone down the rhetoric.

"Humankind is thus well-prepared to understand an important, paradoxical truth: it is only by embracing the artificial that we can save what's natural." — Michael Shellenberger

I don't think humankind is well-prepared to understand that truth, and I don't think environmentalists are ready to perpetuate that truth.

Chapter 4: Is this a book of click bait or something more meaningful?

At the start of this chapter, it was another round of cherry-picked science and misguided arguments with bad messaging in my opinion. And it looks like I'm not the first to think this. I've linked another book review below to show that there is at least one other person that agrees with me.

But, Shellenberger's storytelling as this chapter goes on is compelling. It certainly doesn't align with his overarching message to cool down the alarmism rhetoric. Rather his storytelling related to mountain gorillas, in my opinion, has the potential to make people care more about the environment and animals. And similarly his stories about the work in the Congo are also helpful for people to understand the complexity of environmentalism and poverty dynamics in developing countries.

The last part of this chapter, I actually think is a really important message about conservationists butting heads with locals. I actually wonder if this is what Shellenberger wanted to focus on for the whole book instead of environmental alarmism. Given his background, it seems like this subject matter of conservation in developing countries is where he has the most useful insights and compelling stories. Perhaps this is just the nature of books — you need a hook to reel people into what you really want to talk about.

Chapter 5: This is just an economic development advocacy book.

If it wasn't obvious before reading this book, Shellenberger makes it clear that economic development alleviates poverty. His disdain for environmental activist groups like Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace is increasingly distracting from his compelling stories about development and poverty alleviation.

"Increased wealth from manufacturing is what allows nations to build the roads, power plants, electricity grids, flood control, sanitation, and waste management systems that distinguish poor nations like Congo from rich nations like the United States." — Michael Shellenberger

It seems like once you get past the click-baity chapter titles and the venting about Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace, each chapter reveals a unique story and useful insight about the dynamics of economic development and poverty alleviation.

Something from this chapter that I want to understand better is the relationship between high-yield farming and nitrogen pollution. The downstream impacts of nitrogen pollution are a big problem, so while I get lowering the per unit use of nitrogen sounds like a good thing, I am skeptical about a massive global absolute increase in fertilizer use being good for the environment in any way.

"High-yield farming produces far less nitrogen pollution run-off than low-yield farming. While rich nations produce 70 percent higher yields than poor nations, they use just 54 percent more nitrogen." — Michael Shellenberger

The two sources cited related to global crop harvest and nitrogen use that are of interest to me are below.

Shellenberger also uses a few pages in this chapter to talk about energy density and various forms of energy and transportation. This is a particularly annoying part of the book where he advocates for fossil fuels because they are better than what we had before the Industrial Revolution. He does so without saying much if anything about solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear, which is an unfortunate set of omissions in this chapter. He briefly touched on "clean electricity" but in a very bizarre paragraph.

"People are often willing to accept even high levels of air pollution to enjoy the benefits of electricity. In 2016, I interviewed people living around an old and dirty coal power plant in India. The plant provided them with free electricity, but also sometimes emitted toxic ash, which they said irritated and burned their skin. However much they hated the pollution, none said they would be willing to give up free, dirty electricity for cleaner electricity at cost." — Michael Shellenberger

You'd think a paragraph like that would come complete with a reference to the documented interviews or the people he interviewed. Nope, he just said that he interviewed people and that the people prefer free, dirty electricity that irritates and burns their skin. That's insane. For a paragraph like that, you need a reference and preferably a video of the interview if you are going assert that people said they prefer free dirty energy with irritated and burned skin over clean electricity at cost. That may be the most ridiculous paragraph of the entire book.

If the interviews are real, then there is more digging to do on why any sane human-being would rather have their skin burned and irritated than pay for electricity. This is a clear signal that there is something wrong with our global culture that low cost dirty energy with clear negative public health effects is somehow articulated as preferred over clean electricity that doesn't burn or irritate the skin of local inhabitants. This is likely more about ability to pay than it is preference. I want to see the transcripts of these interviews. This paragraph is antithetical to Shellenberger's book and clearly shows that environmental alarmism, or in other softer words simply raising awareness, would be beneficial to people where the free dirty energy is causing them physical harm.

Chapter 6: Is this book fulfilling a revenge fantasy against Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace?

I think at this point in the book it would make sense to find other examples of environmental activist organizations being too alarmist if that is really the overarching message Shellenberger wants to hammer home. Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace are two organizations within a large ecosystem of environmental nonprofits doing activism, advocacy, and action-oriented work. But alas, this chapter starts with another venting session about how Shellenberger believes Greenpeace is not all that great. He does by the end of the chapter criticize other large environmental organizations including the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and of course 350.org. He may just be taking aim at the best known organizations at this point.

Shellenberger describes the ebbs and flows of a global economy extracting and then not extracting and then extracting again and then not extracting whale oil. He claims capitalism is what saved the whales, but fails to acknowledge the fact that if the economy found another use for whale oil, the only thing keeping whales safe from being hunted is environmental regulation. So in fact, whales don't stay protected from the ebbs and flows of the global economy unless there is some environmental alarm that signals a desire and/or need to protect them consistently across generations and across borders. Of course a substitute for whale oil makes it easier for whales to thrive, but that isn't a permanent solution in the long term, and certainly not one that can be generally applied to all plant and animal species globally. There is no way economic growth and capitalism is somehow going to magically protect all plant and animal species.

I don't care that Greenpeace wasn't solely responsible for protecting the whales, and I know that greed had little to do with saving the whales. If greed was so effective, it wouldn't have been necessary for the United Nations to call for a 10-year moratorium in 1972 and the United States to ban whaling under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1975. This chapter perpetuates bad economic thinking and ignorant shortsighted policy-making. It is absurd to think that we should rely on markets and corporations "outgrowing severe environmental exploitation". When there is severe environmental exploitation, we should of course have societal mechanisms that sound the environmental alarms. We can disagree on what those alarms should look like, but it is just ridiculous to suggest that somehow the free market is going to take care of the environment. It is clear that when the free market benefits the environment or any particular species of plant or animal, it isn't intentional.

Another point of frustration in this chapter is the pro-natural gas, pro-fracking commentary that uses the Independent Petroleum Association of America and British Petroleum as the sources for information with no other source to backup certain claims. Shellenberger and his publisher HarperCollins should've anticipated a critical look at the references for the assertions made in this book. Shellenberger regurgitates a well-established argument for natural gas over coal, but conveniently leaves solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear out of this chapter as well. At this point in the book, the reader is wondering if he will ever talk directly about renewables.

At the end of this chapter Shellenberger talks briefly about communism making whaling worse than it needed to be. He also makes a direct remark about free markets.

"And had there been freer markets, nations like Japan and Norway might have switched from whale oil to vegetable oil much sooner." — Michael Shellenberger

At this point, I'm wondering if Michael Shellenberger is using this book to garner favor with wealthy Libertarian and conservative donors that perhaps don't usually give to environmental causes. In a crowded field of environmental nonprofits, I could see how it would be a good strategic move to differentiate and appeal to an atypical donor base.

Chapter 7: What percent would be considered significant to become a worthy emissions mitigation strategy?

At the beginning of this chapter, Shellenberger goes through some thought exercises showing how difficult it is to reduce emissions in the United States. Paragraph after paragraph ends with "… by just X percent." He is suggesting that because these strategies don't deliver massive emissions reductions, they are not worthy mitigation strategies, or at least not as worthy. Global veganism only results in 10 percent reduction in carbon emissions, so once again Shellenberger brushes off an emissions mitigation strategy.

And then he talks about the "rebound effect" of plant-based diets where people use the money they save from their plant-based diet to buy more energy intensive consumer products, and asserts that reducing carbon emissions in energy is more impactful.

"It is for this reason that reducing carbon emissions in energy, not food or use of land more broadly, matters most." — Michael Shellenberger

Reducing global carbon emissions requires addressing emissions in everything in the economy. It is not about substitutes and alternatives. It is about fundamentally redesigning every product and market in society and shaving off emissions wherever possible. So, if this "rebound effect" happens, then we as a society are simultaneously striving for the consumer products that are less energy intensive, and also reducing emissions associated with the electricity production required to produce those consumer products. We eat less meat, which reduces carbon emissions. We design less energy intensive consumer products, which reduces carbon emissions. And we use electricity produced from renewables, which reduces carbon emissions. We aren't just choosing one of those things.

And then as the chapter continues, the Shellenberger playbook repeats, once again suggesting the free market is taking care of our environmental problems.

Shellenberger perpetuates a common argument that in order to feed billions of people, we need factory farming.

"Attempting to move from factory farming to organic, free-range farming would require vastly more land, and thus destroy the habitat needed by mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, and other endangered species." — Michael Shellenberger

Is that why we can't have free-range chickens in our suburban backyards in America? I thought the Home Owners Association said it was because of reduced curb appeal and property values. But Shellenberger is saying my free-range chickens in suburban America are going to destroy the habitats needed by mountain gorillas and yellow-eyed penguins. I didn't know suburban backyards were being considered for mountain gorilla habitats. The cats and dogs in the suburban neighborhoods across America deserve some consideration in this too, don't you think? We can't have mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, free-range chickens, dogs, and cats all occupying the same suburban backyards. That would be ridiculous.

But I digress.

With regard to Shellenberger's commentary on the nutritional benefits of meat versus plant-based diets, even with the good references he provides, I don't have a good handle on what makes sense from a nutritional perspective. I imagine nutritional needs are highly dependent on the individual.

Chapter 8: Of course, safe nuclear power plants make sense.

This chapter really needs more references to peer-reviewed scientific journals for some of the claims made. As an experiment, I counted the number of peer-reviewed journal articles referenced in this chapter, and it comes out to about 10 percent of the ~130 citations in this chapter. The number is even less when you take out the social science journal references and only focus on physical science and engineering peer-reviewed journals. I don't know if 10 percent should be perceived as sufficient or not, but I think this whole book could've benefited from more references to peer-reviewed scientific journals.

As for the focus of this chapter, I think it makes sense that if we can establish safety as a guarantee and communicate that to the general public, it would make sense to invest in building and maintaining a global stock of nuclear power plants. I whole-heartedly agree that we should be investing in nuclear power plants right now.

On the other hand, I'm not even sure we can rely on planes being safe anymore. And planes seem like a similar or lesser engineering feat when compared to a nuclear power plant. Even if you showed people a study that said planes are still currently the safest way to travel, I think people would still have the most recent debacles in their minds. Public perception is difficult to control.

As Shellenberger points out, nuclear power plants also take a long time to build, and the nuclear workforce is old, so if we're going to go the safe nuclear route, we should start soon in a big way and also couple the investments in the power plants with investments in nuclear engineering higher education programs.

Another odd rabbit hole presented in this chapter was the discussion on deaths caused by the evacuation of Fukushima prefecture during the incident in 2011. Shellenberger offers up the claim that the evacuation caused an estimated 1,600 deaths, but does little to unpack that estimate. An evacuation causing deaths seems supremely vague to me. Maybe good material for the next 'Final Destination' movie though. And then if you were to paint a more detailed picture of how an evacuation potentially caused 1,600 deaths, then I would think there should be a critical look at how we do evacuations in society, regardless of the cause or inciting incident necessitating the evacuation.

On a separate note, Shellenberger reveals in this chapter what I had suspected from the beginning of the book that he is intentionally misleading and curating information to tell the narrative he wants to be heard. This is a common tactic used across the political spectrum, and probably useful to building support for ideas, but it is by nature not presenting a complete picture. Even if he presents two seemingly opposing narratives with curated information in each narrative, that of course will lead the reader to believe what he wants them to. I suppose there is no getting around this when you are trying to convince people of something.

"At least that's how the story goes. While all of the above is technically accurate, I carefully excluded key facts in order to be misleading in the same ways that antinuclear campaigners have been for fifty years." — Michael Shellenberger

I guess if anti-nuclear campaigners mislead people and pro-nuclear campaigners also mislead people, then it will just cancel out and people will arrive at a well-informed perspective? I don't know how this works, especially if both sides are presenting technically accurate information that tells two different stories. Someone should write a book on how a futuristic hyper-intelligent society would determine optimal solutions and then execute those solutions in the face of competing interests, externalities, and various Earthly constraints.

Perhaps environmental alarms should be completely objective run by robots so that no human can twist a narrative or fear monger. I wonder if Michael Shellenberger would support mundane automated notifications sent to every phone on the planet simply stating when environmental thresholds are crossed. What makes an alarm useful is people knowing it is going off and reacting to the alarm. Imagine there is no fire alarm in a house, a fire happens, carbon monoxide knocks people out before they know what's going on, and the house burns down with people inside. At this point, I feel like I'm explaining and defending all versions of alarms in society. At this point in the book, Shellenberger hasn't yet offered up what an acceptable environmental alarm looks like.

Again, I digress.

I agree with Michael Shellenberger on the need for nuclear power plants. Governments should more proactively enable and fund safe nuclear power plants globally and at the same time invest in nuclear engineering higher education programs. Although, I personally still don't want to live near a nuclear power plant. And, we should of course still continue to invest in solar and wind.

Chapter 9: Numbers, numbers, numbers.

This is the chapter where I thought Shellenberger might prove he is not just being a contrarian for the sake of selling books. Instead, he casually discounted the importance of solar and wind energy and did some back of the napkin math to make it seem like solar and wind are not viable options.

The economics of residential solar is highly dependent on the cost of electricity, which varies widely across the country and around the world. Similarly, residential solar has been incentivized in various ways across the United States, which make the economics more favorable to homeowners. Moreover, I still haven't seen any studies that say solar panels don't add value to homes at the time of sale. The addition to the home's value usually isn't included in the back of the napkin calculations, as it wasn't in Shellenberger's math either.

Shellenberger's commentary on the small scale of Tesla battery installations wasn't compelling enough to suggest we as a society shouldn't advocate for more of those types of projects. He spent a lot of pages that really only served to confirm that solar, wind, hydro, battery storage, and nuclear are all different with various pros and cons.

As this chapter goes on, Shellenberger leans into a one-sided anti-renewables onslaught, and doesn't even acknowledge all of the work the solar and wind industry has done for decades to address their unique challenges and the significant progress being made on so many things from prices to reliability to footprint and environmental impact. This chapter isn't about doing right by the environment or humanity. Shellenberger missed the mark in this chapter to say the least and lost a lot of credibility in the process.

I keep wondering who Shellenberger's intended audience is for this book. Is it Libertarian donors, a particular circle of his peers, common environmentalists, the general public? Depending on which of those audiences he is targeting, maybe a one-sided anti-renewables chapter makes sense.

As a side note, I believe the days of McKinsey being considered a reliable source of information have come and gone. McKinsey's largest clients are the biggest multi-national corporations in the world. Do we really think McKinsey is the best source for unbiased information?

It is also ridiculous how Shellenberger compares the Solar Impulse, a concept plane, to a Boeing 747. It is as if he is against all research and development. I wonder if he would've critiqued the Wright brothers the same way and compared their first planes to well-developed passenger trains. Shellenberger is writing a narrative as if all progress has been achieved and there will be no progress moving forward. Note that he doesn't talk about electric planes or their development for regional travel. I think that is a theme in this book — ignoring and discounting local and regional scale thinking and successes to paint a picture globally that the environmental alarms have hurt humanity.

The section on waste is important, but Shellenberger once again misleads the reader with his myopic and singular nuclear advocacy coupled with fossil fuel industry appeasement, not even addressing the much larger problems with coal power plants as he jabs at the solar and wind industries. Solar and wind industry professionals would likely be on his side for developing nuclear power plants if he weren't playing this like a winner-take-all game. We can and should have more than one type of energy in our global energy portfolio and in the many individual, community, corporate, local, regional, and state energy portfolios that Shellenberger ignores.

"Just as the far higher power densities of coal made the Industrial Revolution possible, the far lower power densities of solar and wind would make today's high-energy, urbanized, and industrial civilization impossible. And, as we have seen , for some advocates of renewables, that has always been the goal." — Michael Shellenberger

"The transition to renewables was doomed because modern industrial people, no matter how romantic they are, do not want to return to pre-modern life." — Michael Shellenberger

I know a lot of people that have installed solar panels on their residential roofs, and I have never heard a single person mention anything that would even allude to the notion that they are living a lower quality of life or that they are some how not able to work and live in today's society. Likewise there are thousands of small and medium-sized businesses across the United States that have installed solar on their roofs with no negative impact to their business operations. Somehow none of them have "returned to pre-modern life".

As much as he is advocating against environmental extremism, Michael Shellenberger himself seems to be an extremist in many ways. At the very least, he is deploying the same communication tactics as those he opposes. I wonder if he recognizes that he is effectively sounding an environmental alarm about the negative impacts of wind energy on birds. Even though it is one that many sustainability professionals have heard and commonly talk about, this is still Shellenberger practicing environmental alarmism. Isn't Shellenberger's own environmental alarmism helping the birds at least? Once again, his own arguments are antithetical to the title of his book. Environmental alarmism does help the sustainability conversation and therefore helps us all.

Chapter 10: Logic breakdown.

There is a difference between a corporation like ExxonMobil that made money from fossil fuels funding political campaigns that help that corporation make more money from fossil fuels and a person that made money from fossil fuels donating to a political campaign that would actually reduce the amount of money that person makes from fossil fuels in the future. This is so obvious. Let me try to put it a different way to hammer this home. Imagine person A invests in a fossil fuel company and makes money, and then using the money they made they donate to a political campaign that supports the growth of the fossil fuel industry which person A is invested in. Now imagine a different person, person B. Person B also invests in a fossil fuel company and makes money, and then using the money they made they donate to a political campaign that supports the decline of the fossil fuel industry which person B is invested in. Person A donates for the benefit of their own financial interest, while person B donates for the benefit of humanity and at the cost of their own financial interests. And, I'm one of those crazy people that believes we need to get all money out of politics. So, if you ask me if Tom Steyer, or any millionaire or billionaire, should be donating to political campaigns, then my answer is no one should have that kind of influence over our democracy. In my opinion, Tom Steyer's political contributions have proved ineffective anyway.

As for solar companies giving to environmental advocacy nonprofits, I agree that it is functionally the same thing as fossil fuel companies giving to fossil fuel advocacy lobbying organizations. Shellenberger is simply fighting fire with fire in this book. The paragraphs in this book without citations are of course the most egregiously provocative. He's not changing the rhetoric as the title of his book might suggest. He's just fighting back for nuclear using the same rhetoric. It is unclear though if he is developing more advocates for nuclear or just more fodder to perpetuate the status quo.

Shellenberger's reasoning in this chapter is at minimum lazy and potentially also manipulative, once again to feed his narrative and whatever audience he is targeting to gobble up his weak logic. Shellenberger should expect some scrutiny about his financial motives associated with this book as a consequence of this chapter. Shellenberger once again shows his cards and unveils his real motives. This book is simply a way for him to advance his pro-nuclear agenda. To be honest, I'm generally pro-nuclear, and I was before reading this book, but this book seems more like Shellenberger's revenge fantasy than a book just advocating for nuclear. I'm guessing he and his publisher figured the more extremist and provocative route would sell more books and then some how result in more support for nuclear. I guess time will tell if that strategy works, but once again, that strategy is antithetical to the title of the book, which may or may not matter to Shellenberger.

"Not only are 350.org, Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF all funded by fossil fuel billionaires, they are also all trying to kill America's largest source of carbon-free electricity, nuclear power." — Michael Shellenberger

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that after this book was published, 350.org, Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF weren't exactly excited to join forces with Michael Shellenberger. But maybe he had already tried to work with them and gotten burned or rejected. Hence the book?

Conclusion

This book, while frustrating, is absolutely worth a read, even if only to consider and understand another point of view. I recommend people across the political spectrum take the time to read this even though I don't agree with a lot of assertions in the book and the overarching message. I think most of what Shellenberger writes is advocating for nuclear energy and prioritizing economic development over environmental stewardship in the name of poverty alleviation. This book may lead to more resistance to meaningful environmental stewardship and climate action or it may lead to better prepared and more creative sustainability professionals and environmental activists. Unfortunately, and perhaps unavoidably, the messaging in his book is convoluted and contradictory. It is an odd mix of acknowledging and describing the environmental problems we face, but somehow always coming back to discounting them and prioritizing economic development and using poverty alleviation as the justification. It is a pro-nuclear book more than anything else.

There were multiple times when Shellenberger identified solutions that would address environmental issues while also addressing poverty, but that commentary was overshadowed by a disdain for particular environmental activist organizations. Perhaps in his next book, he can just focus on those solutions where there is the overlap or balance with poverty alleviation that he is looking for. As for the environmentalists that read the book, I'm sure some will tone down or transform their environmental activism to appeal to different audiences. Perhaps it isn't surprising that I am also contradicting myself by saying people should read the book even though I don't agree with a lot of assertions made. At the very least, it is worth the read to understand where various thinking and ideas are coming from.