An environmentalist’s apology:
‘I was guilty of alarmism’
Spectator USA,
by
Michael Shellenberger
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
7/9/2020 5:02:15 AM
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening, it’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30, so I may seem like a strange person to be saying this.
But as an energy expert asked by the US Congress to provide objective expert testimony and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as an Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize
Reply 1 - Posted by:
tyshab 7/9/2020 6:22:40 AM (No. 472031)
Wow, glad to see he is showing some honesty.
7 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 7/9/2020 6:39:23 AM (No. 472046)
"I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding.", "my fellow environmentalists terrified the public"
And there you have Leftism in a nutshell. It is a social/emotional movement, NOT a rational one. Environmentalism has become a terrorist organization. That is how the Left functions; promote fear to advocate for their extreme proposals. But all of it is a lie and their proposals are not necessary.
"people in the White House (BO's) and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career ... Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.", "The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to."
The politics of personal destruction are used to destroy truth. Per the author's examples, environmental policies are exactly backwards in many cases. "Why were we all so misled? ... dollars from fossil fuel interests ... Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs ... status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism." That is, emotional forces and corruption are driving environmentalism.
"My invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment."
Since environmentalism is a political, not scientific, movement, political realignment is what is necessary to rebuild a rational environmental policy; one based on REAL science and practical actions.
Considering the extremity of the damage done by environmentalists, not only by the fear they create but also by the wrongheadedness of their policies and the cost of them, it's far too early for forgiveness. It will take many decades to undo the damage they have done. Shellenberger has made a start at redemption.
17 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
worried 7/9/2020 7:58:02 AM (No. 472117)
Gee, and for all my 80 odd years I have believed what took him all these years to realize, yet he gets the publicity! I guess because I am not an "energy expert". How many others of us have scoffed at the End of the World claims of those like Al Bore/Gore, and been ridiculed for it? So much of those environmentalists' garbage has been proven to be just that! Garbage!
Time we should learn to yell louder. That seems the only way to get attention.
12 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Clinger 7/9/2020 8:11:32 AM (No. 472141)
This is a glimpse into the human group dynamic. People need a sense of belonging and worth. The vast majority of us are predominantly followers and gladly surrender our status of belonging and definition of worthiness to strong leaders. Ask any border collie, we are easy to heard.
To do our due diligence to prepare to deal with the droves of blind followers with every sense of their own being wrapped up in catastrophic lies, we need to do our homework, I suggest we study the Milgram experiment and subsequent repeats of the same, Gustave LeBon's work on group think and Eric Hoffer's "True Believer." Full disclosure, I haven't read Hoffer yet, just bits and pieces, a little internet exploration but I listened to Mark Levin talk of him and I have no doubt its a must read and will flesh out my own grasp on what the hell is going on.
"Climate Science" as we know it has virtually no scientific value in the study of climate but has immense scientific value in the study of human psychology.
8 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
mobyclik 7/9/2020 8:19:34 AM (No. 472156)
Okay, we've read it here in the Spectator USA, now we'll never hear of this again. The so-called MSM will bury this immediately, it's what they do.
9 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
jhpeters2 7/9/2020 8:51:37 AM (No. 472180)
Environmentalist definition is - an advocate of environmentalism - Miriam Webster
FTA: I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
Thirty years jawboning about a concept he now admits he knows nothing about. Isn't it typical? I have been an advocate for heterosexuality all my life, that doesn't make my opinion on sex an expert opinion by any means. Only to the left can wags like this achieve anything remotely resembling expertise. That is a very low bar to hurdle indeed. I have begun refusing to even contemplate accepting "expert" opinions about anything, much less accept what is being advocated, regardless of the advocate's time spent in his fantasy trenches.
8 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
mc squared 7/9/2020 8:53:18 AM (No. 472183)
The author may be sincere now, book or no book,, I'll give him that. However, he was quick to point out the danger of Covid with numbers and all.
He may just see the writing on the wall - climate change is no longer lucrative but pandemics are.
7 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Kate318 7/9/2020 9:05:57 AM (No. 472198)
Rush was just talking about this guy the other day. Nice to see it reinforced, OP.
4 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
rikkitikki 7/9/2020 9:59:30 AM (No. 472254)
Color me skeptical...in my experience, the vocations of 'climate activist' and 'energy expert' are mutually exclusive occupations. Energy experts tend to be engineers with decades of professional experience in the actual practice of engineering work...whose depth and breadth cannot simultaneously allow any appreciable time off for climate activism.
Pick one, but he cannot be both.
4 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
MDConservative 7/9/2020 10:42:01 AM (No. 472299)
Just another useful idiot. He's got a new book. I wonder if he tells how much of this tainted money he took to finance his "research" and other promotional activities.
3 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Ida Lou Pino 7/9/2020 10:44:47 AM (No. 472304)
Reply #2 nails it.
Facts and data do not matter one whit. Leftists rely on emotionalism to create hysteria among their feeble-minded followers. And that's bad news for "Apocalypse Never." All those documented facts may mean something to rational people like us - - but they will never penetrate the emotional hysteria ginned up by leftists.
As worthy as the book is - - it will have zero impact on the climate frenzy.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 7/9/2020 10:54:48 AM (No. 472312)
Welsome to the right side of the issue, we need millions more like this one. In the 1970s an early 80s, I was a member of The Sierra Club, The WIlderness Society, The National Parks Conservation Association, and The Nature Conservancy. In those days The Sierra Club published trail guides and maps for hiking, The Wilderness Society worked to protect the very small remaining roadless areas with Wilderness designation, for hiking, hunting and all non-motorized uses. The NPCA supported our national parks by volunteers helping maintain hiking trails, and other services to make our parks better. The Nature Conservancy purchased unique habitat (how capitalist of them!) and set up ways to preserve the land that they owned.
My wife and I left all except the Nature Conservancy in the early 90s, as they were taken over by extreme leftists who were hiding out after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the disrepute of Communism which followed. Since then, even the Nature Conservancy has gone over to the nutso side on the MMGW fraud, so we dropped them, too, although they are nowhere near as extreme as Sierra Club and Wilderness Society have become.
This MMGW scam has been a fraud for at least 30 years, and I watched it grow up, as the Communists sought an alternative path to power after the collapse of Communism. Ecocraziness and MMGW/climate change fraud was their new path to power, and they have infiltrated much of the world with this lie, and gained a lot of support. And ALL their "solutions" (Green New Deal for example) are essentially identical to the Communist playbooks that they have been using for over a century, just dressed up slightly differently in eco-terms.
4 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DVC 7/9/2020 11:11:05 AM (No. 472328)
Anyone who goes to Bing search today, will see a photo which gives a bit of an idea why I enjoy hiking in the high mountains in Wyoming and Colorado so much, and why I used to support what used to be outdoords groups.
https://www.bing.com/
1 person likes this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
MickTurn 7/9/2020 11:22:25 AM (No. 472344)
Fine, thanks, NOW you need to GIVE BACK 100% of the money you stole with 10% interest.
Let us know when that is done and we'll put you on our long list of those to forgive...
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Bluefindad 7/9/2020 11:23:10 AM (No. 472345)
Biden will be much, much worse than Obama (if you thought that was possible!). Biden has no brain left. He will be used as a puppet by the socialists. The 'Green New Deal' will become a reality. Energy prices will soar and measures to restrict freedom (as rehearsed during the pandemic) will accelerate because if we don't stop climate change, the earth will die! Climate change will require emergency action for the good of the public. Air conditioning will be affordable only for the super rich and party-connected, Soviet style. Same with healthcare, as a national healthcare system is put in place.
Over the years, my rejoinder to socialists (who called themselves 'liberals' is "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO LIKE THE WORLD YOU'RE CREATING!"
4 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
bad-hair 7/9/2020 12:26:47 PM (No. 472400)
I tend to be an optimist in some respects. Although our grandchildren may create a socialist Utopia for themselves, they are the ones who will have to live in it. The constitution of the USA lives in 50 states. Some of them will deny it. Some of them will keep the freedom ongoing.
1 person likes this.
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