The author (second from right) in Maranhão, Brazil, 1995MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER The author (second from right) in Maranhão, Brazil, 1995MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER

Top green movement hero apologises for ‘the climate scare’

 ... and misleading the public

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 may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been aclimate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective experttestimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next AssessmentReport, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly weenvironmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
  • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest useof land — has declinedby an area nearly as large as Alaska
  • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
  • Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for decades and peaked in Britain, Germany and France in the mid-seventies
  • Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
  • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
  • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are biggerthreats to species than climate change
  • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
  • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial”agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to manypeople. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientificstudies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Foodand Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and otherleading scientific bodies.

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-winganti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised moneyfor Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in thesemi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting landinvasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

For the rest of this article please go to source link below.

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By Michael Shellenberger

Best-selling author of "Apocalypse Never" and "San Fransicko" :: Time Magazine, “Hero of Environment” :: Green Book Award Winner :: Founder, Environmental Progress

(Source: whattsupwiththat.com; June 29, 2020; https://tinyurl.com/y8x2gvbs)
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