Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

I emailed McKibben in early 2019 to ask if he regretted advocating for Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station’s closure. He told me its demise “didn’t, I think, lead to big increases in emissions from Vermont electricity.” He pointed to a New York Times data tool, which he said showed “the state replaced the [nuclear] power by buying lots and lots more hydro from Quebec.”37 But that’s not what the data show. In reality, Vermont’s utilities couldn’t replace the lost electricity from Vermont Yankee with in-state generation, and turned to electricity imports from the New England power pool, which is primarily from natural gas.38 McKibben’s opposition to nuclear is the rule not the exception among environmentalists. While referring to the Green New Deal, the office of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in early 2019 that “the plan is to transition off of nuclear . . . as soon as possible.”39 A few weeks later, environmental activist Greta Thunberg wrote on Facebook that nuclear is “extremely dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming,”40 even though, as we have seen, the best-available science shows the opposite. “They can’t have it both ways,” said MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel. “If they say this [climate change] is apocalyptic or it’s an unacceptable risk, and then they turn around and rule out one of the most obvious ways of avoiding it [nuclear power], they’re not only inconsistent, they’re insincere.”41