Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

The assumption was that nature, when left alone, achieves a kind of harmony or equilibrium. Like the thermostat switching on in the cold, nature gracefully, gradually self-regulates species and environments in and out of existence when it senses things are out of proportion. It’s an interwoven system that works as a whole unless humans interfere with its operations. But “nature” doesn’t operate like a self-regulating system. In reality, different natural environments change constantly. Species come and go. There is no whole or “system” to collapse. There’s just a changing mix of plants, animals, and other organisms over time. We might prefer one version of that mixture, like the Amazon rainforest, but there is nothing in the mixture telling us that it is better or worse than some other combination, like a farm or desert.48 The same is true for what we call “the climate.” The climate simply refers to the weather over a period of time, say thirty years, either in a particular place or the entire planet.