Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

Some ecological scientists recognized that they had inadvertently and unconsciously imposed a fundamentally religious idea onto science. “I am convinced that modern ecological theory, so important in our attitudes towards nature and man’s interference with it,” admitted one, “owes its origin to the [Judeo-Christian intelligent] design argument. The wisdom of the creator is self-evident. . . . no living thing is useless, and all are related one to the other.”50 The flip side of nature’s interconnectedness was collapse, which E.O. Wilson adopted as the core assumption of his apocalyptic species area model. What the scientists had re-created in both the species area model, and the prediction that extinctions would result in the extinction of humankind, were the first and last book of the Bible. Genesis tells the story of Eden, and humankind’s fall from it, as a consequence of its hubris. The book of Revelation tells the story of the end of the world, the ultimate consequence of humankind’s fall.