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developed nations required fossil fuels to grow wealthy
it is unethical for rich nations to deprive poor ones of the technologies responsible for our prosperity.
“every Indian life saved through medical or nutritional assistance from abroad diminishes the quality of life for those who remain, and for subsequent generations.”
‘five horsemen of the environmental apocalypse’: ignorance, greed, denial, tribalism, and short-term thinking.”
Hypocrisy is the ultimate power move.
Economic growth is necessary for creating the infrastructure required for protecting people from natural disasters, climate-related or not.
the misinformation about polar bears perfectly captures the ways in which many of the stories people tell about climate change don’t have much to do with science.
“Many of the more worrying impacts of climate change are really symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment.”
better cultivars and improved irrigation increase crop yields. It shows the impact of sea level rise on the most vulnerable country, but does not mention the average. It emphasizes the impacts of increased heat stress but downplays reduced cold stress. It warns about poverty traps, violent conflict and mass migration without much support in the literature. The media, of course, exaggerated further.”
authors were exaggerating or misrepresenting the science for effect.
The system appeared biased toward exaggeration.
“Many of the more worrying impacts of climate change are really symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment.”
press releases, and authors’ statements betray ideological motivations, a tendency toward exaggeration, and an absence of important context.
The news media also deserves blame for having misrepresented climate change and other environmental problems as apocalyptic, and for having failed to put them in their global, historical, and economic context.
IPCC and other scientific organizations are most misleading in what their summaries and press releases don’t say, or at least not clearly. They don’t clearly say that the death toll from natural disasters has radically declined and should decline further with continued adaptation. They don’t clearly say that wood fuel build-up and constructing homes near forests matters more than climate change in determining the severity and impact of fires in much of the world. And they don’t clearly say that fertilizer, tractors, and irrigation matter more than climate change to crop yields.
climate change must prove to be greater than all other contemporary challenges, from the monumental task of lifting one billion souls out of extreme poverty in a world where manufacturing is playing a smaller role in economic development, to the battles and wars that killed tens of thousands of people last year in the Middle East and Africa.
The appeal-to-nature fallacy holds that “natural” things, e.g., tortoiseshell, ivory, wild fish, organic fertilizer, wood fuel, and solar farms, are better for people and the environment than “artificial” things, e.g., plastics from fossil fuels, farmed fish, chemical fertilizer, and nuclear plants. It is fallacious for two reasons. First, the artificial things are as natural as the natural things. They are simply newer. Second, the older, “natural” things are “bad,” not good, if “good” is defined as protecting sea turtles, elephants, and wild fish.
no living thing is useless, and all are related one to the other.”
apocalyptic environmentalism is a kind of new Judeo-Christian religion, one that has replaced God with nature. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, human problems stem from our failure to adjust ourselves to God. In the apocalyptic environmental tradition, human problems stem from our failure to adjust ourselves to nature. In some Judeo-Christian traditions, priests play the role of interpreting God’s will or laws, including discerning right from wrong. In the apocalyptic environmentalist tradition, scientists play that role. “I want you to listen to the scientists,” Thunberg and others repeat.
Apocalyptic environmentalism gives people a purpose: to save the world from climate change, or some other environmental disaster. It provides people with a story that casts them as heroes, which some scholars, as we will see, believe we need in order to find meaning in our lives.
The trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating. It leads its adherents to demonize their opponents, often hypocritically. It drives them to seek to restrict power and prosperity at home and abroad. And it spreads anxiety and depression without meeting the deeper psychological, existential, and spiritual needs its ostensibly secular devotees seek.
To believe in imminent apocalypse is, according to one scholar, to believe that “the accepted texture of reality is about to undergo a staggering transformation, in which the long-established institutions and ways of life will be destroyed.”
the pursuit of knowledge outside of morality was dangerous.
in the early 1990s, climate change emerged as the new apocalyptic threat at the end of the Cold War.
all humans, not just religious people, need to believe, consciously or unconsciously, that we are, in one way or another, immortal, that some part of us will never die.
too much fear of death gets in the way of living, healthy individuals repress their fears, making them mostly unconscious.
it is notable that the spike in environmental alarmism comes at a time when anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising within the general population, especially among adolescents, in both the United States and Europe.67 Seventy percent of American teenagers call anxiety and depression a major problem.68
the world is an evil place and it would be better if it were destroyed and turned back over to the natural kingdom.”
the people who are the most alarmist about environmental problems are also the most opposed to the technologies capable of addressing them, from fertilizer and flood control to natural gas and nuclear power.
people tend to feel put down by climate activists who condemn economic growth, eating meat, flying, and driving. “Why would people listen to you,” asked Lunnon, “when, you know, you’re some kind of new age Puritan?”
was only several years later that I started to question environmentalism’s claims about energy, technology, and the natural environment. Now that I have, I can see that much of my sadness over environmental problems was a projection, and misplaced. There is more reason for optimism than pessimism. Conventional air pollution peaked fifty years ago in developed nations and carbon emissions have peaked or will soon peak in most others.
The amount of land we use for meat production is declining. Forests in rich nations are growing back and wildlife are returning. There is no reason poor nations can’t develop and adapt to climate change. Deaths from extreme events should keep declining. Cruelty to animals in meat production has declined and should continue to decline, and, if we embrace technology, habitats available for endangered species, including for gorillas, and penguins, should keep growing in size. None of that means there isn’t work to do. There is plenty. But much if not most of it has to do with accelerating those
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The stories we tell matter. The picture promoted by apocalyptic environmentalists is inaccurate and dehumanizing. Humans are not unthinkingly destroying nature. Climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, and species extinction are not, fundamentally, consequences of greed and hubris but rather side effects of economic development motivated by a humanistic desire to improve people’s lives.
rich nations must support, not deny, development to poor nations.
“Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts”—a
‘Don’t just listen to what people tell you.’
Environmental humanism will eventually triumph over apocalyptic environmentalism, I believe, because the vast majority of people in the world want both prosperity and nature, not nature without prosperity. They are just confused about how to achieve both. For while some environmentalists claim their agenda will also deliver a greener prosperity, the evidence shows that an organic, low-energy, and renewable-powered world would be worse, not better, for most people and for the natural environment.
