Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

The answer from many rational environmentalists, including myself, who are alarmed by the religious fanaticism of apocalyptic environmentalism, has been that we need to better maintain the divide between science and religion, just as scientists need to maintain the divide between their personal values and the facts they study. Others, like Scruton, urge us to aim for a world “where conflicts are resolved according to a shared conception of justice” and the “building and governance of institutions, and to the thousand ways in which people enrich their lives through corporations, traditions and spheres of accountability.”83 But Scruton himself doubted that such a rationalist project could succeed against the apocalyptic tendencies of the regressive left. “Clearly we are dealing with the religious need, a need planted in our ‘species being,’ ” he writes. “There is a longing for membership that no amount of rational thought, no proof of the absolute loneliness or humanity or of the unredeemed nature of our sufferings, can ever eradicate.”