Michael Shellenberger

Recognizing nuclear as renewable, and saving Diablo Canyon, would be a bold move for Governor Newsom. It would upset his traditional anti-nuclear environmental allies.

Dealing with environmental lawsuits and grassroots resistance is expensive. Industrial wind and solar developers have to hire lawyers, public relations specialists, and scientists willing to testify that this or that project poses only a modest threat to endangered birds and bats.

The underlying problem with solar and wind is that they are too unreliable and energy-dilute.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalism at legacy publications.

There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. And exaggerating climate change risks distracting us from other important issues including ones we might have more near-term control over.

Most people think of solar and wind as new energy sources. In fact, they are two of our oldest.

Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public.

There has always been enough fossil fuels to power human civilization for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, and nuclear energy is effectively infinite.

At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women's cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

Nuclear is the only energy source that has proven capable of fully replacing fossil fuels at low-cost in wealthy nations. While hydro-electric dams can sometimes play that role, they are limited to nations with powerful rivers, many of which have already been dammed.

The idea that we're going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.

The industrial revolution in England was only made possible through intensified agriculture and the use of coal for manufacturing, which delivered far more energy for far less labor.

Wind energy threatens golden eagles, bald eagles, burrowing owls, red-tailed hawks, Swainson's hawks, American kestrels, white-tailed kites, peregrine falcons, and prairie falcons, among many others.

Hypocrisy is the ultimate power move. It is a way of demonstrating that one plays by a different set of rules from the ones adhered to by common people.

Hypocrisy demonstrates how unaccountable one is to conventional morality.

The main problem with biofuels - the land required - stems from their low power density.

If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It's not rocket science.

It's when the conservationists became environmentalists that everything went bad. It stopped being about the environment. It became about controlling society.

Cold white wine is so good with fatty, fried food.

Nations are reorienting toward the national interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables. The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.

When climate goes away as an apocalyptic concern, something else will emerge. No doubt about it.

For years, I referred to climate change as an 'existential' threat to human civilization, and called it a 'crisis.'

I actually argue that renewables are worse than fossil fuels. It's a physical manifestation of lower power densities. More land, more materials, more mining, more metals, more waste.

Environmentalism, apocalyptic environmentalism in particular, has become the dominant religion of supposedly secular people in the West.

There are major groups, including the Sierra Club, that support efforts to deprive poor countries of energy.

We have good examples of successful adaptation to rising sea levels. The Netherlands became a wealthy nation despite having one-third of its landmass below sea level, including areas a full 7m below sea level, as a result of the gradual sinking of its landscapes.

The only countries that have successfully moved from fossil fuels to low-carbon power have done so with the help of nuclear energy.

In truth, humankind has never been at risk of running out of energy.

Like many environmental documentaries, 'Planet of Humans' endorses debunked Malthusian ideas that the world is running out of energy.

Making anything more labor-intensive makes it more expensive.

Paid child care would make child care more efficient, allowing more children to be cared for by fewer adults, and thus free up parents to work more.

Why are the people who are most alarmist about climate change so opposed to the technologies that are solving it? One possibility is that they truly believe nuclear and natural gas are as dangerous as climate change.

Before progressives were apocalyptic about climate change they were apocalyptic about nuclear energy. Then, after the Cold War ended, and the threat of nuclear war declined radically, they found a new vehicle for their secular apocalypse in the form of climate change.

The flip side of renewables' low energy density is their low return on energy invested.

We should be concerned about the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations, without question. There is nothing automatic about adaptation. But it's clear that there is simply no science that supports claims that rising sea levels threaten civilization much less the apocalypse.

Nobody is suggesting climate change won't negatively impact crop yields. It could. But such declines should be put in perspective.