Environmental Alarmism
As is the case with so many of our human endeavors, there are people on all sides of the issue of climate change, its importance, and tactics for its mitigation.
In Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger (cover shown here) argues that climate change isn’t that big a deal. However, his reasoning is flawed, as I’ve tried to show by countering a few of the assertions it makes in the Facebook post promoting the book.
“But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die.”
It’s not impossible that some idiot said, sometime in the past, that by 2019, billions of people (meaning more that 25% of the world’s population) would die by causes related to a changing climate. But since this is a position that not one person with any training in the subject could possibly have taken, what’s the point of bringing it up? The scientific consensus on the subject is that by 2075, hundreds of millions of people will suffer terribly due to some combination of droughts, wildfires, floods and other storm damage, potable water shortages, insect-borne diseases, and sea-level rise that submerges their homelands. In addition, all this will amplify armed hostility around the globe.
Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade.
This is true but misleading. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, even though the annual tonnage of CO2 has diminished. Also, the emissions from India and China are going through the roof, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely.
The scientific consensus on this subject is that, in a business-as-usual scenario, the Earth will experience an average temperature rise of somewhere between 3 and 6 degrees C (the latter of which would be catastrophic).
What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power.
I can’t prove that this is baseless, but I can say that a) I disapprove of people who make accusations without supporting evidence, and b) there is plenty of evidence that Big Oil operates out of a desire for wealth and power. Some claim that Bill Gates is using the pandemic to enslave the world’s population with deadly vaccinations and the implanting of microchips into everyone’s body. Others believe that chemtrails are a similar attempt on the part of some government to makes slaves of us all. And yes, there are YouTube videos that make these assertions, but what about any real proof?
There is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.
That’s an interesting claim, but does it mean anything concrete in what the environmentalists are trying to do here? I don’t know. Speaking for myself as a secular person: I’m definitely not looking for transcendence. Nobody outside my immediate family and small circle of friends is going to be talking about me a week after my demise, and I’m cool with that.
