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After reading Merchants of Doubt, I always read any article about the environment with a pinch of salt. Going through the author list of articles published on F
by Xixi 7y ago
After reading Merchants of Doubt, I always read any article about the environment with a pinch of salt. Going through the author list of articles published on Forbes: he definitely has a clear pro-nuclear bias, and a strong anti-renewable bias. Digging further, his organization, Environmental Progress, is indeed largely considered to be little more than a pro-nuclear lobby group. Michael Shellenberger himself is largely perceived as a nuclear salesman.
At a personal level I used to be rather pro-nuclear, but certainly not anti-renewable. In any case, I think it can be helpful for the readers to have a little bit of background when reading such articles.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 7y agoIndeed, Shill-enberger's articles attack a straw man. No-one is reasonably claiming the world will end due to climate change, or even that climate change is directly causing fires etc. But it is helping alter habitats and will over time have quite large impacts on habitat and diversity, and particularly the water cycle, to which humans and agriculture are particularly sensitive. And we are at a point where it could get quite out of control, with positive feedback loops kicking in (permafrost, clathrates, etc), unless we take serious action now. Simply counting the (human) economic impact of climate change seriously ducks our moral responsibility to take care of the planet.
- slantaclaus 7y agoHis background doesn’t qualify him to speak on environmental issues anyway, in my opinion. No more than any well read layman anyway. Shellenberger was raised in Greeley, Colorado and attended college at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana.[79][80] He went on to receive a master's degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.