Hydroelectric dams remain the way many poor countries gain access to reliable electricity, and both solar and wind might be worthwhile in some circumstances. But there is nothing in either their history or their physical attributes that suggests solar and wind in particular could or should be the centerpiece of efforts to deal with climate change.

Michael Shellenberger

Homelessness has become a human rights crisis.

Michael Shellenberger

Privately, many climate and energy experts admit that the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to decarbonize energy supplies is with nuclear power.

Michael Shellenberger

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

Michael Shellenberger

In reality, Chernobyl proves why nuclear is the safest way to make electricity. In the worst nuclear power accidents, relatively small amounts of particulate matter escape, harming only a handful of people.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

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.

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.

Michael Shellenberger

In many countries, wind turbines pose the single greatest threat to bats after habitat loss and white-nose syndrome.

Michael Shellenberger

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

Michael Shellenberger

Humankind has never transitioned to energy sources that are more costly, less reliable, and have a larger environmental footprint than the incumbent - and yet that's precisely what adding large amounts of solar and wind to the grid requires.

Michael Shellenberger

All renewables thus require a material throughput - from mining to processing to installing to disposing of the materials later as waste - that is orders of magnitude larger than for non-renewable energy sources.

Michael Shellenberger

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

Michael Shellenberger

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

Michael Shellenberger

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.

Michael Shellenberger

The producers of 'Chernobyl' should tell the truth: the accident demonstrates the relative safety, not danger, of nuclear power.

Michael Shellenberger

Now that Europe has developed through deforestation and fossil fuel use it is telling Brazil not to develop through deforestation and fossil fuel use. Bolsonaro is the backlash against such hypocrisy.

Michael Shellenberger